BMW’s chief executive has warned that EU plans to ban combustion engine vehicles is pushing European makers of cheaper cars into a price war with Chinese rivals that they are unlikely to win.
“The base car market segment will either vanish or will not be done by European manufacturers,” said Oliver Zipse, pointing to the growing ambitions of Chinese car brands such as BYD, which specialise in electric vehicles.
China — the world’s largest market for cars — has in the past 15 years built up an electric vehicle industry that has cornered much of the world’s battery supply chains and is now, among increasingly fierce competition at home, trying to enter the European market.