Chinese electric car firms plan expansion in Europe, says Spanish brand manager

BARCELONA, Spain, March 28 (Xinhua) -- Chinese electric car firms are planning to expand in the European market, Raul Jaramillo, brand and marketing manager for Kngloo Spain, said in an interview with Xinhua on Thursday.

"Chinese brands have everything they need to position themselves as global leaders in the production of vehicles," Jaramillo told journalists at Kngloo's showroom in Barcelona.

Kngloo, a brand that is new to the Spanish and European markets, was launched in Spain last year. The company sells Chinese-built electric cars in Europe.

The brand already has 20 sales points in Spain and plans to expand that number to 100 by the end of the year, the company's brand manager said.

"The future for Kngloo and the other Chinese brands that are entering the European market is first of all to ensure the positioning of their brands and satisfy the needs, in terms of safety and technology, of the European public," Jaramillo added.

According to the Kngloo manager, in order to break into the European market, Chinese car brands need to quickly establish a wide network of distributors that "can provide the brand with high quality customer support."

Besides their base in Spain, where they already have three flagship showrooms (Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia), Kngloo has already opened in Italy and also has plans to open in France, Latin America and Africa "in a matter of months."

"One advantage that Chinese companies have is that they don't think in terms of years, but of months. They do things quickly because they have the technical, financial and organisational capacity to achieve it," Jaramillo said.

The growth in sales of Chinese-made electric cars in the European Union (EU) is set to continue as more brands from China take steps to quickly expand across the bloc.

In Spain, the number of new Chinese cars sold in the country increased from 10,000 to 37,000 last year, according to the national vehicle dealers' association, Ancove.

There are already over a dozen Chinese car brands present in Spain, including the likes of MG, BYD and Lynk & Co, making the country the main point of entry into the European market for manufacturers from China.

On March 5, The European Commission announced that imports of Chinese electric vehicles into the EU grew by 14 percent between October 2023 and January 2024, amounting to almost 200,000 vehicles. A recent study by the PwC global consultancy predicted that by 2025, up to 800,000 Chinese-built cars could be sold in Europe.