CHINA: China Edges Towards EU Deal, Xiaomi Tops 600,00 Deliveries and January’s EV Sales | 13 Feb 2026

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Welcome back to EV News, China.

Today, China edges towards its EU deal.

Xiaomi top 600,000 deliveries.

And we'll talk about January's EV sales.

Plus, stick around because later in the show, I'll tell you how China is now drafting new steering safety rules for 2027.

Welcome back to EV News, China.

This is the podcast dedicated to the world's largest EV market.

Each day, I bring you the latest headlines, insights and analysis from the heart of China's booming EV industry

and decode how fast moving developments in the East shape the global EV landscape.

China's Ministry of Commerce now says several companies are expecting to finalize pricing agreements with the European Union

to cut the block's high tariffs on imported EVs.

I reported on this yesterday in recent days as well.

The EU has already approved lifting, countervailing duties on the first vehicle.

This is the Volkswagen CUPRA brand and their Tavascan.

That's their SUV.

It's made by Volkswagen and Nui in China.

Only if it meets a minimum price and it has some import quotas as well.

But more importantly, it's not subject to the blanket tariffs the EU imposed.

The Tavascan had faced a 20.7 tariff plus the standard 10% import duty since late 2024

and that weighed heavily on CUPRA's profitability for last year.

Beijing wants more deals just like that one.

Ministry spokesperson He Yadong says China-EU cooperation matters for helping Chinese EV makers use price undertaking offers.

The European Commission has issued guidance meant to ensure fair assessments of these undertakings

and the two sides discussed it in bilateral talks but the terms remain opaque.

The European Union has kept the minimum price and quota details confidential for now

despite requests for transparency by the Chinese.

The China Chamber of Commerce to the EU says several car makers now weigh

whether to put their own individual price undertaking proposals on the table based on these circumstances.

The Commission's guidance allows these undertakings to be submitted individually or jointly.

They must include commitments to minimum pricing and may include EU investment pledges

spend money in the European Union, maybe even assemble the cars here.

The stakes sit in the tariff schedule though.

EU tariffs on Chinese EVs go everything from 7.8% at the low end.

That was for Tesla who argued that they were being more transparent with the process

and the EU. They make their vehicles in Shanghai for Europe all the way up to 35.3%

for those manufacturers that didn't engage with the EU in the process

on top of the standard 10% like I say.

That's a levy of 45.3%.

That's the urgency that many of the individual car makers have now

in trying to do a deal like CUPRA has done for the Tava Scan.

China says it wants an open dialogue to build a stable market environment

for both regions' car industries.

They're urging the EU to apply fairness and transparency.

For now, the EU keeps its numbers locked away

and is asking the firms to somewhat bid in the dark.

We'll wait and see how that turns out.

Xiaomi has passed 600,000 cumulative deliveries since it began.

This continues to be one of the undertold success stories of the Chinese EV industry.

Many in the West are starting to catch on.

Xiaomi has hit 600,000 deliveries since April the 3rd.

We're not two years into their EV story yet.

The pace picked up last year.

It delivered 400,000 vehicles last year alone.

Recent monthly figures show the run rate,

Xiaomi EV delivered more than 50,000 units in December

and it $40,000 last month in January

and the CEO, Lei Zhun, set a target of 550,000 vehicles this year.

The YU7, that's the Model Y competitor, the SUV,

hit 150,000 deliveries within six months of it even launching.

That's a fantastically quick ramp up to explain this wider total.

Congratulations to the team there.

A business that not even two years ago wasn't delivering cars.

High-tech, big fan base, but not a car maker.

Two years later, they have numbers that many other car makers

that have been around for decades would absolutely kill for.

China's EV pecking order shifted last month in January.

The Tesla Model Y lost its lead and was down to seventh.

Xiaomi's YU7, I just mentioned it, took the top spot

with almost 38,000 sales.

It was in third place in December and top spot in January.

Xiaomi delivered over 39,000 vehicles last month.

Okay, that was down month-on-month,

but everything was down month-on-month.

But it was up 95% year-on-year.

The YU7 made up 90% of their sales.

As they start to wind down the SU7,

I'll talk about that in the next story.

Geely came second with almost 30,000 sales.

With the Xingwan brand, that marked a 20% month-on-month fall

but again, up year-on-year.

The Aito M7 was in third place.

That's now sold over 400,000 units.

NEO's ES8 was in fourth place in January.

Again, it stood out for its price as much as its rank.

It was the only model in the top eight above 400,000 RMB.

That's about 58,000 US dollars.

NEO delivered 27,000, just over 27,000 vehicles in January.

Again, down month-on-month, but massively up year-on-year.

And the new generation, the third generation ES8,

was well over half of NEO's business.

Further down, let's have a look at this.

Lee Auto, they sold almost 17,000 of their i6.

And then we get to the Model Y.

Just 16,800 sales at retail, domestically.

Giga Shanghai did obviously a lot more than that,

but it was really for export.

It was a 74% month-on-month drop.

Okay, we'll watch the trend on that one.

Now, let's look about Xiaomi.

Xiaomi has pulled the covers off its next generation SU7.

So, this is a car that goes on sale in a couple of months time.

In April, 2026.

Display vehicles are now arriving, though.

The first batch of SU7 display cars, the new updated one,

lands from today in their stores.

Xiaomi will show them in 30 stores in seven cities,

Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen included.

Beijing and Shanghai each get five stores from Xiaomi.

Guangzhou and Shenzhen have four stores,

and a second wave of 30 more stores follows in two weeks' time.

Xiaomi revealed the SU7 in three variants.

And presale prices, they kind of run from about

230,000 RMB to 310,000 RMB.

That is a slight bump over current models by about 10,000 RMB.

Xiaomi points to updates in styling.

Interior design, autonomy and safety.

Outside, a new refined front end, new 20-inch wheels,

new wider rear tyres, new paint colours.

One called Capri Blue alongside Golf Blue,

which looks pretty nice.

Standards, braking uses four piston fixed calipers.

The max version gets new Brembo's

and drilled brake discs or rotors.

Inside, a new dark night black option.

A new steering wheel, new stitching on the interior,

more soft touch materials, more physical buttons

on the centre console.

The headline tech change is its sensor stack.

LiDAR now comes as standard in all SU7s.

The entire SU7 range runs the Xiaomi HAD system.

Safety's boosted.

The SU7 has nine airbags.

That's two more than before.

Keeping its hybrid steel aluminium armour cage

construction as they call it and built-in roll cage.

Xiaomi now needs buyers to accept a slightly higher price

in return for a lot more kit, a lot more compute power

and some more stores to go and have a poke around in.

Let's talk about Huawei and JAC's Myxtro.

This S800 is leading the luxury sedan market in China

last month in January.

Despite the month-on-month fall that the

pretty much the whole industry saw, the new

energy vehicle sedan delivered over 2,500 units in January.

Okay, 2,500 units is quite small fry by China standards,

but let me explain this car.

The S800 is a BMW 7 Series competitor.

It's a Mercedes-Benz S-Class Myback competitor.

It's the top-selling luxury sedan in China

and the result comes with a bit of a caveat.

Yes, the sales were down from a great December,

but deliveries only began in August 2025,

so we can't look at year-on-year sales of this version.

And here's the bigger catch.

The pricing runs to 147,000 US dollars equivalent.

That's just over a million you won.

The car sells through their stores,

their strong sales in Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Shanghai

and Beijing.

Inside the cabin, like, ultra-luxury,

16.6-inch touchscreen, 16-inch, 16-inch monitor

for the front passenger, dimmable rear passenger windows.

Chances are that you'll be driven in this vehicle quite a lot.

Power trains split between Purebevs and E-Revs,

the all-electric S800, dual motor, over 500 horsepower,

over 700 kilometers of range,

and then there's an E-Rev version as well.

For now, the S800 has shown that

it can outsell the old money badges

in their own segment, where they've always dominated.

Okay, they're not the biggest sales numbers,

but this is where the Germans were hanging on,

the BMW 7-series and the Maybachs from Mercedes.

Now, the Chinese are even winning that segment.

Let's take a quick break, and when we come back,

China's Mazda heading to the UK

and a new flagship from Tank stick around back in the Mo.

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Mazda has set its UK pricing for the Chinese 6E.

It's going to come in under the United Kingdom's 40,000-pound luxury car tax,

so that's £38,995.

Delivery start this summer.

The car matches the Chinese market Mazda EZ6.

Mazda developed the EZ6 alongside Chang'an

on their EPA electric platform.

This is very closely resembling the DPAL SL03.

Mazda quotes a 78-kilowatt-hour LFP battery pack,

an official range of 348 miles.

Fast charging is 10 to 80 in 24 minutes,

and the price gap is what draws the eye somewhat in China,

because the identical car, let's call it the Mazda EZ6,

it's a different name, but it's the same car, costs £160,000.

That's £17,000.

By the time you stick it on a ship and send it halfway around the world,

pay some import duties as well,

and various other costs, the UK sticker price is 2.3 times higher.

And yet, it stands out for being good value in the UK market.

Chinese brands here now sell in volume.

They've shifted 187,800 vehicles in the UK in the first 11 months of last year.

I haven't got the full 2025 data in front of me.

Taking 10% of total sales, doubling their market share from 2024.

And Mazda wants a piece of the action.

OK, let's move on.

Great Wall Motors tank brand plans to unveil a new flagship off-road SUV

shortly after the 2026 Spring Festival.

Next month in March, according to the CEO, Gu Yukun,

the model targets China's luxury off-road market.

Great Wall Motors not disclose the tech and the timeline that we need.

There's no confirmed information on the dimensions, powertrain or battery,

even pricing, but this is about intent, not specs.

Great Wall Motors plans to launch multiple new models this year.

The regulatory filings include the large plug-in hybrid SUVs part of the offering

with several flagship models sitting above the existing tank 300, 400 and 500 series.

The new tank model will target the large or even mid to large luxury off-road buyers.

The company's strategy points in the same direction.

Very high-end, always electrified SUVs look very chunky, very off-roady.

Last month in January, the brand had sales of over 90,000 vehicles, up 12% year on year.

One clue we can take might sit elsewhere in the group.

The Way brand, WEY, the V9X is a plug-in hybrid SUV.

And that's already been revealed and that could be some of the tech

the Great Wall Motor put inside their new tank vehicles.

800-volt architecture, 363 kilometers of pure electric range.

Until we fill in the blanks, we have a date and not much else.

Now, China is steering, the new steering safety rules are coming in 2027.

We'll finish off with this story.

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology

has drafted a new national standard for steering safety.

And it comes into effect on January the first next year.

This says the draft deletes any references to half steering wheels.

Some people call them yoke steering wheels.

Famously in the Tesla Cybertruck, Toyota feature them as well.

Many argue that with steer-by-wire technology,

you can have your hands either side of a yoke steering wheel

and never have to cross your hands as you would with a regular steering wheel.

Many people have an opinion about them without actually having used one.

But it does appear that that will all be academic anyway as China outlaws them.

The technical changes also tighten crash expectations.

This new standard from January next year reduces the horizontal force limit

for the human crash structure testing to meet the UNR12 specifications.

It adds requirements for upward and backward movement of the steering column during collisions.

The industry, the ministry also closes the gap in how cars get tested.

The update removes exemptions for human impact testing

and demands verification tests on all models without exceptions.

And this matters because steering can account for up to 46% of driver injuries.

That's almost half of driver injuries coming from one part of the steering system.

So China clumping down on this and raising the standard.

Traditional circular steering wheels offer better safety

and cushioning in a crash than a half steering wheel.

Half steering wheels or yoke steering wheels face compliance trouble under these new rules

because the shape can't meet the required impact testing at certain points of the steering wheel

because there physically isn't part of the steering wheel there.

Airbags are also part of China's new clamp down.

The standard covers airbag deployment safety and bans any hard projectiles

being directed at occupants during a deployment.

Again, the half steering wheels raise concerns because their fracture patterns

are proving unpredictable in crash tests and China has no time for that.

Drivers also report day-to-day drawbacks, some uses of sighted awkward one-handed use,

accidental contact with dashboard screens, call buttons, larger steering inputs for regular manoeuvres.

From next year, though, all of that, like I say, could just become academic.

All new models must comply with the new China standard.

Existing models may get a transition period of up to a year, maybe 13 months,

but otherwise for yoke steering wheels, which some people have said are the future of driving,

they won't be in China.

The clock is ticking now and the countdown is the 1st of January next year.

And that's your podcast for today.

Thanks for listening.

I'll see you on the next one.

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CHINA: China Edges Towards EU Deal, Xiaomi Tops 600,00 Deliveries and January’s EV Sales | 13 Feb 2026

About this episode

EV market

countervailing duties

CUPRA Tavascan

Volkswagen

CUPRA

import quotas

tariffs

import duty

price undertaking offers

minimum pricing

Tavascan Tava Scan

transparency

electric vehicle (EV)

Tesla Model Y

month-on-month

year-on-year

Nio ES8

Xiaomi SU7

Ford Capri

four piston fixed calipers

Brembo

drilled brake discs

LiDAR

Bmw 7

Mercedes-Benz Sclass

6e

luxury car tax

LFP battery pack

fast charging

Mazda

plug-in hybrid SUV

WEY

Tesla Cybertruck

steer-by-wire technology

Request an Explanation

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