December new car sales delivered a rather remarkable result, not so much for the totals sold, but rather for the nature of the vehicles sold.
The Clean Car Discount (CCD) ended on 31 December 2023, and this induced a surge in sales.
In fact more than 81% of the 8559 passenger cars sold in the month were either EV's or hybrids of some sort.
That means 6964 of them were "new energy vehicles" (NEV), with only 1595 being traditional internal combustion engine powered (ICE). That is not only the lowest proportion as ICE ever, it is also the lowest number as ICE (apart from the April 2020 level when everyone was in full lockdown).
In all of 2023, NEV sales accounted for more than half or all sales (53%), whereas in 2022 the share was about a third (35%) and in 2021 it was just a fifth (21%).
NEV sales now dominate.
The ending of the CCD probably won't change the direction much, but it will almost certainly result in a sales drought for a few months.
That sales drought has already hit the commercial sector. Only 1044 new commercial vehicles were sold in December and that was a 21 year low, the lowest since January 2001. In fact, new commercial vehicle sales have been retreating sharply all year and only 38,013 were sold over the whole of 2023. That compares with 48,524 in 2022 and 54,389 in 2021.
For used imported passenger cars, the story is quite different. December sales were unusually high at 12,806 and the second highest month in 21 months.
In China, they are already thinking about what will happen when EV's are a large enough share of their total vehicle fleet that they need to integrate this storage into their national grid. They have just released an important discussion document on how that will be done and aim to have all the standards in place by 2025, so that by 2030 (in six years) will have car EV batteries as an important storage element of their national grid. A Chinese car owner's battery capacity will then presumably be controlled by Beijing. You might wish to keep your Social Credit score high so that they don't disable or drain your personal transport. (More here.)
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