Portuguese 
English 
Spanish 
5 min of reading 
0 comments 
A study by Idle Giants reveals that Chinese manufacturers accounted for about 85% of all electric buses deployed in Latin America between 2018 and 2024, with BYD alone concentrating 43.7% of the fleet. The region jumped from less than a thousand units in 2017 to more than 6,000 in 2024, with an average annual growth exceeding 30%. European manufacturers held only 1.9% of the market. The Chinese dominance now expands to electric trucks, whose global sales grew by almost 80% in 2024.
Manufacturers Chinese manufacturers swallowed the electric bus market in Latin America in less than a decade, and the competitive result is so unbalanced that the Idle Giants report classifies the situation as “decisively unbalanced.” The electric bus fleet in the region jumped from less than a thousand units in 2017 to more than 6,000 in 2024, and about 85% of these vehicles were supplied by companies from China. BYD alone concentrates approximately 43.7% of the entire fleet, a dominance that goes beyond commercial presence and constitutes an unprecedented industrial consolidation.
Meanwhile, European manufacturers who dominated public transport for decades held a meager 1.9% of the fleet. The contrast is revealing: companies that built century-old brands in the sector could not compete on price, scale, and delivery speed with new Chinese entrants who arrived offering cheaper vehicles, with integrated technology and the capacity to produce in volumes that traditional competitors cannot match. Latin America has become a laboratory for electromobility in public transport, and the winner is already defined.
The 85% that show the extent of Chinese dominance
According to information released by the portal Insideevs, the most impactful data from the study is the concentration: 85% of all electric buses deployed in Latin America between 2018 and 2024 are from Chinese manufacturers. BYD leads with 43.7% of the total, but other companies from China like Yutong, Higer, and King Long complete a scenario where competition among manufacturers happens within the Chinese ecosystem itself, not between China and the rest of the world.
-
Mercury in fish raises an alert in the Amazon: MPF points to contamination in 21.3% of fish and sees health risk linked to the advance of illegal mining.
-
Brazil enters alert with a heat dome up to 10 °C above average in the Central-West while the South may have cold 6 °C below normal and rain 60 mm above average between May 11 and 18, in an extreme contrast that threatens to transform the autumn of 2026 into an unprecedented climatic seesaw.
-
The James Webb Telescope found “hidden” moons in Uranus and reveals a more complex system than was known.
-
An extratropical cyclone advances over Brazil and turns the Labor Day long weekend into a nightmare for 534 cities. Brutal storms with winds of 100 kilometers per hour and torrential rain threaten to bring down trees, destroy crops, and leave thousands of families without power.
To gauge the growth, the fleet went from less than a thousand units in 2017 to more than 6,000 in 2024, an average annual increase of over 30%. Cities like Santiago and Bogotá led the large-scale adoption, transforming their public transport systems with electric buses that reduced emissions and operational costs. Brazil is advancing more gradually, but with consistent growth in recent years and an industrial base that is beginning to gain relevance.
Why Europe lost Latin America to China
The European defeat in the Latin American electric bus market is not accidental: it is the result of structural differences that favored Chinese manufacturers. In Europe, more structured public policies, including emission targets and incentive programs, created an environment that allowed traditional manufacturers to maintain relevance during the transition to electrification. In Latin America, where these mechanisms were more limited or fragmented, what decided the contest was the capacity to deliver in volume, time, and cost.
Chinese manufacturers arrived with advantages that Europeans could not match. The industrial scale developed in the Chinese domestic market, where hundreds of thousands of electric buses already circulate, allowed production costs to be reduced to levels that European companies, with smaller factories and more expensive supply chains, cannot replicate. The most expensive component of the electric vehicle, the battery, is mass-produced in China at significantly lower costs.
BYD and the Brazilian factory in Campinas
BYD doesn’t dominate the market just by exporting from China: the company has built a local industrial presence that reinforces its competitive position. The Campinas operation, inaugurated in 2015, marked the beginning of local production in Brazil and today has the capacity to manufacture more than 3,000 electric bus chassis per year. The São Paulo plant allows BYD to offer vehicles with national content, which facilitates access to public financing and credit lines that require a minimum percentage of domestic production.
The strategy of local production also neutralizes one of the few advantages that competitors could exploit: the narrative of national employment and industry. With a factory in Campinas, BYD generates Brazilian jobs, pays local taxes, and participates in the national production chain, making it more difficult for public managers to justify choosing a European manufacturer that would import the entire vehicle from another continent at a much higher cost.
The advance into trucks and global freight transport
The Idle Giants study suggests that the same dynamic that consolidated Chinese dominance in electric buses is beginning to repeat itself in the truck segment. The electrification of freight transport is still in its early stages, with a share of close to 2% of total sales, but it is rapidly expanding. Sales of electric trucks grew almost 80% in 2024, and in the first half of 2025 alone, around 90,000 units were sold, practically equaling the volume of the entire previous year.
The logic is the same that worked for buses: manufacturers that produce in larger volumes reduce costs, especially in the battery component, and extend their advantage over competitors. If the electric truck market follows the Latin American bus pattern, Chinese manufacturers could dominate yet another segment before traditional companies like Volvo, Scania, and Mercedes-Benz can scale their electric operations.
What the Latin American case teaches about the energy transition
Latin America functions as a laboratory that anticipates what might happen in other regions of the world. When there are no robust public policies to protect local or traditional manufacturers, competition is decided by price, scale, and speed, and in these three criteria, Chinese manufacturers are unbeatable. The report indicates that this competitive pressure is already advancing into Europe, where Chinese manufacturers are expanding their presence with industrial plants, such as BYD’s new factory in Hungary.
For public transport managers worldwide, the lesson is that electrification does not wait. Cities that delay the transition to electric buses will no longer have options available when they decide to act, because the market will be even more dominated by those who have already achieved scale. And for traditional manufacturers, the warning is that Latin America was lost in seven years, and the same could happen in Europe and North America if the response does not come with the same speed.
Do you prefer your city’s electric buses to be cheaper Chinese ones or more expensive European ones, or do you think Brazil should manufacture its own? Tell us in the comments if your city already has electric buses and what you think about China dominating public transport in Latin America.
Be the first to react!