Germany’s 3 main brands reported a drop of more than 10 percentage points in the Chinese market
Germany’s luxury automakers saw their sales continue to decrease in China during the 1st semester of 2025, while dealing with fierce competition of local rivals and consumer warm demand in the world’s largest car market.
Mercedes-Benz announced in a gain report last week that sold just over 293,000 cars in China, its largest single market, a 14% fall year by year. “The market situation in the prize and luxury segment in China remained tense”said the automaker, noting that continuous price competition, especially from domestic manufacturers, should continue to press foreign companies.
Similarly, BMW sales in China fell 15.5% year by year to approximately 318,000 vehicles, while Audi registered a 10.2% decline in its sales in China, providing 287.6 thousand vehicles.
Meanwhile, total passenger car sales in the Chinese market reached 13.5 million vehicles in the first 6 months of 2025, an increase of 13% year to year, according to the CAAM (China Auto Manufacturers Association).
For years, BMW, Mercedes and Audi had the luxury car market in China. But their sales drop since last year shows that they have not been able to keep up with the Chinese market.
They were late to adapt to their monumental change to Ves (electric vehicles), lost as China’s luxury car buyers grew more discerning and supported themselves when their most aware domestic competitors launched models with much lower priced features, insiders and sector analysts said before.
In the first half of the year, Chinese brands captured 68.5% of the domestic passenger car market, an increase of 6.6 percentage points over the previous year, according to CAAM. Meanwhile, the market share of German automakers fell 2.9 points to 13.1%.
In response, German giants are accelerating their investment in new models, especially EVs. Audi plans to reinforce its product line in China in the 2nd semester of 2025 with several new releases, including the fully electric Audi E5 Sportback and the Audi Q6L E-Tron. Q6L E-Tron will feature the Qiankun smart steering system developed by Huawei.
Mercedes-Benz also plans to launch its new CLA Coupe in China later this year, presenting a watched driving system developed by its local team.
On July 15, BMW announced a partnership with Momenta to co-develop driver assistance systems for its next-generation China models, which should be launched in 2026.
This report was originally in English by the global cash in 4.ago.2025. Was translated and republished by Poder360 under mutual content sharing agreement.
