China's EV Takeover Is Real, And India's Legacy Brands Are Sleepwalking Into It
A fresh ETAuto report lays out how Chinese EV makers have moved from fringe players to mainstream forces in barely five years, with BYD, Geely and XPeng now challenging Tesla in markets as varied as Australia, the UK and Norway. In 2025, over half of new cars sold in China were EVs.
What was announced
According to the ETAuto report published on 23 July 2026, Tesla still leads pure battery EV sales in Australia with a 28 per cent share, but BYD has surged to 24 per cent, closing the gap in under three years. Chinese brands including BYD, Geely and XPeng have moved from fringe status to mainstream in multiple export markets, backed by regional manufacturing clusters that let individual companies move from design to production far faster than European or Japanese rivals.
The next serious EV threat to Tata and Mahindra will not come from Hyundai or Kia. It will come from Shanghai, wearing an Indian badge.
The domestic Chinese market crossed a symbolic threshold in 2025: more than half of all new cars sold in the country were EVs. The Chinese government formally folded EV expansion into its national decarbonisation strategy in September 2020, with the twin aims of reducing oil imports from Iran, Russia and Venezuela, and leapfrogging Germany, Japan and the US in global auto manufacturing.
The export numbers back the ambition. In the United Kingdom, EVs accounted for more than 30 per cent of new car sales in 2025, with Chinese brands taking a rising share of that mix. Norway went further, with EVs representing over 95 per cent of total car sales in 2025. Chinese manufacturers are also expanding aggressively into Southeast Asia and Latin America, often via local partnerships or rebadging arrangements with domestic industrial groups, a pattern now visible in India through the Jindal-MG-linked activity flagged by independent reviewers.
The Car Jury verdict
India's EV conversation is still stuck on range anxiety and charging while China has industrialised the entire stack, batteries, motors, software, at a speed legacy carmakers cannot match. Biturbo Media asked the uncomfortable question out loud: if Jindal is a major steel manufacturer, why is he bringing a rebadged Chinese car to India? That's the tell. Even Indian industrial giants are choosing to badge-engineer Chinese platforms rather than build from scratch, because the cost gap is that wide.
Rachit Hirani of MotorOctane notes Chinese makers are now launching EVs with ICE range-extenders, a segment Indian OEMs haven't even started thinking about. Buyers should read this clearly: the next serious EV competition to Tata and Mahindra will not come from Hyundai or Kia. It will come from Shanghai, wearing an Indian badge.
