By Javi West Larrañaga and Alessandro Parodi

Feb 11 (Reuters) - Chinese automakers gained ground in Europe's competitive car market in 2025, but their market share varied greatly from country to country, data from automotive consultancy Inovev shows.

Although Chinese firms doubled their overall share of car sales in Europe to 6% last year, they represented nearly 14% of sales in Norway, where almost all newly registered vehicles were fully electric, while making up just over 2% of sales in Germany and Slovakia.

Companies including BYD 1211.HK 002594.SZ, Geely Holding 0175.HK and Chery 9973.HK have expanded quickly into major markets across Europe, attracting cost-conscious buyers with cars that in some cases cost 10,000 euros ($11,902) less than equivalent models from European brands.

They gained ground in Britain, to around 11% of all new car sales in 2025, and in Spain and Italy, to around 9%, Inovev's data shows, roughly doubling the respective market shares from a year earlier.

The European Union has imposed tariffs of up to 35% on Chinese-made EVs, but that has not stopped the country's automakers, including newcomers like Changan 000625.SZ, from launching new models.

Crucially, the tariffs do not apply to combustion engine or hybrid models. So in Poland, where Chinese automakers had an 8.2% market share last year versus almost zero sales as recently as 2023, almost two-thirds of the vehicles they sold had a combustion engine.

But new Chinese rivals are struggling to win over consumers in car-manufacturing countries like Germany or France, the data shows.

Inovev's data includes figures from the European Union, Britain, Switzerland and Norway, excluding Sweden's Volvo Cars VOLCARb.ST, which is majority-owned by China's Geely.

Britain has not imposed tariffs on Chinese-made cars.

($1 = 0.8402 euros)

(Reporting by Alessandro Parodi and Javi West Larrañaga in Gdansk; editing by Nick Carey, Kirsten Donovan)

((Javier.West@thomsonreuters.com; +34 918 35 61 12;))