Report 2 / China outbound series / October 2026
After the car ships
Chinese carmakers have put 34 million vehicles on foreign roads since 2020. The showrooms came with them. The repair network is harder to see.
Summary
Seven things to know
The numbers come from Chinese customs data, company annual reports and filings, an insurer’s published assessment and official texts.
China exported $142.4 billion of vehicles in 2025, nine times the 2020 figure. In the first eight months of 2026 it exported another $129.1 billion.
Electric passenger cars went from $3.2 billion to $70.2 billion over the same five years. In January–August 2026 they were 56% of vehicle export value, the first time they have been more than half.
Carmakers now depend on these sales. Great Wall earned 6.5% of its revenue abroad in 2020 and 41.5% in 2025. SAIC’s revenue from China in 2025 was 72% of what it was in 2020.
Showrooms have kept pace. Chery had 1,088 overseas dealership outlets at the end of 2022 and 3,169 by July 2025. Geely’s outlets grew 42% in 2025 while its exports grew 1%.
What sits behind the showroom is not disclosed. None of the nine carmakers we checked publishes a count of overseas service points or parts centres.
In August 2026 a Dutch insurer, Univé, stopped insuring nine car brands, seven of them Chinese. Its reasons were parts, repair instructions and the number of workshops able to do the work. It said country of origin played no part.
Rules are moving the same way. The EU’s Data Act has applied to vehicle data since 12 September 2026. China’s own ministries issued guidance on 1 September that asks carmakers to build after-sales systems abroad.
Chapters 1 and 2
More cars, more electric, in more places
Where the cars have gone is where a service network has to follow.
Scale: exports grew nine-fold in five years
In 2020 China exported 1.09 million vehicles worth $15.7 billion. In 2025 it exported 8.32 million worth $142.4 billion. Value grew 9.05 times and volume 7.63 times. The growth has not slowed: January–August 2026 exports were $129.1 billion and 7.46 million vehicles, against $84.3 billion and 4.92 million in the same months of 2025.
China’s vehicle exports, 2020–2025 and January–August 2026, USD billion
Source: China customs data via Wind. January–August 2026 covers eight months only.
Scale: electric cars grew faster than the total
Electric passenger car exports rose from $3.2 billion in 2020 to $70.2 billion in 2025. Their share of vehicle export value was 21% in 2020 and 49% in 2025, and reached 56.3% in January–August 2026. An electric car needs fewer routine services than a petrol one, but also things an ordinary workshop may not have: high-voltage training, battery diagnostics, and software access granted by the manufacturer.
Electric passenger car exports and their share of total vehicle export value
Source: China customs data via Wind. January–August 2026 covers eight months only.
Where the cars went: the order keeps changing
Mexico was the largest destination in 2025 with 625,000 vehicles, followed by Russia (583,000) and the United Arab Emirates (572,000). The order changes quickly. Russia took 1.16 million vehicles in 2024 and half that in 2025. Mexico was sixth in the first eight months of 2026, after it raised its tariff on vehicles from countries without a trade agreement to 50% on 1 January. Exports since 2020 add up to 34.0 million vehicles by August 2026; some have been scrapped or re-exported, so the number of cars in use is lower. A service network has to follow the cars, and the cars keep changing country.
Top ten destinations for China’s vehicle exports, thousand vehicles
Source: China Passenger Car Association. Destination as named on the customs declaration, so Belgium and the UAE include cars shipped onward. UAE is the United Arab Emirates.
Chapter 3
Carmakers now depend on these sales
Overseas sales have become a large share of revenue for most listed Chinese carmakers. Each company defines the overseas line differently, so read the shares as indicative. A carmaker that earns 40% of its revenue abroad cannot treat a parts shortage in one market as a local matter.
Chapter 4
Showrooms have kept up. What is behind them?
We looked for overseas service points and overseas parts centres for nine carmakers: BYD, Chery, Great Wall, SAIC, Geely, Changan, GAC, Leapmotor and Xpeng. We found neither for any of them.
This does not show that the back end is missing. It shows that investors, insurers and buyers cannot tell from public information.
Outlets have grown with sales
The common assumption is that sales have outrun the dealer network. The carmakers’ own filings do not show that. Geely added 42% more outlets in a year in which its exports grew 1%. Chery’s outlets grew 2.6 times in two years while its overseas revenue grew 3.4 times, and Great Wall’s sales also grew faster than its channels. The picture is mixed, but nowhere is the outlet count standing still.
Growth in overseas outlets against growth in overseas sales
Source: Company filings, as reported by the companies. GAC and SAIC are not shown because their figures are not comparable.
An insurer made its own assessment
On 18 August 2026 the Dutch insurer Univé published the results of a review of new car brands. It will not insure nine brands at present, seven of them Chinese. For five more, including NIO and Zeekr, it offers only third-party liability cover. Lynk & Co can be insured in full. Its reasons: parts that are hard to obtain, missing technical repair instructions, and too few workshops able to work on a brand. It stated that where a car brand comes from is not decisive, and one of its headings reads: “A sales network is not yet a repair network.” This is one insurer’s assessment, and Univé says it will revisit it as brands improve.
Univé’s assessment of fifteen new car brands, August 2026
Source: Univé, 18 August 2026.
Chapter 5
The rules are moving the same way
On 1 September 2026 China’s Ministry of Commerce, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and State Administration for Market Regulation published the Guidelines on Overseas Competition Conduct and Compliance for the Automotive Industry. It is general guidance for companies’ reference and is not binding.
Companies should build quality management and after-sales service systems for overseas markets.
Companies should respect the right of overseas dealers and agents to set their own prices, and should make clear agreements on sales incentives and honour them.
Companies should ensure that the collection, use, protection and cross-border transfer of connected-vehicle and autonomous-driving data are compliant.
After-sales service gets one sentence in the guidance, and it says nothing specific about parts supply or repair information. Its significance is that the home regulator has put after-sales, dealer relations and vehicle data in the same document as pricing. In the EU, the Data Act applies to connected products placed on the market from 12 September 2026, and users must be able to access the data those products generate. Tariffs decide whether a car can be sold. The Data Act and the rules on spare parts and repair decide what the maker must then provide, and these are the things Univé found missing.
Chapter 6
What to build after the car ships
The evidence points to work that happens behind the dealer, not in front of the customer. We set out four systems in the order we would build them, which follows what an insurer, a workshop or a regulator will ask for first.
First
Parts- An electronic parts catalogue in the local language that matches the vehicles actually sold there.
- Stock records that cover the regional warehouse and the importer.
- A measured lead time: the share of orders filled from regional stock, and the number of days for the rest.
Second
Repair information and the people who use it- Repair methods translated and kept current for each model year.
- A portal that independent workshops can register for.
- A record of which workshops have been trained on which models.
Third
The dealer relationship- A dealer management system holding orders, stock, warranty claims and incentive calculations between the carmaker and each dealer.
- Where an importer sits in between, two layers of records that often do not match.
- Warranty claims first: how quickly a dealer is paid, and the carmaker’s earliest signal of a quality problem.
Fourth
Customer and vehicle data- When distribution is taken back from an importer, as BYD did in Germany in 2024 and Sweden in 2025, the customer records have to move with it.
- Who holds the customer relationship, the service history and the consent to contact the owner should be settled in the distribution agreement.
- Which data each model produces, where it is stored, and how a request under the Data Act will be answered.
And publish the numbers
No carmaker we checked discloses how many service points or parts centres it has abroad. Service points by country, parts centres, the share of orders filled from regional stock and the number of workshops trained on high-voltage repair are all numbers an insurer could use. Univé has said it will revisit its assessment as brands improve, and is open to talking to them.
Limits
What this report does not show
- No carmaker discloses overseas service points or parts centres, so “outlets” here means showrooms or combined sales-and-service sites.
- There is no comparable cross-country data on parts lead times, repair waiting times or complaint rates. The evidence on repair is mostly European.
- Export destinations are customs declarations and include re-exports.
- Cumulative exports are not vehicles in use.
- New-energy vehicle export volumes differ widely between the China Passenger Car Association (3.43 million in 2025) and the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (2.615 million). We could not explain the difference and use customs value figures instead.
- Outlet counts are reported by the companies and are not audited.
The full report has the company tables, the rules by market and the sources behind each figure.
This summary is not legal or tax advice. Rules and dates change often.
Also in this series
Report 1: After the factory moves
Chinese manufacturers have put $78 billion of plant into Southeast Asia. The systems behind those plants have not followed at the same speed.