Chinese automakers poised to disrupt U.S. market, says Kerrigan survey

Welcome back to the latest episode of The Future of Automotive on CBT News, where we put recent automotive and mobility news into the context of the broader themes impacting the industry.

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Erin Kerrigan, from Kerrigan Advisors, just published the findings of their 2025 OEM Survey, a study that polls some of the top talent in automotive executive leadership on industry trends.

According to the Kerrigan Survey, 76% of automakers believe that Chinese carmakers will eventually begin selling vehicles in America. And 70% say they’re concerned about the financial implications it will bring.

Over the past 25 years, China has grown from almost no global market share to close to 40% of all new vehicles produced.

And the quality of the new vehicle is now as good as any other automaker on the market.

At the same time, the Chinese have manically focused on reducing their cost of production. In many cases, they can build a comparable car for about 70% of the production costs of the legacy automakers.

Finally, and maybe most concerning, the Chinese innovation cycle is dramatically faster than the legacy OEMs. Historically, it took an automaker about 4 years from concept car to production. The Chinese can do this in less than a year. So they simply get more learning cycles in.

So with cheap, high-quality vehicles, it’s no wonder that the legacy automakers are worried about if and when Chinese autos hit the U.S. market.

From my perspective, these prohibitively high tariffs are simply a short-term band-aid to protect the legacy OEMs.

In the medium term, I expect, similar to the majority of automakers, that we will see mainstream Chinese brands for sale on American soil?

How this plays out is up to us. My suggestion is to figure out how to co-opt the Chinese. Encourage them to build factories in the U.S., but only in JV partnership with our legacy automakers.

Ensure there’s both a revenue share, and intellectual property sharing. So our American automakers both benefit economically, and learn how the Chinese have figured out how to build dramatically cheaper cars and maintain an lightning-fast innovation cycle that the legacy automakers just can’t match.

If we can navigate getting Chinese vehicles into the U.S., the consumer will benefit from a source of cheap, high-quality vehicles at a price point they can afford, and Franchise dealers should benefit if they’re able to represent these new Chinese brands as the sales and service channel.