The number of new motor vehicle registrations in China – including cars, trucks and motorcycles – rose 10% in 2021, compared to 2020, and was also up 14% compared to 2019, as the country’s vehicle parc reached 395 million, according to statistics released last month by a government ministry.
Nationwide, the number of newly registered vehicles in the county reached 36.7 million, up from 33.3 million in 2020 and higher than 32.1 million in 2019, according to statistics released last month by the Traffic Management Bureau of China’s Ministry of Public Security.
That total include 26.2 million newly registered passenger cars and trucks, an 8% increase over 2020’s total. Among them, 4 million trucks were newly registered, which was 3% lower than in 2020.
About 3 million new energy vehicles were registered nationwide in 2021, a 152% increase from 1.2 million in 2020. In China, new energy vehicles are considered to be pure electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid vehicles and fuel cell vehicles. The number of new energy vehicles reached 7.8 million vehicles last year, the ministry found, accounting for 3% of the country’s total number of vehicles. The ministry said the newly registered new energy vehicles population in the country grew from 650,000 in 2017 to the 3 million number last year.
Ten million motorcycles were newly registered in China last year, representing a 22% jump from 2020, maintaining a rapid growth trend in the vehicle category.
According to the ministry, the number of scrapped and canceled vehicle in the country increased by 6% to 23.5 million in 2021.
More than 79 cities in China each have more than 1 million cars, the ministry said, an increase from 70 such cities in 2020. Thirty-five cities have more than 2 million vehicles, and 20 have more than 3 million. For more coverage of electric vehicles and their impact on lubricants, subscribe to Lubes’n’Greases’ Electric Vehicles InSite.