Deutsche Bank said on Wednesday it estimates Tesla and the Chinese carmakers BYD and Nio to post sequential sales figures for May.
While Tesla’s sales figures in China will only become known at a later stage via the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) data, both BYD and Nio will report their monthly results on Sunday, June 1.
Citing weekly vehicle registration data covering the first 25 days of the month, Deutsche Bank’s analyst Wang Bin estimates sales of Nio and BYD to also jump year-on-year gains.
Nio is projected to deliver “around 27,000” electric vehicles this month, up 13% from April and 31% from a year earlier, Bin wrote in a note initially shared by CnEVPost.
The result would represent Nio’s second-best month ever, trailing only last December when the Shanghai-based group delivered 31,138 units across Onvo and the core brand Nio.
The figure includes approximately 17,000 units from the premium Nio brand, 7,000 from its Onvo sub-brand, and 3,000 from the newly launched Firefly.
Last week’s figures show that the Group’s registrations in China fell slightly by 1.8% to 6,530 units across the three brands.
Firefly began deliveries in China on the final days of April. Last week’s insurance registrations stood at 1,130 units, crossing the 1,000 threshold for the first time.
While estimating 24,000 domestic retail sales in the first four weeks of May, the analyst added that new orders are expected to total around 33,000 vehicles — marking a 8% drop from April.
Deutsche Bank said fresh demand was supported by the recent launch of facelifted models, including the updated ES6 and EC6 SUVs, and the new versions of the ET5 and ET5 Touring sedans.
The company kept the same pricing on the four refreshed versions despite the updates.
Tesla’s domestic deliveries in May are expected to rise to about 39,000 units, up 32% from April but down around 30% from a year earlier.
The analyst said Tesla’s retail sales during the first four weeks of May reached 32,000 units.
Citing feedback from dealers, Tesla’s new orders for the month were roughly flat at 39,000 vehicles, with around 31,000 for the recently refreshed Model Y and 8,000 for the Model 3 — in line with delivery forecasts.
Tesla sold 28,731 vehicles in China in April, down from both March and the same period last year. The company exported nearly 30,000 vehicles from its Shanghai plant in April, more than six times the March figure.
BYD is expected to report a 3% growth in wholesale sales to 390,000 vehicles in May.
The bank sees domestic deliveries reaching about 290,000 units — a year-on-year increase of 10% and an 11% rise from the previous month.
In the first four weeks of May, BYD registered 273,000 vehicles wholesale and 257,000 units at retail, the analyst wrote. New orders are expected to hit 350,000, up 10% month-on-month, helped by broader retail discounts, according to Deutsche Bank.
BYD delivered 380,089 new energy vehicles in April, nearly unchanged from March but up more than 21% year-on-year.
Xiaomi is forecast to deliver 28,000 units in May, down 2% from April, with the analyst citing a production pause during the holiday period that took place in the first week of the month. The brand’s retail sales in the first four weeks of May were 25,000 units.
New orders for Xiaomi’s electric vehicles fell 36% from April to about 23,000 units, as some consumers wait for the launch of the upcoming YU7 SUV.
The estimated order backlog at the end of May was around 200,000 vehicles, according to Bin.
