Chinese cars in Thailand: which brands sell there and since when

Thailand is the assembly hub of South-East Asia, and since 2020 it has become the place Chinese carmakers build for the region. SAIC was first: its joint venture with Charoen Pokphand has assembled MG vehicles in Thailand since 2014 and opened a second, larger plant with 100,000 units a year of capacity in 2017, then a battery plant in 2023. Great Wall Motor bought General Motors' Rayong factory in 2020 and opened it as its own plant on 9 June 2021. Neta began mass production in March 2024, GAC Aion's first phase was completed in July 2024, BYD opened a 150,000-unit plant in Rayong in July 2024, and Changan's Rayong plant was scheduled to start with 100,000 units a year of capacity from 2025.

The pull is a two-stage government incentive package. The EV3.0 measure ran from 2022, and the National Electric Vehicle Policy Board approved a second phase, EV3.5, for 2024 to 2027; the Board of Investment published the terms on 3 January 2024. Buyers of eligible battery-electric passenger cars receive a per-vehicle subsidy, excise duty on qualifying cars falls from 8 per cent to 2 per cent, and import duty on completely built-up cars is cut by up to 40 per cent for the first two years. In exchange, companies importing built-up cars must build them locally afterwards, at two locally produced vehicles for each imported one by 2026 and three for each by 2027.

The result is a market where Chinese brands own the electric segment. Thailand registered 120,301 battery-electric vehicles in 2025, up 80.3 per cent on 70,137 in 2024, and BYD alone held about 38.5 per cent of that segment. Domestic battery-electric passenger-vehicle production more than doubled to about 71,000 units in 2025, according to the Federation of Thai Industries. Overall vehicle production still fell slightly short of 2024.