CAAM Sees China Passenger Sales Below 19 Million as Exports Top 11 Million
China's auto industry association is now writing two official numbers onto a split it has described for months. At its November 11 briefing on October data, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said it expects domestic passenger-car sales in 2026 to fall below 19 million units. At the same event, vice secretary-general Chen Shihua said full-year vehicle exports should exceed 11 million.
Those forecasts sit on opposite sides of the same market. They also revise, in public, the more comfortable picture CAAM offered at the start of the year, when it preliminarily projected about 34.75 million in total vehicle sales, up 1%.
Vehicle sales were 3.016 million, up 2% from September but down 9.2% from a year earlier, according to CAAM's October report. Of that, 1.95 million were sold in China, down 26.6% — the seventh straight month in which domestic sales have fallen more than 20% year on year, CAAM said. Exports were 1.066 million, up 60.2%, and have now exceeded one million units for five consecutive months. For the first ten months, total sales were 26.286 million, down 5.1%: 17.014 million at home, down 22.9%, and 9.271 million abroad, up 65.1%.
The passenger-car figures are starker still. CAAM said January–October passenger-car sales were 22.622 million, down 6.6%, of which 14.528 million were domestic, down 25.2%, and 8.094 million were exported, up 69.6%. Chen told the briefing that 2026 domestic passenger-car sales "will be below 19 million units, but this is not a trend." Last year, the same domestic market did 24.065 million, up 6.4%. He did not present the sub-19-million figure as a new normal. He did put it on the record for this year.
Fuel cars are doing most of the damage. Chen said domestic sales of conventional fuel passenger cars fell 49.4% in October. CAAM said October fuel-car sales were 500,000 units below the same month last year, and that the year-to-date shortfall is 3.516 million. New-energy vehicles are not shrinking. They accounted for 64.3% of October vehicle sales, with 1.94 million units sold, up 13.1%. For the first ten months, NEV sales were 14.411 million, up 11.3%, and 54.8% of the total. That record share is being set inside a contracting home market, not an expanding one.
Exports are carrying the headline totals, and new-energy vehicles are carrying the exports. CAAM said October NEV shipments were 606,000, up 1.4 times from a year earlier. The first ten months came to 4.612 million, up 1.3 times. Chen said monthly vehicle exports have now cleared one million five times running and that the full year should exceed 11 million. In October, exports already accounted for 35% of all vehicles CAAM counted as sold.
CAAM is not treating that overseas volume as risk-free. In its commentary on the same data, the association said the European Union's safeguard investigation into hybrid vehicles would restrict related exports to Europe, and that a cut in export tax rebates would also weigh on manufacturers' margins. The rebate change — the NEV rate is due to fall from 13% to 9% on April 1, 2027 — is already on the books. The association is, in other words, raising its export forecast and flagging the policies that could take the shine off it.
The domestic warning should be read with Chen's qualifier attached. "Not a trend" leaves room for a rebound if policy or demand turns. It does not change the arithmetic for 2026. A passenger market that did 24.1 million at home last year is now officially expected to come in below 19 million, while the export machine is being counted on for more than 11 million vehicles. For Chinese automakers, the year's remaining question is no longer whether overseas sales can offset a weak month at home. It is how much of the business, and of the profit, will still be made in China by December.
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