China July Wholesale Top 10, BYD ATTO 2 Takes First and Tesla Model Y Settles for Third

China's best-selling passenger car in July was not a Tesla, nor one of BYD's flagship models, but a compact electric SUV that costs roughly a third of a Model Y's price. The BYD ATTO 2 took the wholesale crown with 63,258 units, the BYD Seal U family followed with 61,012, and the Model Y settled for bronze at 59,836.

The Geely EX2 (55,105), Chery Tiggo 7 (34,936), Tesla Model 3 (33,743), Geely Coolray (31,137), Leapmotor A10 (28,593), BYD Seagull (27,971) and Fang Cheng Bao Tai 7 (27,320) round out the top ten, with 18 models in total clearing 20,000 units, including the Xiaomi SU7 and MG ZS. New energy vehicles dominate the field.

Geely EX2

One caveat matters before reading too much into the ranking. Wholesale counts everything factories ship to dealers at home and abroad, exports included, while retail tracks actual deliveries to Chinese buyers. In July wholesale held nearly flat at 2.25 million units while retail cratered 20.9 percent, and the 20.7-point gap is almost entirely an export story. Some 918,000 vehicles went overseas, up 87.8 percent year on year, now making up 41 percent of wholesale volume versus just 21 percent a year ago.

The home market is genuinely soft, squeezed by pricier gasoline, a summer lull that empties showrooms and demand pulled forward into June. Combustion car retail collapsed 41 percent while NEVs slipped just 3.9 percent, lifting NEVs to a record 65.1 percent of retail sales. The comparable figure for the US market is roughly 7 percent.

Tesla's high ranking leans on exports too, since Giga Shanghai wholesaled 93,579 vehicles in July but retailed only 27,249 at home. Half this list is a sales chart and half is an export report card, and with shipping routes multiplying, the names on it appearing on foreign streets is only a matter of time.

BYD Atto2