China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) reported on Friday that sales of battery-electric vehicles (BEV) decreased almost 10% sequentially in December, while extended-range electric vehicles (EREV) vehicles rose both year-on-year and month-on-month.
In China, the world’s largest automotive market, December NEV wholesale penetration stood at 56.0%, up 6.6 percentage points from a year ago.
The tech giant Xiaomi and the Guangzhou-based carmaker XPeng — which sold over 350,000 fully electric models in 2025 each — started last year developing their first extended range model after launching only BEV vehicles.
XPeng started late last year with the launch of the EREV version of its MPV model X9, while Xiaomi is planning to roll out its first hybrid vehicle later this year.
On the other hand, brands like Nio and Tesla, have been repeatedly saying that they have no plans to produce hybrid vehicles.
December Sales Performance
Sales of fully electric vehicles in December increased from a year ago but fell when compared to November.
CPCA disclosed that wholesales of BEVs stood at 940,000 units, rising by 5.8% year over year but falling by 9.4% month-on-month.
However, EREVs totaled 147,000 wholesale units, representing an increase of 1.6% compared to November and a 13.4% surge from a year ago.
With 476,000 wholesale units, plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEV) suffered a year-on-year (3.9%) and a sequential (9.2%) decrease.
Therefore, out of all new-energy vehicles (NEV) — which include both fully electric and hybrid cars — EREVs saw the fastest growth in December.
Analysing by powertrain, BEVs represented 60.2% of the December wholesales, whereas PHEVs accounted for 30.4% and EREVs 9.4%.
As for the full year NEV wholesale structure, 61.8% BEVs, PHEV 29.5%, EREV 8.7%
Wholesales: December and Full Year 2025
December retail sales of passenger vehicles in China reached 2.261 million units, down 14.0% year-on-year but up 1.6% from November.
In 2025, the total retail sales were 23.744 million passenger vehicles, representing a 3.8% rise compared to the previous year.
However, from January to December 2025, wholesale increased 8.8%, with a total of 29.554 million passenger vehicles.
Therefore, total wholesale surged 8.8% last year compared to 2024.
Growth of NEV Sales
NEVs achieved a wholesale total of 1.563 million units, growing 3.3% year-on-year and declining 8.4% month-on-month.
Consequently, the NEV retail penetration reached 56% in the last month of 2025.
The 2025 cumulative NEV wholesale totalled 15.319 million vehicles – a 25.2% rise compared to the previous year.
Therefore, China successfully fulfilled the NEV growth targets set under the Fourteenth Five-Year Plan (2021–2025).
“As the NEV purchase tax exemption policy expired at year-end, the December market should have entered a year-end rush phase,” CPCA stated on Friday before noting an offsetting effect.
“However, most provinces and cities exhausted their trade-in subsidy budget pools, creating an offsetting effect on purchase incentives. Combined with adjustments to the auto trade-in policy, market trends showed clear divergence,” CPCA added.
Best Selling Models
According to CPCA, there were 27 models that exceeded 20,000 units sold in December.
Tesla Model Y ranked first with 66,189 units — including more than 20,000 units of its recently launched Model Y L.
BYD‘s Song model followed with 55,107 units and the Seagull (known as Dolphin Surf in Europe) closed the podium with 44,627 units.
Combining both domestic sales and exports, BYD sold 414,784 vehicles in December with the Chinese giant Geely Group following with 154,264 units.
Tesla, which only sells fully electric models, sold 97,171 units.
The company’s wholesale figures reached 97,171 units, split between 66,189 Model Y and 30,982 Model 3 vehicles.
Domestic sales accounted for 93,843 units, with the remaining 3,328 exported.
2025 VS 2026
Looking for 2026, CPCA sees this year to show a ‘U-shape’ trend “with overall sales flat compared to 2025 domestic retail volume.”
“The 2025 national vehicle market showed an “inverted U-shape” trend (low start, high middle, low end),” CPCA said on Friday.
“The 2026 passenger vehicle market is expected to show a “U-shape” trend (high start, low middle, high end), with overall sales flat compared to 2025 domestic retail volume. Exports are expected to maintain double-digit growth above 10%,” it added.
