Shanghai is gradually drifting back to work from Monday.
According to CAAM (China Association of Automobile Manufacturers), the domestic vehicle sales were 1.18 million in April, down 50% year on year and month on month, a ten-year low for the same period.
The demand for electric vehicles is relatively resilient, with a sales volume up 44.6% YoY to 299,000 units, but down 38.3% MoM.
In April this year, China saw its severest lock-downs since Wuhan, with major car manufacturing clusters in Changchun and Shanghai being heavily affected.
After a grim April for China's auto industry, practitioners expected a path to recovery. Shanghai whitelisted numerous local and multinational companies, including the world's largest auto component supplier, Bosch and Tesla China.
The stock market also expected a full resumption of the auto sector. Shares of carmakers such as Great Wall Motor, BYD and GAC performed well on the April sales data.
But the road to recovery is slow. Bosch China said on May 10 that it was operating at only 30% to 75% of normal capacity for all products, with about 75% of its upstream suppliers having already resumed production. Tesla Giga Shanghai produced 10,000 cars from April 19 to April 30, less than half of its average capacity.
Another supplier Aptiv went "silent" - a Covid-19 controlled treatment that inhabitants were not allow out of their houses or communities - on the second day of recovery after positive cases were reported at its wiring harness factory.