Hyundai and Kia’s Monthly China Sales Fall Below 10,000 Vehicles

Hyundai Motor and Kia’s combined retail sales in China fell below 10,000 vehicles in September for the first time this year, underscoring the Korean automakers’ continuing difficulty in the world’s largest car market.

The two companies sold approximately 9,000 vehicles during the month, down 39 percent from a year earlier, according to a Hana Securities report based on China Passenger Car Association data. Their combined market share slipped to 0.6 percent, a stark reversal from the mid-2010s, when it exceeded 10 percent.

Hyundai Motor recorded the sharper decline. Its September sales dropped 47 percent from the same month last year to around 4,000 vehicles. Kia sold about 5,000 vehicles, a year-on-year fall of 31 percent. The figures show that both brands lost ground at the same time rather than weakness being confined to one company or model line.

The decline comes despite efforts to develop electric vehicles specifically for Chinese customers. Hyundai’s China-focused electric sport utility vehicle, the Elexio, sold 251 units during the first nine months of 2026. That was well below the 1,216 units sold in the final three months of 2025, indicating that the model’s early sales momentum did not carry into this year.

Hyundai’s Ioniq V, the company’s first China-specific vehicle under the Ioniq brand, sold 558 units in September. While that gave Hyundai another locally tailored electric model in the market, the volume was not enough to prevent a steep overall decline for the month.

The September results highlight the scale of the challenge facing Hyundai and Kia as they seek to rebuild their Chinese operations. Their fall from a double-digit combined market share to less than 1 percent shows that introducing market-specific electric vehicles has yet to produce a broad sales recovery.

For both automakers, the immediate business issue is not simply expanding their electric-vehicle range but converting new product launches into sustained retail demand. September’s figures suggest that the companies remain under heavy pressure to improve their competitive position in China, with both sales volume and market share moving sharply lower from a year earlier. The simultaneous declines also make China a shared strategic problem for the two affiliated brands rather than an isolated setback.