Sales of electric and hybrid cars practically doubled in 2022 in China and represented more than a quarter of vehicles sold, a level never seen, a professional federation announced on Tuesday.
As the world’s largest automobile market, the Asian country is also the world’s main producer of greenhouse gases. In 2035, it aims for car sales mainly made up of so-called non-polluting vehicles.
In total, all categories combined (petrol, diesel, electric, hybrid), 20.54 million vehicles were sold last year, an increase of 1.9%, indicated the Chinese Federation of Individual Car Manufacturers ( CPCA).
In December, sales reached 2.17 million vehicles (+3% over one year).
Consumers have benefited from the last month of state support measures, including subsidies for electric vehicles and tax cuts for certain vehicles.
Over the whole of 2022, a total of 5.67 million hybrid and electric cars were sold, a new record. This is nearly double the previous year.
In December, 640,000 units were sold (+35% over one year), including 455,000 all-electric.
This market for so-called clean vehicles “showed strong performance in 2022, which illustrates China’s major advances in the construction of high-end automobiles”, welcomed the CPCA.
Many local brands (BYD, SAIC-GM-Wuling, Geely, XPeng, Nio…) compete in this niche with the American Tesla and other foreign manufacturers.
The market was driven in particular by purchase subsidies, which however disappeared at the end of December 2022.
Automobile sales had increased in 2021 (+4.4%), following several years of decline due to the general economic slowdown and then to the Covid-19 epidemic.
The year 2022, however, remained complicated for the automotive sector, due in particular to the confinement of several cities in the face of the coronavirus and travel restrictions which thwarted travel plans and weighed on consumption.
/ATS
