CPCA

The CPCA's preliminary figures were 8.8 percent below its January 28 estimate of 1.36 million units, implying a worse-than-expected performance in the final days of January.

This represents a 10.37 percent increase over the 59,845 vehicles sold in the same month last year and an 18.38 percent increase over the 55,796 vehicles sold in December.

Auto dealers' sales pace was disrupted in January due to the impact of the Covid infection wave and the early timing of the Chinese New Year, the CPCA said.

Here is the CPCA's ranking of the top performers and models for December and the full year 2022.

The Tesla Model Y sold 315,314 units in 2022, which is 2.11 times that of the second-place Mercedes-Benz GLC.

All models on the list except the ET5 and ET7 are traditional fuel models, with the BMW 3 Series coming in at No. 1 with 18,533 units.

For the full year 2022, retail sales of new energy passenger vehicles in China were 5.67 million units, contributing 27.6 percent of all passenger vehicle sales.

That's down 44.37 percent from 100,291 vehicles in November and down 21.24 percent from 70,847 vehicles in the same month last year, according to data released today by the CPCA.

The CPCA did not release preliminary sales figures for NEVs in December. Previous figures showed the CPCA expected the figure to be around 700,000 units.

Covid led to lower-than-expected retail growth in the Chinese auto market, with traditional ICE vehicles performing worse than expected while NEVs performing better than expected.