Beijing, 3 July 2026 — Preliminary CV World data puts China’s H1 2026 heavy-truck sales at 660,000 units, up 22% year-on-year, with June alone at 115,000 — the highest June on record (+18% YoY). The number European readers should underline: new-energy heavy-truck sales grew 67.6% in January–May against the same 2025 period, sustaining growth even after December’s front-loaded 53.9% penetration spike. Exports added a second engine, estimated +35% in June.

Why the “hangover that wasn’t” matters. Sceptics (including careful ones like this desk) expected December’s pull-forward to dent early-2026 volumes. It didn’t materially happen — which upgrades the interpretation of China’s electrification from “incentive-driven spike” to “structural transition”: price parity on LFP cost curves, swap-network coverage on industrial corridors, and policy that prices diesel are all still in place, and none depends on which month orders land. Full-year 2026 trajectory now points well past 2025’s 231,100 new-energy units.

The export line is Europe’s business. June’s ~35% export growth is the quiet number: Chinese heavy trucks are heading abroad at accelerating rates — to the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia, and increasingly Europe (SANY delivering in Germany, XCMG homologating for 2027, the Morocco–France corridor agreement in April). For European fleets this is supply-side good news: more competition, more leverage, falling prices. For European OEMs it’s the reason their lobby groups keep asking Brussels for CO₂-target protection — the T&E report’s industrial-policy framing in action. For our scorecard, it’s the reason the Chinese entries’ track-record dimension will keep improving quarter by quarter: deliveries are the one thing volume manufacturers produce reliably.