Tesla Sales & Market Share Trends in China – CleanTechnica

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Yesterday, I noticed that BYD’s share of the Chinese auto market really had grown a lot over the course of the year, and I produced an article featuring monthly market share charts to visualize that. In the comments, a reader, Mike Sarcione, noted, “Zach didn’t include Tesla’s Chinese market share in his recent article, but that would be good FYI.” I believe that was referencing my article from the day before, “Is Tesla On Track for Sales Growth (or Sales Decline) in 2024?.” It was a great suggestion, so here we are.

In this case, I’m adding one additional chart on top of the two types of charts I created for BYD. In addition to charts on Tesla’s share of the Chinese auto market and Tesla’s share of the Chinese NEV market, I’m also including a chart showing Tesla’s monthly sales in China. Let’s get into it.

First of all, just looking at Tesla’s monthly sales in China, we can see that the first two months of the year (which include the Chinese New Year, a very down period for auto sales) were particularly weak months. March showed a fairly strong rebound, but then the company had a pretty weak period until August. Overall, as mentioned in the aforementioned Tesla-focused article, the company’s sales in China were down year over year through the first 8 months of the year. (Also, while July looks like a down month in the chart above, Tesla’s sales were actually up 47% year over year; and while August looks like a much better month, Tesla’s sales were actually down 2% year over year.)

But how did these ups and downs relate to the market overall in the first 8 months of the year? I’m glad you asked. Let’s have a look.

Well, we’ve got Tesla’s quarterly up and down trends that have been common at the company since the beginning. That leads to what seem to be strong fluctuations. However, overall, the range is from 1.3% of the Chinese auto market to 2.6%. In general, we can that Tesla is hovering at around 2% of the Chinese auto market.

Looking at Tesla’s share of the new energy vehicle (NEV) market, which includes both full battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) and plugin hybrids (PHEVs), it’s a similar story. Though, Tesla clearly did better in the first quarter. On average, the company had 6.6% of the Chinese NEV market in the first 8 months of the year.

In short, though, I don’t see any strong trends with regard to Tesla sales or market share in China. That’s a clear contrast to BYD, which has seen its share of the Chinese auto market rise quite steadily throughout 2024.

There’s not such a strong trend when looking at BYD’s share of the Chinese NEV market. I take that to mean that the NEV market is growing fast and hyper-competitive, which it is. There’s a lot of competition on the NEV market. BYD does dominate it, but it’s actually a constant challenge to just maintain market share — as Tesla’s third chart above shows very well.

Any other thoughts on these sales trends and market share trends in China?