China's auto market hit with 17th-month-in-a-row sales downturn

China's auto market posted the 17th-month-in-a-row sales downturn in November, while the decrease was further contracted over the previous months.

The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) said the country's auto sales slid 3.6% year on year to 2.457 million units in November, but apparently rose 7.6% from a month earlier. Based on the data for bygone months, we could found out that the decline in monthly sales has been continuously diminished between August and November.

For the first eleven months, automakers in China sold roughly 23.11 million new vehicles in total, which were 9.1% less than that of the year-ago period.

Although the market still posted flagging sales, the auto outputs for the first time outnumbered the prior-year period after 16 consecutive months of decrease. Notably, the growth in year-to-date CV sales has turned positive thanks to a double-digit growth in the Nov. sales.

Among 2.057 million PVs (-3.6%) sold last month, 935,000 units (+3.3%) were SUVs. Besides, the car, the MPV and the minibus sectors all failed to outperform the same period in 2018. Year-to-date PV sales dipped 10.5% with none of sectors clocking year-over-year growth.

NEV sales in November plummeted 43.7% to around 95,000 units. Due to the five-straight-month downturn, the growth in year-to-date NEV sales had been reduced to 1.3%. The cumulative sales of plug-in hybrid PVs shrunk 11.9%, which evidently offset the 11.8% growth in all-electric PV sales. Moreover, the 25.1% decline in new energy CV sales should be blamed for the smaller growth in total NEV sales.