China to focus on greener vehicles

Date: 17/7/2012

China has announced plans to improve its transport infrastructure with an increase in the manufacture of purely electric and plug-in hybrid automobiles.

According to China Daily, the country plans to hugely increase its level of production and its sales of new-energy vehicles in order to slowdown levels of oil consumption and pollution by 2020.

The news source bases a blueprint released last week by the country's State Council which also detailed that total production and sales of electric and hybrid vehicles will hit the milestone of five million units by the end of the next decade.

China's government expects that production and sales will hit 500,000 units by the time 2015 rolls around while manufacturers will have an annual production capacity of two million units for the vehicles by 2020.

A number of both foreign and domestic carmakers have announced that they are to make greener vehicles in China over the course of the next few years and the government expects manufacturers to have new-energy vehicle programs in place when they install new production capacity.

By placing an increased focus on greener vehicles, the Chinese government hopes that it will be able to reduce the average fuel consumption for passenger vehicles.

It has set the target of reducing the consumption to 6.9 litres per 100 km by 2015 while also looking at reducing this even further to five litres per 100 km in 2020.

The government also set out plans to continue to allocate funds for those customers who buy new-energy vehicles.

It comes after a government announcement in May, where it was detailed how authorities would offer 26.5 billion yuan in subsidies for energy-saving vehicles and household appliances.

Carmaking heavyweight Audi will be among the first companies to get involved with the plans.

It will kick off commercial production of purely electric models in 2017 at its joint venture with Volkswagen Group and China's FAW Corp.

All of Audi's China-made models will also have all-electric versions by 2020.

Posted by Nick Anderson