According to a leading automotive supplier, Chinese manufacturers have a cost advantage of 10,000 euros for small electric cars. One reason for this is that development costs are lower, less capital is used in production and labor costs are also below European levels.
Good vehicles are being built in China, and Europe is unable to stop imports, said Patrick Koller, head of the supplier Forvia. That should be more of a problem for European car manufacturers than their rivals in the USA, because the market share of Chinese companies there is lower because of the tariffs, according to Koller. Forvia emerged from the merger of the two suppliers Faurecia from France and Hella from Germany and is the worldwide seventh largest auto parts supplier. The company also supplies customers in China, including the low-cost car manufacturer BYD, which is also coming onto the Austrian market these days. According to data from the analysis company JATO Dynamics, the average price of a European electric car has risen by almost 7,000 euros to 55,821 euros since 2015 in the USA, the vehicles increased in price by around 10,000 euros to 63,864 euros. In China, on the other hand, the price collapsed from 66,819 euros to 31,829 euros and is now below the price of a comparable petrol engine. According to the French consulting firm Inovev, Chinese manufacturers now have a market share of around 5.8 percent in Europe, and the trend is rising.
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