Just how well are Chinese brands penetrating the Philippine automotive industry? With CAMPI-TMA members as well as independent distributors such as BYD now declaring its full year 2025 sales, it’s time to get a clearer picture.
In 2023 when we started tracking monthly sales results, Chinese brands accounted for around 5 percent of cars sold. At the time, the top brand from China was MG.
Although it went through a rough transition from a Philippine-based distributor (The Covenant Car Company) to a directly-run subsidiary (SAIC Motor Philippines), it managed to still move 5,679 units—around 1.2 percent of all new cars sold, or 25 percent of all Chinese brands combined.
In August of that year, a big announcement was made: ACMobility was taking over the BYD distributorship in the Philippines.
The following year, 475,094 new cars were sold (CAMPI-TMA members and independent distributors), and among them were 30,703 Chinese cars—an uptick of 1.2 percent (6.2 percent of all new cars sold). The big jump was thanks to, you guessed it, BYD, which alone moved 4,780 units.
While it wasn’t enough to land them in the Top 10 automotive brands, being 11th in its first year was certainly enough to raise eyebrows. MG also had its first full-year under SAIC Motor Philippines and as a result, moved 9,016 units. These two brands combined managed to cover 45 percent of all Chinese brands present in the Philippines.
And now, we’re at 2025. For its year-end report, CAMPI included independent distributors which was an odd decision on its own. According to them, 491,395 new vehicles were sold.
And in an act of reluctant acceptance, they realized that they couldn’t turn a blind eye to the rise of BYD, especially since BYD moved 26,122 units. That’s enough for third place in the industry just behind Toyota (229,447 units) and Mitsubishi (86,808 units) and ahead of Suzuki (21,984 units), Ford (21,784 units), and Nissan (20,571 units). Putting this into perspective, BYD alone carved out a 5.31 percent market share of all new cars sold.
But just how well are Chinese brands doing as a whole? Well, according to industry data, CAMPI-TMA members said they sold 463,646 units. Add BYD’s figure, and you still have 1,627 that are accounted for. This could very well be from independent distributors such as Geely, HARI (Chevrolet, Volvo, Hyundai Trucks & Buses), Autohub (Mini, Lotus, Zeekr), PGA Cars (Audi, Porsche, Lamborghini), and even smaller players like QSJ (DFSK, Bestune, Aito) and Li Auto.
Even if we assume that all 1,627 unaccounted sales are from non-Chinese brands, that meant 47,021 Chinese cars were sold in 2025—20,899 from CAMPI-TMA members (MG, GAC, Chery, Foton, etc.) and 26,122 from BYD. Add them together and you have 47,021 units—a 9.56 percent market share. That means that 1 out of every 10 new cars being sold in the Philippines were from China, their highest share ever.
With CAMPI-TMA reporting that 2026 is shaping up to be a flat-year in terms of growth (they’re targeting new car sales to hit anywhere between 491,000 to 500,000 units), how will the Chinese brands fare? Barring any unforeseen circumstances, expect them to carve an even larger share. Geely alone expects to move 7,000 vehicles this year and we’re pretty sure BYD will do the same, especially with at least four new vehicle launches and the introduction of its upscale Denza brand.
Industry analysts predict that eventually Chinese brands will plateau with a 20 percent market share combined in the Philippines. While this seemed impossible just three years ago, now it’s just a matter of time.
What’s going to happen? The most likely scenario that smaller players will be gobbled up or will have to be satisfied operating at the fringes. The first victims will likely be the smaller independent Chinese distributors who may not have enough volume to find the business sustainable.
After that, it will be those in the premium mainstream segment will be hit next. No doubt, brands such as Toyota and probably even Honda and Nissan will move up price-wise. Their large variety of vehicles will help them cover their bases; it’s something that’s not possible for smaller players which will be squeezed out. Not to mention, as buyers start to prefer electrified offerings, brands that don’t offer any sort of hybrid will definitely feel the pinch moving forward.
After a decade not bad. Automotive world’s big enough for every other brands to share with. Just play fair and square, no secretive heavy government subsidies to sell below cost to ease out competition
ReplyDelete"no secretive heavy government subsidies"
Deleteand what's wrong with this???
@ Anonymous February 7, 2026 at 4:23 PM
DeleteThe short answer to question "what's wrong with giving subsidies", secret or not, is that given 2 auto manufacturing companies, one that receives substantial subsidies and the other that receives considerably less or zero subsidies; the one that receives substantial subsidies can use those subsidies to cover their costs of production thereby allowing such company to provide a lower price on their products.
The above situation is unfair to those other auto manufacturers receiving less or no subsidies as they cannot price their products competitively as they have to cover all the costs of production.
After seeing what cars like the Zeekr lineup can do, I'm surprised it's not higher.
ReplyDeleteZeekr is positioned as a premium brand. Their threshold for doing very well is not very high in terms of units sold.
Delete1 out of 10 are suckers and doesn’t know a lot about cars
ReplyDeleteMost of those Chinese car owners are wealthy and smarter than you.
DeleteAccording to the article, industry analysts are expecting 20% of the market or 1 out of 5 to be buyers.
DeleteEither that 20% of the market is clueless or the people calling them suckers are actually the ones missing out.
Good if you have other car/s in your garage, not recommended for 1st time / only-car owners.
DeleteNo wonder despite of the extreme value that these chinese brands offer they barely make a dent in the market.
👍🏻 most buyers of china cars here has already a car or two. it’s those buyers who has money to spare and don’t mind experimenting with china cars. if it breaks down they have other cars to use
Deletewait... so from what I'm getting here is that there are 2 types of chinese car buyers: one, those who are wealthy with multiple cars that they can afford to experiment and the second one are noobies who doesn't know a lot about cars. I think this makes sense and I can see it being plausible
DeleteThat figures amounts to about 61B pesoses...
ReplyDeleteThats a big dent to the japanese car brand sales.
Nikkie asia news: byd January2026 sales dropped 30% vs January 2025. Getting bitter and bitter and its home market. Hype already gone for byd in china, could be china car buyers had bad feedback about byd’s quality and reliability. Byd has a head start on exporting cars but once comrades catch up it could be clobbered just like in china
ReplyDeleteIf you're just going to copy info from news websites at least use their good grammar. No one really wants to read some weak/bad market analysis from someone with horrible English.
DeleteBYD mainly focus on export markets as they're doing very well in various overseas markets where they can sell their vehicles at high profit margins like the Philippine market.
DeleteGeely mainly took away the sales of BYD from China but in overseas markets Geely still can't match BYD and Chery Group of car brands.
Someone here too serious in grammar and probably in life 😁😁😁it’s getting BITTER and BITTER for byd in its home market. Hopefully now you get it. its just some spice bro
DeleteAs someone who actually reads the news being cited I can say that the weak analysis being given here in the comments section is not what is being said in those articles or even around discussions by car experts.
DeleteThis kind of 'spice' sucks when you know the real deal pero ang daming made up stuff na hinalo dito. 🤢
If you're not serious about it then don't bother replying. I care about it, so what? lol
Oh it’s not an analysis bro, im not an analyst am just an ordinary Kalye guy. the headline is it is what it is. Bitter is my personal opinion with a some spice of joke. Ok ok if you didn’t get it maybe the joke is on me😅😅😅. Next time just read the headline and then go to news website for details. 👍🏻
ReplyDelete"Hype already gone for byd in china, could be china car buyers had bad feedback about byd’s quality and reliability. Byd has a head start on exporting cars but once comrades catch up it could be clobbered just like in china"
DeleteI shouldn't be surprised you can't grasp that what you're doing is making your own speculative analysis. English is obviously not your strength.
Work on your English, but I'm not sure your jokes will get better. 😅
Reuters news: Byd December 2025 sales dropped by 18% year on year. Nikkie Asia news: Byd January 2026 sales dropped by 30% year on year. Oh ayan wala dagdag bawas😆😆😆 Very bitter news for byd fans here 🫛🫛🫛
ReplyDeleteThank you for making your edits. Maybe you'll realize that people like me are not BYD fans but just don't appreciate all the extra unnecessary stuff you add in (your jokes are horrible lol).
DeleteOh denial king🤥🤥🤥. it’s very obvious bro that you’re not only a byd fanboy but someway or another you are connected to byd business here in ph. Admit it bro, nothing wrong with it, just admit it😁😁😁
Delete"Bro", BYD can suck it. I am a fan of cars and car culture but not car companies (though I consume a lot of business news/information about them). Yes, people like me do exist.
DeleteYou should maybe accept that your self-confessed 'ordinary Kalye guy' attitude and commenting style is just not fit for decent discussion.
Your only kapit to your arguments is that people have to be fanboys because they are criticizing your crude comments (and your idea/guess of what I am is laughable).
If you can make decent arguments (in decent/passable english) then you would gain my respect as a random internet stranger.
Unfortunately, you seem to be the type to only read headlines. If real car people are talking real doom and gloom about BYD (or any company) I can digest that and accept that but that's not how the market is looking right now.
For comparison, Tesla just had a horrible 2025, do I think they are going to fold and die out soon? No, because real business is more complicated than that. You are playing out your fantasies in your comments because real (non-kalye) experts are saying BYD is down but still holding on. How will they do in the future? Who knows? Not me and I'm not pretending to know and I'm definitely not making baseless claims for or against them.
We've crossed paths in these comment-sections before but you always follow the same pattern of abandoning talk of actual details and then switch to personalan mode. I've seen you do this in response to other people's comments too. Child's play moves.