Shanghai leads in China's NEV sales in 2021

Tesla Model Y and Model 3 both sold more than 20,000 units in Shanghai in 2021, making them the most popular models among local residents. The Nio ES6 is ranked fifth with 6,228 units.

Shanghai, home to Tesla's China factory as well as Nio's global headquarters, is the city with the most new energy vehicles (NEVs) sold in China in 2021.

In 2021, Shanghai saw 240,757 new energy passenger vehicles being sold, the D1EV Institute said in a report Friday, citing insurance registration data.

That's well above Shenzhen's 148,976 units, Beijing's 130,815 and Guangzhou's 121,624.

Join us on or

(Graphic by D1EV Institute)

For the full year 2021, China has 2,910,507 new energy passenger vehicle insurance registrations, according to the report. This means that about 8.2 percent of new energy passenger cars were registered in Shanghai last year.

Behind this is a difference in the policies of these cities regarding vehicle purchase restrictions. While all of these cities currently require a local household registration or a certain number of years of social security payments, Shanghai is the most friendly city for NEVs.

Shanghai offers a free license plate to buyers of NEVs, except that the plate expires when the vehicle is scrapped and cannot be transferred to the next vehicle.

Shanghai uses an auction system for fuel car license plates, but bidders are not allowed to bid at random, and only those who bid closest to the average value in the guideline range are eligible to buy a license plate.

Beijing offers only 100,000 new license plates per year, including 30,000 for fuel cars and 70,000 for NEVs in 2022. These are all provided through a lottery system, and residents usually have to wait several years to obtain them.

Both Guangzhou and Shenzhen use a combination of a lottery system and an auction system to issue fuel and new-energy vehicle quotas.

In Shanghai, 180,000 new energy passenger cars were sold to individuals in 2021, with the rest sold to companies, according to the D1EV Institute.

Tesla Model Y and Model 3 both sold more than 20,000 units, making them the most popular models among Shanghai residents.

BYD Han EV ranked fourth with 6,982 units, Nio ES6 ranked fifth with 6,228 units, Volkswagen ID.4 X ranked sixth with 5,917 units, Xpeng P7 ranked seventh with 5,021 units, and Nio EC6 ranked eighth with 4,760 units.