The China Automobile Dealers Association's Passenger Car Market Information Sub-Committee (CPCA) said on October 23 that, based on weekly trends, October narrow passenger-car retail will reach about 1.6 million units, down 1.1% month on month and 28.9% year on year.
New-energy vehicles remain the engine of volume: October NEV retail is expected around 1.07 million units, down 16.5% year on year and 1.3% month on month, for a retail penetration rate of about 66.9% - only 0.1 percentage point below the 67.0% all-time high set in September, consistent with normal seasonality after the quarter-end peak.
Weekly data show demand remains unsteady: after the National Day holiday order release, daily retail ran about 58,000 units in the second week and fell to about 47,000 in the third. Weak household income expectations and wait-and-see sentiment at terminals are draining momentum, and most leading carmakers have completed less than 60% of their annual targets after nine months, leaving heavy fourth-quarter volume pressure.
CPCA noted that anti-involution governance and dealer profitability concerns are limiting discounting, so makers are broadly adopting cautious inventory strategies in October rather than the price wars of prior years. September already showed a clear peak-season-that-wasn't pattern, with October's conventional silver-October window far weaker than seasonality alone would suggest.
Image: Vehicles on display at an international mobility show. Source: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).
