1st-quarter passenger vehicle price went down slightly

Prices of Chinese-made passenger vehicles drop by 0.42%, 0.51% and 0.94% in the first three months respectively, totally 0.82 percent lower than the same period last year, of which the basic edition and sport utility vehicles declined 3.34% and 3.00 compared with the end of last year, while price of micro bus surged by 6.71%.

Vehicles sales in China climbed more than one-fifth in the first quarter of this year.
Sales of Chinese-made vehicles totaled 2.12 million units from January to March, up 22.2 percent from a year ago, according to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

In March alone, vehicle sales grew by 17 percent year-on-year to 847,200 units. Car sales jumped by 30.1 percent to 1.12 million units in the first three months of this year, the association said. Meanwhile, sales of multi-purpose vehicles and sport utility vehicles stood at 53,100 units and 71,700 units, increasing 14.7 percent and 15.9 percent.

"The robust vehicle sales were mainly boosted by manufacturers' price cuts and new product launches," said Zhu Yiping, a spokesperson for the association.