Search, compare and if you find something better, buy it
It was the 80s and Colón’s detergents had snuck their famous slogan into every house in Spain. 40 years later, a BYD worker explained to me how they sought to break down prejudices in Spain:
“We are letting people take the car home. We don’t want to do the typical 20-minute test with the salesperson inside the car. We tell the customer not to be afraid, to take the car and bring it to us the next day”
BYD barely had a handful of points of sale in Spain those days in 2023. Shortly before we had attended the official presentation of the brand. The Chinese company arrived with three electric cars (two of them with a clear premium focus) and I saw it clearly: the brand had to attract the customer to the dealership. Let him sit in the car, touch it and feel it. It was the only way to dynamit prejudices.
We are just over a month away from the end of 2025. At the end of October, BYD has sold 22,357 exclusively plug-in units in Spain according to data from Anfac. They easily double Fiat. They surpass Mazda and Volvo. They left Tesla behind a long time ago. They have Opel or Cupra on the near horizon. They begin to approach Ford.
At the same time, BYD will close 100 dealerships this year (96 are already active throughout Spain) and they plan to open another thirty next year. At the same time, Chery has placed 31,493 cars in our country at the end of November between Ebro, Omoda and Jaecoo. And we are facing the first full year in which they have sold cars in our country. The sum of all of them also easily exceeds one hundred points of sale.
MG adds 38,989 units between January and October 2025. With 11 points of sale available throughout Spain.
The irruption is such that 10% of the cars purchased in Spain they are Chinese. It was a figure that was difficult to imagine just a few years ago.
A figure that has been achieved by taking the customer to the dealership.
And dynamiting their prejudices.
The importance of being on the street
There are many factors that explain the brutal growth of Chinese brands in our country. We can talk about its low prices, about offering a gateway to a technology (electric or plug-in hybrid) that has made the product more expensive or the extensive equipment offered in each car.
But in addition to the price, which overrides all the previous arguments, we find an expansive effort by all these brands to be on the street, at the customer’s feet, with the dealers.
“We had been waiting for its arrival for a long time. Already 15 years ago, in the brand’s first foray, we had one of its models, now I don’t remember exactly the name. In terms of volume, manufacturing capacity and development, it is a really excellent product. We think it is above the rest of the Chinese brands that are arriving in our country.”
The speaker is José María Blitz, Project Director at the dealership that BYD has on Concha Espina Street in Madrid (next to the Santiago Bernabéu) and which belongs to Astara Retaila distributor with a presence in 19 countries and that sells you a Bentley or a Rolls-Royce as well as a BYD. This time it is the Chinese brand he is referring to.
He tells us that the public has welcomed the company with open arms and that since they opened their first dealership, this one next to the Madrid stadium, interest has only increased.
“The client It has already surpassed that of ‘unknown brand’. There could have been one at the beginning, three or four years ago, but I think it is practically expired. What’s more, the customer’s perception of the brand is excellent,” he explains. Added to that, “the European product was very expensive and the equipment was very fair. Chinese brands offer a quality product at a competitive price with a much higher level of equipment. We can easily be 20% or 25% below competing brands with higher equipment levels,” says Blitz.
BYD is just one of the Chinese brands that sell in our country. Together with MG and the Chery Group (Omoda, Jaecoo and Ebro) they form a kind of quintet representative of the 28 Chinese brands that already sell in our country, according to Faconauto.
The dealer association of our country says it has about 600 points of sale right now, between dealers and official services. Of course, they point out to us that “it is convenient to contextualize this figure: the majority of points of sale in Spain continue to correspond to consolidated manufacturers – European, Japanese, Korean or American – whose presence is structural and has developed over decades.
Right now, Faconauto has 28 Chinese companies selling cars through 600 dealerships spread throughout the country.
What happened to find us with this explosion? Blitz is clear, the product, he assures, is part of the success. But also who these brands have partnered with. “Their strategy has been to close agreements with large groups of dealers, people who are really professional,” they say from this dealership owned by Astara.
The same is the opinion of Faconauto, who point out that “they have decided to enter our market with a ‘traditional’ model, taking advantage of the establishment of business dealers. And the key is the word ‘businessmen’, who choose where to invest their money. It is evident that many dealer groups have seen a good opportunity in investing in the distribution of Chinese brands.”
This commitment generates trust in the customer, which has allowed them to grow “to the level of any other European brand,” for Blitz. The key: a disruptive product and good after-sales service.
“They are very agile and they want their employees to be agile too. There is a sense of urgency in everything they do. They want to grow very quickly, but sensibly.” This time the speaker is Víctor Moll, co-founder and CEO of Moll Motor that for more than 60 years have sold all types of products. In fact, in their portfolio they have Mazda, Fiat, Abarth, Alfa Romeo, Jeep and Suzuki… and Omoda-Jaecoo or Ebro, brands to which he refers on this occasion.
Moll Motor perfectly represents that figure of a distributor that maintains a broad portfolio of traditional brands but has not hesitated to join the “Chinese party.” A party that has looked towards the classic dealership business, a formula where traditional brands have tightened their grip in recent years. Volvo, for example, jump to “everything online” but it has been a fiasco. Mercedes works in establish an agency model and Carlos Tavares was already talking about a profound weight loss of the Stellantis dealer portfolio in 2022.
In recent years, Faconauto explains, “there have been rationalization processes, especially in brands with historically very extensive networks, motivated by digitalization, efficiency adjustments or changes in contractual models. In 2014, for example, there were about 2,100 dealers of ‘traditional’ brands and by the end of 2024 there were about 1,600… but in that year we have had to add the 500 new points that Chinese brands have been generating”.
“Chinese brands offer better conditions than some traditional brands, it is normal if they want to enter, the question is whether they will maintain them over time. They are very fast in providing product, and that causes volumes to increase, and finally our profit is a question of scale,” says Moll who defends his role: “Chinese manufacturers are very clear about what they want and how they want to do it, and for this they have counted on dealers, something that other traditional brands seem to have forgotten.”
“They are very clear about what they want to do, and for this they have counted on the dealers, something that other traditional companies seem to have forgotten. They wanted to reinvent the wheel”
“What we made the brand see was that after-sales service was fundamental. In other words, we believe that success is not only in having a competitive product, but in being able to then provide a high level of service. In terms of facilities, training, technical training, guarantees, that there is no stock out. The customer needs that car to work every year that he has it and that it is really well cared for. And I think that is one of the successes today as well. That has been done very well with a very powerful warehouse for Iberia in Guadalajara. That warehouse has over 90% of the available parts,” Blitz recalls. And he emphasizes: “that is fundamental. That is the key.”
Victor Moll defends the same position. “To build a brand image and bring it closer to the consumer, with the best after-sales service, the most direct, efficient and economical way has always been through a dealer network. Selling is the easiest, many know how to do that, but providing the necessary service afterwards is no longer so easy, and dealer networks have been doing that for a long time. Many traditional manufacturers decided to ‘reinvent the wheel’ and they have clearly made a mistake, and that has left a space for new ones. players have entered through the path opened by others”.
And he summarizes “they are very clear that the client comes first and they make a great effort to understand the local market. They listen and ask a lot.”
What Blitz or Moll narrate is the success of BYD, Omoda and Jaecoo, Chinese companies that, like MG or Ebro, have been quickly embraced by the general customer. But they are not the only ones trying to gain a foothold in Spain.
Deepal, Zeekr, iCar, GAC, Lepas, Nevo, Luxeed or Avatr are much less well-known brands. All of them have raised the interest of large dealer groups Spaniards who see under its initials the same thing that Astara saw with BYD: an attractive product at a price good enough to convince the private customer.
In general terms, and as can be seen in the case of Astara or Moll Motor, Chinese brands have not opened their own network in record time. The majority have settled on distribution giants in our country, taking advantage of the network they already had in place to be more agile, position the product on the street and offer it as quickly as possible.
Faconauto describes the movement well. The employers’ association confirms that although “specific movements are taking place” there is no generalized phenomenon in which dealers are abandoning traditional firms to switch to the market of Chinese companies.
“There are groups that incorporate a new brand as a complement to their portfolio; others They do it to reinforce their electrified offer; and some maintain their commitment exclusively to traditional manufacturers,” they explain from the association that brings together dealers in our country.
And in the future? “It will depend on factors such as regulatory stability, the evolution of the electricity market, the continuity or adaptation of the aid and the commitment of each manufacturer with its investment in the network and after-sales. But the trend observed so far shows a progressive and orderly emergence, which coexists with a very solid and majority traditional network,” they describe in Faconauto, which also emphasizes that “the decisive factor is not the origin, but the solidity of the project, the after-sales support, the investment it requires and the visibility in the medium and long term. “Decisions are made with strategic criteria, not due to questions of origin.”
Photo | BYD
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