China's vehicle sales in May 2019 drop 16.4% from a year ago, CAAM

According to data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) on June 12, China has faced a year-on-year decrease in vehicle outputs and sales for the 11th month in a row.

In May 2019, the auto outputs and sales in the world's largest auto market fell 21.16% and 16.40% from a year ago respectively to 1,848,300 units and 1,912,600 units. Compared with the performance for April, both figures also presented negative growth. To be specific, national PV and CV sales slid 17.37% and 11.79% over the previous year.

The association said the overall auto climate failed to heat up according to the output and sales numbers in May. The continuous downturn resulted from two major reasons: 1) the consumption drivers were not effectively improved; 2) automakers have voluntarily slowed their production and sale paces to alleviate the pressure on delivery.

For the first five months, China saw its cumulative vehicle outputs and sales fall 13.01% and 12.95% respectively from the year-ago period to 10,237,000 units and 10,265,900 units. The CPCA explained that year-to-date (YTD) numbers were sitting at a relatively low level partly because some regions are about to execute the China 6 Emission ahead of the state's schedule. Due to the policy shift, consumers are lack of confidence over the market and hesitate about buying cars.

The PV sales decrease was the major reason that led to the whole YTD sales drop. The Jan.-May CV sales in China only edged down 1.3%, while PV sales were down by 15.17%. As to the performance of each sectors, the MPV's cumulative sales represented the biggest year-on-year decline up to 23.9%.

For the month of May 2019, MPV sales jumped 13.51% from the previous month, while still dropping 22.4% from the previous year. Besides, car and SUV sales remained basically the same as that of a month ago, but still faced double-digit decrease compared with the year-ago period performance.