Credit: Visual China

BEIJING, July 12 (TMTPost) —— China's automobile exports maintained a fast year-over-year growth rate of 75% in the first half of 2023, with exports hitting 2.14 million units, according to data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) on Tuesday.

Among those cars, 1.78 million units were passenger cars, up 88.4% year-on-year. 534,000 new energy vehicles were exported, up 1.6 times year-on-year.

The fastest-growing export automakers are BYD, Chery Automobile, and Great Wall Motor, with year-on-year growth of 10.6 times, 1.7 times, and 0.98 times respectively. BYD recorded a very high growth rate in the first half of 2023 mainly because its export volume in the first half of 2022 was small and only started to gain momentum in the second half of the year, according to Xu Haidong, deputy chief engineer of the CAAM.

Chinese automobile production and sales reached 13,248,000 units and 13,239,000 units respectively in the first half of 2023, up 9.3% and 9.8% year-on-year. Xu said that driven by consumption promotion policies, marketing activities of automobile enterprises, and a large number of new models on sale in the market, the demand gradually recovered and the auto industry achieved higher growth in the first half of the year.

Affected by the price war, the automotive industry was sluggish in the first quarter, leading to production and sales falling 4.3% and 6.7% year-on-year, respectively. After the price war, the car market returned to a higher growth rate in the second quarter. Learning from the lessons of the price war, the CAAM, together with 16 car companies signed the Letter of Commitment to Maintain a Fair Market Order in the Auto Industry last Thursday, with each committed not to disrupting fair market competition through abnormal prices.

However, this move was considered to be against the spirit of the Anti-Monopoly Law. The CAAM issued a statement last Saturday to remove the above clause.

According to the CAAM, seven of the top 10 Chinese carmakers in the first half of 2023 maintained positive year-on-year growth. However, Dongfeng Motor Group saw a year-on-year decrease of 27.8%, SAIC had a year-on-year decrease of 17% in sales, and Great Wall Motor saw a year-on-year decrease of 13.3%.

SAIC and Dongfeng Motor Group have been slow in their development of new energy vehicles. The two traditional car companies sold 363,000 units and 174,000 units of new energy vehicles in the first half of the year, respectively, a year-on-year decrease of 7.1% and 3.9%. Guangzhou Automobile Group showed outstanding performance in the new energy transformation of traditional car enterprises, with the new energy vehicle sales reaching 238,000 units in the first half of 2023, an increase of 109.9% year-on-year.

Li Auto realized sales of 139,000 units in the first half of the year, a year-on-year increase of 130.3%, squeezing into the top ten enterprises in terms of new energy vehicle sales.

In the first half of the year, the production and sales of new energy vehicles grew at a high rate, reaching 3,788,000 and 3,747,000 units respectively, up 42.4% and 44.1% year-on-year. The penetration rate of new energy vehicles has reached 28.3% in China, an increase of 6.7 percentage points year-on-year.