BEIJING (Reuters) -China’s automotive gross sales accelerated in September, the normal peak season for the auto market, as sellers and customers took benefit of trade-in subsidies earlier than extra native governments suspended the incentives.
Home automotive gross sales rose 6.6% year-on-year to 2.27 million models, following a 4.9% improve in August, knowledge from the China Passenger Automobile Affiliation (CPCA) confirmed on Monday.
Gross sales of electrical automobiles and hybrid automobiles made up 57.2% of complete gross sales and grew 15.5%, in comparison with 7.5% in August.
This time of yr, often known as “Golden September” in China, is often peak season as automakers rush to launch new fashions and customers return to showrooms after a lull throughout the stifling summer season months.
Native government-subsidised trade-ins spurred automotive gross sales within the first half however are displaying indicators of petering out resulting from a funding scarcity.
Jap Jiangsu province and the southwestern area of Guangxi had been amongst those who introduced final month they’d droop native auto alternative subsidy programmes. Extra cities comparable to Wenzhou and Hangzhou in China’s jap Zhejiang province joined the suspension this month.
The gross sales progress additionally got here as sellers took on extra stock final month. Information from the China Vehicle Seller Affiliation confirmed the sellers had a complete of three.04 million models of automobiles of their stock by the top of September, up from 2.6 million a month in the past.
Cui Dongshu, CPCA secretary-general, final week referred to as for monetary insurance policies to assist the sellers who’ve been struggling widespread losses from new automotive gross sales whereas automakers saved offloading stock onto them regardless of tepid demand.
High participant BYD logged the primary month-to-month fall in automotive gross sales final month since February 2024, alongside an extra output reduce. BYD’s gross sales in its house market accounted for 14% of China’s home automotive gross sales in September, in comparison with 18% in the identical interval in 2024.
Smaller home rivals together with Geely, Leapmotor, Xpeng and Xiaomi outperformed BYD with file excessive gross sales final month.
Tesla, which exported 19,287 China-made EVs in September, noticed its gross sales in China down 0.9% from the yr earlier than, extending a shedding streak to the third month.
China’s automotive export progress picked as much as 20.7% from 20.2% in August, CPCA knowledge confirmed.
(Reporting by Qiaoyi Li, Zhang Yan and Brenda Goh; Modifying by Tom Hogue and Kate Mayberry)
