Shanghai (ZXZC)- China's auto market faced its 15th-month-in-a-row decline in monthly sales as of September, 2019, according to a report released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM).

Last month, 2,271,000 vehicles were sold across the world's largest auto market, dropping 5.2% year on year. Nevertheless, compared with August, this number still showed an evident growth of 16% because September is a conventional peak season for auto sale in China.

For the first three quarters, Chinese automaker sold 18,371,000 vehicles in total, a decrease of 10.3% over a year ago, versus 11% decline in Jan.-Aug. sales.

In September, the PV outputs and sales reached 1,865,000 units and 1,931,000 units respectively, up by 10.1% and 16.8% from the previous month, while down by 7.9% and 6.3% from the previous year. Four major sectors—the car, the SUV, the MPV and the Minibus—all achieved month-on-month growth in both outputs and sales, of which the MPV sector boasted the biggest one.

Year-to-date PV outputs and sales in China fell 13.1% and 11.7% over the year-ago period respectively with four sectors all posting decrease. Compared with Jan.-Aug. year-on-year change, the SUV sector featured smaller drop in both outputs and sales.

In September, CV sales in China amounted to 345,000 units and 340,000 units, climbing 4% and 1.9% compared with the prior-year respectively. However, the growth in year-to-date CV outputs and sales still remained negative.

The CAAM's figures showed that NEV sales in September slumped 34.2% from a year ago to around 80,000 units, for the third month in a row representing year-on-year drop.

Sales volume of PVs powered by the so-called “new energy” tumbled 32% from the previous year to roughly 73,000 units in September. Of that, both BEV and PHEV sales showed double-digit year-on-year decrease.

For the first nine months, China's NEV sales totaled about 872,000 units, still leaping 20.8% over the prior-year period.