And it gets worse. Because China effectively accounted for 52.5% of the new car sales in FY25.
That's a huge deal.
..
Maruti, Tata, Mahindra and other made-in-India cars had long dominated the Nepali car market.
- But, with the advent of EVs, Nepal sensed an opportunity to cut its massive petrol and diesel imports (all from India)
- Being a power surplus country with 85% of its power being clear (hydro), Nepal slashed import duties and tariffs on electric car imports
And result? Imported electric cars are massively cheaper in Nepal, versus the combustion engine based cars.
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It's an outcome of this that in FY25, 75% of all neww cars sold in Nepal were electric.
And 70% of those came froom China.
Effectively resulting in China cornering a 52.5% market share there.
And this should ideally be a moment of reckoning for anyone and everyone who goes around claiming that Tata and Mahindra's EVs are as good as Chinese ones.
If those were as good, then their sales would not have evaporated in a neutral market like Nepal, where both India and China's carmakers have an equal and free ground.
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The fact of the matter is that, even in India:
- MG's Windsor has left Tata's Nexon and others in the dust
- This is despite the fact that Windsor is majorly imported from China as knocked down kits by paying heavy import duties to Govt of India, and then assembled here
- And even when Tata and Mahindra's competing products don't pay any such tariffs to the Govt, their cars end up being costlier
Same holds for BYD's car sales in India too - which are growing massively at a low base, with competitive pricing despite the massive tariffs.
And this should make our carmakers sit down and thank the Govt of India for keeping the Indian markets largely protected from the Chinese onslaught.
Else, things here would have been no different from what's playing out in Nepal.
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