The 2024 China Automotive Market Development Forecast Summit was recently held in Beijing. Fu Bingfeng, executive vice president and secretary general of China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, said at the conference that in 2023, China's automobile industry has withstood a severe test and overcome many adverse factors, and the whole industry has met difficulties and taken the initiative to act, and the market has risen steadily, still showing strong development resilience and endogenous power. The auto market in 2023 presents three major highlights: First, automobile production and sales hit a record high; Second, new energy vehicles continued their rapid growth momentum, significantly better than predicted at the beginning of the year; Third, automobile exports have reached a record high, and 2023 is expected to reach 4.9 million or even 5 million units.
According to the Spanish "El Pais" website reported on December 8, the efforts of the European Union and the United States to counter China in the field of electric vehicles have not had any effect, at least for now. The Chinese locomotive has not only maintained its advantage, but has further strengthened it with a strong domestic market and expansion into other regions such as Europe. China, for example, already accounts for 41% of global exports of electric vehicles, according to a study by French bank Natixis. This is 20 percentage points higher than the whole of 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic. This growth is attributed not only to Chinese companies, but also to European and American car companies producing in China, such as Tesla. The company owned by American tech tycoon Elon Musk exports a lot of vehicles from its factory in Shanghai. In terms of sales volume, Chinese brands accounted for 52 percent of global plug-in vehicle registrations, including electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, totaling 7 million units. According to the above study, European brands are far behind, with fewer than 3 million vehicles, but higher than American brands (just over 2 million). Among the fastest-growing Chinese companies, BYD, the brand that arrived in Spain this year, set a record in October when it sold more than 300,000 plug-in cars in a single month for the first time in the world. Its best-selling models are the BYD Song (plug-in hybrid) and BYD Yuan Plus(electric) sold in Asia.
This week's meeting comes more than two months after Brussels launched an anti-subsidy investigation into Chinese-made electric cars. In response, a Chinese Foreign Ministry official said that China's industrial development is not dependent on government subsidies, but is driven by innovation. If China has a clear advantage in the electric vehicle market, then this advantage becomes even more obvious in the battery value chain. From January to September 2023, Chinese companies produced 63 percent of the world's electric vehicle batteries, with Ningde Times being the largest producer: accounting for 37 percent of the market. It was followed by BYD (which is not only a car manufacturer but also produces its own batteries and components) and South Korea's LG New Energy. Most notably, China is accelerating its capture of the battery market, with a market share of 35% since 2020, so it has almost doubled its weight in the industry in just three years. This comes at a time when Europe is trying hard to attract battery production projects. Not only does China produce two-thirds of the batteries, but its dominance of raw materials is also evident. According to the Natixis report, by 2025, China will have a very high share of the refining of key battery materials: 71% of manganese, 67% of cobalt, 54% of lithium and 39% of nickel.
