The China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) has again raised its forecast for new energy passenger car sales for 2021 as the industry grows rapidly. The 2021 forecast for new energy passenger car wholesale sales was raised to 2.4 million units which is up from a forecast of 2 million in February and 2.2 million in April.
Wholesale sales of new energy vehicles in China reached 860,000 units from January to May this year, up 2.5 times from a year earlier.
China is having huge EV car volume from cheap $5000-12000 electric cars. The top selling EV in China is a $5000 EV. Tesla still is battling for second and third most sales with the Model Y and Model 3. The Model Y sales were fifth in April but are ramping quickly. May numbers indicate the Model Y and Model 3 were second and third in sales in China for EVs.
Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) sold 33,463 China-made electric cars in May, including exports, a 29% jump from April, according to data from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA). China’s new electric vehicle sales surged 177% to 185,000 cars in May from a year earlier, CPCA said. Overall passenger vehicle sales, however, rose just 1.1% to 1.66 million cars.
Of the 21,936 vehicles delivered to the Chinese market, 12,728 were Model Y and 9,208 Model 3.
SOURCE – Equalocean, EV Sales blog, Tesmanian, CPCA
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com (Brian owns shares of Tesla)
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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My experience with Chinese traffic is that there is just as many large luxury 4wd wagons in the city traffic as in Australia/USA/England.
Though there are also more tiny little things as well.
Perhaps the preferences of western and eastern female drivers differ? Such as looking for a car that's "cute" versus say something as a defensive visage, or a status indicator. Or the general issue that in the west, more vehicles are generally high mass at high speed in the general population forcing everyone to step up to a larger size as an accident defensive measure (the feeling of safety in a large vehicle, and the truth in that via energy absorbing crumple zones)
Then why do women prefer to drive large 4 wheel drive wagons around the city?
As the intro picture shows, China allows subcompact cars (sometimes called Kei cars, which is the specific subcompact car category in japan), intended for short range urban use (you can driver them on the highway, and many are equipped with turbochargers, but they are rather squirrelly when driving at high speed due to short wheelbase). The subcompact category is increasingly popular with women drivers/owners. In that aspect, EV subcompact cars are a potential good fit provided the charging infrastructure is present. At low size and weight, it's much cheaper to turn into an EV, though the thickness of the battery deck in a skateboard chassis design is a bit of an issue (due to potential need to step up into the seat, which is disliked by women drivers). Subcompacts also lend themselves to short boxvan types as well, for short range delivery.
Unfortunately the safety standards are somewhat compromised due to lack of raw structural mass, so you are unlikely to find them in western countries for general road use. You typically find them in asia, and any place that imports used asian cars (typically from japan)
There's a running column over at Electrek on weird subcompact EV's sold on Alibaba.
https://electrek.co/2021/04/17/awesomely-weird-alibaba-ev-of-the-week-solar-powered-electric-family-car/