Revolutionize China’s Auto Market Setup by Chinese EV Brands? Answers from Consumers

Abstract

As the foreign and joint venture brands introduced thier electric vehicle (EV) into China, the pattern of China’s EV market changed quietly. Under such circumstance, whether Chinese EV brands can subvert the structure of the Chinese automobile market is a question worth studying. This article uses the discrete choice experiment (DCE) to answer this question from the perspective of consumer preference. We divided the entire EV market into mid-end and high-end EV markets, a binary logit regression model was used to analyze the possibility of consumers’ purchase choice of EVs in different markets depending on the different levels of price, range, energy efficiency, number of super charging stations, service stores and installation of automated driving system. We finally found that compared with the high-end EV market, Chinese domestic EV brands are more competitive in the mid-end market, but even in the mid-end market, Chinese branding EVs are still not as attractive to consumers as joint venture brands. Generally speaking, although Chinese domestic EV brands will cause certain changes in China’s overall automotive market structure, the changes would be very limited. In the future, the Chinese brand EVs should improve its brand-specific charging service levels which can greatly increase thier competitiveness.