China's passenger vehicle production and sales in November both more than doubled from a year earlier, continuing the robust growth and causing China's auto market to lead the global industry for the whole year.

It's also the first time the domestic monthly production and sales broke the 1 million units barrier.

Sales of passenger vehicles, including cars, multi-purpose vehicles (MPVs), sports-utility vehicles (SUVs) and minivans, reached 1.01 million last month, surging 103.7 percent year-on-year, and increased 9.5 percent from October, Rao Da, secretary-general of China Passenger Car Association, said yesterday.

The total output of the sector hit 1.08 million units, 101 percent higher than that of November 2008.

"It is strong evidence of how hot automobile sales are in China, despite the oil price hike and bad snow which had an impact on logistics in November," said Rao.

He predicted that the market performance of the passenger vehicle segment would continue to hit record highs in December, with production and sales figures 80,000 to 10,000 units more than those in November.

"And the sales peak is coming in January," he added.

"It will be unprecedented in any country's auto industry that the monthly sales continued to break records for seven months in a year," said Rao.

China's total vehicles sales exceeded 12 million in the first 11 months, retaining its lead as the world's top auto market since January, reported Xinhua News Agency, citing the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

The association is going to release the details this week.

Boosted by government stimulus measures such as tax cuts and subsidies for trade-ins, sales of all automobiles for the whole year are set to break the 13 million barrier, compared with 9.38 million units last year.

(China Daily December 8, 2009)