China 2020 heavy truck sales top record 1.6 mln units

During last year, preliminary estimates suggested that China's total heavy truck sales would have surged 38% or by nearly 450,000 units on year to 1.6 million units, CVWorld said, noting that Chinese truck makers contributed by far the largest number of new vehicles to the global truck market than makers in any other countries.

China's heavy truck sales by month 

Photo source: CVWorld

In December alone, large truck sales were seen moving up by 24% on year to 114,000 units, despite an on-month 16% drop, to make this still the highest December result in history.

Sales in Q1 2020 had been severely impacted by the virus outbreak, CVWorld noted, only accounting for some 16.9% of the year's total sales – much lower than the 27.7% for the same period in 2019. Though CVWorld does not provide truck production data, it notes that operations among domestic manufacturers were interrupted by the pandemic during the quarter especially for the supplies of components and spare parts for the trucking manufacturing. 

The proportion of quarterly sales against full-year sales

 
Data Source: CVWorld

Sales recovered spectacularly since April, however, with monthly average on-year growth over April to December was estimated at as high as 60%, the report said.

"Unprecedented (government) measures promoting the scrapping of those diesel-fuelled trucks with the exhaust abatement systems complying with only the National Emission Stage III standard created a huge space for the heavy truck market in 2020. In many regions, the deadline for removal – when truck owners could enjoy 'old-for-new' subsidies on new trucks – was by the end of 2020," CVWorld said, adding this was the most crucial stimulus for sales throughout the whole year.

China's target to eliminate 1 million units of diesel-fuelled trucks from some highly environmentally-sensitive regions – trucks which failed to meet the National Emission Stage IV standard – was to have been fulfilled by the end-2020, the last year of China's thirteenth Five-Year Plan period (2016-2020), Mysteel Global noted.

In addition, the tightening and regularizing of controls on overloading also forced owners to procure additional trucks for their fleets or risk fines, while Beijing's supportive policies for infrastructure projects, which had been delayed by the epidemic and sped up later on had also resulted in robust truck sales for construction use, CVWorld maintained.

On the other hand, sales of natural gas-fuelled trucks increased 28% on year to 136,900 units over the first 11 months of 2020, and CVWorld expected that annual sales could have jumped by 22% on year to over 140,000 units last year.

However, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers fears that after last year's strong performance, the truck makers will face tougher conditions in 2021, and the association expects sales of commercial vehicles, including trucks, therefore, to decline 10% on year this year, as the subsidiary that owners enjoy from scrapping their Stage III trucks for more upgraded models will wane this year, as reported.

Written by Anna Wu, wub@mysteel.com
Edited by Russ McCulloch, russ.mcculloch@mysteel.com