The prognosticators who 15 years ago predicted we’d all be driving Chinese cars are being proved right. Across Europe, Chinese brand sales accelerated by 80 per cent as the rest of the European car market fell by 3.6 per cent.
That’s on top of an impressive 2025 sales haul for Chinese brands of 810,982, according to data service Dataforce, as the European market for new cars (including the UK and EFTA) swelled from 12.9 million cars in 2024 to 13.2 million cars last year.
In Ireland, Chinese brands are doing extremely well. The biggest seller from China in Ireland is currently BYD, which has now reached 13th position in the Irish sales charts in 2026, up from 15th overall in 2025, growing its sales by 131 per cent compared to January 2025. Its best-selling model was the plug-in hybrid Seal-U DMI SUV, a model which was also the best-selling PHEV model across Europe in 2025.
In European terms, the biggest seller is MG, which may have classic British origins, but has been owned by China’s Shanghai Automotive Industrial Corporation (SAIC) since 2005. MG sold 307,282 cars in Europe last year, a gain of more than 50,000 units. In Ireland, MG is currently in 17th place in the overall sales charts, having grown its sales by 56.6 per cent so far this year. Its best-seller here is the all-electric MG4 hatchback.
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Volvo, which has been owned by Chinese giant Geely since 2010, is right behind MG in Irish terms, in 18th position, growing its Irish sales by 9.7 per cent in 2026 so far, which is a better result than the company has seen in a global sense. Its all-electric sister brand Polestar scored a sales uptick too, with a 78 per cent climb in Irish sales, albeit from a relatively low base.
How do Irish customers actually feel about the Chinese brands, though? A welcoming embrace? Or is there more caution in the air? Car sales website DoneDeal has done some digging and found out.
According to DoneDeal, its survey revealed that more than half of respondents (51 per cent) say they plan to buy or change their car within the next 12 months, highlighting strong near-term purchase intent.
Awareness of Chinese brands is now widespread, with just 3 per cent of respondents saying they are unaware of any Chinese car brand. BYD leads in terms of awareness at 40 per cent, followed by MG at 31 per cent, Xpeng on 18 per cent and Leapmotor at 9 per cent.
Overall perception is largely positive. Six in 10 respondents (61 per cent) describe their view of Chinese car brands as positive, while 31 per cent remain neutral. Only 7 per cent express a negative view, indicating limited resistance and a large cohort of buyers still forming opinions.
Electric vehicles are where Chinese brands are making the strongest impression. Nearly three-quarters of respondents (72 per cent) believe Chinese manufacturers offer better value in EVs than established European, Japanese and Korean brands, with 45 per cent saying they offer “much better value”.
Price (35 per cent) and higher-equipment levels (27 per cent) are the main reasons buyers say they would consider a Chinese car.
However, it’s not all rosy in the Chinese gardens.
According to DoneDeal, some of that consumer sentiment softens when the outlook is extended a bit, with 64 per cent saying they are either very or somewhat confident in the long-term reliability of Chinese cars, 36 per cent are either not confident or unsure, underlining ongoing caution.
Resale value emerges as the single biggest barrier to wider adoption. Just over four in 10 respondents (41 per cent) say concerns about resale value would stop them buying a Chinese car, while a further 33 per cent say it might. Concerns around long-term support and parts availability (15 per cent) and the relative newness of Chinese brands (21 per cent) also feature prominently.
When it comes to what would convince more buyers to make the switch, Irish consumers are reassuringly old-fashioned — a larger dealer network, a longer warranty and strong after-sales support are all named as ways in which Chinese car buyers can keep Irish customers happy.
In this, Ireland seems a petri dish for how Chinese brands aim to steamroll all of Europe.
“Rather than competing head-to-head with foreign car makers on traditional combustion platforms, Chinese manufacturers strategically embraced electrification early on, using it as a lever to leapfrog legacy players,” said a spokesperson for the JATO automotive data, analysis, and intelligence firm.
“While many international brands continued to treat EVs as a long-term alternative to combustion vehicles, Chinese makers fully committed to EV development, investing heavily in innovation, vertical integration and product diversification.
“As a result, Chinese brands have not only secured leadership within their domestic market, but are now well-positioned to shape the global electric transition, setting new benchmarks in affordability, technology and speed of execution.”
Expect to see more. Volvo’s chief executive, Hakan Samuelsson, told The Irish Times that more collaboration between Volvo and Geely was inevitable, especially when it came to designing and making the long-range plug-in hybrid models now seen as a critical asset when it came to bridging the gap to a fully electric motoring world.
“Hybrids are moving from being a totally conventional car where you put in some small batteries to give them a better performance on the test cycle, which was exaggerating a bit and maybe not in a good way,” he said.
“Now we need to move to where the plug-in hybrids are really an electric car, which has a backup engine for when the batteries are flat, and that is the development we will see. So this will be the bridge solution until the last customer is ready to go electric, and this would, of course, be super-costly, to develop two parallel technologies.
“So we have put all our resources into developing new electric models, such as the EX60, and then we have the hybrids we have and we will improve them.
“Then, together with Geely, we will develop a second generation of plug-in hybrids, and I think the XC70 is a good indication of what those new hybrids will be like.”
The XC70 just mentioned is a China-only model that Volvo builds with Geely, which uses a large battery – up to 39kWh – giving it an electric range of more than 200km (on the relatively lenient Chinese CLTC official test) and which has a 1.5-litre petrol engine on board to act as a generator.
Such cars are increasing in popularity as buyers across Europe seem happier to go partly, rather than fully, electric, and it makes for a remarkable opportunity for the big Chinese brands as the imports of such plug-in hybrid cars aren’t affected by the higher tariffs that the European Union applied to Chinese-made full-electric models last year.
Those tariffs could also now be about to go by the board, as the EU has softened its stance on Chinese car makers, saying that the tariffs could instead be replaced by a combination of “minimum import price, sales channels, cross-compensation and future investments in the EU”.
With Chinese car companies making substantial investments in Europe — BYD has already opened a plant in Hungary and is looking for a second location, while MG’s announcement of a European factory is said to be imminent — the appetite for such brands could soon be even larger.
The reverse is most certainly not true, and it’s starting to look as if European, Japanese and American brands could be squeezed out in China, which is now the world’s largest car market.
There has been a price war between the big Chinese brands in the past couple of years – which is seen as part of Beijing’s semi-official “Darwinian” process of allowing multiple car companies to be established, then pitting them against one another in a survival-of-the-fittest contest – and that has helped to squeeze Western car makers further out of the market, so much so that the drop in Chinese sales has triggered financial crises at the likes of Audi and Porsche.
The Wall Street Journal is predicting that most big car brands – save perhaps for the likes of Toyota and Volkswagen – could well find that operating in China just isn’t worth the costs any more from as soon as 2030 as home-grown brands flood the market with cheaper, fast-developing products.
In Europe, and Ireland? The sky seems to be the limit for Chinese cars now.
*An error in the original standfirst was corrected on Wednesday, February 25th, 2026.
