Car makers in China will face more fierce competition this year, after a tough 2018 when the world's biggest auto market contracted for the first time in more than two decades.
This is according to the country's top auto industry association.
Companies such as homegrown Geely and Britain's biggest automaker Jaguar Land Rover have already in recent days flagged caution about China sales in 2019, hit also by Beijing's trade war with the US.
China car sales fell 13% in December, the sixth month of declines in a row.
This brought annual sales to 28.1 million, down 2.8% from a year earlier, China's Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) said.
This was against a 3% annual growth forecast set at the start of 2018 and is the first time China's auto market has contracted since the 1990s.
China's car market "still faces relatively large pressures in the short-term", senior CAAM official Shi Jianhua said at a briefing.
He attributed the weak 2018 sales to the phasing out of purchase tax cuts on smaller cars and the Sino-US trade war.
CAAM expects the weakness to persist and has forecast flat sales of 28.1 million vehicles for 2019, while other government and industry bodies see a 0-2% growth.
Ford was the worst performer among global car makers in China last year, with its sales shrinking 37%.
Geely, China's most successful carmaker, sold 20% more cars in 2018, but this was sharply lower than a 63% growth in 2017. It is forecasting flat sales this year.
Japan's Toyota, however, bucked the trend, with a 14.3% rise in sales in China, compared to 6% growth in 2017, helped by better demand for its luxury brand Lexus and improved marketing efforts.
The bleak numbers add to worries for investors, already spooked by signs of a broader drop in demand from the world's second biggest economy, especially after Apple's rare revenue warning citing weak iPhone sales in the country.
Analysts are, however, counting on measures promised by China to buoy spending as well as rising demand for new energy vehicles (NEVs) to bring some relief.
NEV sales jumped 61.7% in 2018 to 1.3 million units, CAAM said. It sees NEV sales hitting 1.6 million this year.
