(Yicai Global) Dec. 11 -- China’s new energy vehicle sales gained for a fifth month in a row last month, fueling expectations that the annual total will outdo last year’s despite the coronavirus and the phasing out of government subsidies.

NEV sales doubled to 200,000 units in November from a year earlier, data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers showed today. Passenger vehicle transactions climbed 137 percent to 186,000, while commercial NEV sales fell 28 percent to 14,000.

The outlook for this year had been downbeat in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak and after the government began phasing out various subsidies to the sector from November last year.

But China is now expected to move 1.3 million NEVs this year, far in excess of initial industry expectations, Bai Hua, an official with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said today.

For the first 11 months of the year, NEV sales rose 3.9 percent to 1.11 million, according to CAAM’s latest data. That compares with 1.21 million for the whole of 2019.

Editor: Ben Armour