Korean Electric Vehicles Take High Spots in World’s 5 Major Car Markets

Korean-made electric vehicles are consistently among the top five imported electric vehicles (EVs) in the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany and the United Kingdom. The five nations are the biggest overseas market for Korean cars and major car makers.

The top five countries which imported the Korean passenger cars last year were the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany and the United Kingdom, according to a report titled “The Korean Automotive Industry’s Export Competitiveness” released by the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade (KIET) on June 10.

The report analyzed the structure and proportion of automobile imports from these five countries, underscoring that the United States and Germany brought in 23.68 percent and 11.96 percent of all the import EVs, respectively, from Korea last year. Therefore, Korean EVs ranked second in the import EV markets of the two countries. Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom posted 14.09 percent, 9.36 percent, and 9.14 percent, respectively. Korean EVs took third place in all the three countries.

The report analyzed changes in the shares of the EV imports among the total car imports in these five countries over the past three years from 2020 to 2023. “The share of electric vehicles in Korea’s major export destinations more than doubled in 2023,” it said, confirming Korea’s status as an eco-friendly vehicle exporting country.

The proportion of eco-friendly vehicle exports in Korea’s total car exports rose to 35.47 percent in 2023 from 20.04 percent in 2020, the report said. China, on the other hand, enjoyed faster growth as its proportion ascended from 28.99 percent to 53.07 percent over the same period.