EV Photo:VCG

 
Chinese electric vehicle (EV) maker Xpeng said on Monday that it has delivered its 10,000th smart EV in the European market, adding to recent developments that have pointed to strong presence of Chinese EVs in the EU despite hefty additional tariffs.

He Xiaopeng, chairman and CEO of Xpeng, said in a post on Sina Weibo that the company is the first Chinese new EV startup to deliver 10,000 EVs in the European market, and ranks as the top seller for models priced above 40,000 euros ($41,612.7) among all Chinese carmakers this year. 

On Sunday, another Chinese EV company Nio said that it plans to launch its new Firefly EV brand in the European market early in the first half of 2025. While noting that the EU's additional tariffs would "definitely" impact its EV, Li Bin, CEO of Nio, said that "even so, Firefly is very competitive because it is a product developed with real smart EV technologies, which Nio has been investing for a decade. We are confident in its product competitiveness," according to Reuters.

The European Commission, the executive body of the EU, in October introduced additional tariffs of up to 35.3 percent on Chinese EVs. However, Chinese EVs have so far maintained a solid foothold in the European market, according to a recent report from JATO Dynamics, a leading provider of data and analytics to the global automotive industry. 

Released on Friday, the JATO report showed that battery EV sales by Chinese carmakers nearly matched Tesla's in the European market in November. "The standout performances of the month came from China's automakers, which combined registered more than 24,100 units of [battery EVs] in November (including Volvo, Polestar and Lotus), just behind Tesla," the report said.

During the month, the market share of Chinese automakers in the battery EV category increased from 12.5 percent in November 2023 to 13.2 percent in November 2024, with significant growth seen by several Chinese EV makers, including Leapmotor, with a 296-percent growth, BYD, with a 127-percent growth and Xpeng, with a 93-percent growth, according to the JATO report.

Zhang Xiang, chief energy storage expert at Jiangsu Gufeng Electric Power Technology Co and an expert in the EV industry, said that the strong performance of Chinese EVs in the European market can be attributed to their competitive advantage. "Chinese EVs maintain a very competitive edge in terms of costs, and even with added tariffs, they are still trying their best to survive in the market," Zhang told the Global Times on Monday.  

Commenting on the progress of the talks at a press briefing on Thursday, He Yongqian, a spokesperson for the Chinese Commerce Ministry, said that China has been persistently making its best effort in the consultations and called on the EU to take practical actions to work with China to jointly advance the consultation.