If Europe wants to see how Chinese manufacturers could affect its all-important car industry, it could do worse than look to Norway. Fully 94 per cent of cars sold in the Nordic country in October were electric, putting it on course to hit a target of no new fossil-fuel passenger vehicles next year.
Chinese carmakers sold no cars in Norway in 2019; this year so far, they have managed to take 11 per cent market share. Brands such as MG, BYD and Xpeng are common sights on Norwegian streets. Perhaps most telling is that Oslo’s main shopping strip Karl Johans Gate has only one car dealership on it: Nio, a relatively new Chinese brand. Just around the corner, under the Financial Times’ Nordic bureau, an upmarket estate agent has been replaced by a flashy showroom for Voyah, replete with modern art.
It is hard to exaggerate the importance of Europe’s car industry either in economic terms or in symbolic value. It employs more than 13mn on the continent directly or indirectly, and accounts for one in 10 manufacturing jobs. It is equally hard to underplay the gloom in the sector right now. Amid the profit warnings being handed out by European carmakers, taboos are being threatened everywhere from Volkswagen planning its first closure of a factory in its homeland of Germany in 87 years to Europe’s oldest car plant in Turin being shut for large parts of the year.