The Zhitong Finance App learned that on November 6, the Passenger Transport Association and Wilson jointly released the monthly NEV industry report for September 2026. In September, the passenger car market sold 1.656 million units, down 26.4% year on year and up 7.3% month on month; sales volume in the new energy market was about 1.088 million units, down 16.2% year on year, up 10.3% month on month. In September, sales in the new energy market accounted for 65.1% of total passenger car sales, up 7.9 percentage points from the same period last year.
Overall performance of the new energy market
In September, sales of pure electric vehicles were about 760,000 units, down 9.3% year on year, up 11.3% month on month; plug-in hybrid sales volume was about 318,000 units, down 29.1% year on year, up 8.1% month on month.
In 2026, the cumulative sales volume of new energy was 7.495 million units, a cumulative year-on-year decrease of 13.2%.
Top 10 New Energy Passenger Vehicle Market Sales Cities
In September, the top 10 cities accounted for 26.4% of sales, an increase of 0.6 percentage points over the previous month (25.8%); the top 3 cities were: Shanghai, Chengdu, and Beijing.
Among them, the city with the biggest year-on-year increase was Shanghai (12.3%); the city that rose the most in the ranking was Shanghai, which rose 1 place in the ranking.
By fuel type, the sales volume in the top 10 cities is mainly pure electric; in terms of ownership of property rights, it is mainly individual users.
The top 3 cities with new energy penetration rates this month were Shanghai (73.8%), Xi'an (73.5%), and Shenzhen (71.9%); the city with the lowest penetration rate was Suzhou (62.5%).
Pure electric market segment analysis
In September, the top 3 sales segments of the pure electric market were B-SUV (17.0%), A0 class (15.8%), and A-SUV (12.3%). Compared with the previous month, the market share of the A-SUV and A00 class increased significantly (+1.1 percentage points, +1.0 percentage points), and the B-class market share declined relatively much (-1.2 percentage points).
Compared with the same period last year, the A0-SUV market share expanded from 3.8% to 7.2%, and the D-SUV market share expanded from 1.8% to 4.7%; while the A00 class market share shrank from 14.2% to 5.6%.
Analysis of the ownership of pure electric market property rights
In September, the share of individual users in the pure electric market was 87.2%; down 9.5% year on year; unit users accounted for 7.0%, up 3.4% year on year.
Cumulatively, the pure electric market is dominated by individual users, accounting for 85.7%; unit users account for 7.8%.
