By Reuters Staff
July 19, Reuters
China’s electric vehicle market is not small at all. Its estimated size in 2025 was approximately $357,98 billion. Expectations are that it may even reach up to $788,20 billion by the year 2030. In 2024, battery electric vehicles held about 58,36% of the electric vehicle market share. Passenger cars captured about 88,25% revenue share during 2024. This is already a hint of just how comprehensive this market is. Some of the more well-known electric vehicle brands that can be found in China are Geely, BYD, NIO, Li Auto, SAIC Motor, Foton, Xpeng Motors, Changan Automobile, JAC Motors, and Great Wall Motors.
A sales snippet of a broken system
Chinese electric vehicle brands Neta and Zeekr ZK.O inflated sales in recent years to hit aggressive targets, with Neta doing so for more than 60,000 cars, according to documents reviewed by Reuters and interviews with dealers and buyers. The leading energy vehicle group Zeekr forms part of Geely Holding Group. It was established in February. The Neta band, on the other hand, is owned by Hozon Auto. Neta was launched in 2018.
The brand currently has 8 models in its lineup and fares reasonably well in the Chinese market. The companies arranged for cars to be insured before they were sold to buyers, the documents show, enabling them under Chinese industry car registration practices to book sales early so they could hit the monthly and quarterly targets, the dealers and buyers said.
Dual thought processes in a competitive world
Neta booked early sales of at least 64,719 cars through this method from January 2023 to March 2024, according to copies of records it sent to dealers, seen by Reuters. That was more than half the sales of 117,000 vehicles it reported over the 15 months.
Zeekr, a premium EV brand owned by Geely, used the same method to book early sales in late 2024 in the southern city of Xiamen through its main dealer there, state-owned Xiamen C&D Automobile, according to dealers, buyers, and sales receipts seen by Reuters.
Vehicles booked as sold before reaching a buyer are called “zero-mileage used cars” in the Chinese auto industry. The practice has emerged out of cutthroat competition for sales in the world’s largest auto market, which is reeling from a brutal, years-long price war caused by chronic overcapacity.
Using zero miles as an advantage
A “zero-mile” used car is most often than not a new electric vehicle. These vehicles are registered and then immediately resold on the used car market. They have very few or no miles clocked on the odometer. Some may even still have the protective plastic covering on the seats and have that distinct “new car smell”, although the classification lists it as a pre-owned vehicle.
The industry faces a moment of reckoning, with state media calling out the zero-mileage car practice, the cabinet pledging to regulate “irrational” competition, and other central government bodies organizing meetings with the industry’s largest players to express concern about such methods. On Saturday, a publication run by the China Association of Auto Manufacturers said the industry ministry was planning to clamp down on the practice by banning cars from being resold within six months of being registered as a sale.
In the bigger scheme of things, this might all seem a bit irrelevant, but sales numbers are quite an important factor in the Chinese electric vehicle market. The methodology behind this logic is that it aids investors in determining who is holding the lead position in the EV race. Adjusting these figures at a whim will taint the picture available to competitors, analysts, as well as investors. The aim would be to ensure reliability and transparency in overall sales statistics.
GCN.com/REUTERS.