7:25 am, May 14, 2026
Chinese carmakers could snatch as much as a quarter of the new car market as they take advantage of the UK’s lack of tariffs and growing appetite for electric vehicles, IM (International Motors) Group boss Andrew Edmiston has warned.
Speaking on the latest Car Dealer Podcast – which you can watch above and listen on your favourite streaming services – the IM Group managing said the speed at which Chinese car companies had arrived in Britain had been a ‘surprise’.
‘I can’t remember exactly what the current Chinese volume is, but it be 25% of the market very quickly,’ he told podcast hosts Jon Reay and James Baggott.
‘So, where’s those 500,000 units going to come from out of two million? There’s not going to be more cars sold, so who’s going to make way?’
Edmiston remarked that all brands will be under pressure from the speed and scale of Chinese carmakers, from Japan to Europe and America.
He added: ‘You can see already that the Japanese are being affected, but the Europeans also and the Americans. It’s everybody really. You would worry for some manufacturers.’
Solihull-based IM Group represents Subaru, Isuzu, GWM and XPeng in the UK, with Chinese LCV maker Foton also due to join the portfolio in the near future.
The rise of Chinese carmakers had been developing for the past few years, but Edmiston admitted that the speed at which these brands have arrived in Britain was still surprising.
He said: ‘Even though I knew China has the capacity to do this, when it actually happens you don’t exactly know how it’s going to feel, do you?
‘The changes that it’s brought everybody, I think that those are the things that, you know, the speed of that, that’s probably been quite surprising.’
The UK has been very attractive to Chinese car manufacturers because it is a large market with no no major tariff barriers and strong regulatory pressure to grow EV sales, he explained.
‘The Chinese just basically look at the UK and say, well, it’s quite a big market. There are no barriers and tariffs for us and EV sales are growing and effectively being incentivised to grow,’ he said.
‘You know, we’re going to go there, make a load of money. That’s actually not how it always turns out.’
Edmiston said the shift to EVs had handed Chinese manufacturers a major competitive advantage because of their dominance in battery technology.
He said: ‘We knew probably as much as 10 to 15 years ago that the Chinese had a fantastic battery industry, like the best in the world.
‘Europe didn’t have a battery industry. So, you can’t build a battery industry in five minutes or five years or probably even 10 years. Takes 20 to 30 years to do that.’
Elsewhere in the interview, Edmiston criticises the ZEV mandate and chats about Mitsubishi’s return to the UK.
You can listen to the podcast on Spotify and other streaming services, and watch the filmed interview at the top of this story.
