Over 21m automobiles produced and sold in China since beginning of 2014

Cumulative Chinese automobiles production and sales numbers from January until November totaled 21.43 million units and 21.08 million units, theBeijing Morning Post reported today, citing statistics from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. The two figures represent respective year-on-year growth rates of 7.2 percent and 6.1 percent. By comparison, year-on-year growth rates last year were 7.1 percent and 7.4 percent.

The CAAM predicts year-on-year automobile market growth rates next year to increase in tandem with GDP, with actual growth being around seven percent. New energy vehicles, who started to emerge as an important market this year, will be a major driver behind next year’s growth. According to CAAM statistics, a total of 57,125 new energy vehicles were produced from January to November of this year, while 52,944 were sold over that same time period. Among those figures, slightly more sales, 29,060 units, were of pure electric vehicles, compared to plug-in hybrid sales of 23,884 units.

CAAM statistics show that production and sales volumes for November were 2.16 million units and 2.09 million units. The two figures represent year-on-year growth of 5.7 percent and 5.2 percent. They are 1.2 percent and 2.3 percent higher than respective figures from the previous month of October. Passenger automobiles still constitute the bulk of the production and sales volumes. The minivan and SUV segments performed particularly strongly, with their total sales growing 34.1 percent and 48.7 percent, respectively.

Bloated automobile dealership inventories remain another issue of concern. According to CAAM statistics, automobile inventories grew by 351,400 units over the first eleven months of the year. The China Automobile Dealers Association has raised the warning index for dealership inventories to 65.7 percent in November, up 10.7 percent from October’s rating. CAAM Deputy Secretary General Dong Yang warns the industry to stay on its guard on the light of these large inventory increases.