Plugin vehicles continue to be all the rage in the Chinese auto market. They grew 78% year over year (YoY) in September. They scored over 636,000 registrations last month, a new record. Plugin hybrids (PHEVs) surged 148% year over year (YoY). They reached 161,000 registrations in September, which is their fourth fifth record month in row. It seems the Chinese version of PHEVs, with an average of 30+ kWh batteries and working more as EREVs, has struck a chord with buyers. As for BEVs, they grew a “paltry” 62% … to a record 475,000 units. In just one month.
Share-wise, with September’s record performance, plugin vehicles hit 35% market share. And the share could have gone higher, if the overall passenger car market hadn’t grown also — in this case, by 10% last month.
Full electrics (BEVs) alone accounted for 26% of the country’s auto sales last month! These brilliant results pulled the 2022 share to 29% plugins and 22% BEVs.
If electrification continues at this pace, expect in a year from now the plugin share to be at some 45%, with BEVs owning one third (33%) of the Chinese market!
And expect BEVs to cross the 50% share threshold by 2025! Imagine that: the largest automotive market in the world being BEV-based in three years time!
Another measure of the importance of this market is the fact that China alone represented over half of global plugin registrations last month.
With such high market shares, it would only be natural that the plugin market would merge further with the overall market, and that was the case, with 7 fully plugin models in the top 10, leaving only 3 ICE-based models in the overall top 10!
Here is last month’s top 10 in the overall market:
- Tesla Model Y
- BYD Song
- Wuling Mini EV
- Nissan Sylphy
- BYD Qin Plus
- VW Lavida
- BYD Han
- Tesla Model 3
- BYD Dolphin
- Toyota CorollaOne interesting coincidence of the three ICE models is that all three are compact(ish) sedans, so this category is probably one of the last low-hanging fruits still waiting to be electrified in China’s automotive market.
