A third of new cars sold here are Chinese-built. That is a brand trust brief.

China-made vehicles accounted for 35.5 per cent of the Australian market in June 2026 — closer to 39.6 per cent once Tesla and Polestar are counted. BYD delivered 29,192 vehicles in the first half and took 28.1 per cent of the BEV market, up 241 per cent year on year. Geely grew 415.9 per cent in May. Chery was up 92 per cent by April. GWM cleared 30,000 units in the half.

The AADA now forecasts Chinese-made vehicles at 58 per cent of the market by 2035, close to 900,000 units a year.

Whatever you think of the forecast, the present-day number is already large enough to have changed the marketing problem for everyone in the market. It just changed it differently depending on which side you are on.

If you are a newer entrant

Your product problem is mostly solved. The vehicles are competitive on specification, equipment and price, and buyers have worked that out — the sales figures say so plainly.

What is not solved is everything that happens after the sale. The objections that stall these brands in Australia are almost never about the car:

• Will this brand still be here in five years?
• Who services it, and how far away are they?
• Can I get parts, and how quickly?
• What is it worth when I sell it?
• Is the warranty worth anything if the importer changes?

These are the highest-value marketing subjects available to you, and most brands in this position under-invest in them dramatically — because they read as unglamorous, and because the instinct is to keep selling the value story that is already working.

Three things worth doing properly:

Make the service network a headline product attribute. Not a footer link. Site count, coverage map, parts availability commitments, average turnaround. Published, specific, and updated.

Publish residual data as soon as you credibly can. Resale fear is the single largest unaddressed objection for newer marques. The first brand in this cohort to publish honest retained-value data will take a meaningful trust advantage, and the data is only getting better as volume builds.

Fix the reputation surface, not just the ad. These decisions are heavily influenced by forums, owner groups and review comment sections. A brand with strong advertising and a neglected community presence loses arguments it never sees.

If you are an established brand

Competing on price against this cohort is a losing position, and competing on specification is getting harder every model year. What remains is genuine and defensible, but only if it is actually true and actually evidenced:

• Depth of service network and parts logistics, expressed in numbers rather than adjectives.
• Demonstrated residual performance across multiple cycles — you have the data, most brands never use it in market.
• Long-term presence, which matters to a buyer weighing a fifteen-year ownership horizon.
• Dealer relationship quality, which is one of the few things a network can deliver that a price list cannot.

What does not work is implication. Australian buyers are well past the point where a vague appeal to heritage or an unnamed suggestion about build quality lands — and the ones who research heavily, who are the ones you most want, will treat it as an admission that you have nothing specific.

The bit both sides get wrong

Nearly all of this is being fought at brand and campaign level, and almost none of it at the point where the decision actually gets made: the model page, the comparison table, the enquiry form and the response that follows.

A buyer weighing a BYD against a RAV4 is looking for service coverage, parts, warranty terms and resale evidence in the same session. Whichever brand answers those questions clearly, in one place, without making them hunt, wins a disproportionate share of that comparison. It is the cheapest available advantage in the category and it is mostly sitting there untaken.

Sources

• Chinese cars now account for a third of all new vehicles sold in Australia, CarExpert
• Chinese brands to take over half of Australia’s new car market by 2035, dealers’ group forecasts
• Chinese car brands in Australia: the winners and losers so far in 2026, Drive
• Australia EV sales surge as BYD takes lead, The Driven