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rom Late Entrants to Structural Challengers
Over the past decade, Chinese vehicle manufacturers have evolved from largely domestic players into globally relevant competitors. While this transformation has been widely discussed in the passenger car segment, a similar shift is now emerging in commercial vehicles. Driven by rapid advances in electrification, battery technology and vertically integrated value chains, several Chinese truck OEMs, including BYD, SANY and SuperPanther, are accelerating their push into Europe.
As of now Chinese battery electric truck (BET) manufacturers are not volume challengers in Europe. Despite strong domestic momentum (“New Energy Vehicle” trucks recently exceeded 50% market share in the Chinese market), their European volumes remain marginal, especially in medium and heavy-duty segments. However, focusing on current sales figures misses the point. What is unfolding is not a short-term export initiative, but a deliberate and multi-dimensional market build-up designed for scale.
The critical question for European incumbents is: are Chinese truck OEMs still niche players, or are they really emerging as credible long-term competitors to European legacy OEMs like Daimler Truck, MAN and Scania?
To understand the depth of this transformation, it is useful to examine four reinforcing layers of competitive market embedding.
Graphic 1 – Chinese BET Competitive Strategies
Source: Berylls by AlixPartners
Chinese BET OEMs have moved decisively beyond simple homologation adjustments. Rather than merely adapting vehicles to European regulatory standards, they increasingly design products around specific European duty cycles and fleet requirements.
Across all major truck segments, established European manufacturers are facing growing competition from Chinese OEMs, often at estimated price points equivalent to 50 to 60% of comparable European offerings.
In the heavy-duty segment for example, electric models such as the Mercedes-Benz eActros and the MAN eTGX are now confronted with new vehicles from manufacturers such as SANY and SuperPanther. On paper, these vehicles offer comparable performance and specifications to established European battery-electric long-haul trucks. However, it is real-world use cases, rather than technical specifications alone, that ultimately determine performance in terms of reliability, efficiency, and total cost of ownership (TCO).
Whether Chinese OEMs can consistently deliver at scale in Europe remains to be proven, but early signals are positive. SANY’s nomination for the International Truck of the Year 2026 highlights advanced technical features and a competitive TCO, while the results from initial long-term tests with logistics providers such as DHL Freight and Dachser show strong performance in real-world operations, including high scores for reliability, efficiency, and customer service.
Trucks from low-cost countries have existed for decades, but historically they lacked the product substance required for successful market entry in Europe. Chinese manufacturers are now increasingly closing this gap, offering operationally sufficient, use-case-optimized solutions at significantly lower acquisition costs. Although TCO has always been a guiding criterion in the (European) truck market, incumbent OEMs were able to sustain premium price levels through superior product substance, proven reliability, and strong residual value performance. If this qualitative gap continues to narrow and residual values of Chinese competitors hold up over time, the traditional premium justification weakens, potentially shifting purchasing decisions more decisively toward economic efficiency and cost competitiveness.
Product competitiveness alone is not enough in Europe. Chinese OEMs face tariffs, regulatory hurdles and political resistance when importing to Europe. Selected Chinese OEMs are therefore pursuing different localization strategies, not primarily as a cost lever, but as a mechanism to secure market access, political legitimacy, and long-term strategic positioning. Other OEMs continue to rely on imports for their European market entry.
Graphic 2
Source: Berylls by AlixPartners
Chinese OEMs are using multiple localization strategies in Europe, including:
Direct investment, such as BYD’s commercial vehicle plant in Hungary, building up full-scale production capacity for 1,250 battery electric trucks and buses within the EU annually. This model reduces exposure to tariffs and trade defense measures, ensures compliance with European industrial and procurement rules, shortens delivery times, and signals long-term commitment to regulators and fleet customers. However, it requires significant capital expenditure, scale assumptions, and long-term market confidence to justify the investment.
Partnership-based production, such as Foton’s cooperation with Piaggio, producing co-developed light commercial vehicles at Piaggio’s Pontedera plant in Italy, enables faster market entry by using existing European manufacturing infrastructure, workforce, and supplier networks. This approach lowers upfront investment, accelerates regulatory approval and ramp-up, and shares operational and financial risk between partners while maintaining access to local industrial credibility.
Contract manufacturing and SKD/CKD assembly, exemplified by SuperPanther’s semi-knocked-down (SKD) truck production at the Steyr plant in Austria (formerly a MAN production site), is a localization approach that enables speed, flexibility, and tariff resilience. The model allows rapid market entry with limited upfront investment, as vehicles are assembled locally from SKD kits that are sourced from China. Additional components are supplied by established European companies such as ZF, Schaeffler, Continental, and Aumovio, embedding the trucks within existing European supply chains and supporting quality perception and fleet acceptance. SuperPanther plans to sell up to 16,000 trucks in Europe by 2030 based on its proprietary platform. In parallel, Sinotruk (25% owned by MAN) also utilizes the Steyr plant for SKD production and is expected to transition toward complete knock-down (CKD) assembly over time, including the localization of cab manufacturing, to further increase the level of value creation on site and reduce tariff exposure.
Even while Chinese truck volumes in Europe remain marginal, the structural groundwork for scale is being laid in parallel.
In commercial vehicles, aftersales is a large part of the product promise. Vehicle uptime is not an optional feature, it is the business model, making service coverage the foundation for fleet adoption.
Historically, limited service networks represented a structural barrier for Chinese vehicles in Europe. Selected Chinese truck manufacturers are now addressing this limitation: SANY and SuperPanther have partnered with the Alltrucks service network which gives them access to over 700 service locations across Europe alongside 24/7 roadside assistance. While still significantly below the number of locations operated by major European OEMs (see chart below), this footprint provides a foundational level of coverage that enables initial market entry.
Graphic 3
Source: Berylls by AlixPartners
Network size alone does not equate to service maturity. What ultimately determines competitive credibility is execution: spare parts availability, technician expertise, response times, warranty handling, and uptime performance under real operating conditions. These capabilities must still prove themselves at scale in European fleet environments. Aftersales is therefore not yet commoditized for Chinese OEMs. While the presence barrier is being addressed, operational credibility still needs to be proven under European fleet conditions.
The question is no longer whether Chinese OEMs can offer service coverage. It is whether they can deliver consistent uptime across European fleets.
Building a comprehensive ecosystem around truck operations has emerged as one of the central value drivers in the commercial vehicle market. Over recent years, European OEMs began to establish a structural advantage in their home markets by extending their offering well beyond the vehicle itself. What initially started with telematics and basic fleet monitoring evolved into integrated digital ecosystems encompassing charging infrastructure, energy services, fleet management, uptime solutions, and predictive maintenance, often enabled through close partnerships with infrastructure providers, roaming platforms, utilities, and software players.
Amid rising concerns about data leakage, espionage, and dependencies on Chinese players, this local advantage can become a significant differentiator for European OEMs. By relying on EU-based cloud infrastructure, localized data hosting, and clearly defined data sovereignty frameworks, European OEMs can offer a compelling alternative. For fleet operators, this combination translates not only into operational efficiency gains but also into increasing trust in data security, regulatory compliance, and long-term reliability. As a result, ecosystem integration and robust data governance are becoming implicit entry barriers for non-European OEMs – particularly in data-intensive and uptime-critical truck applications.
Chinese OEMs are now trying to close this gap. Rather than attempting to replicate European ecosystems from scratch, they pursue a pragmatic localization and partnership strategy. By leveraging established EU-based providers for telematics, charging management, roaming, and energy services, they can achieve functional ecosystem parity at greater speed and lower investment. BYD’s cooperation with Geotab, including vehicle data hosting on German servers, illustrates how Chinese OEMs are addressing regulatory requirements and trust considerations through third-party integration rather than proprietary platforms.
> Make truck BEVs the strategic core of the business. The electric vehicle can not be treated as an extension of the internal combustion engine business if companies are to respond to the structural nature of global competition with focus, capital discipline and industrial commitment.
> Develop truck BEVs around defined European use cases. Companies should prioritize operational fit and total cost of ownership over technical overengineering or specification-driven positioning.
> Industrialize locally and secure supply chain depth in Europe. This strategy can ensure tariff resilience, political legitimacy, delivery reliability and long-term strategic market embedding.
> Radically shorten time-to-market and scale production early. Speed and volume – not legacy strength – will determine cost competitiveness and structural market position.
> Prioritize early market penetration over short-term margin optimization. Scale effects and steep learning curves define long-term profitability in electrification.
> Establish aftersales excellence and guaranteed uptime. These are core competitive differentiators, proving reliability, service depth and residual value performance under real European fleet conditions.
> Treat battery electric trucks as an integrated ecosystem. Combine vehicle, charging, energy, digital operations and data governance into one coherent offering, actively shaping partnerships across logistics, infrastructure and software.
Chinese truck OEMs are embedding themselves into Europe’s commercial vehicle ecosystem earlier and more deeply than many incumbents anticipated. While they are not yet volume challengers, their structural market build-up and use-case-driven product localization position them as credible long-term competitors. What will ultimately determine the durability of this competitive shift in the coming years is their ability to demonstrate long-term reliability and sustainable residual value performance in European operations, so lower upfront acquisition costs truly translate into superior total cost of ownership. For European truck manufacturers, the implication is clear: the competitive challenge is no longer in the distant future. It is unfolding now – structurally, strategically, and at scale.
Copyright Berylls by AlixPartners