China's homegrown PV retail sales drop 6.8% year on year in 2020

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- For the year of 2020, around 19.605 million locally-produced PVs (referring to cars, MPVs, SUVs and minibuses) were handed over to consumers in China, representing a year-on-year decrease of 6.8%, according to the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA).

The association said the downturn in PV retail sales was primarily ascribed to the earlier-than-usual Chinese New Year holiday and the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Due to these factors, the deliveries were down by 2.08 million units over the previous year in the first quarter. With the PV market gradually recovering, the second-quarter retail sales were only 170,000 units fewer than that of the year-ago period, and the sales in the second-half of the year were 840,000 units more than that of the same period of last year. 

For the month of December 2020, China's PV retail sales climbed 6.5% from a year ago to 2.32 million units, boasting consecutive year-on-year increase between July and December.

Compared to the 7.5% drop in 2019's delivery volume, China's PV market performed better in 2020. It is mainly credited to the better-than-expected recovery in macro-economic climate and export performance, and the robust rebound in retail sales of new energy vehicles (NEVs), said the CPCA.

The Dec. retail sales of luxury PVs jumped 26% year on year thanks to the strong demands of replacing old cars with luxury vehicles. However, as wholesales growth slowed in the year-end period, luxury PV retail sales edged down 1% compared to November.

Besides, the Dec. retail sales of China self-owned brands and mainstream joint-venture brands rose 4% and 5% over the previous year respectively.

China-made Model 3

Last month, there were 23,804 consumers taking delivery of the China-made Model 3s, a month-over-month growth of 10.2%.

In terms of the full-year PV retail sales, FAW-VW ranked first among Chinese automakers. It is also the only one whose annual deliveries exceeded 2 million units. Moreover, the respective sales of SAIC VW, SAIC-GM, Geely Auto, Dongfeng Nissan and SGMW all surpassed 1 million units last year.

China’s automakers sold 20.121 million locally-produced PVs through 2020, a year-on-year decline of 6.2%. In December, PV wholesales grew 6.6% from the previous year to 2.356 million units.

Due to the vigorous efforts to reduce inventory and smaller wholesale goal, dealers saw their inventories further decrease in December.

Regarding the annual PV wholesale volume, the top six automakers were FAW-VW, SAIC VW, SAIC-GM, Geely Auto, Dongfeng Nissan and SGMW, the same as the ranking for retail sales.