Alibaba Group’s auto unit is pushing deeper into online car sales in rural areas, opening the doors to a huge market for carmakers amid slowing sales in first-tier cities. Sanfeng village, in Xinchang county of Zhejiang province, is one of the top three highest-spending villages during Singles’ Day this year, according to Alibaba. One local spent CNY400,000 to buy a BMW car, becoming the most valuable single transaction of the day in the village, according to rural Taobao partner Ye Lu. The e-commerce company started its rural strategy in 2014 turning some countryside areas into Taobao villages. These are a cluster of online retailers within an administrative village, representing 10% of households – or at least 100 active online shops – with a collective annual online revenue of at least CNY10 million. Wang Licheng, General Manager of Alibaba’s automotive division, said car sales growth is slowing in first and second tier cities, while carmakers are looking to expand online channels to tap customers in lower tier cities and in rural areas. With the rising internet penetration and the use of mobile devices, more rural residents are accustomed to shopping online, becoming a new force to drive e-commerce. Alibaba said as many as 100,000 vehicles by dozens of carmakers were sold during the Singles’ Day shopping festival on its e-commerce platforms Taobao and Tmall, compared with about 6,700 cars sold last year. Autohome, a leading automotive website operator, said customers placed orders for 134,225 cars worth CNY19.7 billion on its e-commerce platform on Singles’ Day, and its counterpart, Bitauto, said the number of orders was 138,970 cars valued CNY21.2 billion, the South China Morning Post reports.