China Sold More Plugin Vehicles in 2025 Than the USA Bought Vehicles o…

Support CleanTechnica’s work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe.

I read through hundreds if not thousands of comments every week, and sometimes our highly intelligent, tremendously informed readers share information that really makes my eyes pop. Once in a while, something is shared that I really can’t believe I didn’t see or realize earlier. I just had one of those moments.

Top commenter “Matthew2312” wrote: “Chinese production was 34.4 million vehicles last year (passenger and commercial). Compare that to 10.6 in the US. (And yes, China makes more plug-ins than US makes vehicles of all types combined.) Of the 34 produced, 7 were exported and 4 are commercial, so domestic retail is just under 24 million (compare that to 16 million US). They are hitting a natural growth limit. The domestic fleet will grow from 370m to 600m in the next ten years. It cannot absorb too much more production and the export markets everywhere are hugely contested.”

The key line there was “And yes, China makes more plug-ins than US makes vehicles of all types combined.” Wait, what?!?

Now, there are some nuances here to pay attention to. There’s the number of vehicles produced in a country, and then there’s also the number of vehicles sold in a country. China produces a lot more vehicles within its borders than it sells there, and the US buys a lot more vehicles than it produces. But, still. Here are the stats:

• China sold 16.49 million plugin vehicles in 2025 domestically and abroad. (About 12.8 million were sold domestically.)
• In the US, people bought 16.38 million vehicles overall. (The country produced about 10.2 million.)

Just to be clear, we are talking about new vehicles in the normal consumer vehicle market — not heavy-duty trucks, buses, etc.

China’s plugin vehicle market grew by 28% in 2025 compared to 2024, and plugins accounted for 48% of new vehicle sales. The country is clearly far ahead of the United States now in the newest, fastest growing, most innovative segment of the automobile market. Compared to China’s 12.8 million domestic plugin vehicle sales, the US had only around 1.5 million domestic plugin vehicle sales in 2025.