China's car sales clock slowest growth in 3 years, exports strong

China's car sales clock slowest growth in 3 years, exports strong

Reuters — 2026-01-09

Automotive Industry

China's car sales in 2025 slowed to their weakest pace in three years while exports of made-in-China cars beat estimates, as automakers stepped up overseas expansion to offset a sluggish domestic market.

Sales dropped 14.5% last month from a year earlier to 2.28 million units, worsening from an 8.5% decline in November and the biggest fall since February 2024, data from the China Passenger Car Association showed on Friday.

For the full year, car sales were up 3.9%, slowing from growth of 5.3% in 2024 and the slowest in three years.

Electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids (PHEV) outsold gasoline vehicles for the first time annually, even as sales growth of such vehicles - grouped as new energy cars in China - slowed sharply to 17.6% last year from 40.7% in 2024.

Domestic demand faded in the last quarter, as many cities and provinces reduced or suspended government subsidies for auto trade-ins due to a funding shortage, intensifying an already cut-throat competition in the world's largest market.

Automakers including Changan, FAW, Li Auto and Nio failed to meet their sales target for 2025.

No.1 Chinese automaker BYD, which posted its weakest sales growth in five years, narrowly met its slashed sales target of 4.6 million vehicles.

The local EV giant has led the pack in relying on overseas markets to offset domestic challenges. Its sales abroad hit a record of more than 1 million units, unseating Tesla as the world's largest EV maker last year.

Overall, car exports increased 19.4% to 5.79 million units, while EV and PHEV exports were up 86.2% to 2.42 million units, the CPCA data showed.

The association had expected car export growth to cool to 10% in 2025 from 25% a year earlier. It had predicted zero growth for EV exports.