Shanghai (ZXZC)- The 2017 sales growth rate of China’s passenger vehicle (PV) market failed to meet expectations and the market will continue to see slight increase in the future, according to the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA). In the last month of 2017, both the wholesales and the retail sales had modest increase in year-on-year growth and month-on-month increase.

Here, we use passenger vehicle in its narrow sense, which covers locally-produced sedans, SUVs and MPVs, and also includes the export passenger vehicles.

In the past year, the wholesale of China passenger vehicles reached 24,216,999 units, up 2.2 percent from a year earlier. However, the last month in 2017 saw a year-on-year decrease in China PV wholesales. In December, 2017, China’s PV wholesales decreased by 0.4 percent compared with the same period of 2016 to 2,598,432 units.

By the retail sales, China PV market managed to grow by 2.1 percent to 23,764,443 units in 2017. The December retail sales totaled 2,745,529 units, a modest increase of 1 percent year on year.

Customers’ preference to SUV remained a trend. With a year-on-year growth of 15.3 percent, the SUV sales came near to those of sedans in 2017. A total of 10,077,721 SUVs were delivered to customers in 2017 while the sales of sedans fell by 3.4 percent to 11,659,753 units. The annual sales of MPV were 2,026,969 units, down 17.4 percent from a year earlier.

The growth of SUV products under self-owned auto brands was especially obvious. According to the association, the outstanding sales performance of the GAC Trumpchi GS8, the WEY brand under Great Wall Motor and the Lynk & Co brand under Geely Auto led the growth of SUV products under self-owned brands.