China saw third monthly consecutive pair-drop auto production, sales in July

A series of sales promotion including lowering official selling price and offering much discounts seemed of no use because the degree of sales drop and production drop is unexpectedly high in July in China. China’s vehicle production in July was 1,518,000 units, an 11.8 percent drop compared with the same period of a year earlier. The overall auto sales quantity of in the country also decreased 7.1 percent from a year earlier to 1,503,000 units.

On the other hand, the accumulative production volume and sales quantity reached respectively 13,612,700 units and 13,353,300 units, minimal growth of 0.8 percent and 0.4 percent compared with the same period of last year. The accelerated sales drop in July was contributed by an array of factors including slowdown of Chinese macro economy, vehicle demand decrease and the current dull season following historical norms, as well as the turbulence in the share market.

This was the third consecutive year that China witnessed sales drop along with the production drop compared with the same period of last year. And this unwanted situation only had happened during the world financial crisis at the end of 2008.

In particular, passenger vehicle production volume in China in July decreased 11.6 percent from that of last year to 1,301,300 units; and the sales volume dropped 6.6 percent to 1,268,600 units compared with the same period of last year. These figures indicated that expect SUV models, all the other general models experienced sales drop on a year-on-year basis, and general car model was encountered with up to 20 percent.

But, Chinese own automakers, Japanese joint-ventures and the alternative fueled vehicles realized sales growth amid the general downturn. In particular, the passenger vehicle sales quantity of Chinese brands in July increased 5.1 percent from a year earlier to 499,200 units, with market share in the overall passenger vehicle industry increasing 4.3 percentage points to 39 percent compared with the same period of last year.

In July, alternative fueled vehicles sold 16,884 units in China, with 19,307 units overall output, according to the statistics of China Association of Automobile Manufactures; the production and sales quantity jumped 2.2 folds and 3.3 folds compared with the same period of last year. In particular, pure EV reported July production volume and sales volume of 11,252 units and 8,970 units, increasing respectively 1.7 folds and 3.3 folds on a year-on-year basis. On the other hand, plug-in reached 8,055 units in production and 7,914 units in sales, both with a 3.4 times jump compared with the same period of last year.