Car News from China

China's charging network reached 23.683 million points at the end of July, up 41.9% year on year. Almost all of the month's growth was private: 536,000 of the 626,000 points added were home or workplace wallboxes, and public charging now accounts for barely a fifth of the total.

New-energy vehicles took a record 64.4% of China's retail car sales in July 2026, even as NEV retail itself fell 2% year on year - the seventh straight monthly decline. The record came from combustion collapsing faster than EVs are growing.

In May 2026 not a single petrol or diesel model made China's top 10 - the first time combustion cars have vanished from the list. It says less about an EV boom than a fuel-car collapse.

Six car badges are built in South Korea and four companies own them. Hyundai Motor Group makes 84% of them, and two of the others are foreign-controlled.

Who owns Europe's car brands: the five groups that hold most of them, the icons now controlled from China, India and Abu Dhabi, and the same map sorted by country.

China's car market runs on a handful of giant groups, each fielding a stack of brands. Here is who owns what - the parent companies, the sub-brands, the Huawei alliance, and why the chart keeps changing.

Six powertrains are on sale and three of them are called hybrids. What MHEV, HEV, PHEV, EREV and EV mean, how far each goes on its battery, and how to tell them apart.

Norway sells almost nothing but electric cars, and never paid a purchase subsidy to get there. The tax structure that did it, year by year, and how it ends in 2028.

The Volkswagens sold in China are built by two companies, and one of them is Chinese. That arrangement started in 1983 as a condition of entry, and it has since produced badges that exist nowhere else: Jetta, Wuling, and AUDI in block capitals with no rings. Who holds which half, which brands the ventures invented for themselves, and which of the old partnerships have quietly ended.

Aion is GAC, Jaecoo and Omoda are Chery, Deepal is Changan, Nammi is Dongfeng. Ten Chinese brands whose names do not carry the parent company, grouped by how each one relates to its owner: brands sold only outside China, recent badges on long-established state groups, brands two levels below the group, and one that Huawei supplies but does not own.

Twelve European badges whose nationality does not match their ownership: Cupra, Vauxhall, DS, Opel, Lancia, Alpine, Abarth, MG, Ebro, DR Automobiles, smart and Leapmotor. Some are Spanish or British names owned in Germany or the Netherlands, some are revived badges on Chinese hardware, and several are assembled in a third country again.