Beijing (ZXZC)- China’s monthly vehicle sales and production volume have decreased for three consecutive months by the end of July, according to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM). But monthly sales and production of new energy vehicles (NEVs) continued to set up new records with the cumulative sales and production of the first seven months surpassing the total volumes of last year.

Last month, vehicle sales in the biggest auto market declined 11.9% from a year ago to 1.864 million vehicles and dropped 7.5% from the previous month, but increased 2.7% when compared with the same month of 2019. The monthly production volume was down 15.5% year on year and 4.1% month on month to 1.863 million vehicles.

For the first seven months of this year, China produced a total of 14.44 million vehicles, up 17.2% year on year while the year-to-date sales grew by 19.3% versus the same period of last year to 14.756 million vehicles. Compared with the same period of 2019, sales and production of the first seven months were up 4.2% and 3.4% respectively. 

Sales of passenger vehicles were still affected by automotive chip shortage so that the segment’s monthly sales in July fell 7% year on year to 1.551 million vehicles, but saw a slight increase of 1.1% compared with the corresponding month of 2019. The total sales of the first seven months of this year still declined 1% versus the same period of 2019.

Due to the shortage, sales decrease of luxury vehicles increased 4.4 percentage points to 6.4% with 255,000 vehicles sold in July. By the end of July, the total year-to-date sales amounted to 1.991 million vehicles, with a growth rate of 37.9% year on year, 16.7 percentage points more than that of the overall passenger market.

July sales of Chinese-branded passenger vehicles jumped 22.2% from a year ago to 720,000 units, with a market share of 46.4%, 11.1 percentage points more than that of the same month of last year. And the share of cumulative sales grew 6.5 percentage points to 42.6% with 4.92 million Chinese-branded passenger vehicles sold in the first seven months of this year.

Monthly sales and production of commercial vehicles both saw big year-on-year decrease, but still jumped 11.3% and 13.8% compared with the same month of 2019. The total sales of commercial vehicles in China in the first seven months were up 12.9% year on year and up 29% versus the same period of 2019.

NEV sales and production continued to achieve best-ever results in July with monthly sales soaring 164.4% year on year to 271,000 vehicles. By the end of July, China has sold a total of 1.478 million NEVs, exceeding the volume of last year and accounting for 10% of the country’s total vehicle sales.

Apart from favorable policies, there were several main drivers for the NEV sales surge, according to Xu Haidong, vice chief engineer of the association. The first one is consumers’ acceptance and choice for NEVs, which can be seen from the growth of individual consumers. The other one is the increasingly rich NEV portfolio in the market, including high-end products like the NIO ES8 as well as mainstream products like the Hongguang MINIEV.

NEVs also contributed 31.5% of the country’s monthly export volume which soared 180% to 174,000 vehicles in July, a new high. The export volume of the first seven months surpassed 1 million, 770,000 of which were passenger vehicles.