Countervailing duties are extra taxes a country puts on imported products when other countries help their own companies by giving them money. This makes the imported products cost more.
Import quotas are rules that limit how many cars from other countries can be brought in. This helps protect local car makers from too much competition.
Tariffs are extra taxes that countries put on cars coming from other countries. This makes those cars cost more and helps local car makers sell better.
Price undertaking offers are promises by car makers to sell their cars at a certain minimum price to avoid extra taxes when selling in other countries.
The Tavascan is a new electric SUV made by a car company called SEAT. It doesn't use gas and is part of their plan to make more electric cars in the future.
The Tesla Model Y is an electric car shaped like a small SUV that can drive far without needing gas. It's popular because it has cool features and is good for families or people who want more space than a regular car.
The Nio ES8 is a big electric SUV made in China that can change its battery quickly instead of waiting to charge. Many people in China buy it because it has lots of smart features and good space.
The Xiaomi SU7 is a new SUV being made by Xiaomi, a company famous for phones and gadgets. This car will have lots of smart features and shows how tech companies are starting to make cars.
The Ford Capri is an old sporty car that many people liked because it looked cool and was fun to drive. Even today, people talk about it because it reminds them of cars from the past.
These are parts of the brakes that squeeze the brake pads onto the discs to stop the car. Having four pistons means the brakes can stop the car better and more smoothly.
LiDAR is a special sensor that uses lasers to see around the car, helping it understand where things are to drive safely on its own or assist the driver.
The Mercedes-Benz S-Class is a very fancy and comfortable car that many people buy when they want the best in luxury and technology. It's like a moving lounge with lots of smart features and is popular in places like China.
The 6e is an electric car from Mazda that will be sold in places like the UK. It's a cheaper way to get a Mazda electric car, helping more people buy one without spending too much.
A plug-in hybrid SUV is a big car that can run on both gas and electricity. You can charge it by plugging it in, so it uses less gas and can drive a short distance on electricity alone.
The Tesla Cybertruck is a new electric pickup truck that looks very different from regular trucks. It has a special steering wheel called a yoke, which is shaped differently from normal ones.
Steer-by-wire means the steering wheel controls the car's wheels using computers and wires instead of a physical connection. This lets car makers design different kinds of steering wheels.
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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,
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pay some import duties as well,
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Chinese brands here now sell in volume.
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I haven't got the full 2025 data in front of me.
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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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About this episode
China is moving closer to an EU deal to reduce tariffs on imported EVs, with companies like Volkswagen's CUPRA already benefiting from exemptions. Xiaomi has surpassed 600,000 EV deliveries since launching less than two years ago, with its YU7 SUV leading January sales in China, overtaking Tesla's Model Y. Xiaomi also unveiled an updated SU7 model featuring enhanced safety and technology. Meanwhile, Huawei and JAC's luxury sedan Myxtro S800 is gaining traction, challenging traditional German luxury brands. The episode also covers China's evolving EV market dynamics, tariff negotiations, and new safety regulations slated for 2027.
