Last November, Chinese automaker SAIC-GM-Wuling (SGMW) rolled a compact electric vehicle model off the assembly line at its subsidiary in Indonesia. The sleek four-seater -- the subsidiary's 160,000th vehicle produced in the country -- was soon on its way to hit a showroom in Thailand.

From launching its first model in Indonesia to surpassing this milestone, SGMW, headquartered in the industrial city of Liuzhou in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, took just seven years to build a reliable new energy vehicle (NEV) supply chain, driving its car sales in Southeast Asia.

As the first Chinese automaker to invest and establish a factory in Indonesia, SGMW has played a key role in expanding China's electric fleet and has gained over 50% of the local NEV market share.

China's increasing footprint in this rapidly growing market has been propped up by a legion of key domestic players, with manufacturers such as BYD, Chery and Great Wall Motor all taking their share of the pie on the back of competitive pricing, an array of modern industry features and robust after-sale services.

Data from the Association of Indonesian Automotive Industries shows that the five bestselling NEV models in the country in 2024 were from three different Chinese carmakers, with the BYD M6 leading the pack.

In Thailand, where the number of registered pure electric cars reached 70,000 to account for about 14% of total car sales in 2024, four out of the five bestsellers were from Chinese brands. The same goes for Cambodia, where BYD holds the pole position in the nascent NEV market.

Japanese automakers have long dominated Thailand's auto market with their conventional internal-combustion-engine vehicles. However, there are signs that Chinese rivals have begun to break this stronghold.

Surging NEV sales have led to Chinese brands doubling their market share, which expanded from 5% to 11% in 2023. But their Japanese counterparts, which are lagging in their adoption of electric power, experienced a sharp decline in market share in the same year, decreasing from 90% to 78%.

"Our parents' generation has lived and breathed Toyota and Honda growing up, and many are still waiting for the Japanese producers to turn electric," according to a Thai student who goes by his Chinese name, Li Fenghuang.

"Instead of getting bound by brand loyalty like my parents, the younger generations tend to place more importance on quality and cost, and these are where the Chinese manufacturers stand out," Li said.

Industry insiders say that affordability is still the leading concern for consumers in emerging economies like those in Southeast Asia, and that Chinese automakers have been particularly adept at embracing the reality on the ground by rolling out a range of technologically superior products with relatively small price tags to gain a competitive advantage in these burgeoning markets.

Data from China's General Administration of Customs shows that China's total auto exports rose from 2 million to 6.41 million between 2021 and 2024. And on the green vehicle front, China alone accounted for over 60% of global sales in 2023, with over 1.2 million units being shipped overseas, a year-on-year increase of 77.2%.

The official figures also indicate that China sustained its growth momentum going into 2024, with the volume of pure electric car exports topping 2 million units for the first time.

Behind China's booming car export business are years of painstaking efforts to groom a vast network of locally based suppliers that are essential to building a resilient transnational supply chain.

In Indonesia, SGMW has helped guide 17 Chinese enterprises on the auto supply chain to venture abroad, developing over 100 local suppliers over the past seven years.

Last November, the China-Indonesia Institute of Modern Craftsmanship of New Energy Vehicle, a training base established by Liuzhou City Vocational College, Indonesia's Anand Industrial Training Institute and SGMW's Indonesian subsidiary, was officially inaugurated in Indonesia.

"The new institute is expected to be an addition to the company's ongoing campaign to enhance Southeast Asia's capability to grow its own electric vehicle sector," said Qiu Min, a tutor at Liuzhou City Vocational College.

In a bid to internationalize its NEV production further and transform Southeast Asia into a hub for the green transition of global manufacturing, a number of top Chinese carmakers have gone big on their investments since 2024, setting up joint ventures in the region.

Last year, both BYD and GAC Aion, a subsidiary of Chinese state-owned automaker GAC Group, opened their first NEV plants in Thailand, with respective annual production capacities of 150,000 and 50,000 vehicles.

In Cambodia, a top-of-the-line BYD assembly plant with an annual production capacity of 20,000 cars is expected to begin operations at the end of 2025.

For years, emerging markets such as Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa have unlocked huge growth potential. In the next 10 years, six major ASEAN economies will see the compound annual growth rate of their NEV markets reach between 16% and 39%, according to forecasts from various market research firms.

A report from the AlixPartners consultancy firm predicts that by 2030, Chinese automakers will be able to seize over 70% of the domestic market and sell approximately 9 million cars overseas, attaining 33% of the global market share.

Meanwhile, the collective NEV market value of Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore is predicted to grow exponentially from $2 billion in 2021 to between 80 billion and $100 billion by 2035, according to a recent study from EY-Parthenon, a global strategy consulting firm.

"We are seeing a shift in the growth of demand for NEVs in the developing world," said Zhang Yongwei from ChinaEV100, a non-governmental research and policy institute. "And the growth of the sector has been largely buoyed by emerging economies, with China leading the charge."