China’s Auto Sales Drop More than 10%

Car sales in China fell by more than 10% in March as automakers suffered a long outage and the supply chain was disrupted by China's strict Covid-19 blockade.

Passenger car sales fell by 10.5% in March to 1.58 million vehicles, the China Passenger Car Association said on Monday. It further said that the quarterly sales also fell 4.5% from a year earlier to 4.92 million vehicles. 

China has imposed a strict lockdown since March in Shanghai, disrupting the car market and component production due to factory shutdowns and logistics delays. These areas are the centre of auto manufacturing in China with plants of automakers such as SAIC Motor Corp, General Motors Co, and Volkswagen AG.

Cui Dongshu, the secretary-general of the association, said the world's largest car market is likely to be under pressure, partly due to sluggish demand. He further said that the covid has had a tremendous impact on the production of car makers while consumers are going out less for car purchases. 

Sales of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles this quarter were a bright spot for the industry. According to data from the association, the number of such vehicles sold has more than doubled from the previous year to 1.07 million units.