Analysis of China’s Passenger Car Market in December 2021

On Tuesday, the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) released a  report on the country’s passenger car market for the month of December 2021. In the last month of 2021, retail sales of passenger cars reached 2.105 million units, down 7.9% year-on-year while 2.466 million passenger cars were produced, up 7.2% year-on-year.

In December, the production and sales of the automobile market increased overall, although the production in some regions saw slight declines. From January to December, 2021, total retail sales reached 20.146 million vehicles, up 4.4% year-on-year while in the month of December alone retail sales of self-owned brands reached 930,000 units, up 4% year-on-year. Further, the wholesale market share of self-owned brands was 46.9%, an increase of 6.2% over December 2020.

In December, 170,000 passenger cars were exported, up 63% year-on-year, and new energy vehicles accounted for 15% of the total exports. The export of self-owned brands reached 150,000 vehicles, up 77% year-on-year.

Retail sales of new energy passenger cars reached 475,000 units, up 128.8% year-on-year while the entire year saw retail sales of new energy vehicles hit 2.989 million, up 169.1% year-on-year.

There were 14 enterprises whose wholesale sales of new energy automobile manufacturers exceeded 10,000 units, including BYD (93,338), Tesla China (70,847), Geely Automobile (16,831), XPeng Motors (16,000), Li Auto (14,087), NIO (10,489) and Hozon Auto (10,127).

In November, the sales volume of Chinese new energy vehicle startups such as XPeng Motors, Li Auto, NIO, Hozon Auto, Leapmotor and WM Motor performed well in general. The first four brands each sold more than 10,000 vehicles in the last month of the year while the others reached monthly sales of more than 5,000 units.

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With the decline of new energy auto subsidies, the prices of some models have gone up slightly. However, due to the number of undelivered orders, CPCA expects that the sales volume of most new energy vehicles will not be significantly affected by the new policy.