English

By Yin Lei

China’s new energy vehicle (NEV) sector will see fiercer competition, better technologies, and more international cooperation, as reported by the Economic Information Daily on Tuesday.

NEVs as a cleaner means of transport have enjoyed strong popularity in the domestic market.

China’s NEV sales more than doubled year-on-year from January to May this year, as revealed last week by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM). During these months, a total of 328,000 NEVs were sold, of which 250,000 were all-electric ones.

Experts attribute the huge consumer interest in the NEVs to their more advanced technologies and better quality, which allow them to cover a much longer range that has risen from the initial 120 km to the current maximum of over 400 km.

The credit also goes to the availability of more charging facilities and the improvements in the after-sales services in the country.

Since June 2017, over 8,000 public charging piles were being added in China every month, according to the statistics of the China Electric Vehicle Charging Technology and Industry Alliance. By the end of May, such facilities, as reported to the above Alliance, numbered over 266 thousand.

Another driving factor is favorable policies such as consumption taxes, tolls, and manufacturer subsidies, etc.

Such policies also have an important role to play in stimulating technology advancement. The latest subsidy adjustments, effective since last week, cut support to NEVs with a range of less than 300 km but offered more to those with a better performance.

Experts forecast three trends for China’s NEV sector.

Competition will be fiercer. As the major domestic and foreign NEV manufacturers step up the launch of new products in the Chinese market, some internet firms are also entering as newcomers. Such competition, as it intensifies, will bring benefits such as technology improvements and cost reductions.

Technologies will upgrade faster. The NEVs will be lighter along with the use of light-weight materials and become smarter, interconnected and autonomous. By 2020, they will be powered by mass-produced new-type batteries.

More collaboration will be possible. Domestic NEV manufacturers will have more opportunities to work with their foreign peers as the Belt and Road Initiative intensifies and the cooperation on production capacity goes on between China and other countries.