China vehicle sales down by 19.6% YoY in September

Beijing (Gasgoo)- China’s new vehicle sales continued to fall in September, but the year-on-year decrease of its production volume narrowed compared with the previous month.

Data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) showed that the biggest auto market sold 2.067 million vehicles last month, down by 19.6% from a year ago and marking a fifth consecutive decrease in monthly sales. Compared with September 2019, September sales this year were down 9.1%.  

In terms of monthly production volume, the market saw a decline of 17.9% from a year earlier, 0.8 percentage points less than that of August, representing a decrease of 6.1% compared with September, 2019.

The year-to-date sales increase declined from 13.7% for the first eight months to 8.7% for the first nine months.

The association said that the automotive chip supply shortage eased last month, but the supply still couldn’t meet the needs. Besides, the high base of the same period of last year was also a major reason for the year-on-year decline but month-on-month growth.

Year-on-year decline in passenger vehicles’ monthly production and sales widened by 2 and 4.8 percentage points to 13.9% and 16.5% when compared with August. And September production and sales also fell 5.4% and 9.5% compared with September 2019.

In the first three quarters, China’s passenger vehicle production and sales amounted 14.658 million and 14.862 million with a respective year-on-year increase of 10.7% and 11%, 4.5 percentage points and 5 percentage points less than those of the first eight months.

Market share of Chinese auto brands continued to grow in September. Local brands’ monthly sales increased 3.7% to 821,000 vehicles, representing a share of 46.9%, 9.1 percentage points more than that of September, 2020. By the end of September, Chinese local brands have sold 6.433 million vehicles in the market this year, up by 31.4% from a year earlier.

Sales of locally-made luxury vehicles were affected by automotive chip supply shortage, dropping 14.5% year on year to 254,000 units. In the first nine months, the market sold 2.489 million China-made luxury vehicles, jumping 22.8% from a year earlier.

By the end of September, year-to-date sales of commercial vehicles increased only 0.5% from a year ago, 5 percentage points less than that of the first eight months and the change of year-to-date production volume turned negative to a decrease of 4%. China’s outputs and sales of pickups in the first nine months of this year jumped 15.3% and 17.7% to 393,000 and 402,000 vehicles respectively. 

Both monthly sales and production of new energy vehicles continued to hit new high. With 357,000 new energy vehicles sold in September, those vehicles accounted for 17.3% of the market’s overall vehicle sales while the share of new energy passenger vehicles among all passenger vehicles was up to 19.5%.

Here, new energy vehicles include battery electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles. Last month, the country produced 155 fuel cell vehicles and sold 173 fuel cell vehicles.

Automobile companies in China exported 173,000 vehicles in September, down by 7.5% month on month but up by 74% year on year. And new energy vehicles contributed 21.4% to the total export volume. The year-to-date export volume surged 120% from a year earlier to 1.362 million vehicles.