Last November, Chinese automaker SAIC-GM-Wuling (SGMW) rolled a compact electric vehicle model off the assembly line at its subsidiary in Indonesia. The sleek four-seater -- the subsidiary's 160,000th vehicle produced in the country -- was soon on its way to hit a showroom in Thailand.
From launching its first model in Indonesia to surpassing this milestone, SGMW, headquartered in the industrial city of Liuzhou in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, took just seven years to build a reliable new energy vehicle (NEV) supply chain, driving its car sales in Southeast Asia.
As the first Chinese automaker to invest and establish a factory in Indonesia, SGMW has played a key role in expanding China's electric fleet and has gained over 50 percent of the local NEV market share.
China's increasing footprint in this rapidly growing market has been propped up by a legion of key domestic players, with manufacturers such as BYD, Chery and Great Wall Motor all taking their share of the pie on the back of competitive pricing, an array of modern industry features and robust after-sale services.
Data from the Association of Indonesian Automotive Industries shows that the five bestselling NEV models in the country in 2024 were from three different Chinese carmakers, with the BYD M6 leading the pack.
In Thailand, where the number of registered pure electric cars reached 70,000 to account for about 14 percent of total car sales in 2024, four out of the five bestsellers were from Chinese brands. The same goes for Cambodia, where BYD holds the pole position in the nascent NEV market.
Japanese automakers have long dominated Thailand's auto market with their conventional internal-combustion-engine vehicles. However, there are signs that Chinese rivals have begun to break this stronghold.
Surging NEV sales have led to Chinese brands doubling their market share, which expanded from 5 percent to 11 percent in 2023. But their Japanese counterparts, which are lagging in their adoption of electric power, experienced a sharp decline in market share in the same year, decreasing from 90 percent to 78 percent.
"Our parents' generation has lived and breathed Toyota and Honda growing up, and many are still waiting for the Japanese producers to turn electric," according to a Thai student who goes by his Chinese name, Li Fenghuang.
"Instead of getting bound by brand loyalty like my parents, the younger generations tend to place more importance on quality and cost, and these are where the Chinese manufacturers stand out," Li said.
Industry insiders say that affordability is still the leading concern for consumers in emerging economies like those in Southeast Asia, and that Chinese automakers have been particularly adept at embracing the reality on the ground by rolling out a range of technologically superior products with relatively small price tags to gain a competitive advantage in these burgeoning markets.
Data from China's General Administration of Customs shows that China's total auto exports rose from 2 million to 6.41 million between 2021 and 2024. And on the green vehicle front, China alone accounted for over 60 percent of global sales in 2023, with over 1.2 million units being shipped overseas, a year-on-year increase of 77.2 percent.
The official figures also indicate that China sustained its growth momentum going into 2024, with the volume of pure electric car exports topping 2 million units for the first time.
Behind China's booming car export business are years of painstaking efforts to groom a vast network of locally based suppliers that are essential to building a resilient transnational supply chain.
In Indonesia, SGMW has helped guide 17 Chinese enterprises on the auto supply chain to venture abroad, developing over 100 local suppliers over the past seven years.
Last November, the China-Indonesia Institute of Modern Craftsmanship of New Energy Vehicle, a training base established by Liuzhou City Vocational College, Indonesia's Anand Industrial Training Institute and SGMW's Indonesian subsidiary, was officially inaugurated in Indonesia.
