PHEV Sales in China Are Falling – Consumers Buy Fully Electric Cars Instead
Electric car sales in China, the world’s biggest car market, have continued to rise in the month of August. In fact, plug-in hybrid sales fell significantly for the second time in a row, two months in a row, while electric car sales propped up new energy vehicle sales. So, what’s going on? I mean, how the hell can plug-in hybrid sales or basically hybrid sales in general, e-revs and plug-in hybrids, how can their sales be going down, I mean, there’s almost twice as many models now versus what there was 12 months ago. Literally, we’re comparing sales here, right versus the same month of last year. You would think the technology has improved, and it has. It has gotten better. prices have gone down and there is nearly twice as many models. I mean, that’s the perfect storm for disruption for these plug-in hybrid manufacturers to be and e to be honest e-revs and plug-in hybrid sales to be going ballistic. But instead, they’re going down and electric car sales are rising. Hello, my friends. Welcome to the channel. I’m Sam Evans. You’re watching the Electric Viking. YouTube’s new algorithm means that you’re often not getting all of our videos in your feed. There’s 7,500. I’m pretty sure you’re probably not seeing a lot of them. In the description, there is a link to our newsletter. Click on that and you can get an update every day of all the latest news in the electric car industry. If you want to know what’s going on in the Chinese car market, you’re welcome to join us on a trip to China later this year to come to to visit a Chinese auto show and also to potentially test some cars there and also just to see what’s going on. It’s a very different place to what you might have seen if you’ve been there in the past. If you’re interested, send me an email contact at the electricviking.com. Today the Chinese government have revealed sales figures for the month of August. EV sales well continued to increase. In fact, EV sales have grown by 17.2% year-over-year and NEV sales, new energy vehicle sales haven’t gone up as much because hybrid sales are dragging the number down. I kid you not, the media is probably going to pick up on this and say, “I told you there’s an EV sales slowdown. It’s even hitting China.” But they’re going to obviously ignore the fact that these numbers include plug-in hybrid sales, and that’s what’s dragging the number down. Numbers are not down overall, though. They’re still up because of the increase in EV sales as a whole. China’s new energy vehicle retail penetration. In other words, the percentage of cars in China that were either plugins, so cars you can plug into the power socket, not Toyota hybrids, but plugins, cars you can actually drive on EV power alone. And EVs, was 55% in August. So 55% of all cars had an actual plug on them. Of those 55%, nearly 65% of them were fully electric. Nearly 65%. So, plug-in hybrids, e-revs, put their numbers together, and they’re about 35 36% of all new energy vehicle sales. See, you can see it’s interesting, isn’t it? Two out of every three people choose to buy a fully electric car versus a a plug-in hybrid or an e-rev. Interestingly, though, manufacturers are pouring huge sums of money into e-rev and plug-in hybrid development, particularly e-revs. And they’ve got new models now that have, you know, five, 600, even 700 kilometers of CLTC range, electric only range, massive batteries, 500 plus kilowatt fast charging for some of these new cars. It’s kind of interesting to see it because some of these other plug-in hybrids that people are buying, I don’t think they realize, but they’re buying some pretty old technology. We’re talking about DC charging of 20 kW for a lot of these hybrids that people in the West are buying. I mean, that is remarkably slow. I don’t think you’d want to stop for that if you’re on a road trip. So, a lot of people think I want to buy a plug-in hybrid because I’m going to be doing some long distance driving, but I’m not sure that many people would want to sit around and wait for their battery to charge if it only could charge at 20 kW DC. That’s quite common in a lot of these hybrids that people don’t really test that. So, in China, there’s much better models than that available now that can charge it up to 5 600 kW, but those are mostly the new e-re. So manufacturers such as Xpang, uh, all their models that they have on sale now, they’re making e-rev versions. And – versions, they’re a little bit more like a base getting an electric car and just sticking a small generator motor in that car. Basically, the car only drives as an EV and that generator motor only powers the battery. It doesn’t power the wheels at all. In terms of actual total sales, right, 1.1 million vehicles were sold in August that were plugins with the majority of those being fully electric. That is a 7.5% yearon-year increase from the month of August in 2024. So 7.5% not a big difference, right? But as I mentioned before, plug-in hybrid sales are falling and EV sales are going up. Battery electric vehicle sales continue to grow, says CN Post, with August retail sales reaching 686,000, a 17.2% yearon-year increase and a 13% rise from July. So, we have a 17% year-on-year increase in electric car sales, which is a quite a good number if you ask me. I think 17% every year puts us in a pretty good position if that continues to happen. Earlier this year though, we did see faster growth than that. So, going to be interesting to see what happens towards the end of the year. Hybrids, not actual hybrids as you think of them, but plug-in hybrids and e-revs, their sales declined by 6.8%. Now, e-rev sales, they stayed flat. They sold 100,000 in August this year and 100,000 in August last year. But plug-in hybrid sales actually fell by more than I think it was 7 and a half%. And that shows that um actually they also fell 13% compared to July of this year. So BD’s plug-in hybrid sales have been falling. I think they fell by 24% in the month of August versus August last year. And overall the market for plug-in hybrids is shrinking. I mean, it’s very interesting to see this. I kind of wonder if it’s similar to Norway where, you know, initially people bought a lot of hybrids and then eventually everyone was like, “Ah, we don’t need them. We don’t need them. EVs are actually simpler and therefore the better technology.” That that’s what I think they are. A lot of people agree with me, but a lot of people don’t. I’ve even had people walk up with my face and tell me, “Oh, you hate hybrids.” And really get in my face about it. Because they obviously love them. But remember, hybrids have given EVs a bad name. They have hybrids have given EVs a bad name. That is a completely factual statement. You might disagree with that, but it is a factual statement because there is probably 150 million people have watched videos on YouTube of these EVs blowing up, setting fire to themselves, and there’s hundreds of them. And guess what? 99% of the cars in those videos are plug-in hybrids. They are. Now, new plug-in hybrids are having far less problems with catching on fire. But in the past there was so it was so common for these cars to catch on fire. It was very common. There was cover-ups in China about it. And that therefore led to people thinking that these cars were electric cars. Cuz basically the YouTubers knew they’d get more clicks if they said, “Look at all these electric cars catching fire in China.” They said, “Look at all these plug-in hybrid cars catching fire in China.” It doesn’t have the same appeal. So as a result millions of people think that e basically electric cars are just setting themselves on fire all over the planet which of course was completely false. So in terms of e-rev sales of all new energy vehicle sales so if we include electric cars plug-in hybrids and e-revs uh e-revs make up 9% of the market e electric cars make up about 64% and plug-in hybrids make up the rest. But yeah, like I said before, manufacturers are pouring billions of dollars into new hybrid plug-in hybrid and e-rev development. I don’t see this as the future and I actually think they’re wasting a lot of money. They’re not going to listen to me on this of course, but um I strongly believe that in a mature car market you want to see like Norway uh and even uh even surprisingly place like Nepal, we see that um people move away from hybrids and they say well actually it’s not necessary. I thought it was initially I was afraid of changing to a new technology. Maybe that’s why you know you consider that to begin with but it’s not necessary. Now, I get that in certain segments it still is. Well, you think it is anyway. I know that manufacturers are saying that for pickup trucks, they still should be hybrids. Uh, can’t get enough range. Obviously, General Motors doesn’t agree with that. They’ve got a an pickup trucks that are getting literally 500 miles of real world range tested in the real world. Getting 500 miles. That’s true. That’s a fact. 500 miles. If you can get 500 miles from a vehicle, I personally don’t think you need a hybrid version of that vehicle. And keep in mind, people say, well, it’s a big battery pack. Batteries are too expensive. But manufacturers are now moving towards bigger battery packs. It’s not a problem. Batteries are cheap. Batteries are not not the bottle, not the problem anymore. The size of the battery, make it bigger. It doesn’t actually make that big of a difference in terms of overall cost. There’s still people on social media, I’ve been reading it during the week, claiming stuff, old information, very, very old information. And if they watch this channel, you’ll be able to actually keep updated. So he won’t say stuff on social media that’s false claiming stuff like this. Uh the battery makes up 40% of the cost of the car, right? That was true 5 years ago, but battery prices have come down by 80% in 5 years. So there’s no real point sprouting that information when it’s categorically false today. It’s no longer the case at all. In fact, on average, the battery costs probably about depending on the the segment of car, you know, if it’s if obviously if it’s a segment where you need a really really big battery, then it’s probably going to be closer to 25%, but in the smaller battery segments is closer to 20%, even sometimes 15%. So, the number is is completely not accurate anymore. And the truth is, look, we got companies like um BMW with a new EX-3. Yeah, that’s not a large car, but it’s got 110 kilowatt hour 108 kilowatt hour usable battery, 800 km of range. So, I think that’s what we’re going to see. Uh, battery energy density increasing, uh, per charging speeds increasing, more charging locations around and people getting their heads around a new technology and really really realistically if you’ve got more than 500 km of range in your car, uh, you know, some cases you can have get a lot more than that, 800, 900, you got 500 kW fast charging. There’s charges everywhere. There’s really no need for a hybrid. So, I think this change will continue happening in China. And I believe that electric cars will continue to take market share away from hybrids, regardless of all the billions of dollars being poured into hybrid technology by manufacturers, particularly in China. What do you guys think? Do you agree? Um, am I wrong? Am I right? What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments. Thanks for watching. Bye-bye. [Music]
PHEV Sales in China Are Falling – Consumers Buy Fully Electric Cars Instead
📉 PHEV sales in China are falling fast as consumers shift their money toward fully electric cars (BEVs), signaling a major change in the EV market. Once seen as a bridge technology, plug-in hybrids are losing ground to pure electric vehicles from brands like BYD, Tesla, NIO, XPeng, and Li Auto, as drivers demand longer range, faster charging, and cutting-edge battery technology. This trend could reshape the future of the Chinese automotive industry and accelerate the global transition to 100% electric cars.
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