Average production capacity utilization in China’s auto industry has continued to decline as its new-vehicle market remains locked in a downturn.
Automakers producing in the country operated at 76.1 percent of their capacity during the third quarter, decreasing 3.5 percentage points from a year earlier, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics.
For the first nine months, the rate dropped 3.8 percentage points from the same period last year to 76.8 percent.
The Bureau didn’t provide capacity utilization rates for individual automakers.
The prolonged downturn of the overall new-vehicle market in China has hit the production of light-vehicle makers much harder this year than commercial vehicle manufacturers.
In the first nine months, output of new light-vehicles including sedans, crossovers, SUVs, multi-purpose vehicles and minibuses slumped 13 percent year on year to about 15.1 million units.
In the period, production of new commercial vehicles including buses and trucks dipped 2.1 percent to roughly 3.1 million units, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.
