According to the Financial Times of the UK, auto dealers and Chinese electric vehicle manufacturers have stockpiled cars that they cannot handle at many of the major ports in Europe, and they have currently reached a bottleneck. The key to the problem is that distributors cannot sell their electric vehicles at the expected speed.
It is reported that auto manufacturers are facing the problem of declining sales, and the shortage of trucks and drivers also poses a dilemma for the transportation of cars out of the port.
The Financial Times reported that some Chinese electric vehicles have been at European ports for as long as 18 months. The Antwerp-Bruxelles port is the largest auto import center in Europe and is currently facing the problem of a mountain of cars piled up at the port. “Auto distributors are increasingly using the parking lots at the port as warehouses.
They do not store the cars at the dealers, but stack them at the car terminal,” the Antwerp-Bruxelles port said, adding that this problem is prevalent in all major ports in Europe. An anonymous auto industry logistics manager also said, “Chinese electric vehicle manufacturers are using the port as a parking lot,” while another informed source said that this is “chaos.”