Shanghai (ZXZC)- In May 2022, China’s passenger vehicle (“PV”) retail sales amounted to 1.374 million units, jumping 29.1% compared to the previous month, according to the the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA).

Compared to the year-ago period, the country's May PV retail sales dropped 17.3%, which were 18.4 percentage points lower than the decrease in April sales.

For clarity, the PVs hereby refer to the cars, MPV, SUVs, and minibuses locally produced in China.

There were around 180,000 luxury PVs retailed across China last month, representing a 29% year-on-year decrease, while showing a 52% robust month-on-month growth.

Chinese indegenous PV brands recorded a combined retail sales volume of 620,000 units in May, achieving 5% and 29% increase compared to the previous year and the previous month respectively.

According to the CPCA, China's local brands accounted for 46.3% of the country’s total PV retail volume in May, 9.8 percentage points higher than the prior-year level.

With about 560,000 PVs delivered in May, joint-venture brands in China attained a two-digit growth of 24% month on month.

Among the top 10 automakers by May PV retail sales, BYD was still the only one which won a year-on-year upward movement, even though it dropped to the runner-up place compared to April. FAW-Volkswagen returned to the top place with its year-on-year decrease shrinking to 10.6%. Aside from BYD, Geely Auto and Changan were the other two local brands of China, ranking third and fourth respectively.

In May, automakers in China produced 1.695 million PVs in total, indicating a 5.4% and 68.8% increase from a year ago and a month ago respectively. The year-on-year growth was entirely credited to the two-digit jump achieved by Chinese indigenous brands.

With the coronavirus impact ebbing away, the supply of imported auto parts has been improved, which was conducive to rapid recovery of vehicle production, said the CPCA.

FAW Group, SAIC Motor, and Tesla all boasted a three-digit month-on-month hike in May PV outputs.

The monthly PV wholesale volume amounted to 1.611 million units, edging down 2.1% year on year, while zooming up 66.7% month on month.

Regarding the PV wholesale volume in May, the list of the top 10 automakers was evenly divided by joint-venture brands and Chinese indigenous ones. BYD was also the fastest-growing one with only NEVs sold.

The CPCA forecasted that both PV production and sales volumes in China would grow year on year at a rate of over 10% in June 2022.