An estimated 80 percent of Chinese people who traveled during Golden Week opted to drive, making roughly 1.53 billion trips | Bloomberg image
China’s multi-faceted stimulus package has boosted electric vehicle sales during the week-long national holiday, with one manufacturer describing it as the ‘best Golden Week in many years’.
Zhou Jinkai, marketing director of General Motors Co.’s joint venture. with SAIC Motor Corp. and Wuling Motors Holdings Ltd., said it was the best Golden Week for the brand in terms of sales in years. “The stock market is up, and the car market is up!” he wrote in a post on Chinese social media platform Weibo on Monday as the weeklong holiday came to an end.
He wasn’t the only one sharing good news. Zhu Jiangming, the CEO of Stellantis NV’s Chinese electric car partner Zhejiang Leapmotor Technology Co., said in a message on Wechat that Leapmotor received a record 17,000 orders in the first week of October, and thanked his staff for their efforts during the holiday. . Lei Jun, chairman of Xiaomi Corp., said orders for more than 6,000 SU7 EVs have been blocked — meaning a deposit has been made — in the past seven days — more than half of average monthly deliveries.
Photos of crowded car showrooms from the past week on Chinese social media add to evidence that the fiscal bazooka introduced in late September is already starting to improve consumer confidence after a stunning stock market rally. It remains to be seen whether the boost can reverse the overall trend of declining car-related spending, which fell 2.4 percent in the first eight months of the year compared to 2023, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
In addition to spending on cars, people also went for a drive during the holidays. Road tripping has become the favorite way to travel during the holidays, leading to traffic chaos and, for those in electric cars, long queues at charging stations.
An estimated 80 percent of Chinese who traveled during Golden Week chose to travel by car, making roughly 1.53 billion trips, according to Ministry of Transport forecasts on September 27. Planes, trains and other commercial services such as bus travel made up the other half. 20 percent.
With electric cars now accounting for one in three new car sales in China in some parts of the country, many of those road trips were made in an electric car, although the government does not release exact figures. That helped push power consumption by public chargers on highways to a record 15.58 gigawatt hours in the first two days of the holidays, official data showed.
That’s a 56 percent increase over the same period during the 2023 holiday, according to state network data. Average daily road traffic on highways is also estimated to be up 3 percent this year compared to last year, according to early reports from Baidu Maps.
The popularity of road trips is increasing as more people choose to travel within China and prefer the flexibility that driving brings. With international travel taking a back seat, exploring lesser-known attractions is in vogue, with internet searches for ‘niche tourism sites’ increasing by 200 percent. According to Baidu Maps, remote places in Gansu and Yunnan provinces are among the most popular destinations.
One downside of the road trip craze: long queues at charging stations and traffic jams.
Many travelers took to social media to complain about the time wasted by standing motionless as traffic came to a standstill or waiting for hours for an EV charging point to become available.
Despite all the perks of Chinese smart cars, such as large screens and built-in entertainment systems, some people resorted to killing time by playing card games on the side of the road, reports on Chinese platform Xiaohongshu showed, although the savings of electricity is probably also a factor.
First publication: Oct 8, 2024 | 9:11 am IST