China leads worldwide automobile sales for January 2025

Global sales of passenger and light commercial vehicles reached 6.7 million units in January 2025, reflecting a nearly 2% increase compared to the same month in 2024.

China has led the global auto sales with 1.96 million vehicles sold, Caliber.Az reports citing statistics published by GlobalData, followed by the United States with 1.1 million.

Out of those sales, 1.3 million of them were electric vehicles. According to the London-based analyst Rho Motion, as cited by Motor1, this demonstrates a significant drop (-35%) from December 2024, but it notes that the last month of last year saw record figures.

Compared with January 2024, the sales levels grew by +18%. In the field of electric vehicles, China dominated as well, with more than half of the volume generated there, which alone reached 0.7 million.

The growth was 12% compared to the previous year, while the decline compared to December 2024 was -43%, however, the presence of the Chinese New Year and the associated holidays are believed to have contributed to this.

Meanwhile, Western Europe’s auto market declined by 3.2% to 1 million units, and Eastern Europe’s sales fell to 288,500 vehicles. In contrast, South America saw a surge in sales, reaching 225,600 units — an increase of 22.3% from January 2024.

By Nazrin Sadigova