An unprecedented level of investment in multi-deck vehicle carriers is being driven by tonnage replacement and scale economy strategies, but emphatically also by explosive growth in China’s automotive exports.Global deep-sea automotive shipments…
An unprecedented level of investment in multi-deck vehicle carriers is being driven by tonnage replacement and scale economy strategies, but emphatically also by explosive growth in China’s automotive exports.
Global deep-sea automotive shipments, excluding the Russian trade, were estimated at some 15.6 million units in 2025, up 5 percent on 2024, maintaining recent years’ trajectory. China’s inexorable rise as a producer and exporter is the conspicuous influence on traffic development.
Notwithstanding the impacts of sometimes fraught political relations between the USA and China, and between Europe and China, and the prevailing Middle East conflict, China’s expansion in electric vehicle (EV) manufacture and increased penetration of new and emergent markets around the world is fundamentally influencing global logistics, shipping capacity, and service offerings.
Data from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) points to a huge proportional increase in Chinese vehicle exports between 2024 and 2025, up from 4.7 to 5.7 million units. In the opening quarter of 2026 alone, 2.2 million vehicles were exported from China, more than 50 percent higher than the comparable period of the year before, and with a considerably increased EV component of some 950,000 units.
Shipments from South Korea and Japan have levelled off, but the
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