(Yicai Global) Feb. 2 -- China’s sales of new energy vehicles got off to a shaky start in January with the withdrawal of government subsidies at the end of last year, the week-long Lunar New Year holiday not to mention US rival Tesla cutting its prices. All Chinese EV startups experienced a drop in sales from December and the gap between them widened.

Li Auto was the best seller last month, shifting 15,100 units, a jump of 4 percent from the same period last year, but a 28.7 percent slump from the previous month, according to the January sales data released by carmakers yesterday.

While Leap Motor performed the worst, with sales plummeting 85.9 percent year on year to just 1,139 cars. It was the biggest yearly fall of all the electric carmakers.

Only Beijing-based Li Auto and newcomer Aito, co-founded by telecoms giant Huawei and automaker Seres, achieved year-on-year growth in January, but Aito’s growth was largely due to the low base in 2022 when it was starting out.

NEV sales have reached a bottleneck stage and the ending of subsidies will severely challenge growth, the China Passenger Car Association said earlier.

Nio came second with 8,506 deliveries last month, a drop of 12 percent from a year ago and half that of December. There was a significant uptick in NEV sales in December as people hurried to buy before the car purchase tax subsidy ended and before the Spring Festival holiday.

Xpeng Motor clung onto third place but sales plunged 53.8 percent from December to 5,218 units, which was also a 60 percent drop from the same period last year. The Guangzhou-based firm said there had been a delay in some deliveries due to the seven-day break.

Zeekr was the second-worst performing with 3,116 deliveries, although this was also due to the closure of its factory over the holiday period for the upgrading of equipment.

Many electric carmakers, such as Xpeng and Aito, have started to slash prices in order to boost sales, while Nio and Zeekr are launching promotions for a limited time period.

Editor: Kim Taylor