Domestic passenger vehicle retail dropped 28% from a year earlier in September, a much steeper decline than total shipments posted. The China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) published the September data on October 12. Wholesale covers what manufacturers shipped in the month, domestic deliveries and exports, not end purchases, and it fell 8.9% year over year while manufacturer-reported passenger vehicle exports grew 73.7%. With those year-over-year numbers side by side, I read them as exports offsetting some of the domestic decline, and exports' share of wholesale went from 19% a year earlier to 36%.
Against the prior month, the export share dropped two months running from 41% in July, while September wholesale and exports both rose, which does not sit as neatly with that reading. The CPCA named ten automakers as NEV exporters, meaning battery electric, plug-in hybrid and range-extended vehicles, and those exports also rose from August. BYD's figure fell while Chery and Leapmotor gained, and these are shipments abroad only, not counting combustion-engine exports.
The CPCA pointed to this year's Mid-Autumn Festival falling earlier than usual, in late September, with clearly weaker domestic sales that week. It cited a high base from September 2025, when subsidies for car buyers in some provinces were about to expire and purchases concentrated before they lapsed. The report listed other causes, and how much of the retail drop those two explain is not clear from one month.
On October 12 the Ministry of Finance and the State Taxation Administration announced a reduction in the export VAT rebate rate for battery electric and plug-in hybrid passenger vehicles. The rate drops from 13% to 9%. It applies to exports from April 1, 2027, going by the export date. The announcement does not settle how large the effect will be.
The CPCA report carries two export counts. For August, manufacturer-reported passenger vehicle exports including kits for overseas assembly rose 77.8% from a year earlier, while customs data for all vehicle types grew 37%. No September customs figure appears. What would you watch in the report covering October data, out next month, to gauge what exports are doing for automakers' total shipments with domestic volume down?
Of the automakers on the CPCA's September NEV export list, two are in CNQQ and the other eight are not. The latest issuer holdings file puts BYD at about 1.75% of net assets, held as the Shenzhen-listed A share, and XPeng at roughly 0.41%. CQQQ's index is a FTSE benchmark of Chinese companies the provider classifies under technology.