[KITA News] Korea’s performance in the EV market remains strong as the country ascended to be the fourth largest EV exporter

       

Korea’s performance in the EV market remains strong as the country ascended to be the fourth largest EV exporter

Germany, the U.S. and China are top three EV exporting countries in order of export performance
Europe turned out to be the center EV transaction activities

 

In the global EV market - a market witnessing a significant growth, a report revealed Korea’s strong performance in the market. Korea ascended to be the fourth largest EV exporter.

The Korea International Trade Association (Chairman: Christopher Koo) and the Institute for International Trade released a report titled “Trends of EV markets of key nations since the Covid pandemic” on September 8. The report revealed a continuous growth of the EV market despite the struggle experienced by the global automobile market during the Covid pandemic. In 2021, approximately 6.6 million EVs were sold globally, which is a 226.3% increase compared to the corresponding figure posted in 2019. The aggregated value of EVs that were traded in 2021 skyrocketed 150% from 74.2 billion dollars to hit 188.7 billion dollars during the same period.

The report also revealed that Europe is the main stage of EV transactions, which is shown by multiple European countries being included in the top 10 list of EV import and export activities. Germany was both the largest exporter and importer of EVs. The country sold 28.8 billion dollars’ worth of EVs and purchased 17.7 billion dollars’ worth of such vehicles. The UK and France were the third and fourth largest EV importer respectively. Spain and Belgium were ranked fifth and sixth respectively in terms of EV exports.

China’s growing prominence in the EV market is also worth paying attention. China was merely ranked 11^th in terms of EV exports with managing to sell a total of one billion dollars’ worth of EVs in 2019. However, China became the third largest EV exporter in 2021 with achieving the target to sell over 10 billion dollars’ worth of EVs that year. Contrary to skyrocketing EV exports, the country’s EV imports decreased from 3.5 billion dollars to 2.9 billion dollars during the same period of 2019 to 2021. The report analyzed that this is attributable to a) the growth of Chinese EV makers, including BYD, and b) a full-fledged production by global EV makers in China, including Gigafactory Shanghai operated by Tesla.

Korea was revealed to be the fourth largest EV exporter in 2021. In comparison with a 11.9% decrease in Korea’s automobile exports in 2020 compared to the previous year, the country’s EV exports in 2021 jumped 112.2% compared to 2019. Korea’s EV exports also increased in terms of its share in the total size of automobile exports. EV’s share nearly doubled from 8.1% to 15.8% between 2019 and 2021.

A bulk of Korean-made EVs are exported to the U.S. and Europe. During the first half of 2022, the market share of Korean-made EV in the U.S. was ranked at second position for the first time after Tesla EVs - the front runner in the American EV market. Korean-made EVs were also successful in the European market as well. In Germany and the UK - the second and third-largest export destinations of Korean EVs respectively - the market share of Korean-made EVs was ranked at fourth position during the first half of this year. These achievements illustrate Korea is increasing its share in the global EV market in a consistent manner.

Kkot-byeol Kim, a senior researcher at KITA pointed out, “In comparison with China, Germany and the U.S., which all have a competitive edge in a variety of sectors relevant to EVs, including production, domestic sales and exports, Korea is at a disadvantage in securing competitiveness compared to its rivals as Korea heavily focuses on exports due to its limited size of the domestic market”. The researcher also advised, “As the U.S. has recently passed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) along with multiple countries stubbornly maintaining discriminatory policies to provide subsidies to support their own EV industry, close public-private cooperation is needed in Korea to support our companies to maintain their competitiveness.”

By - KITA.Net (http://kita.org/about/newsView.do?id=&no=2732&searchWrd=&pageIndex=1)