For the first time ever, China’s electric vehicle sales are set to outpace traditional car sales on an annual basis in 2025, years in advance of the Chinese authorities’ targets and years ahead of analyst projections, according to the latest industry forecasts provided to the Financial Times by research companies and investment banks.
China’s combined EV and plug-in hybrid sales are expected to jump by around 20% to over 12 million units next year, HSBC, UBS, Morningstar, and Wood Mackenzie have projected.
Next year, the expected sales of the so-called new energy vehicles are set to more than double from the 5.9 million units sold in 2022.
At the same time, sales of conventional cars with internal combustion engines (ICE) are projected to fall by 10% next year to fewer than 11 million vehicles. This means that China will see EV sales outpacing conventional car sales for the full-year 2025, according to the four research firms and banks that have shared their latest insights with FT.
The second half of this year has already seen EVs outselling conventional cars in China. July 2024 was the first month ever in which new energy vehicle sales exceeded ICE car sales. Since July, China has consistently marked months of EV sales holding more than 50% of new car sales.
In November 2024 alone, the Chinese market once again beat its previous record set in October by over 50,000 vehicles, to reach almost 1.3 million EVs sold, EV research house Rho Motion said earlier this month.
The monthly growth in EV sales in November 2024 was almost entirely due to higher number of BEV sales, which rose by over 70,000 units. Most of the growth resulted from monthly increases in sales from Geely, Tesla, and Changan, according to Rho Motion.
Between January and November 2024, China’s EV sales jumped by 40% from a year earlier to 9.7 million units, Rho Motion noted.
Soaring EV sales in China have contributed in part to the weaker-than-expected oil demand in the world’s top crude oil importer. The other major factors have been wobbling economic performance and surging LNG-fuelled trucking.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
