New-vehicle sales by automakers operating in China rebounded for the third consecutive month in August after Shanghai, the largest domestic city, came out of a two-month lockdown and the central government halved purchase tax on gasoline cars at the start of June.
Last month, the wholesale volume of new vehicles industrywide jumped 32 percent year on year to exceed 2.38 million, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said on Friday.
The market rebound was driven by demand for light vehicles.
In August, shipment of new sedans, crossovers, SUVs, multi-purpose vehicles and minibuses surged 36 percent to nearly 2.13 million.
Thanks to government investment in infrastructure construction projects across the country, shipment of new commercial vehicles such as buses and trucks rebounded for the first time since April 2021, rising 4 percent to some 258,000 last month.
For the first eight months, new-vehicle sales industrywide gained 1.7 percent from a year earlier to approach 16.9 million.
In the period, light-vehicle sales increased 12 percent to 14.7 million while commercial-vehicle shipment slipped 36 percent to 2.2 million.
Demand for new electrified vehicles remained robust, with the wholesale volume doubling from a year earlier to around 666,000 in August.
In the month, shipment of full electric vehicles rallied 93 percent to roughly 522,000 while sales of plug-in hybrids soared 160 percent to some 144,000.
As of August, electrified-vehicle sales industrywide spiked 110 percent to 3.86 million. The tally is composed of some 3.04 million EVs and 818,000 plug-in hybrids, jumping 100 percent and 170 percent respectively.
