Despite chip shortage in the automotive industry, China’s auto sales rose 36.6 percent year on year to 10.88 million units in the January-May period as business activities continued to pick up pace amid sustained economic recovery, data from an industry association showed.
The country’s national press Xinhua News, published the Chinese Association of Automobile Manufacturers data on the latest car delivery with sales of passenger vehicles increasing 38.1 percent year on year to 8.44 million units with May sales totaled 2.13 million units, down 3.1 percent year on year..
But the bigger story in China’s car market is the New Energy Vehicles or NEV’s which is seeing robust interest from consumers, sales in these vehicles shot up surging 220 percent to 900,000 units during the same period. In May this year alone sales hiked 160 percent to 217,000 units, the high volume came about from Beijing’s announcement in making the nation a major consumer and hub for energy efficient automobiles.
NEVs are expected to represent 20 percent of the sales of new vehicles by 2025, and vehicles used in public transportation will be completely electrified by 2035, according to the plan.
Having Covid-19 completely under control has been a boon for the Middle Kingdom, exports in automotive seeing a accelerated momentum with manufacturers exporting 670,000 vehicles up 110 percent from last year. Despite positive results from the sector, CAAM is being cautious on possible challenges especially on the pandemic situations, uneven global economic recovery and an unstable economic recovery foundation.
