The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday edition that less than a year ago, Chinese carmakers were seen as a threat to their European counterparts. The Globe's Eric Reguly writes that today, they are seen as the Europeans' potential saviours. Nissan's European business is a case in point. Nissan owns the Sunderland factory in northeast England. It is the country's biggest car plant, and when running at or close to capacity, it can pump out 600,000 vehicles a year. Lately, Sunderland has been running at about half that rate. Nissan's solution is to fill Sunderland's production lines with Chinese cars. Preserving jobs and preventing the factory from turning into an echo chamber were the main goals, even if, over the long term, building Chinese EVs on European soil will inevitably eat into the European car industry's domestic market share. Other deals are happening across Europe. The embrace-your-enemy strategy is an admission that Chinese car companies are winning the global EV battle, especially at the cheap end of the market. Last year, Chinese EVs accounted for 60 per cent of global EV sales. Experts say China is on the verge of dominating the EV industry the way it dominates the global solar panel market.