Shanghai (ZXZC)- China's PV wholesales volume declined 8% over the previous year to 1,648,283 units in August, while climbed 6% compared with the July performance, according to the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA).

PVs in this report refer to cars, MPVs, SUVs and minibuses locally produced in China.

Year-on-year decrease in August PV wholesale volume was 5.3 percentage points more than that of the July number.

In August, SUV wholesales basically remained flat over the previous year. Besides, the car, MPV and SUV sectors all suffered double-digit sales drop.

Chinese automakers sold a total of 13,339,453 PVs through August, down by 12.1% from the year-ago period.

The country's PV retail sales in August fell 9.9% from a year ago, versus the 5.3% decline and the 4.9% growth in July and June deliveries.

China's passenger-car retail sales showed sign of recovery as dealers offered discounts to clear inventory before the China Ⅵ Emission Standard kicked in.

Moreover, the wholesale volume of new energy PVs reached roughly 71,000 units, shrinking 15.5% over the previous year, while rising 6% compared with July, said the CPCA.

Of that, plug-in hybrid vehicle sales plunged 46%, which was severer than what the association expected.

A total of 714,000 new energy PVs were sold between January and August across China, a remarkable jump of 41.7%.

The top three automakers by August PV wholesale volume were still FAW-Volkswagen, SAIC Volkswagen and SAIC-GM with their rankings remained unchanged compared with July. Dongfeng Nissan outperformed Geely Auto by an advantage of 9,646 vehicles. The sixth and seventh places were still occupied by SAIC-GM-Wuling and Dongfeng Honda.

It is noteworthy that the last three places on the top 10 list didn't show up in the July list.