While the overall Chinese auto market returned to positive numbers in May (+7% year over year), plugins are still in the red and were down 32% last month, with close to 73,000 registrations.
Plugin vehicle sales continue to recover in China. They were still down 29% year over year (YoY) in April, but that was the smallest drop so far this year. Slightly more than 61,000 units were registered in April.
With the Chinese market slowly returning to normal, now that China has endured the first wave of the COVID pandemic, sales have started to recover from February’s fall into the abyss. In March they dropped just 51%, to around 60,000 units, a significant improvement from the 65% fall of the previous month.
With the Chinese electric vehicle (EV) market suffering from the general lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, sales took an expected beating, with only 15,000 passenger EVs registered in February, the worst result in over 3 years, representing a 65% drop year over year.
After the December sales peak, January signaled the expected sales hangover in China, but with some 49,000 passenger plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs), the numbers were worse than expected, as sales fell 50% year over year (YoY).
The Tesla Model 3 is the Usain Bolt of the electric vehicle market. It is far and away the most popular electric vehicle in the world. In fact, it had nearly 3× as many sales last year as the 2nd best selling electric vehicle (EV), and it accounted for ~4× as many sales as the 3rd best selling EV, the Nissan LEAF.
After some terrible months (-42% in November), the Chinese plug-in market seems to have finally bottomed out, falling just 22% year over year (YoY) in December, to 149,000 units, with both powertrain technologies dropping. Fully electric vehicles (BEVs) suffered less (only -17% YoY) than plug-in hybrids (-45%).
We may have some more high-selling blockbuster electric vehicles in 2020, but 2019 had one electric vehicle that was in a league of its own, the Tesla Model 3. Through November, the Model 3 had almost 3× the sales of the world’s 2nd best selling EV, the BAIC EU-Series, and it had more than 4× the sales of the world’s 2nd best selling non-Chinese EV.
When you find yourself in times of trouble, Model 3 comes to thee
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
And in this hour of darkness, it is standing right in front of thee
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
Tesla accounts for 1 out of every 6¼ global plug-in vehicle sales. The Tesla Model 3 alone accounts for 1 out of every 8 global plug-in vehicle sales, 13% of the global market.
