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New market entrants to soak up 1 million new West European passenger car units on an annualised basis adding more uncertainty to industry job worries

  • Writer: Matthias Schmidt
    Matthias Schmidt
  • Sep 19
  • 2 min read
Bar chart of new car market share growth in Western Europe from 2018-2025, highlighting Chinese and Tesla contributions. Red and pink bars.

A current study from Schmidt Automotive Research (SAR) identifies that traditional incumbent passenger car manufacturers aren't just suffering from a Western European new passenger car market running at 2.8 million units below pre-COVID-2019 levels (14.3 million), the share of the current 12-month trailing 11.53 million unit new passenger car market pie is increasingly being snapped up by new market entrants, meaning in reality incumbents' market reach is now well over 3 million units below pre-2020 levels. 


According to the latest SAR data, 7 per cent, equivalent to just under 1 million units of the new regional car market on an annual basis, is now in control of manufacturers that have entered the market within the last 15 years, creating an overcapacity elephant hanging in the room. 


While Tesla was the main beneficiary from that list, its market share and, consequently, volume losses, which began in 2024, have done little to ease the fears of incumbent OEM employees, who fear for their jobs, as Chinese OEMs have continued to gain market share from where Tesla left.


If not by the end of 2025, then by 2026, over 1 million new regional passenger cars registered on Western European soil will be controlled by these new OEMs, while any hopes of employment transfer to these new companies will remain muted, with the vast majority of these models are still being imported, mainly from China, despite 10% import tariffs in place for all models imported from markets with no FTAs with the EU while an anti-subidy additional tariff remains in place for Chinese-made BEVs. However, the latter, according to our latest Chinese OEM European Study, has created little more than a pivot to non-BEV models.  Meanwhile one major incumbent OEM has told us they are actively looking for export markets outside of Europe to keep European production utilisation rates at healthy levels.

Our full industry studies can be downloaded here (€). 


Source: Schmidt Automotive Research 



All of our reports, which feature exclusively researched data, can be purchased here. ◼︎︎


*Western Europe 18 Markets: EU Member States prior to the 2004 enlargement plus EFTA markets Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, plus UK

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