Author｜Grace
Editor｜Yang Buding
On March 26, an official response from Volkswagen Group put long-standing rumors to rest: Skoda brand sales in China will continue until mid-2026, after which it will exit the Chinese market. This company, founded in 1895 and one of the oldest car manufacturers in the world, has chosen to say goodbye after 20 years of deep cultivation in China.
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Skoda's departure is not surprising. Before Volkswagen Group's official announcement, this Czech brand had already been silent in the Chinese market for a long time.
In the past decade, more than ten international car brands, including Mitsubishi, Renault, Suzuki, Acura, and Jeep, have exited the Chinese market one after another. They were once the &#34;first cars&#34; for many Chinese car owners, and now these names are gradually fading from the streets.
Why have these brands, which once carried countless memories for car owners, collectively failed? Who will be the next to exit?
Nearly 10 car companies have exited China in the past decade
This farewell ceremony began nearly ten years ago. In 2015, Opel officially exited the Chinese market. In an era when joint venture brands were thriving, the departure of a European brand did not cause much of a ripple. Ten years later, Skoda has become the latest addition to this long list.
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Skoda officially entered China in 2006 and quickly opened up the market with its positioning of &#34;affordable German.&#34; At its peak in 2018, Skoda's sales in China reached 341,000 units, making China its largest single market globally, with a dealer network of over 500.
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The turning point came unexpectedly. Starting in 2019, its sales began to decline continuously, dropping to only 15,000 units by 2025, a more than 95% plunge from its peak, with a market share of less than 0.1%. The once &#34;sales champions&#34; Octavia, Superb, and Kodiaq have gradually been forgotten by consumers.
Mitsubishi's story is equally lamentable. As early as the 1970s, Mitsubishi began exporting light commercial vehicles to China. In the 1990s, Mitsubishi targeted the passenger car market, partnering with Changfeng and BAIC, producing a number of classic models, while also venturing into the engine business. Its two engine factories in China had helped many domestic brands like Great Wall, BYD, and Geely to thrive
In 2012, the GAC Mitsubishi joint venture was officially established, riding the wave of the SUV boom, and became synonymous with domestic off-road vehicles thanks to the popularity of the Pajero &#34;Snow Leopard.&#34; In 2018, GAC Mitsubishi's annual sales soared to 144,000 vehicles, but thereafter it experienced a sharp decline, ultimately exiting the market by the end of 2023. In 2025, Mitsubishi's engine joint venture business in China will also come to an end, with all automotive-related operations in China being zeroed out.
Over the past decade, brands such as Suzuki, Acura, Fiat, DS, Jeep, and Renault have also ended their joint ventures in China, some parting ways amicably while others had more contentious exits. Regardless of the circumstances, the Chinese market has only one farewell song to offer them—wanting to stay but unable to, is the loneliest feeling.
Behind the Retreat: Three &#34;Fatal&#34; Commonalities
Although the development trajectories of these brands in the Chinese market differ, they all share commonalities—having once thrived during the boom of fuel vehicles and SUVs, they watched passively as new energy vehicles rose, and after electrification became mainstream, they completely vanished.
To summarize their three fatal flaws, the first is a reliance on past successes. They once made a fortune in the Chinese market based on nostalgia, believing that possessing core technologies for fuel vehicles would ensure their safety. However, the lack of product localization and disconnect from Chinese consumer demands led to many brands not updating their models for six or seven years.
While these joint venture cars were counting their profits, Chinese brands were catching up rapidly, not only increasing their independent R&amp;D efforts and mastering core technologies but also significantly shortening the speed of new car iterations, widening the gap between the two sides.
By 2025, the market share of domestic brands in China reached 64.6%, while the market share of joint venture brands fell to 35.4%. Five years ago, joint venture brands held an absolute mainstream position with a market share of 64.3%.
The second point is the collective delay in the transition to electrification. The Chinese new energy vehicle market has experienced explosive growth, with a penetration rate exceeding 50% by 2025, and nearly two-thirds of global new energy vehicles sold in China. However, these exiting brands have almost universally been slow to respond to this trend.
Taking GAC Mitsubishi as an example, in 2018, under pressure from the dual credit policy, they repurposed the GAC Trumpchi GS4 into the Qizhi PHEV, even without the Mitsubishi badge. It wasn't until 2022 that they launched their first pure electric model, the Artko, which was essentially a rebadged vehicle from GAC's own brand, priced even higher than domestic cars, ultimately achieving only double-digit monthly sales.
The third point is the &#34;discarded&#34; positioning within the group. Many exiting brands played a &#34;low-end volume&#34; role within their automotive groups, such as Skoda within the Volkswagen Group. This positioning could survive in a growing market, but as competition shifted to a saturated phase, group resources inevitably tilted towards brands with higher profits and stronger brand power, making their exit a natural outcome.
After Saying Goodbye to China: Global Strategy Restructuring
However, leaving China does not mean the end for these brands; it is merely a step in their global strategic adjustment, and even after leaving the Chinese market, the vast majority of these brands are still doing quite well.
Skoda will focus on the Indian and Southeast Asian markets after ending its operations in China. Despite poor performance in China over the past few years, growth in other regions has compensated for the shortcomings of its Chinese business. In 2025, Skoda will become the third best-selling brand in Europe for the first time, with record sales in India and strong growth in North Africa and Turkey.
In 2025, Skoda's global sales surged by 12.7% to 1.043 million vehicles, breaking the one million mark for the first time. Moreover, its electrification transformation is also thriving, with sales of pure electric models soaring by 119.8% and plug-in hybrids growing by 108.6%, along with a batch of new electric vehicles set to be launched.
Many brands that exited earlier, such as Suzuki and Mitsubishi, had already shifted their focus away from the Chinese market. Suzuki, known as the &#34;King of Small Cars,&#34; realized that Chinese consumers prefer larger vehicles and has firmly bet on the Indian market, where its market share exceeds 40%, with global sales climbing to 3.3 million vehicles in 2025.
Mitsubishi had already indicated in its &#34;2030 Vision&#34; released in 2020 that its operational focus had shifted to Southeast Asia and Oceania. However, over the past year, Mitsubishi has faced difficulties, with significant declines in sales in its key U.S. market and being squeezed by Chinese brands like BYD and MG in Southeast Asia, causing its market share to halve from 12% to 6%.
Of course, there are also brands that, although no longer selling cars in China, have not severed ties with the Chinese automotive industry; instead, their connections have become increasingly close. Renault ended its gasoline passenger car business in China in 2020, but over the past five years, it has established a joint venture with Geely for power solutions, collaborated with WeRide to develop L4 autonomous minibuses, and utilized production capacity in South America to help Geely and Chery with contract manufacturing, deepening its ties with Chinese automakers.
In early March this year, Renault launched its new strategy &#34;futuREady,&#34; which once again emphasized its positioning in the Chinese market as a research and development base and cost control center. This means that Renault aims to fully leverage China's mature electrification and intelligent industry chain to empower overseas operations. The Twingo E-Tech, a small car, was developed by Renault in China in just 22 months, and through procurement in China, the cost per vehicle can be reduced by 400 euros.
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Therefore, some common patterns can be summarized from these exiting brands: They actively abandon the fiercely competitive Chinese market and turn to emerging markets such as India, ASEAN, and Central and Eastern Europe, where the pace of electrification is slow, demand for fuel vehicles is stable, and competitive pressure is lower, making it less intense.
These multinational brands are retracting their global presence, concentrating resources on advantageous markets and core technologies, no longer pursuing &#34;comprehensive development,&#34; but instead aiming for &#34;breakthroughs in specific areas.&#34; At the same time, the Chinese market is beginning to shift from being a &#34;sales market&#34; to a &#34;research and development/supply chain base.&#34;
Who is next?
After Skoda, other potential brands to exit are those second-tier joint ventures and marginal luxury brands whose operations in China have become virtually non-existent. Most of these brands have been absent from major domestic auto shows for the past two years and have not launched new models for years, with sales volumes sharply shrinking.
The brand with the highest call for exit is Chevrolet. According to Chevrolet's official website, among the eight models currently on sale, only four have sales data available as of February 2026. Except for the Malibu XL, which has sales over a hundred, the Equinox has only sold 13 units, while the rest are in single digits. The last updates for models like the Cruze, Malibu XL, and Equinox were in 2023.
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Currently, Chevrolet's official website lists only one authorized dealer in Beijing, one in Guangzhou, and just four in its home base of Shanghai. The official social media accounts have not been updated for over a year, and it also missed the Shanghai Auto Show in 2025. At the 2026 SAIC-GM Dealer Partner Summit held earlier this year, SAIC-GM announced its strategic plan for the next three years, without mentioning any plans for the Chevrolet brand.
SAIC-GM's joint venture contract will expire in June 2027, and both parties have not officially announced a renewal. Currently, within SAIC-GM, the core profit driver is Cadillac, while Buick serves as the volume brand. Chevrolet is positioned below Buick, and as Buick continues to delve deeper into the market, Chevrolet's survival space is completely squeezed, making it highly likely to be abandoned in renewal negotiations.
The exit of brands like Skoda, Mitsubishi, and Renault is not due to &#34;exclusivity&#34; in the Chinese market, but rather an inevitable result of the Chinese automotive industry shifting from &#34;high-speed growth&#34; to &#34;high-quality development.&#34; The Chinese market has become the main battlefield for global electrification and intelligence, and only brands that are truly localized, rapidly iterating, and embracing electrification can establish a foothold.
For multinational automakers, the Chinese market is no longer a &#34;laying down to win&#34; paradise, but a competitive arena where &#34;the strong get stronger.&#34; The global strategic adjustments of exiting brands are essentially about &#34;cutting losses&#34; and &#34;focusing,&#34; but abandoning China, the world's largest and most dynamic market, also means giving up future growth potential.
The market will not wait for any brand. This is the law of the Chinese automotive market and the unchanging survival rule in the century-long changes of the global automotive industry

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The Skoda brand announced that it will exit the Chinese market in mid-2026, becoming the latest in a series of international automotive brands to leave China in recent years. Skoda's sales in China plummeted from 341,000 units in 2018 to 15,000 units in 2025, with a market share of less than 0.1%. This phenomenon reflects the intensified competition among international automotive brands in the Chinese market, with many once-popular brands gradually being forgotten by consumers

Sales plummet by 95%, Skodas line up to say goodbye to China, is Chevrolet next?