Chinese cars in New Zealand: which brands sell there and since when

New Zealand is a small, wide-open market of about 138,000 new vehicles a year with no domestic manufacturing and no tariff on imported cars. Under the New Zealand-China Free Trade Agreement, in force since 1 October 2008 and upgraded by a protocol that took effect on 7 April 2022, the duty on motor cars from China fell in stages from 17.5 per cent to zero by 2013. Every model sold here is imported, and right-hand-drive Chinese production is as easy to source as Japanese or Korean.

MG, GWM and LDV built the first Chinese-brand base, and the Motor Trade Association counted 29 Chinese vehicle brands represented in New Zealand by the mid-2020s, among them BYD, Chery, Dongfeng, Geely, Leapmotor and Zeekr. Dongfeng entered in late 2025 with three battery-electric models led by the Box hatchback. In calendar 2025 MG was the seventh best-selling passenger make with 4,131 registrations and GWM tenth with 3,237; BYD entered the commercial top five with 1,882 registrations, all of them the Shark 6 plug-in hybrid ute, and the MG ZS was the fourth best-selling passenger model at 1,971.

Two policy changes shape the market more than trade rules do. The Clean Car Discount, which paid rebates on low-emission vehicles and charged fees on high-emission ones, ended on 31 December 2023. From 1 April 2024 battery-electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids lost their long-standing exemption from road user charges, at 76 New Zealand dollars per 1,000 km for light EVs and 53 dollars for plug-in hybrids. Both changes removed a subsidy that had favoured the electric models Chinese brands lead with, and both applied to all brands equally.