Plug-in electric car sales in China shrunk for the past six consecutive months, but the rate of decline at least has not increased.

The EV Sales Blog reports almost 150,000 sales for the month of December, which is 22% less than a year ago (the overall automotive market was down by just 1%). The market share amounted to 6.8%. Both types of plug-ins BEVs and PHEVs are in the red (BEVs are down 17%, but hold 86% of the segment, while PHEVs went down 45%).

Plug-in electric car sales in China – December 2019

With limited support from incentives during the second half of the year, overall plug-in electric car sales amounted to over 1,177,000. It's actually nearly 7% more than in 2018. Also, the market share improved to 5.5% (compared to 4.2% in 2018).

80% of the total volume was BEVs (up 13%), while PHEVs not only stand for just 20% of the total plug-in segment but also went down 13%.

As the Chinese government does not intend to remove the rest of the subsidies in 2020, there is a big chance for higher growth next year.

Model rank

The top-selling plug-in models in China are all-electric cars (only five plug-in hybrids were classified in the top 20).

The best selling model is the BAIC EU-Series (111,047), which in December set also a new monthly record for the Chinese market (21,963).

The second-best this year was BYD Yuan (67,839), followed by the tiny SAIC Baojun E-Series (60,050).

Among the brands, the top three in China were:

BYD: 19% share, 6th consecutive #1

BAIC: 14% share

SAIC: 12% share

Top for the month:

BAIC EU-Series - 21,963 BAIC EC-Series - 11,409 FAW Bestune B30 EV - 8,735 GAC Aion S - 8,460 Baojun E-Series – 8,352

Top 20 for the year:

Source: EV Sales Blog