China has posted another month of increased sales for pure battery electric vehicles, while every powertrain that has an engine is down compared to last year. But despite the increase in BEV sales, Tesla sales are down for a third-straight month.
In terms of electric car sales, China had a slow start this year. Government incentives were changed at the end of last year, causing a drop for the first couple months of the year. This led many to prematurely declare the end of electric cars in China – even though sales of other types of vehicles were dropping as well.
Things changed rapidly, though. Not only has the Chinese consumer seemingly forgotten about these incentive changes, geopolitics intervened and led global oil prices to spike drastically.
Now, China is continuing the trend of dropping car sales… for everything except pure electrics. Anything with an engine is down, but battery electric vehicles are holding strong.
China likes to split cars into two categories: NEVs, or new energy vehicles, which is basically anything that has a plug, and everything else. So if you just look at NEVs, those sales are down, as are sales of cars as a whole.
August numbers show that overall retail car sales fell by 23.6%, continuing the trend of posting year-over-year declines every month this year so far, and NEVs as a whole are down 10.1% (but up in market share, to 65.2% from 55.2% last year, because of the drop in non-NEV sales). But split that out by powertrain and you see what’s really happening:
- BEVs: up 0.8%
- PHEVs: down 29.6%
- EREVs: down 22.2%
- NEVs (BEV + PHEV + EREV): down 10.1%
- Fossil-powered vehicles (ICE + conventional hybrid): down 40%
So it turns out it’s quite the rout for anything with an engine in it. BEVs aren’t up by much, but given the overall bloodbath in the Chinese market, they’re holding on well.
But EV manufacturing is up in China, and all those EVs have to go somewhere. So instead they’ve shifted to the export market, where sales are surging.
Chinese export of NEVs was up 154.7% in August, continuing a trend of China dominating world EV exports. Manufacturers from other countries simply don’t care to provide the vehicles the world wants and needs, and seem content to allow China to become the global auto manufacturer of the present and future, for some reason. NEVs made up a majority, 58.4%, of Chinese car exports.
A similar pattern between domestic and export sales can be seen with one EV maker of particular interest: Tesla. The former world’s largest EV maker had a rough month in China, with sales down 12.4% year over year, and its weakest August since 2022, when the company was still growing. Tesla’s fortunes have plateaued since then in many markets, alongside its CEO Elon Musk’s active advocacy against electric cars.
Tesla did have a good export month, though, but not as good as the rest of the EV industry in China. Exports from Tesla’s Shanghai factory rose by 38.7%, which is quite a large chunk, but a lot lower than the 154.7% experienced by NEVs as a whole.
BYD held its lead in Chinese retail NEV sales, with 233k cars delivered, more than twice as many sales as any other brand. Geely came in second at 110k, and Tesla trailed in 6th place with 50k.
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