China's slow-down: Has decreasing growth in electric car uptake put the brakes on Chinese car imports for Australia or will new arrivals XPeng, Deepal, Geely and more push them higher?

There’s been extensive talk of the slowing uptake of electric cars around the world, be it relatively realistic talk of sales levelling out or rather dramatic chat about the end of EVs.

There’s a less commonly addressed effect of the same trend — China’s automotive export market.

It seemed there would be a new Chinese electric car arriving in Australia every fortnight. New brands were popping up left and right, with new models coming in an EV landslide, but that also seems to be slowing down. 

So are the two trends related?

Australia’s new car market sales data would certainly suggest so.

In 2024, sales of electric cars were down 14.5 per cent when compared to 2023, and that trend is continuing into 2025. January’s EV sales this year are down a huge 38.5 per cent compared to January 2024.

This is a pretty significant shift from the increase between 2022 and 2023, which saw EV sales up by a huge 161.1 per cent.

The numbers would suggest the booming EV market had a relatively solid ceiling, for now at least.

At the same time, Chinese imports were down 8.9 per cent between 2023 and 2024, after being up a huge 57.5 per cent the year before. Those numbers aren’t built from a small base, either — in 2022, 122,845 Chinese cars made it to Australia. In 2023, it was 193,433.

But in 2024, that number dropped back to 176,159, and that’s not a result of a shrinking market, as Australia’s market as a whole was steady, up 0.3 per cent.

The trend continued this year. Chinese car imports to Australia in January were down 6.9 per cent compared to 2024, from 12,902 to 12,018 units.

That in itself isn’t enormous, but the shift from what was a meteoric rise in the years preceding is significant.

The thing is, it’s not just Australia. As a country without tariffs on cars imported from China, it’s notable that even here things are slowing down.

When it comes to much bigger markets like the EU and the US, the tariffs imposed on China have done some significant cutting into the nation’s exports.

The US increased its tariffs in 2024 to 100 per cent, while the EU imposes different tariffs on different manufacturers, but they range from 17.0 to 35.3 per cent according to the EU.

Sources said China’s exports for new cars still increased in 2024, around 20 per cent more than the previous year. The growth has slowed from the previous years, which “reached 59 per cent and 74 per cent year-on-year during January to October 2022 and 2023” according to Rhodium Group researchers.

In further detail, China Daily reported the increase was mostly made up of traditional combustion exports: “fuel vehicle exports rose by 23.5 per cent to 4.57 million units, while [new energy vehicle or NEV] exports grew by 6.7 per cent to 1.284 million units”

The outlet points out the rise in NEV sales locally in China was up 35.5 per cent in terms of sales.

So, while all this data is taken in the midst of a tumultuous time for the global new car market, changing politics and economics worldwide seem to have somewhat put the brakes on China’s exports of EVs, at least for now.

Whether this will continue or something will change is yet to be seen.