Nissan may build Chinese cars in Sunderland
Nissan’s plant in Sunderland is Britain’s biggest car plant. It can build 600,000 cars a year but runs at less than half of that.
On June 3, 2026, Nissan and Chery signed a non-binding agreement. From fiscal 2027, Nissan workers would build Chery cars on Line 1. In April 2026, Chery’s Omoda and Jaecoo brands took 6.7% of the UK market. Nissan took 2.7%.
China has more car brands than it can keep
In 2024, 129 brands of electric and plug-in hybrid cars sold vehicles in China. About 400 electric-car makers have closed since 2018. WM Motor, HiPhi, Jiyue and Neta all went bankrupt or stopped production between 2023 and 2025. AlixPartners expects about 15 brands to be financially viable by 2030.
Sources: AlixPartners; EV Boosters.
Chinese carmakers bring out new models twice as fast
McKinsey puts the time from concept to launch at about 24 months for Chinese electric-car makers. Older global carmakers take 40 to 50 months or more. The tools are virtual testing, soft tooling for test parts and software that keeps improving after the car is sold.
Xiaomi, a phone maker, announced its car business in March 2021 and showed its first car 33 months later.
Source: AlixPartners.
A price war cut profits to a record low
China calls it involution (内卷, nèijuǎn): competition so hard that more effort brings less return for everyone. Tesla cut prices in January 2023. In 2024, 227 models got cheaper. In May 2025, BYD cut prices by up to 34% and sold its Seagull for ¥55,800, about $7,800.
In 2025, 56% of car dealers lost money. China’s leaders have warned against the price war, and regulators have twice summoned carmakers over it.
Source: NBS data, via CarNewsChina.
Carmakers passed the squeeze to their suppliers by paying them later. In June 2025, under government pressure, 17 carmakers promised to pay suppliers within 60 days.
Sources: Fortune, citing analysts’ reading of BYD’s filings (not a company figure); CnEVPost; CAAM survey, via China Daily. Suppliers say some carmakers start the clock late.
China became the world’s largest car exporter
China’s factories used about half of their capacity in 2024. The cars they could not sell at home went abroad. China passed Germany in 2022 and Japan in 2023.
In 2025 China exported 7.1 million vehicles. That beat Japan’s 1985 record of 6.73 million. In June 2026, China became the first country to export more than a million vehicles in one month.
| Year | China | Japan | Germany | South Korea |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 1.0 | 3.7 | 2.6 | 1.9 |
| 2021 | 2.0 | 3.8 | 2.4 | 2.0 |
| 2022 | 3.1 | 3.8 | 2.6 | 2.3 |
| 2023 | 4.9 | 4.4 | 3.1 | 2.8 |
| 2024 | 5.9 | 4.2 | 3.2 | 2.8 |
| 2025 | 7.1 | 4.2 | 3.2 | 2.7 |
Sources: CAAM, JAMA, VDA (passenger cars) and KAMA. Japan and South Korea before 2023 and Germany before 2022 are approximate. China’s customs data count more: 8.3 million in 2025, worth $142 billion.
Tariffs closed some markets
The US put a 100% tariff on Chinese electric cars in September 2024. The EU added duties of up to 35.3% in October 2024. Russia took about a fifth of China’s car exports in 2024, then raised a vehicle fee in 2025 and its imports from China fell by about half.
British buyers chose a Chinese SUV
UK deliveries of Chery’s Jaecoo 7 began in January 2025, at prices from £29,435. The press called it the “Temu Range Rover.” In its first year it was the fourth-best-selling car to private buyers. In March 2026 it was Britain’s best-selling car.
Sources: AM Online; Omoda & Jaecoo UK; Which?
Chinese carmakers now build cars abroad
S&P Global counts 19 overseas plants for China’s five biggest exporters. About 1.1 million Chinese-brand vehicles were built abroad in 2025, and it forecasts about 1.6 million for 2026.
Not every plant works out. BYD’s plant in Hungary is running late. Its plant in Turkey is on hold. Leapmotor’s line in Poland ran for nine months and stopped.
Many of the plants used to belong to Western carmakers
BYD builds cars in Ford’s old plant in Brazil. Great Wall uses plants Mercedes-Benz and General Motors left in Brazil and Thailand. Chery builds in Nissan’s old Barcelona plant, which made the first Chinese-brand car built in Western Europe in November 2024.
- Running
- Being built or planned
- Stopped or on hold
- In a plant another carmaker built
- BYD
Szeged, Hungary. Being built. - BYD
Subang, West Java, Indonesia. Being built. - BYD (JV)
near Karachi, Pakistan. Being built. - Chery (Omoda & Jaecoo JV)
Thai Binh, Vietnam. Being built. - Geely (JV)
Thai Binh, Vietnam. Being built. - Leapmotor (via Stellantis)
Zaragoza, Spain. Being built.
In a Stellantis plant. - Chery
Sunderland, United Kingdom. Agreement to study.
In a Nissan plant. - GWM
Barra do Riacho, ES, Brazil. Announced.
Sources: company announcements and trade press, listed under References. Excludes bus and truck plants. Map outlines: Natural Earth.
Japan took the same steps in the 1980s
Japan’s car exports surged in the 1970s. In 1981 the US capped them. Then Japanese carmakers built plants abroad: Honda in Ohio in 1982, Toyota with GM at NUMMI in California in 1984, and Nissan in Sunderland in 1986. Their output in the US went from about 1,500 cars in 1982 to about 2 million by 1991.
At NUMMI, Toyota ran GM’s worst plant with the same workers and made it GM’s best. Western managers learned the Toyota Production System there. In 1990 an MIT study of the Japanese method gave it a name: lean production.