May delivered the year’s defining month so far: 30,800 new-energy heavy trucks, up 104% year-on-year and 10% on April — the second-highest monthly figure on record after December 2025. January–May cumulative sales reached 102,600 units, +67.6%, with five-month penetration at 19.07% on CV World’s counting basis. On the new-vehicle-market basis tracked by domestic data services, May penetration touched 40.88% — brushing the 40% threshold the government’s 2030 plan would formally target the following month.

The drivers were now familiar and mutually reinforcing: replacement incentives (an estimated 500,000 pre-National-IV trucks in the phase-out pipeline), LFP cost parity, and corridor infrastructure. What’s notable in the May detail is the breadth — growth came from tractors, dump trucks and mixer trucks simultaneously, across mining, port, steel and general logistics, not from any single policy-favoured niche.

For Europe: May’s numbers are why the ‘China question’ at IAA 2026 will not be whether Chinese trucks are coming but at what price and with what service stack. SANY’s European team was already saying it by June: their 2026 China target was 40,000 units — nearly triple Europe’s entire annualised e-truck market. Scale is the message May sends.