Market slumps 38% in January

Retail sales of new passenger vehicles in China skidded 38 percent year on year in last month due to lingering pandemic, termination of incentives and fewer working days, the China Automobile Dealers Association said on Wednesday. 

Some 1.29 million new sedans, crossovers, SUVs and multi-purpose vehicles were delivered in January, lower than the estimates of 1.36 million it made last week. 

Last month, sales of gasoline vehicles tumbled 44 percent to roughly 960,000, while deliveries of electrified products including full electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids dropped 6.3 percent to some 332,000.

In the month, the volume of luxury brands slipped 36 percent to around 190,000. 

Demand for global mass-market marques shrank 45 percent to approximately 47 percent to some 470,000, while sales of domestic Chinese brands fell 31 percent to about 640,000. 

CADA didn’t disclose vehicle sales by brand for January. 

On December 7, Beijing abruptly removed nearly all pandemic control measures it had upheld since 2020. The move quickly caused an explosion of coronavirus cases across China. The virus outbreak lingered in January.  

At the end of December, China’s decade-long subsidy program for EVs and plug-in hybrids and six-month purchase tax cut on gasoline vehicles both ended.

In China, the week-long lunar New Year holiday ran from January 21 through January 27. Last year, it began on January 31.