TMTPost -- The new tariffs on electric vehicle (EV) imports imposed by the European Union started to hit Chinese brands last month, data from market researcher Dataforce showed.

Credit：Xinhua News Agency

The new EVs that Chinese automakers registered in the EU in July fell 45% from a month ago, Dataforce complied results across the 16 EU member states that have reported July figures to date. In comparison, overall EV sales dropped 36% month-over-month (MoM) last month in these countries, the researcher tracked.

Chinese brands took 8.5% of the EU EV market in July, up from a 7.14% share from the same month last year. Sales of China’s top EV maker BYD Co., Ltd. in the 16 markets in July tripled year-over-year (YoY), which was deemed as a force that softened the fall for Chinese brands by Julian Litzinger, an analyst with Dataforce.. MG, a brand under state-backed SAIC Motor, recorded a 20% YoY decline in sales in July. Sales of Polestar, a subsidiary of Chinese auto company Geely shed 42% YoY.

The MoM decrease in registration of Chinese brands may have been exaggerated by automakers rushing to get EVs to dealers before the added levies took effect July 5. “We saw a huge push from Chinese manufacturers” to empty stockpiles in June, said Matthias Schmidt, an independent auto analyst based near Hamburg. “That likely caused an inventory burn.”

Chinese brands seized 11% of the electric vehicle (EV) market in Europe in June by sales, according to Dataforce. The record high registration represented a 72% jump from May, which was twice the MoM increase in overall EV registration in the Europe for June. SAIC Motor led the registration jump of Chinese brands, shipping its MG4 hatchback to dealers in volume, analysts at Dataforce said. However, around 40% of the MG4s registered in June were self-registrations by dealers — “not a very healthy growth,” said Gabriel Juhas, head of product at Dataforce.

Established automakers based outside China like BMW AG and Tesla Inc. are also subject to the additional EU tariffs. Howevre, the June spike was less pronounced for Western companies that were more cautious in managing their inventory, Schmidt said.

The latest data from Dataforce shed a light on how Chinese auto manufacturers could lose ground in EU as elevated tariffs took effect. The European Commission announced on July 4 it imposed provisional countervailing duties of up to 37.6%, on top of the ordinary BEV import duty of 10%, on imports of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) from China. The commission concluded through an anti-subsidy investigation that the BEV value chain in China benefits from unfair subsidization, which is causing a threat of economic injury to EU BEV producers.

Specifically, the additional individual duties on three sampled Chinese EV makers, would be 17.4% for BYD, 19.9% for Geely and 37.6% for SAIC. That means the EU decided to levy a little bit less duties on Geely and SAIC-made EVs since its proposed rates pre-disclosed on June 12 are 20% and 38.1%, respectively, while BYD, China’s largest EV manufacturer, faces the same tariff rate as EU’s original proposal disclosed more than a month ago.

According to a statement of the European Commission, other BEV producers in China, which cooperated in the investigation but have not been sampled, are subject to the 20.8% weighted average duty, marginally downgraded from the commission’s original proposed 21%, while all other BEV producers in China that did not cooperate in the investigation face an extra duty of 37.6%, compared with the originally proposed 38.1%.