Shanghai (ZXZC)- According to data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) on Thursday, China auto sales in 2017 rose to 28.879 million vehicles in 2017, an increase of 3 percent from a year earlier, which is lower than the expectation. China has been the largest auto market by sales for nine consecutive years.  

In 2017, China auto market maintained steady growth in vehicle output and sales on the basis of the record-high volume of 2016. However, a growth rate of 1.4 percent in passenge vehicle market was lower than the average rate of the whole industry and the lowest in the past nine years.

The new energy vehicle (NEV) segment kept a good momentum in the annual sales. Last year, the sales of new energy vehicles soared 53.3 percent to 777,000 units. The ratio of NEV sales to the total vehicle sales were 2.6 percent in the past year.

Last year, a total of 10.847 million vehicles under self-owned brands were sold and accounted for 43.9 percent of the total sales volume. The percentage was higher than that of the previous year. In particular, the SUV sales under self-owned brands reached 6.217 million units, growing 18 percent year on year and accounting for 60.6 percent of the total SUV sales.

The association said that according to the data from automakers, the vehicle export volume rose 25.8 percent year on year to 891,000 units. This is the first annual sales growth after the export volume had fallen for four years. In the past year, our country imported 1.14 million vehicles from January to November last year.