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).
EVs are taking over the world, and if you need proof of this, just look at the sales numbers.
The Tesla Shanghai Model 3 jumped straight to the #1 spot in China’s battery electric vehicle production charts in January, according to figures released by MIIT. The 2,625 units put the Model 3 some 12.5% ahead of any rivals.
The coronavirus is knocking the Chinese electric car market for a loop, with some companies reporting a 50% decline in sales or more.
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%).
The world’s fossil fuel vehicle sales have continued to freefall in 2019, dropping by around 4.35 million, or some 4.7%, compared to 2018, accelerating a now inexorable trend. Global electric vehicle sales meanwhile have continued to rise, with 2019 EV market share reaching 4.7% in China and 3.8% in Europe.
2019 electric vehicle market share in the world’s largest auto market, China, increased from 4.5% to 4.7%, even after a significant trimming of incentives from July.
Overnight, Miao Wei, the Minister of Industry and Information Technology in China, announced at the EV100 forum in Beijing that new energy vehicle (NEV) subsidies will not be cut in July 2020, as many in the industry had feared.
The electric vehicle revolution continues to heat up, and while we’d love to be reporting on more electric models hitting the market in 2020, the fact is traditional automakers were a bit too slow for that and there’s much more being put into models for 2021 and beyond. Audi and BMW both recently had announcements about investments for the coming years.
