Europe’s car giants won’t have much time to restructure their operations and product lines to compete with ascendant Chinese automakers, and stiffer tariffs will do little to protect the status quo, industry executives said during a Reuters event.

European trade regulators in Brussels have said they could levy new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles based on the results of an investigation into Chinese government subsidies.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday said that Europe would take a “tailored approach” to its investigation and any potential duties imposed will be “correspondent to the level of damage”. It will inform those Chinese EV makers incurring provisional tariffs by June 5.

But industry executives said that Brussels cannot prevent the reckoning that China’s lower cost EVs will force on European automakers and their traditional suppliers.

Chinese carmakers, which command a 30% or more cost edge over European rivals, took 19% of Europe’s EV market last year, up from 16% in 2022, according to the Rhodium Group.

“And the window is closing. From my point of view, we have two or three years. If we are not fast…it will be really tough (for German industry) to survive,” Thomas Schmall, a board member at Europe’s top carmaker Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE)
, opens new tab, said at the Reuters Events Automotive conference in Munich.

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The surge in Chinese exports, and the prospect of Chinese factories within Europe, are forcing the continent’s incumbent automakers to explore partnerships with long-time rivals, turn up pressure on suppliers to cut costs, and intensify discussions with European unions over the future of plants and jobs, executives said.