The price war engulfing China’s electric vehicle industry has sent share prices tumbling and prompted an unusual level of intervention from Beijing. The shakeout may just be getting started.

For all the Chinese government’s efforts to prevent price cuts by market leader BYD from turning into a vicious spiral, analysts say a combination of weaker demand and extreme overcapacity will slice into profits at the strongest brands and force feebler competitors to fold. Even after the number of EV makers started shrinking for the first time last year, the industry is still using less than half its production capacity.

Chinese authorities are trying to minimise the fallout, chiding the sector for “rat-race competition” and summoning heads of major brands to Beijing last week. Yet previous attempts to intervene have had little success. For the short term at least, investors are betting few car makers will escape unscathed: BYD, arguably the biggest winner from industry consolidation, has lost US$21.5-billion in market value since its shares peaked in late May.

“What you’re seeing in China is disturbing, because there’s a lack of demand and extreme price cutting,” said John Murphy, a senior automotive analyst at Bank of America. Eventually there will be “massive consolidation” to soak up the excess capacity, Murphy said.

For car makers, relentless discounting erodes profit margins, undermines brand value and forces even well-capitalised companies into unsustainable financial positions. Low-priced and low-quality products can seriously damage the international reputation of “Made-in-China” cars, the People’s Daily, an outlet controlled by the Communist Party, said. And that knock would come just as models from BYD to Geely, Zeekr and Xpeng start to collect accolades on the world stage.

For consumers, price drops may seem beneficial but they mask deeper risks. Unpredictable pricing discourages long-term trust — already people are complaining on China’s social media, wondering why they should buy a car now when it may be cheaper next week — while there’s a chance car makers, as they cut costs to stay afloat, may reduce investment in quality, safety and aftersales service.

The culprit?

Motoring industry CEOs were told last week they must “self-regulate” and shouldn’t sell cars below cost or offer unreasonable price cuts, according to people familiar with the matter. The issue of zero-mileage cars also came up — where vehicles with no distance on their odometers are sold by dealers into the second-hand market, seen widely as a way for car makers to artificially inflate sales and clear inventory.

Chinese automakers have been discounting a lot more aggressively than their foreign counterparts.

Murphy said US automakers should just get out. “Tesla probably needs to be there to compete with those companies and understand what’s going on, but there’s a lot of risk there for them.”

Read: All the plug-in hybrid EVs for sale in South Africa

Others leave no room for doubt that BYD, China’s no-1 selling car brand, is the culprit.

“It’s obvious to everyone that the biggest player is doing this,” Jochen Siebert, MD at motoring industry consultancy JSC Automotive, said. “They want a monopoly where everybody else gives up.” BYD’s aggressive tactics are raising concerns over the potential dumping of cars, dealership management issues and “squeezing out suppliers”, he said.

BYD is China's biggest EV firm — BYD is China’s biggest EV manufacturer

The pricing turmoil is also unfolding against a backdrop of significant overcapacity. The average production utilisation rate in China’s automotive industry was mere 49.5% in 2024, data compiled by Shanghai-based Gasgoo Automotive Research Institute shows.

An April report by AlixPartners meanwhile highlights the intense competition that’s starting to emerge among new energy vehicle makers, or companies that produce pure battery cars and plug-in hybrids. In 2024, the market saw its first ever consolidation among NEV-dedicated brands, with 16 exiting and 13 launching.

“The Chinese automotive market, despite its substantial scale, is growing at a slower speed. Automakers have to put top priority now on grabbing more market share,” Ron Zheng, a partner at global consultancy Roland Berger, said.

Jiyue Auto shows how quickly things can change. A little over a year after launching its first car, the automaker jointly backed by big names Zhejiang Geely Holding Group and technology giant Baidu, began to scale down production and seek fresh funds.

It’s a dilemma for all car makers, but especially smaller ones. “If you don’t follow suit once a leading company makes a price move, you might lose the chance to stay at the table,” AlixPartners consultant Zhang Yichao said. He added that China’s low capacity utilisation rate, which is “fundamentally fuelling” the competition, is now even under more pressure from export uncertainties.

While the push to find an outlet for excess production is thrusting more Chinese brands to export, international markets can only offer some relief.

“The US market is completely closed and Japan and Korea may close very soon if they see an invasion of Chinese car makers,” Siebert said. “Russia, which was the biggest export market last year, is now becoming very difficult. I also don’t see Southeast Asia as an opportunity anymore.”

Ballooning debt

The pressure of cost cutting has also led analysts to express concern over supply chain finance risks.

A price cut demand by BYD to one of its suppliers late last year attracted scrutiny around how the car giant may be using supply chain financing to mask its ballooning debt. A report by accounting consultancy GMT Research put BYD’s true net debt at closer to CY323-billion ($45-billion), compared with the CY27.7-billion officially on its books as of the end of June 2024.

Read: Zero Carbon Charge secures R100-million for off-grid EV charging stations

The pain is also bleeding into China’s dealership network. Dealership groups in two provinces have gone out of business since April, both of them ones that were selling BYD cars.

Beijing’s meeting with automakers last week wasn’t the first attempt at a ceasefire. Two years ago, in mid 2023, 16 major automakers, including Tesla, BYD and Geely signed a pact, witnessed by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, to avoid “abnormal pricing”.

Within days though, CAAM deleted one of the four commitments, saying that a reference to pricing in the pledge was inappropriate and in breach of a principle enshrined in the nation’s antitrust laws.