EUChina EV Marketplace (CEVM), a company that sells Chinese cars to European buyers, reports that its sales of pre-owned electric vehicles to EU customers grew 280% year on year in January to September 2026, to 7,900 units. Over the same period its sales of new vehicles fell 44%. These are CEVM’s own platform figures, not registrations across the EU market.
Why used cars sidestep the duties
Countervailing duties on Chinese battery-electric cars rose as high as 45.3% in 2024. CEVM says customers who wanted a car from China then moved to new plug-in hybrids and to used BEVs, neither of which paid that duty. The EU has since introduced a 350,000-unit cap on imports of hybrids from China, according to CarNewsChina, which reported the CEVM data, and used cars are outside that as well.
CEVM’s chief operating officer, Jakub Geršl, said tariffs “have already weakened demand for new Chinese BEVs among our European customers” and that the company expects the hybrid import cap to put pressure on new PHEV sales too. “Pre-owned cars are exempt from the additional BEV tariffs and from the new hybrid (PHEV) quota,” he said. That is why CEVM is making pre-owned vehicles the main focus of its European business.
An exemption from the extra duty is not an exemption from import costs. Importing a used car still means paying the applicable taxes and going through the required procedures.
What is on offer
CEVM lists more than 2,600 used EVs, updated daily, from brands including Xiaomi, BYD, iCar, Denza, Lynk & Co and Avatr. Geršl says falling new-car prices in China push down used prices too, and that his Shanghai team finds cars with around 6,000 km on the clock priced 40% below their original Chinese list price. That is a saving against the home-market price before shipping, duties and compliance work, so it is not what a European buyer would pay.
Direct import from China takes about three months, according to CEVM. To shorten that, it has announced a delivery centre in Prague with an initial batch of 20 EVs, for buyers who want to collect a car immediately.
A 280% rise to 7,900 units implies roughly 2,100 sales in the same months of 2025, so the base was small. The figures show where one importer’s business moved. For the wider European picture, see Europe’s September BEV registrations.
