Good news from China for producers of renewable metals, especially lithium, with a surge in sales of new energy vehicles (NEVS) in February that should allay lingering concerns caused in some minds by January’s soft start.
The slide in sales in January from December’s record level came because of the number of buyers naturally fell after the late 2022 splurge to take advantage of the ending of purchase subsidies on December 31, and the earlier timing of the Lunar New Year holiday which cut showroom traffic and sales.
Some silly western analysts tried to claim this was bad news for battery material suppliers (and behind the slide in lithium prices this year) but others pointed to the two key factors behind the dip in sales for the start of the new year.
February data out this week confirmed that January was a one off with sales of passenger NEVs leaping 32% to 438,000 in February from January’s 332,000. February was also up 59% from February, 2022.
According to preliminary data released by the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) the surge in February took sales of NEVs for the first two months of the year to 770,000 – 23% above the same period in 2022.
The Association said that in wholesale terms, China’s passenger NEV sales were 500,000 units in February, up 58% from 2022 and up 29% from January. China’s cumulative wholesale sales of passenger NEVs in the first two months of 2023 were 889,000 units, up 21% from 2022 (Wholesale sales are those vehicles sent to dealers, retail figures are the actual dealer sales to consumers or by companies like Tesla which deal direct).
Including both internal combustion engine vehicles and NEVs, China’s retail sales of passenger cars in February rose 9% year on year to 1.364 million units which was 6% above January’s level.
This means that the penetration rate of passenger NEVs at retail in February was 32.1%, up 6.4 percentage points from 25.7%
From these figures it’s clear that NEV sales are keeping the wider car market buoyant and taking an increasing share that was almost one in three sales being a NEV in February.
We already know that BYD and Tesla dominated sales in both months.
Tesla sold 74,402 China-made electric vehicles (EV) in February, according to data published by the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA).
That was up 31.65% higher from February last year.
Tesla sales for the two months totalled 140,453 units, up more than 19% from the first two months of 2022 and an annual rate of just over a million units.
BYD sold 193,655 NEVs in February, up 28% from 151,341 units in January and up 119.4% from 88,283 units in the same month last year.
That was a total of 344,996 units in January and February, a record and considerably more than 2022 (the comparison with which is clouded by the fact that BYD was also making internal combustion engine vehicles).
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Tesla sales in Australia boomed in February, according to industry data released Monday.
EV sales hit a new record in Australia, with 6.8% of all February car sales nationwide.
The monthly sales report from the Federated Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) showed that 5,932 EVs were sold in February out of 88,878 vehicles.
Tesla dominated the EV market with 3,516 EVs sold in February or 60% of the market or 4% of total sales in the month.
Tesla’s Model 3 was the third best-selling vehicle in the country, with 2,671 sales. While the company’s Model Y had 864 sales last month.
The next ten electric models were: BYD Atto 3 (770), MG ZS EV (387), Polestar 2 (172), Hyundai Ioniq 5 (146), Hyundai Kona EV (88), Volvo C40 (59), Nissan Leaf (57), Mercedes EQ Series (55), BMW iX (46), and Kia EV6 (40).
In a change which should ring alarm bells at Toyota, BEVs outsold non-plug-in hybrids (HEVs) for the first time. 5,716 HEVs were sold in February 2023. Toyota was the biggest seller of hybrids (most of its model ranges has a hybrid variant, including Lexus).
It has committed to building a BEV version for its Lexus brand in the US by 2025 and there’s talk it will have a cheap BEV in China by later this year.
