March this year, the national automobile industry continued to maintain a good momentum of development, with production and sales reaching 2.462 million and 2.526 million vehicles respectively, an increase of 63.9% and 73.6% from the previous month and an increase of 71.6% and 74.9% year-on-year; New energy production, sales and export volume once again set a new historical record for the month.
Due to the low base in March 2020, the production and sales of various models have shown substantial year-on-year growth in March this year. However, compared with the data in March 2019, the national automobile production and sales volume declined in March, and the rate of decline further expanded. According to the analysis of the China Automobile Association, in the context of the recovery of market consumption, the decline may be related to the problem of chip supply.
From January to March this year, the national automobile production and sales reached 6.352 million and 6.484 million respectively, an increase of 81.7% and 75.6% year-on-year, and the growth rate was narrowed by 7.2% and 0.6% respectively from January to February. Compared with the data from January to March 2019, automobile production and sales increased by 0.3% and 1.8%, respectively, and the growth rate was 2.6% and 0.9% lower than that from January to February, respectively.
From the perspective of subdivided models, driven by factors such as the switching of the National Sixth Standards, the over-regulation and the initiation of infrastructure projects, the production and sales of trucks and commercial vehicles have reached a record high. It is worth noting that the production and sales of pickup trucks from January to March were higher than the average level of commercial vehicles and trucks, reaching 140 thousand and 141,000 respectively, an increase of 1.1 times and 1 times respectively year-on-year.
In March this year, the production and sales of new energy vehicles reached 216,000 and 226,000 respectively, an increase of 74.9% and 110% month-on-month, and an increase of 2.5 times and 2.4 times year-on-year, continuing to refresh the historical production and sales records of the month. From January to March this year, the production and sales of new energy vehicles were 533,000 and 515,000, respectively, a year-on-year increase of 3.2 times and 2.8 times respectively. Among them, the production and sales of pure electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles showed rapid growth month-on-month and year-on-year.
The export data of auto companies in March continued to break the historical record of the month, reaching 132,000 vehicles, an increase of 26.5% month-on-month and 45.5% year-on-year. Among them, 99,000 passenger vehicles were exported this month, an increase of 28.8% month-on-month and 45.3% year-on-year; the export of commercial vehicles was 33,000, a month-on-month increase of 19.9% and a year-on-year increase of 46.2%. From January to March, auto companies exported 357,000 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 74.6%.