Beijing (ZXZC)- China’s annual automobile sales volume may surpass 26 million vehicles in 2021, with 13% being new energy vehicles, according to Fu Bingfeng, the executive vice president and secretary-general of China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM), at a summit today.

Fu Bingfeng; photo credit: CAAM

The secretary predicted that 3.4 million new energy vehicles would be sold this year, soaring 160% from a year ago given the current statistics.

According to CAAM’s latest statistics, for the first eleven months this year, automakers in China produced 23.172 million vehicles and sold 23.489 million vehicles in total, up 3.5% and 4.5% year on year, respectively. The production volume of new energy vehicles in the period amounted to 3.023 million units, while its sales volume totaled 2.99 million units.

By November, new energy vehicles already accounted for 17.8% of the entire market.

Fu Bingfeng pointed out that with the electric, intelligent and connected technical transformation among the auto industry, there are several bright spots in the 2021 market performance so far.

Firstly, since June this year, the production and sales of new energy vehicles have grown rapidly, entering an unprecedented explosion stage.

Secondly, automobile exportation has been growing since the last quarter of 2020. Fu estimated that China’s annual export volume would reach over 2 million vehicles this year.

Lastly, sales of passenger vehicles from Chinese brands are holding more and more market shares. From January to November, the sales volume of passenger vehicles from local brands amounted to over 8.4 million vehicles, accounting for 44% of the total passenger vehicles sold, maintaining its growth for eight consecutive months.