⚡ The short version
On 24 September, the LNG dual-fuel car carrier Tingjiangkou took on 4,600+ Chinese-built cars at Guangzhou’s Xinsha terminal while simultaneously receiving 400 tonnes of LNG from road tankers — the first time China has combined vehicle loading and LNG bunkering in a single port operation. The ship is sailing to Australia. It is the latest sign that China is treating car-carrier capacity and clean marine fuel as strategic pieces of its EV export machine, alongside BYD’s growing fleet of LNG-fuelled carriers.
The story of Chinese electric cars in Europe and the UK is usually told in model names and price lists. The quieter story is happening on the water. On 24 September 2026, the COSCO Shipping LNG dual-fuel car carrier Tingjiangkou loaded more than 4,600 export vehicles at Guangzhou Port’s Xinsha terminal while 400 tonnes of LNG was pumped aboard from four road tankers working in parallel — a first for China, and a reminder that the logistics of exporting cars are being rebuilt as carefully as the cars themselves.
What happened at Xinsha
Chinese state media reported on 24–28 September that the operation combined two jobs that are normally done separately. Vehicles rolled up the ramps of the Tingjiangkou while LNG flowed from tankers through a mobile fuelling skid and hoses into the ship’s bunker tanks, a process that ran for more than 12 hours across the day and night boundary. The vessel is bound for Australia with a full cargo of domestic vehicles.
The model — described by CNOOC’s Guangdong marine clean-energy arm as a “tanker – mobile skid – hose” arrangement — matters because not every port can accommodate a dedicated LNG bunkering vessel. Xinsha has shallow-channel constraints in parts of the harbour and limited alongside space, so loading fuel from trucks at the berth sidesteps the usual infrastructure hurdles. Doing the two jobs at the same time also cuts the time a ship sits in port, which is valuable when each voyage slot is measured against a strict sailing schedule.
The technical challenge was coordination as much as chemistry. LNG is a Class 2.1 cryogenic flammable gas; the bunkering run had to be sequenced against the arrival, boarding and lashing of thousands of vehicles, with port authorities, customs, immigration, stevedores and the bunkering crew working on overlapping timetables. The local immigration checkpoint ran a round-the-clock watch during the operation, and the whole plan went through a formal safety assessment beforehand.
Why this matters for the car market
Europe has spent the past two years arguing about tariffs on Chinese EVs — a row we have covered in detail in our explainer on the UK–China car tariff row and in the wider picture of Chinese EV exports to the EU. But tariffs are only one layer of the cost stack. Shipping is another, and China has been investing heavily in both the ships and the fuel to keep that cost low.
BYD, the world’s largest EV maker, has been building its own fleet of LNG-fuelled car carriers — we looked at its order for ten more carriers, taking its fleet to 18 earlier this year. COSCO Shipping, which operates the Tingjiangkou, is doing the same on a larger scale. The point of all this is simple: controlling the ships and the fuel means controlling the cost and the carbon of getting cars to market. An LNG dual-fuel carrier emits significantly less CO2 than a conventional heavy-fuel-oil vessel, and it gives operators a hedge if fuel prices move.
For buyers in Britain, the practical effect is that Chinese brands can keep shipping cars to Europe at scale while they build local factories — the strategy that is already reshaping the UK new-car market, as our report on Chinese brands taking one in four European hybrids showed. Chinese brands took 15.8% of UK new car sales in August, according to the AA’s latest readiness data, a number that would have been unthinkable three years ago.
Guangzhou is becoming the export gateway
Xinsha is already the largest vehicle import-export terminal in South China, and the numbers are accelerating. Guangzhou Port said the port handled 161,600 vehicle exports in the first nine months of 2026, up 258% year on year. The combination of green loading and clean fuel bunkering fits a broader push by Chinese ports to sell themselves as efficient, low-carbon hubs for car exports, particularly to markets like Australia, Latin America and the Middle East where Chinese brands are gaining share fastest.
That growth is not incidental. China’s vehicle exports have been rising for years, but the mix has changed: higher-value battery-electric and plug-in models now account for a far bigger share of the cargo, which is why port throughput and cargo value have both climbed sharply. The UK EV sales picture in August and the AA’s finding that Chinese competition is doing the heavy lifting on price show what that shift looks like at the retail end.
What to watch next
Three things are worth tracking. First, whether the Xinsha model spreads to other Chinese ports — if bunkering-by-tanker becomes routine, it removes one of the last bottlenecks on long-haul EV export routes. Second, whether LNG-fuelled car carriers start appearing on UK routes in larger numbers; several Chinese brands sell in Britain through conventional ro-ro services today, but the economics of the new dual-fuel fleet may change how cars arrive. Third, the pace of Chinese manufacturing investment in Europe, which is the long-term answer to both shipping cost and tariff risk — the subject of our piece on the UK–EU talks over car rules.
For UK drivers none of this changes which car is best this week — you can still compare every model in the electric car library, use the comparison tool and check charging costs on the calculator. But it does explain why the choice keeps growing and why prices keep falling: the cars you see in showrooms are the visible end of an export machine that is being redesigned from the port up.
Sources
China Daily — China’s first simultaneous car loading and LNG bunkering operation, 27 September 2026 (https://gd.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202609/27/WS6ab8e52de4b09a165c78cd98.html) · China News Service — China’s first public-berth ro-ro loading and LNG bunkering operation completed, 24 September 2026 (http://www.chinanews.com.cn/cj/2026/09-24/10703297.shtml) · Guangdong Provincial Government — Guangzhou Xinsha terminal solves ro-ro LNG bunkering challenge, 28 September 2026 (http://www.gd.gov.cn/gdywdt/dsdt/content/mpost_4960879.html) · China Water Transport — GBA’s first vehicle-ro-ro LNG bunkering, 25 September 2026 (https://www.zgsyb.com/news.html?aid=772546) · Yangcheng Evening News, 24 September 2026.
