Half a dozen Chinese EV makers delivered record numbers electric vehicles (EVs) to customers in December before the end of a state subsidy that boosted the year’s total sales to 10 million units. The CNY20,000 subsidy for replacing oil guzzlers with EVs – equivalent to between 10% and 20% of the price of half of the EVs on Chinese roads – ran from July to December, prompting customers to rush to seal deals ahead of the year-end, said Zhao Zhen, Sales Director at Shanghai-based dealer Wan Zhuo Auto. That way, they can “benefit from the subsidy”, she said, noting that the sales momentum may not be sustainable in 2025 with the expiry of the subsidy, as budget-conscious Chinese consumers refrain from spending on big-ticket items amid slowing economic growth. For now, carmakers are celebrating their new milestones.
BYD, the world’s largest electric car assembler, sold 514,809 units in December, surpassing its November record by 1.6%. The Shenzhen-based company delivered 4.27 million pure electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles last year, up 41.3% compared with 2023. It also beat the full-year sales target of 3.6 million units Chairman Wang Chuanfu announced in March by almost 19%. Nio handed 31,138 EVs to customers last month, up 72.9% from the same month in 2023, bolstered by surging deliveries of its mass-market brand Onvo. The Shanghai-based carmaker sold more than 30,000 cars for the first time last month, the South China Morning Post reports.
The Global Times adds that the number of electric vehicles (EVs) produced by BYD surpassed that of U.S. automaker Tesla in 2024, according to the two firms' latest financial reports, and in terms of EV sales, BYD's gap with Tesla narrowed to within 30,000 units last year. Last year, Tesla sold 1.79 million vehicles, according to its latest financial report. This was down 1.1% from its deliveries in 2023, the first such drop the company has reported since 2015. Meanwhile, Chinese automaker BYD sold 1.77 million EVs last year, up 12.08% year-on-year. That means Tesla still retained the title of the world's top selling EV brand in 2024, but the gap with BYD was less than 30,000 vehicles, compared with over 220,000 in 2023. In the fourth quarter of 2024, Tesla reported sales of 495,570 EVs, which was far behind BYD's global deliveries of around 600,000 EVs in the same quarter. Previously, BYD beat Tesla in EV sales for the first time in the fourth quarter of 2023, and in the third quarter of 2023, BYD also overtook Tesla in revenue for the first time. With regard to EV production, Tesla produced 1.77 million EVs in 2024, while that of BYD was slightly higher at 1.778 million units.
China's Ministry of Finance (MOF) said in a notice that the proportion of NEVs in the total annual official vehicle procurement should not be less than 30% in principle if NEVs can meet the actual official needs. The procurement ratio for NEVs should be 100% for official vehicles with relatively fixed routes and single usage, and mainly operating in urban areas. NEVs should also be prioritized in vehicle leasing, according to the MOF notice. The move will help boost market demand for NEVs, and will be conducive to optimizing the government procurement structure, enhancing both quality and effectiveness, Wang Peng, Associate Research Fellow at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences said.
The South China Morning Post reports that more than 30,000 car dealers in mainland China are facing another bleak year in 2025, with many turning from profit-generators into corporate failures in two years under a debilitating price war and an e-commerce onslaught. More than half of the industry’s participants failed to achieve their sales targets for 2024, the China Automobile Dealers Association (CADA) said in an end-December report. Most of them are either suffering huge losses or struggling with a capital crunch, it added. The discount war among Chinese manufacturers involving petrol-powered and electric cars resulted in CNY177.6 billion of losses between January and November, CADA said, worsening from CNY84.5 billion in the year-earlier period. “The association expects the auto market outlook to be uncertain in the future,” it said in the report. Steep discounts by car manufacturers have persisted over the past two years, despite calls by industry leaders to halt price competition. Producers cut prices on 195 models, up from 150 models in 2023, the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) said. Nationwide sales rose 4.7% to 20.3 million cars in the first 11 months of last year.
In another breakthrough reported by the Global Times, China's first electric flying car – Kunpeng No 1 – was developed and unveiled by a research team at Southeast University in Jiangsu province. Unlike traditional electric vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft, the Kunpeng No 1 is designed as an integrated land-air vehicle, which combines the ground with aerial vehicle mobility. It is China's first flying car based on distributed electric drive technology, using a car as its primary carrier, rather than relying on drone technology, enabling smooth transitions between driving on the ground and flying in the air, according to the developers.
