Shanghai (ZXZC)- BYD said on August 7 that its auto sales for the first seven months edged down 1.05% year on year to 259,057 units. Meanwhile, vehicle sales in July notably declined 16.96% over the previous year.

The sales drop should be primarily attributable to the oil-fueled vehicle sales downturn. In July, BYD sold 14,418 fuel-burning vehicles, suffering an evident year-on-year decrease of 22.16%. As to cumulative sales so far this year, the decline even reached up to 42.41%. 

(Photo source: BYD's WeChat account)

It is noteworthy that the automaker's new energy vehicle (NEV) sales in July dropped 11.84% from a year ago to 16,567 units, the first-time downturn for 2019. It was also decreased by 37.65% compared with the previous month mainly because a large amount of market demands had been overdrawn before a three-month grace period for new NEV subsidy policy ending June 25.

Sales of new energy PVs slid 12.05% year on year to 16,010 units in July. Of that, PHEV sales slumped 35.22%, while BEV sales still apparently grew 16.38%.

Since China's NEV market has officially entered a low-subsidy era after July, the industry is not very optimistic about the future blooming increase in NEV sales for the second half of the year. Some people said the subsidy slash may whittle down the possibility for automakers to get mass purchase orders from car rental service providers. On the other hand, consumers will be more hesitant to buy a NEV affected by the rising prices.

The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) recently cut the annual forecast of NEV sales in 2019 to 1.5 million units from 1.6 million units.

BYD's chairman Wang Chuanfu said at the 2019 World New Energy Vehicle Congress that BYD aims to sell 420,000 NEVs this year. However, only 38% of target has been completed by the end of July.