China’ss passenger vehicle sales rose 4.3% in September from a year earlier, snapping five months of decline with a boost from a government subsidy to encourage trade-ins as part of a broader stimulus package.
All the gains came from battery-powered vehicles, whose buyers and manufacturers have benefited since July from a doubling of subsidies to consumers, while sales of gasoline cars in China, a market foreign brands once dominated, continue to shrink.
Sales in the world’ss biggest auto market hit 2.13 million vehicles in September, up from 2.04 million a year earlier. For the first nine months, sales were up 1.9% from 2023 levels, according to data from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA).
Sales of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids jumped 50.9%, accounting for 52.8% of overall sales. It was the third month in a row that battery-powered vehicles including plug-ins outnumbered sales of gasoline-engine cars in China.
Gasoline car sales in September were above 1 million, up more than 100,000 from August. But that was far short of September last year, when over 1.29 million were sold in China.
Sales of EVs and plug-in hybrids – a category the Chinese industry group classifies as “new energy vehicles”; – hit 1.12 million in September and 7.13 million for the first nine months.
Global EV sales have slowed this year with automakers outside China scaling back production. Sales in China, however, have risen, driven by expanded subsidies for consumers trading in older vehicles for EVs and more fuel-efficient cars – a program likened to the U.S. “cash-for-clunkers” stimulus in 2009.
