China’s carmakers built and shipped a record number of new energy vehicles in October. Chinese shoppers bought fewer of them. Preliminary figures from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) released Wednesday show NEV retail sales of 1.148 million units, down 10% from a year earlier, while NEV wholesale volume hit an all-time high of 1.807 million, up 12%.
That’s a gap of roughly 659,000 vehicles between what left the factories and what customers in China drove home. Some of it is exports, which wholesale counts and retail doesn’t. Some of it is cars sitting with dealers. Either way, the two halves of China’s car market are telling very different stories right now.
The October numbers
Here is what the CPCA reported for October 1–31, as carried by Yicai, Jiemian via Sina Finance, IT Home and Zhongxin Jingwei (China News Service), all citing the association’s official WeChat account:
- NEV retail: 1.148 million, down 10% year on year, up 6% from September. January–October: 8.907 million, down 12%.
- NEV wholesale: 1.807 million, up 12% year on year and 8% month on month. January–October: 13.256 million, up 10%.
- All passenger cars, retail: 1.693 million, down 25% year on year, up 5% from September. January–October: 15.027 million, down 22%.
- All passenger cars, wholesale: 2.635 million, down 10%. January–October: 22.372 million, down 6%.
- NEV share of retail sales: 67.8%, a record. Wholesale share: 68.6%.
The retail figure actually beat the CPCA’s own forecast. On Oct. 23 the association had projected about 1.07 million NEV retail sales, a 16.5% drop, CnEVPost noted. It’s still the tenth straight month that NEV retail has fallen year on year, though the decline narrowed from 16.7% in September.
The wholesale record tops the previous high of 1.706 million set in November 2025. BYD led with 483,125 passenger NEVs shipped, followed by Geely (213,165), Chery (134,471), Changan (122,422) and Leapmotor (103,021), according to the CPCA’s estimate published a day earlier. Tesla’s Shanghai plant shipped 67,829 (our story).
Gasoline cars are falling faster
The biggest number in the report isn’t about EVs at all. Overall retail fell 25%, much more than NEVs, because gasoline car sales are collapsing. The CPCA said nationwide production of pure fuel light-duty vehicles plunged 52% year on year to 386,000 units in the first four weeks of October, as persistently high international oil prices kept running costs up.
That’s why the NEV share keeps setting records even while NEV sales shrink. Two in three new cars sold in China in October plugged in. A year ago the market was bigger and the pie was split differently.
Why are NEV sales down at all? Two policy changes hit at once. China’s purchase tax exemption for NEVs was cut in half from Jan. 1, 2026, and last year’s sales were pulled forward by a rush to buy before trade-in subsidies tightened, which leaves a high base to compare against. The CPCA said October got help from National Day auto shows, local subsidies and peak-season promotions, but it warned that the month-long pattern showed “a lack of sustainability in demand.” Average daily retail sales swung from 33,000 in the first week to 91,000 in the last week’s end-of-month push, and every week was down 22% to 29% from a year earlier.
The association also took an unusually blunt swipe at the industry. Most NEV brands lack blockbuster models, it said, yet automakers keep up a steady production pace to hit their targets, which leaves “a wide gap” between estimated orders and actual sales.
The EVX Take
For Japanese carmakers this is the harder half of the story. Their China businesses are still built mostly on gasoline and hybrid cars, and that’s the segment shrinking fastest. In September, Toyota’s China sales fell 19.7% to 127,700, Honda’s dropped 53.1% to 25,564 and Nissan’s fell 61.6% to 23,658, Sankei reported. A 52% fall in gasoline car output in October suggests the pressure hasn’t let up. The other effect reaches Japan directly. When Chinese factories ship record volumes into a home market that’s buying less, more of those cars go abroad, and Japan is one of the places BYD is pushing hardest, with its Japan-only RACCO kei EV and new dealers. Expect more export pressure from China in Japan and the rest of Asia going into 2027. Our October China EV scoreboard has the brand-by-brand numbers.
Sources: CPCA preliminary October data as reported by Yicai, Jiemian (via Sina Finance), IT Home, Zhongxin Jingwei, China News Service (via Sina Finance) and CnEVPost; CnEVPost (CPCA wholesale estimate); CPCA market reports; Sankei Shimbun. Figures are preliminary and may be revised in the CPCA’s full monthly report.
— The EVX News team
Featured image: BYD’s own car carrier BYD EXPLORER NO.1 moored in Wilhelmshaven, Germany (Sept. 26, 2026). Photo: Ein Dahmer / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped).
