490,000 electric vehicles sold in March in China

The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers released the data on March sales and the numbers are simply staggering. Not surprising, but still staggering. Over 653,000 vehicles sold in the country were electric which is nearly 35% more than in the same period last year.

That’s over a 24% increase from February alone. For the first time though, the all-electric cars are the ones driving sales. Until recently the ratio between plug-in hybrids and battery-powered EVs was about 1:1. The BEVs sold 490,000 units, which is the highest number ever in a single month.

The fact that it’s the highest number is not surprising. It’s actually easy to tell the future here - next month will likely be even better, in fact for the next few years every month will be better than the one before. Every quarter will record the highest sales and this will go on until we stop selling combustion-powered cars.

Looking at the bigger picture, there were 2.45 million vehicles sold in China in March (wow!) which makes the BEVs a comfortable 20% of the lot. Chinese customers bought 24% more vehicles than they did in February and nearly 10% more than they did in March last year.

The clear leader here is the BYD with over 207,000 NEVs (New Energy Vehicles) sold last month. Out of those 102,670 were all electric, which puts Tesla’s 88,869 vehicles sold in a close second place. GAC Aion is chasing the front duo with 40,016 units delivered to customers.

The Chinese market is always the one to watch. There is a huge issue with ICE-powered vehicles on the horizon - new stringent emissions limits are coming into play in the next couple of months, which will render many cars unsellable. Many analysts expect the petrol and diesel-powered vehicle market to collapse with many cars left unsold.

While this situation is unlikely to have an immediate impact on global markets, sooner or later it will affect Europe and the US. Customers are no longer excited about gasoline and diesel vehicles, they are being seen as an old-school compromise, a stop-gap solution before more electric cars become available. There is a storm brewing on the horizon.

Via