GAC Group announced its plans to expand into Europe as its sales fell three consecutive quarters this year.
According to GAC’s European Market Plan, presented by General Manager Feng Xingya at the Paris Motor Show, the Guangzhou-based automaker plans to introduce its electric vehicle models in select European markets this year and achieve complete market coverage across Europe by 2028.
The company is exploring the possibility of building an EV manufacturing plant in Europe to avoid tariffs, GAC International General Manager Wei Heigang previously told Reuters. GAC Group also targets 500,000 overseas sales by 2030. In the first nine months of the year, the company exported 95,000 cars. However, non of them found its way to Eruope yet.
GAC Group, or Guangzhou Automobile Group, is a state-owned automaker and one of China’s largest automobile manufacturers. Despite launching multiple EV models and the EV-only brand GAC Aion, it suffers from the rapid transition of the automotive market from ICE cars to electric vehicles. While ICE sales are in free fall in China, GAC struggles to grow its EV sales, which are under pressure from many local EV startups and EV hegemons like BYD or Geely.
In September, its sales fell 25% to 183,000 units compared to last year’s period. In the first three quarters of the year (January – August), GAC Group sales fell 26% to 1.34 million vehicles. However, a red flag for GAC is that only 282,000 cars were electric, which is 28% compared with the first three quarters of the previous year.
China’s EV penetration reached 53% in September; more than half of the cars sold in China were electric. For domestic brands, the ratio is even wider – 3 out of 4 cars sold by domestic brands were electric in September.
GAC electric flagship brand is called Aion and if GAC expands to Europe, it will be most likely with this brand. It used to be quite successful few years back when it offered budget friendly EVs. However, in September, Aion sales fell 38% to 31,332 in China compared with previous year. It is a forth consecutive declive since May.
