Abstract:
As the market share of domestic new energy vehicles continues to rise rapidly, the share of traditional fuel vehicles in China's passenger car market is showing an accelerated shrinking trend. The latest statistics recently released by the Passenger Car Market Information Joint Branch of the China Automobile Dealers Association show that in September 2026, the sales proportion of fuel vehicles in the Chinese market fell below one-third for the first time, and the overall penetration rate of new energy vehicles simultaneously climbed to a record high of 67%.
After seeing this data, Tesla CEO Elon Musk specifically forwarded the relevant content and directly commented that China's dependence on oil is declining rapidly at a rate far exceeding outside expectations.
This is not the first time that Musk has publicly expressed similar views. On January 30 this year, he forwarded a post on the development of China's electric vehicle industry published in August 2024 on his personal social media account. At that time, he publicly stated that the amazing growth of China's solar power generation and electric vehicle fields will greatly reduce the country's dependence on oil and natural gas imports.
In September 2026, the retail penetration rate of domestic new energy vehicles in the overall passenger car market reached 67.0%, an increase of 9.1 percentage points from the same period last year and an increase of 1.7 percentage points from the previous month, once again setting a new record for the new energy penetration rate in the Chinese auto market.
Correspondingly, the sales ratio of traditional fuel vehicles has officially dropped below one-third of the critical line. In the future, the consumption structure of the entire auto market will further tilt towards new energy sources, and the living space of fuel vehicles will only continue to narrow.
Many automobile industry analysts pointed out that the fall of the proportion of fuel vehicles below one-third is a landmark node for the comprehensive electrification transformation of the domestic auto market. The remaining shares of fuel vehicles will most likely be concentrated in a few high-end off-road, special-purpose commercial vehicles and other sub-categories. The mainstream household consumer market will almost fully shift to new energy vehicles. The energy substitution process of the entire automobile industry has passed the core turning point.
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