China-EU talks on hybrid and electric vehicle trade used a 2025 baseline of 302,000 Chinese hybrid cars imported into the EU. The EU’s claim that China’s hybrid exports to the bloc will fall “by more than half” over four years comes from the EU extrapolating recent export growth, not from the bilateral negotiation baseline. That projected path was not the agreed reference in negotiations. Forecasts are uncertain and recent export figures were influenced by short-term market factors, so linearly

China-EU talks on hybrid and electric vehicle trade used a 2025 baseline of 302,000 Chinese hybrid cars imported into the EU. The EU’s claim that China’s hybrid exports to the bloc will fall “by more than half” over four years comes from the EU extrapolating recent export growth, not from the bilateral negotiation baseline. That projected path was not the agreed reference in negotiations. Forecasts are uncertain and recent export figures were influenced by short-term market factors, so linearly extending a volatile period to predict the next four years is not reliable.