Over 73% of used car dealers are operating at a loss.

According to Yicai, in the first half of this year, new energy vehicles accounted for only 5.3% of the second-hand car transactions. The operating conditions of used car dealers are facing severe challenges, with over 70% of them suffering losses in the first half of this year. On September 28th, according to the research conducted by the Used Car Business Department of the China Automobile Dealers Association in the first half of 2025, the proportion of losses among second-hand car dealers has risen to 73.6%. In the first half of this year, the transaction volume in the second-hand car market reached 9.5701 million vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 1.99%, with a cumulative transaction amount of 623.238 billion yuan. According to association monitoring data, although the scale of second-hand car transactions has increased, the average price has decreased, with the average transaction price dropping from 61,180 yuan in the same period of 2024 to 53,673 yuan, a decrease of 12.3%, showing a trend of increasing volume and decreasing price. According to calculations by multiple membership-based second-hand car platforms, the average cost of acquiring a customer in 2025 has risen to 6,200 yuan, while the average profit per transaction is only about 1,500 yuan. After the capital retreats, the platforms are unable to sustain high subsidies, leading to a steep decline in user growth. In addition, the mainstream business models of second-hand car platforms on the market are almost identical, lacking differentiation and competitive edge, and can only rely on price wars to compete for market share.