New energy vehicles in China

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The stock of new energy vehicles in China is the world’s largest, with cumulative sales of more than 1.7 million units through December 2017. These figures include passenger cars and heavy-duty commercial vehicles such buses and sanitation trucks, and only accounts for vehicles manufactured in the country.The Chinese government uses the term new energy vehicles (NEVs) to designate plug-in electric vehicles eligible for public subsidies, and includes only battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs).

Sales of new energy vehicles since 2011 passed the 500,000 unit milestone in March 2016, and the 1 million mark in early 2017, both, excluding imports. Cumulative sales of new energy passenger cars achieved the 500,000 unit milestone in September 2016, and 1 million by the end of 2017.Domestically produced passenger cars account for 96% of new energy car sales in China.

As of December 2017, the Chinese stock of domestically built plug-in electric vehicles consisted of 1,385,088 all-electric vehicles (80.1%) and 343,359 plug-in hybrid vehicles (19.9%) sold since 2011. Most of the stock of new energy vehicles was sold during the last three years. Deliveries between 2015 and 2017 account for 93.4% of all domestically built new energy vehicle sales since 2011, of which, 45.0% were sold in 2017, 29.3% in 2016, and 19.2% in 2015.

As of December 2017, China had the world’s largest fleet of light-duty plug-in electric vehicles with over 1.2 million units, after having overtook during 2016 both the U.S. and Europe in terms of cumulative sales.China has been the world’s best-selling plug-in electric car market for three years running since 2015, with annual sales of more than 207,000 plug-in passenger cars in 2015;320,000 in 2016; and record sales of about 600,000 passenger plug-in car sales in 2017, which accounted for about half of global plug-in car sales that year. A particular feature of the Chinese passenger plug-in market is the dominance of small entry level vehicles, in 2015 representing 87% of total pure electric car sales, while 96% of total plug-in hybrid car sales were in the compact segment.

China is also the world’s largest electric bus market. The global stock of plug-in electric buses in 2015 was estimated to be about 173,000 units, almost entirely deployed in China. The Chinese electric bus stock grew nearly sixfold between 2014 and 2015. The plug-in buses stock reached about 385,000 units in 2017, representing over 99% of the global stock. In addition, China is also the global leader in the electrification of other transport modes, with more than 200 million electric two-wheelers, and 3 to 4 million low-speed electric vehicles (LSEVs).

BYD Auto ended 2015 as the world’s best selling manufacturer of highway legal light-duty plug-in electric vehicles,and for a second year running was the world’s top selling plug-in car manufacturer with over 100,000 units delivered in 2016.During 2016 BYD became the world’s all-time second largest plug-in electric passenger car manufacturer after the Renault-Nissan Alliance. The BYD Qin was the top selling new energy passenger car for two years in a row, 2014 and 2015.The BYD Tang was the best selling plug-in passenger car in 2016. Until December 2016, the Qin ranked as the all-time top selling plug-in electric car in the country with 68,655 units sold since its inception.The BAIC EC-Series all-electric city car was the top selling plug-in car in 2017, and with 78,079 units sold, it also listed as world’s top selling plug-in car in 2017.

The government’s political support for the adoption of electric vehicles has four goals, to create a world-leading industry that would produce jobs and exports; energy security to reduce its oil dependence which comes from the Middle East; to reduce urban air pollution; and to reduce its carbon emissions.In June 2012 the State Council of China published a plan to develop the domestic energy-saving and new energy vehicle industry. The plan set a sales target of 500,000 new energy vehicles by 2015 and 5 million by 2020.As sales of new energy vehicles were slower than expected, in September 2013, the central government introduced a subsidy scheme providing a maximum of US$9,800 toward the purchase of an all-electric passenger vehicle and up to US$81,600 for an electric bus. The subsidies are part of the government’s efforts to address China’s problematic air pollution.