China wholesales Full Year 2025: Geely overtakes VW, Toyota, places Xingyuan at #1. Domestic brands at 65% share

Immediate success for the Geely Xingyuan: #1 as soon as its first full year of sales.

Discover 45 years of Chinese Historical Data here.

According to data by CAAM, new vehicle wholesales in China soar 9.4% year-on-year in 2025 to a new record 34,531,000 units, marking three consecutive years above 30 million. This includes exports. New Energy Vehicles are up 28.2% to 16,490,000 units including 10,622,000 BEVs (+37.6%) and 5,861,000 PHEVs (+14%). The market has been helped by the “two new” policy framework or scrappage scheme offering incentives for trading in old vehicles. This stimulated replacement demand. Exports ar sup 21.1% to 7,098,000, confirming China as the biggest car exporter in the world. Excluding exports, the domestic auto market is up 6.7% to 27,302,000 units, also a record. However December was off a steep -15.6% to 2,519,000 units. In the passenger car segment, domestic brands are expected to reach a stunning 65% share. NEV domestic sales are up 19.8% to 13,875,000 units and 50.8% share, and 54% in the passenger vehicle segment.

The Wuling Hongguang Mini EV returns near the top of the charts in 2025.

BYD remains the dominant force with over 3.1 million units sold, but sees its volume drop -11.7%. Sales were still up year-on-year at the halfway mark in June, but October saw a -38.2% fall, November -35% and December -27.4%. It’s fair to say the carmaker couldn’t have sustained the record-pace of sales it displayed in 2024 but this result is still a little worrying, especially as BYD has been heavily involved in the ruthless price war affecting the market this year. As expected, a lot of the brand’s models sink, notably the Seal (-88.4%), Destroyer 05 (-61.1%), Song Plus (-52.1%), Tang (-51.3%), Yuan Plus (-50.8%), Han (-47.6%) and Seagull (-31.4%). There are still some good news though, like the Qin (+56.3%), Yuan Up (+40.4%), Seal 06 (+22.7%) and Qin L (+15.3%), as well as the successful launches of the Sealion 06 (136,166) and Seal 05 (115,000 units).

Leapmotor sales are up 83.9% and cross the half-million mark.

The success story of the year is without a doubt Geely, up a fantastic +66.4% to just under 2.1 million wholesales and leapfrogging both Volkswagen (-9.1%) and Toyota (-0.1%) to land in 2nd place overall. Geely now has the best-selling model in the country in the Xingyuan hatchback, and its new Galaxy NEV sub-brand achieves a 102.2% year-on-year growth to over 526,000 units. Geely broke its all time monthly volume record in January (when it ranked #1), October and November. Volkswagen symbolises the hellish environment in which are marred foreign joint ventures, having fallen from comfortable #1 to #3 in the space of just a few years. Toyota manages stable sales which is quite a good performance in context. Wuling (+6.2%) advances two spots to #5, followed by Changan (-7.9%) and Chery (+4.1%) all taking advantage of Honda’s collapse (-27.2%). Tesla (-4.8%) stays at #9 while Audi (-2.7%) rounds out the Top 10.

The Xiaomi YU7 is the best-selling 2025 launch and peaked at #3 in December.

More success stories lurk below. Leapmotor is up 83.9% to #13 with over 520,000 sales vs. 284,000 in 2024. It broke its monthly volume record every month between May and October, lifting it from 41,409 to 63,724 and peaking at #8 in October. Hongqi (+9.3%) and AITO (+9.6%) continue to gear up below. Xiaomi surges 195.3% to comfortably surpass the 400,000 units and peaked at #12 overall in October and December. The brand brilliantly crossed the 50,000 monthly sales milestone for the first time in December. Xpeng (+119.7%) gains 8 spots to #21 and hit all time high volumes in August, September and October. BYD-owned Fang Cheng Bao (+213.1%) partly compensates BYD’s slump and breaks its volume record four times at the end of the year, lifting it to 48,161. Firefly (#59) is the most popular new brand launch ahead of Shangjie (#64) and Maextro (#80).

Xpeng is up 119.7% in 2025.

Looking at the models ranking separately, as mentioned above we have a new leader this year: the Geely Xingyuan hatchback (+784.5%) ends its first full year of sales at #1, snapping the monthly pole position in February, April, May, July and August and hitting an all-time high of 48,060 in September. The Wuling Hongguang Mini EV (+66.8%) enjoys a second wind thanks to the launch of a four-door variant and gains six spots on last year to #2, ranking #1 in September, October and November. Leader in 2024, the Tesla Model Y recedes by -11.4% despite a record December volume at 65,874 sales. It ranked #1 in March, June and December. The next four models all fall: the BYD Seagull (-31.4%) is hit the hardest followed by the BYD Qin Plus (-19.3%), VW Lavida (-16.2%) and Nissan Sylphy (-6.5%). The Xiaomi SU7 (+85.1%) storms into the Top 10 at #9, while its SUV brother the Xiaomi YU7 is the best-selling 2025 launch, landing at #39 with over 150,000 sales. It even peaked at #3 in December and outsold the Model Y in October.

Previous year: China wholesales Full Year 2024: BYD above 3.5 million sales, domestic brands at 61% share

Two years ago: China wholesales 2023: BYD ends 37 years of Volkswagen domination

Full December 2025 Top 100 All brands and Top 606 All models, Full Year 2025 Top 106 All brands and Top 697 All models vs. Full Year 2024 figures below.