China is set to smash international forecasts and Beijing’s official targets with domestic EV sales — including pure battery and plug-in hybrids — growing about 20 per cent year on year to more than 12mn cars in 2025, according to the latest estimates supplied to the Financial Times by four investment banks and research groups. The figure would be more than double the 5.9mn sold in 2022.

At the same time, sales of traditionally powered cars are expected to fall by more than 10 per cent next year to less than 11mn, reflecting a near 30 per cent plunge from 14.8mn in 2022.

Meanwhile, EV sales growth has slowed in Europe and the US, reflecting the legacy car industry’s slow embrace of new technology, uncertainty over government subsidies and rising protectionism against imports from China.

“They want to electrify everything,” said Liew. “No other country comes close to China.”

While the pace of Chinese EV sales growth has eased from a post-pandemic frenzy, the forecasts suggest Beijing’s official target, set in 2020, for EVs to account for 50 per cent of car sales by 2035, will be achieved 10 years ahead of schedule.

They also highlight how the rapid rise of the Chinese EV industry now threatens the national manufacturing champions of Germany, Japan and the US.

As China’s EV market tracked towards year-on-year growth of near 40 per cent in 2024, the market share of foreign-branded cars fell to a record low of 37 per cent — a sharp decline from 64 per cent in 2020, according to data from Automobility, a Shanghai-based consultancy.

“While China’s domestic EV sector is clearly flourishing, it is also facing slowing growth — from a very high base — models oversupply, intense competition and a price war,” she said. “The longer-term direction of travel is clear — China’s EV juggernaut is unstoppable.”

HSBC estimated about 90 new car models had been planned for release by manufacturers in China in the fourth quarter of 2024 — about one a day — and nearly 90 per cent were EVs.

But he added: “We anticipate . . . a strong surge in purchases at the end of 2025, driven by the expiration of subsidies and the imposition of a 5 per cent purchase tax on electric vehicles in 2026 — compared to 0 per cent until the end of 2025.”