(Yicai Global) April 10 -- China’s passenger vehicle sales last month expanded at the slowest month-on-month pace for March in a century as sluggish demand and a mixture of prices hamper the industry, according to the latest data.

Sales of passenger vehicles climbed 14.3 percent in March from February and just 0.3 percent from a year earlier, according to figures released by the China Passenger Car Association today. Car sales slumped 13.4 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier to 4.3 million units.

New energy vehicle sales bucked the trend, soaring 21.9 percent in March year on year to 543,000 units and accounting for 34.2 percent of all sales. This was a big jump from the penetration rate of 28.1 percent a year ago.

BYD led the way with sales of 206,089 EVs, followed by Tesla with 88,869 units and GAC AION with 40,016. Eleven carmakers sold more than 10,000 NEVs each last month.

Some 290,000 passenger vehicles were exported in March, a more than two-and-a-half-fold jump from a year ago, the report said. Of this, almost a quarter were electric cars.

A better market environment, more supportive policies to boost consumption, more in situ auto shows, the upgrading of vehicles to China’s Stage-6 emission standards and the drop in the price of battery raw materials are all helping electric carmakers with their cost-performance ratios and are boosting sales.

However, the recent price war in the NEV sector is also causing consumers to hold off buying as they wait and see what happens.

Despite widespread promotions last month, there weren’t many actual discounts, the CPCA said. The main aim of the advertising frenzy was to clear inventories of old models that do not conform to the new emission standards.

Editor: Kim Taylor