China EV Export Statistics 2026
By Axis Intelligence Research
Co-author: Aidan Jad, EV & Clean Energy | Last updated: September 1, 2026 | License: CC BY 4.0
China shipped 2,910,000 new energy vehicles abroad in the first seven months of 2026 — more than it exported in all of 2025. Domestic NEV sales fell 13.4% over the same half-year. Axis Intelligence Research finds that exports contributed 2.54 times the entire net growth of China’s NEV industry: overseas demand did not supplement domestic demand, it replaced it.
Quick Answer
China exported 2.91 million new energy vehicles between January and July 2026, against 2.615 million for the whole of 2025, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. Axis Intelligence Research calculates a July Export Dependence Ratio (XDR) of 35.4% — more than one in three China-built NEVs now leaves the country. Domestic NEV wholesale sales fell 13.4% in the first half.
Key Findings
- Axis Intelligence Research calculates China’s NEV Export Dependence Ratio (XDR) at 32.3% for January–July 2026, up from 15.9% for full-year 2025 — the share of China-built new energy vehicles shipped overseas has roughly doubled in seven months.
- Axis Intelligence Research calculates an Export Substitution Multiple (ESM) of 2.54 for the first half of 2026: exports added 1,284,545 units year-on-year while total NEV sales grew only 506,578, because domestic sales fell by 787,598 units.
- According to CAAM, China’s NEV exports reached 553,000 units in July 2026 and new energy vehicles crossed 60% of total new vehicle sales for the first time, at 60.4%.
- Axis Intelligence Research measures an Export Market Concentration Index (EMCI) of 1,331 points across the ten largest destinations for China-built passenger NEVs in the first half of 2026 — statistically equivalent to 7.5 equal-sized markets, with Brazil alone taking 22.8% of that basket.
- According to the IEA’s Global EV Outlook 2026, Chinese imports accounted for 55% of electric car sales outside Europe and the United States in 2025, up from about 10% in 2021.
How Many EVs Does China Export in 2026?
China exported 2,355,000 new energy vehicles in the first half of 2026, a 1.2-fold increase on the same period a year earlier, on data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. Adding July’s 553,000 units brings the seven-month total to 2,910,000 — already 1.11 times the 2,615,000 NEVs China exported across the whole of 2025, a figure the State Council Information Office published alongside CAAM’s annual results.
The monthly series is the clearer read:
| Month (2026) | NEV wholesale sales | NEV exports | XDR (Axis) | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| May | 1,496,000 | 446,000 | 29.8% | CAAM |
| June | 1,643,000 | 523,000 | 31.8% | CAAM |
| July | 1,561,000 | 553,000 | 35.4% | CAAM |
| Jan–Jul cumulative | 9,007,000 | 2,910,000 | 32.3% | CAAM |
XDR = NEV exports ÷ total NEV wholesale sales, same period, CAAM basis. Calculated by Axis Intelligence Research.
What share of China’s vehicle exports are electric?
Nearly half, and rising fast. Axis Intelligence Research calculates that NEVs made up 46.2% of China’s 5,096,000 vehicle exports in the first half of 2026, and 47.4% across January–July, against 36.8% for full-year 2025 on the same CAAM basis. The IEA puts the 2025 electric share of Chinese car exports at more than 35%, up from about 20% in 2024 — a slightly different scope, since the IEA counts electric cars rather than the full NEV category including commercial vehicles.
Total vehicle exports hit 6,140,000 units in the seven months, up 65.3% year-on-year in the first half. Conventional fuel vehicle exports were essentially flat in 2025 at 4,483,000 units, down 2%. The growth is electric, and almost entirely so.
Aidan Jad: The tempting read is that China’s EV industry is booming. Look at where the volume lands and a different picture shows up. Domestic wholesale is down 13.4%, retail is down harder, and the plants are running anyway. Capacity does not idle politely when demand softens — it looks for a port. Every unit in that export column is a unit that did not find a Chinese buyer at a price the factory would accept.
Why Are China’s EV Exports Growing While Domestic Sales Fall?
Two things changed at once on January 1, 2026.
The first is fiscal. China’s NEV purchase tax exemption — in place in some form since September 2014 — became a 50% reduction, with the per-vehicle benefit capped at 15,000 yuan instead of 30,000 yuan, under the schedule the Ministry of Finance, State Taxation Administration and MIIT announced in 2023. Buyers pulled purchases into late 2025 to beat it. January 2026 domestic NEV sales fell 18.9%, and the domestic market has not recovered since.
The second is structural. Production capacity kept expanding. The IEA estimates China held 29 million units of car manufacturing capacity in 2025 and produced 16 million electric cars — output that exceeded domestic demand by 20%.
The Export Substitution Multiple (ESM)
This is the metric that captures what actually happened, and Axis Intelligence Research built it because the headline growth rate hides it completely.
ESM = change in NEV exports ÷ change in total NEV wholesale sales, year-on-year.
Inputs, first half 2026 versus first half 2025, using CAAM’s reported levels and CAAM’s own reported growth rates to reconstruct the prior-year base:
| Component | H1 2026 | H1 2025 (reconstructed) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total NEV wholesale sales | 7,446,000 | 6,939,422 | +506,578 |
| Domestic NEV sales | 5,090,000 | 5,877,598 | −787,598 |
| NEV exports | 2,355,000 | 1,070,455 | +1,284,545 |
Prior-year values reconstructed by dividing 2026 levels by CAAM’s published year-on-year rates (+7.3% total, −13.4% domestic, ×2.2 exports). Source: CAAM. Calculation: Axis Intelligence Research.
ESM = 1,284,545 ÷ 506,578 = 2.54.
An ESM of 1.0 would mean exports account for exactly the industry’s net growth. Anything above 1.0 means exports are covering a domestic shortfall as well as delivering growth. At 2.54, exports delivered two and a half times the industry’s entire net gain — and China’s NEV sector would have contracted by 787,598 units without them.
Aidan Jad: Run the same arithmetic on any Western volume manufacturer and the number would be a crisis headline. Here it gets reported as growth. The distinction matters for anyone forecasting 2027 demand from Chinese production data: production is currently a poor proxy for consumption, and the gap between them is being carried in ships and in overseas dealer lots.
What Is China’s Export Dependence Ratio for New Energy Vehicles?
XDR is deliberately simple, because simple ratios are the ones that get quoted correctly.
XDR = NEV exports ÷ total NEV wholesale sales, same period.
| Period | NEV exports | NEV sales | XDR |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full-year 2025 | 2,615,000 | 16,490,000 | 15.9% |
| H1 2026 | 2,355,000 | 7,446,000 | 31.6% |
| July 2026 | 553,000 | 1,561,000 | 35.4% |
| Jan–Jul 2026 | 2,910,000 | 9,007,000 | 32.3% |
Source: CAAM. Calculation: Axis Intelligence Research. Baseline reading.
The doubling inside seven months is the finding. In 2025, roughly one China-built NEV in six went abroad. In July 2026, it was better than one in three.
There is a caveat the IEA raises that belongs in any honest reading of this series: in 2025, CAAM-reported exports exceeded measured overseas sales by more than 25%, which implies a meaningful build-up of unsold Chinese electric cars sitting in destination markets. Export volume and overseas demand are not the same quantity, and XDR measures the first.
Where Do China’s Electric Vehicles Actually Go?
Not primarily to Europe, and not to the United States at all in any material volume. The destination table below covers China-built passenger new energy vehicles for January–June 2026, on customs data compiled by Gasgoo Automotive Research Institute.
| Rank | Destination | Passenger NEV exports (H1 2026) | YoY | Share of top-10 basket |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazil | 293,032 | +158.8% | 22.8% |
| 2 | Belgium | 207,174 | +45.3% | 16.1% |
| 3 | United Kingdom | 181,880 | +101.8% | 14.2% |
| 4 | Australia | 154,305 | +199.7% | 12.0% |
| 5 | Germany | 83,085 | +219.5% | 6.5% |
| 6 | Thailand | 80,914 | +84.0% | 6.3% |
| 7 | Italy | 77,773 | +298.8% | 6.1% |
| 8 | South Korea | 73,940 | +161.5% | 5.8% |
| 9 | Spain | 71,872 | +69.3% | 5.6% |
| 10 | United Arab Emirates | 59,739 | +34.7% | 4.7% |
| Top-10 basket | 1,283,714 | 100% |
Source: General Administration of Customs of China, compiled by Gasgoo Automotive Research Institute. Share column calculated by Axis Intelligence Research.
Two absences are as informative as the entries. Russia took 432,698 Chinese passenger vehicles in the half — the single largest destination overall — and does not appear in the NEV top ten at all. Russia buys Chinese combustion cars. And Mexico fell 33.7% to 148,154 units after tariffs on Chinese and other Asian EVs were raised to 50% from January 2026, alongside a 36.4% decline in shipments to the UAE.
Export Market Concentration Index (EMCI)
Axis Intelligence Research computes EMCI as a Herfindahl-Hirschman Index across each destination’s share of the top-ten basket — the standard concentration measure, applied to a trade flow nobody publishes it for.
EMCI (H1 2026) = 1,331 index points, equivalent to 7.51 equal-sized markets.
For orientation: a market where one destination took everything would score 10,000; ten perfectly equal destinations would score 1,000. At 1,331, China’s NEV export book across its ten leading destinations is close to evenly spread, with a single meaningful lean toward Brazil.
Within that basket, five European economies — Belgium, the UK, Germany, Italy and Spain — together take 48.4%, while Australia, Thailand and South Korea account for 24.1%. Belgium’s position is a logistics artifact rather than demand: it is the port of entry for a large share of vehicles distributed onward across the EU.
A calculation Axis Intelligence Research declines to make: we do not compute the top-ten basket as a percentage of the 2,355,000 total NEV export figure. The destination data is passenger-vehicle customs data; CAAM’s export total includes commercial NEVs and is compiled on a different basis. Dividing one by the other would produce a number that looks precise and means nothing.
Aidan Jad: The Brazil number is the one to watch, and not because it is the biggest. Brazilian exports were front-loaded ahead of a July tariff increase on fully built-up vehicles, and Brazil moved in 2026 to close the CKD and SKD kit loophole by aligning kit tariffs with built-up rates. Shipping cars is a strategy with a shelf life. What comes next is local content, which is slower, costlier, and much harder to reverse.
How Much of Europe’s EV Market Comes From China?
Less than the political temperature suggests, and increasingly under Chinese badges rather than Western ones.
The EU registered 1,220,890 new battery-electric cars in the first half of 2026, a 20.7% market share, up from 15.6% a year earlier, according to ACEA. Plug-in hybrids added 577,735 units, or 9.8%. Petrol and diesel combined fell to 29.7% from 37.8%.
Against that, the IEA reports EU electric car imports of more than 900,000 units in 2025, of which China supplied almost 60% — equivalent to less than 20% of EU demand. Sales of Chinese-built electric cars across Europe as a whole reached about 940,000 units in 2025.
The composition shift is the more consequential number. The Chinese-brand share of EU imports from China rose from 50% in 2023 to more than 70% in 2025, while Tesla’s share of those same imports fell from 30% to 10%. Europe is no longer importing mostly Western-badged cars that happen to be built in Shanghai.
A second calculation Axis Intelligence Research declines to make: we do not divide Chinese NEV shipment data by ACEA registration data to produce a “Chinese share of the EU EV market.” Shipments are not registrations, the customs series includes the UK and plug-in hybrids, and ACEA’s BEV series does not. Publishing that ratio would be arithmetic in search of a headline.
What the EU tariffs actually do
Under Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2024/2754, definitive countervailing duties on China-built battery electric cars took effect on October 30, 2024 for a five-year term, at exporter-specific rates running from 7.8% to 35.3% on top of the standard 10% MFN duty. The IEA notes the duties held Chinese imports below 20% of total EU electric car sales in 2025, and that current EU policy maintains them to the end of 2029.
The mechanism now shifting is the price undertaking. On January 12, 2026 the Commission issued guidance letting Chinese exporters offer minimum import prices in place of duties. As of February 10, 2026, the Commission had accepted exactly one: Volkswagen (Anhui), for the CUPRA Tavascan, conditional on a minimum import price, a volume cap, and defined EU investment milestones. The regulation’s consolidated text carries an amendment date of February 11, 2026 reflecting it.
One accepted undertaking, and it went to a German-owned joint venture exporting a Spanish-badged car. That is worth stating plainly, because the framework is widely described as a Chinese off-ramp and so far it has not functioned as one.
Which Chinese Automakers Export the Most EVs?
BYD’s own filings tell the story of the whole sector in miniature. In its voluntary HKEX announcement for June 2026, the company reported 403,472 NEV sales for the month, of which 175,349 were exports — 43.5% of monthly volume, by Axis Intelligence Research’s calculation from the two figures in that single filing.
The same filing shows first-half NEV sales of 1,808,511 units, down 15.72% from 2,145,954 in the first half of 2025. Passenger BEVs came to 867,479 units, passenger plug-in hybrids to 909,896 — the plug-in hybrid line is now the larger of the two.
| BYD, H1 2026 | Units | Basis | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total NEV sales | 1,808,511 | Wholesale, incl. exports | HKEX filing |
| Change vs H1 2025 | −15.72% | Wholesale | HKEX filing |
| Passenger BEV | 867,479 | Wholesale | HKEX filing |
| Passenger PHEV | 909,896 | Wholesale | HKEX filing |
| June NEV exports | 175,349 | Monthly export volume | HKEX filing |
| Overseas sales, PV + pickups | 789,367 | Company-reported | Company statement |
Figures in the HKEX announcement are unaudited. The 789,367 overseas figure is company-reported on a different scope — overseas sales of passenger vehicles and pickups — and is not the same quantity as customs export volume.
We do not divide 789,367 by CAAM’s 2,355,000 to produce “BYD’s share of Chinese NEV exports.” Different scopes, different compilers, different definitions of what counts as leaving the country.
The wider pattern, per the IEA: four in five China-built electric cars sold overseas in 2025 carried a Chinese brand, up from fewer than two in five in 2021. And the ten largest Chinese automakers have announced combined 2026 overseas sales targets exceeding 7 million units — almost double their 2025 announcements, and roughly equal to China’s entire vehicle export volume in 2025.
Aidan Jad: Seven million is not a forecast, it is a sum of individual ambitions that cannot all clear. Announced targets are cheap. Port capacity, homologation queues, dealer networks and warranty coverage are not. Show me the ro-ro bookings and the service-point counts in each destination market and I will move the number.
Where the Growth Is Coming From Outside Europe
The IEA’s regional breakdown for 2025 is the clearest available account of where the demand actually sits:
| Region | Growth in Chinese-built electric car sales, 2025 | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Southeast Asia | +130% | IEA |
| Middle East | +60% | IEA |
| Latin America | +55% | IEA |
Europe’s share of total Chinese electric car export value fell to around 40% in 2025. More than half of Chinese electric car sales overseas were recorded in markets other than Europe and the United States. And outside those two blocs, Chinese imports accounted for 55% of all electric car sales in 2025, against roughly 10% in 2021 — with many countries in Latin America, the Middle East and Africa importing more than 80% of their electric cars from China.
That is the sentence most coverage of this market misses. The tariff argument is a European and North American argument. The volume is somewhere else.
What Could Slow China’s EV Exports in 2027?
Four constraints are visible in the primary record, and none of them are speculative.
Inventory. The IEA’s finding that 2025 exports exceeded overseas sales by more than 25% means a substantial number of units already shipped have not yet sold. Channel stock has to clear before new shipments can be absorbed.
Tariff walls hardening outside Europe. Mexico raised tariffs on Chinese and other Asian EVs to 50% from January 2026. Brazil reinstated electric car tariffs in 2025 and moved in 2026 to align kit tariffs with built-up rates. Most Southeast Asian import-duty waivers expired in December 2025.
Export licensing. In January 2026 China introduced export licences for battery electric vehicles, extending a requirement already applied to other vehicle technologies.
The localisation trap. Chinese firms held roughly 1.7 million units of overseas dual ICE-EV assembly capacity in 2025 against 29 million at home. More than half of that footprint sits in Southeast Asia — Thailand above 30%, Indonesia above 20% — and it is barely running: Chinese BEV capacity utilisation was estimated at around 20% in Thailand and below 15% in Indonesia.
Aidan Jad: That utilisation pair is the number I would put in front of any investor modelling this sector. Building the plant is the easy half. A line running at 15% is carrying full fixed cost against a fraction of the output, and it stays that way until local supply chains, homologation and dealer coverage catch up. Chinese exporters are being pushed from shipping cars into building them, in markets where the payback maths is considerably worse than it looks in a press release.
Methodology
Collection. Every figure in this article was retrieved from a primary or issuing-organisation source during production on September 1, 2026, and logged with its URL in the accompanying CSV. National production, sales and export volumes come from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, accessed through State Council of the PRC republications of CAAM’s releases and CAAM’s monthly reporting. Destination-level customs data is General Administration of Customs of China data compiled by Gasgoo Automotive Research Institute. Global production, trade and regional figures come from the IEA’s Global EV Outlook 2026. European registration data comes from ACEA’s H1 2026 release. Trade measures come from EUR-Lex and the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Trade and Economic Security. Company figures come from BYD’s HKEX filing.
Formulas.
- XDR (Export Dependence Ratio) = NEV exports ÷ total NEV wholesale sales, same period, CAAM basis.
- ESM (Export Substitution Multiple) = change in NEV exports ÷ change in total NEV wholesale sales, year-on-year. Prior-year levels reconstructed by dividing 2026 levels by CAAM’s own published growth rates.
- EMCI (Export Market Concentration Index) = Herfindahl-Hirschman Index computed on each destination’s percentage share of the top-ten destination basket (sum of squared percentage shares). Equivalent-market count = 10,000 ÷ EMCI.
All three are computed from sourced inputs held in the CSV, and every one of them can be reproduced from the values published there. Arithmetic was run twice, in floating-point and exact rational form, and cross-checked before publication.
Scope. CAAM’s NEV series is a wholesale measure covering battery-electric, plug-in hybrid and fuel-cell vehicles, including commercial vehicles, and includes both domestic sales and exports. The IEA’s “electric car” series covers passenger cars only and uses different compilation methods; the two are reported side by side and never merged. Customs destination data covers passenger NEVs only. Export volume measures shipments, not registrations or retail sales in destination markets.
Disclosed source discrepancies. These are documented rather than reconciled:
- CAAM reported 7,098,000 total vehicle exports for 2025; China customs data compiled on a different basis gives a higher total. Axis uses the CAAM series throughout for internal consistency and does not blend the two.
- For July 2026 NEV exports, CAAM reports 553,000 units and CPCA reports 540,000 — the gap reflects CPCA’s passenger-only scope. Both are in the CSV.
- The IEA puts 2025 Chinese electric car exports at more than 2.5 million; CAAM’s NEV export figure is 2,615,000. Different vehicle definitions, not a contradiction.
- BYD’s company-reported 789,367 overseas sales figure and CAAM’s national export series are not comparable, and no ratio between them appears in this article.
About This Dataset
china-ev-export-statistics.csv contains 139 observations covering China’s NEV production, domestic sales, export volumes, destination-level customs data, European registrations, applicable trade measures and company-level filings, spanning 2021 to July 2026 with the bulk of coverage on 2025 and 2026. Every row carries the issuing organisation, source document, source URL, retrieval date, whether the source is primary, whether the value is calculated by Axis Intelligence Research, and — for calculated rows — the full formula.
License: CC BY 4.0. Free to use, including commercially, with attribution.
Citation: Axis Intelligence Research, China EV Export Statistics 2026, 2026.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does CAAM’s NEV export figure count vehicles built in China by foreign brands like Tesla?
Yes. CAAM’s export series measures vehicles shipped from China regardless of the badge on them, so Tesla Shanghai volumes and joint-venture output are included. This matters for interpretation: the IEA reports that four in five China-built electric cars sold overseas in 2025 carried a Chinese brand, up from fewer than two in five in 2021 — so the foreign-brand component is shrinking as a share, but it has not disappeared.
Why do CAAM, CPCA and China customs give different export numbers for the same month?
Because they measure different things. CAAM reports manufacturer wholesale volumes including commercial NEVs. CPCA covers passenger vehicles only — its July 2026 NEV export figure is 540,000 against CAAM’s 553,000. Customs data records goods crossing the border, which captures knocked-down kits and timing differently again. None of the three is wrong; they answer different questions, and mixing them produces false precision.
Do exports from China count as sales in the destination market?
No, and the gap is measurable. The IEA found that CAAM-reported 2025 exports exceeded measured overseas sales by more than 25%, implying vehicles sitting in destination-market inventory rather than in driveways. Anyone using export data as a demand signal should discount it accordingly.
Are Chinese EVs still subject to EU tariffs in 2026?
Yes. Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2024/2754 imposed exporter-specific countervailing duties of 7.8% to 35.3% on China-built battery electric cars from October 30, 2024, on top of the 10% MFN rate, for five years, and current EU policy maintains them to the end of 2029. The price-undertaking route announced in January 2026 offers an exemption in exchange for a minimum import price, volume caps and EU investment commitments — but as of February 10, 2026 only one had been accepted, from Volkswagen (Anhui) for the CUPRA Tavascan.
Why is Russia China’s largest car export destination but absent from the NEV list?
Because Russia buys Chinese combustion vehicles, not Chinese electric ones. Russia took 432,698 Chinese passenger vehicles in the first half of 2026 — more than any other market — yet does not appear among the top ten destinations for China-built passenger NEVs. Charging infrastructure, climate and pricing all point the same direction there.
What happens to Chinese export volumes when destination countries close the CKD and SKD loophole?
Shipping semi-knocked-down or completely-knocked-down kits for local assembly has let Chinese makers pay lower tariffs than on fully built-up units. The IEA reports that around half of Great Wall’s and SAIC’s 2025 car exports were knocked-down kits. Brazil moved in 2026 to align kit tariffs with built-up rates, which pushes manufacturers toward genuine local content — slower to build, but far harder for a destination government to reverse once the plant exists.
Is China’s domestic EV market actually shrinking?
The domestic wholesale market contracted in the first half of 2026: 5,090,000 NEVs against a reconstructed 5,877,598 a year earlier, a 13.4% fall on CAAM’s own reported rate. Penetration kept climbing regardless — NEVs hit a record 60.4% of total new vehicle sales in July and 65.1% of retail — because combustion sales fell faster. A shrinking market can still electrify quickly.
What would push China’s Export Dependence Ratio back down?
Three things, in order of likelihood: domestic demand recovering as the market absorbs the halved purchase-tax benefit, which runs through to the end of 2027; overseas inventory clearing before new shipments resume; and Chinese overseas plants ramping up, which converts exports into local production and removes the units from the customs series entirely. That last one is currently the slowest — Chinese BEV capacity utilisation ran near 20% in Thailand and below 15% in Indonesia in 2025.
How is the Export Substitution Multiple different from a normal growth rate?
A growth rate tells you the industry grew 7.3%. ESM tells you where that growth came from. At 2.54, exports contributed two and a half times the net gain, because domestic sales were subtracting from it at the same time. Any metric that reports only the net figure conceals the fact that the two components are moving in opposite directions.
Cite This Research
APA — Axis Intelligence Research. (2026). China EV export statistics 2026: Sales, market share, destinations and the export substitution shift. https://axis-intelligence.com/china-ev-export-statistics/
MLA — Axis Intelligence Research. “China EV Export Statistics 2026: Sales, Market Share, Destinations & the Export Substitution Shift.” Axis Intelligence, 1 Sept. 2026, axis-intelligence.com/china-ev-export-statistics/.
Chicago — Axis Intelligence Research. “China EV Export Statistics 2026: Sales, Market Share, Destinations & the Export Substitution Shift.” Axis Intelligence, September 1, 2026. https://axis-intelligence.com/china-ev-export-statistics/.
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