China marks slowest NEV sales month of 2022 with April data

A total of 280,000 New Energy Vehicles were sold in China in April, up 50.1 per cent from the same month last year but down 38.5 per cent from March 2022, making April the weakest month of the year so far.

So far, February was the weakest month with 317,000 NEVs, while January and March would each see over 400,000 New Energy Vehicles sold. While the February figures can be explained mainly by the festivities around Chinese New Year (and thus missing sales days in the already shorter month), the situation is different in April. Here, the strict Corona lockdown in numerous cities such as Shanghai was probably the biggest factor.

Of the 280,000 new NEV cars, 214,000 were BEVs and 66,000 PHEVs. This corresponds to a distribution of 76.4 to 23.6 per cent. This means that the ratio has shifted slightly in favour of plug-in hybrids again compared to March (81 to 19 per cent). In terms of wholesale sales, the NEV share in April was 29.6 per cent, compared to 11.2 per cent last year.

However, the weaker April cannot completely slow down the general market trend. So far this year, 1.35 million new energy vehicles have been sold in China, up 128.4 per cent from January to April 2021.

The aforementioned lockdown around Shanghai also had a massive impact on the manufacturer rankings in April. The usual pattern, where BYD is ahead in New Energy Vehicles (i.e. BEV + PHEV) but Tesla is ahead in pure electric cars, does not apply in April. BYD is still by far the largest NEV manufacturer with 105,475 NEVs. However, with 57,403 BEVs, BYD is also ahead in the pure BEV ranking – in addition, 48,702 PHEVs were sold.

This is, of course, due to Tesla, which, as is well known, had to keep its Gigafactory Shanghai closed for several weeks in April and was then only able to resume production with one shift instead of three. In April, the CPCA (China Passenger Car Association) shows just 1,512 BEVs for Tesla. These all stayed in China, no vehicle was exported.

Among the EV start-ups, GAC Aion and Leapmotor were able to continue the positive trend of the past months and place themselves well ahead of the more internationally known brands such as Xpeng and Nio. Leapmotor fell just into the four-digit range again, but for other manufacturers, the decline in April was much stronger, for example, Xpeng or Great Wall Ora.

For better clarity, we have summarised selected brands – without claiming completeness – in the following table. This is not an official ranking by the CPCA, but a compilation by the editorial team.

Note: April figures for SAIC and Geely are not yet known. As soon as they are published, we will update the table. As in the months of the first quarter, VW no longer publishes monthly figures.

Brand	January	February	March	April	Total	Rank
BYD*	93,168	87,473	104,878	105,475	390,994	1
SAIC*	72,236	45,267	74,509	0	192,012	2
Tesla	59,845	56,515	65,814	1,512	183,686	3
GAC Aion	16,031	8,526	20,317	10,212	55,086	4
Geely,*	17,928	14,501	15,557	0	47,986	5
Xpeng	12,922	6,225	15,414	9,002	43,563	6
Neta Automobile	11,009	7,117	12,026	8,813	38,965	7
Great Wall Ora	13,229	6,261	14,264	3,008	36,842	8
Nio	9,652	6,131	9,985	5,074	30,842	9
Leap Motor	8,085	3,435	10,059	9,087	30,666	10