New energy vehicles are being loaded onto the ship for export at a container terminal of Taicang Port, east China’s Jiangsu province. (PHOTO: VCG)

By LIU Yin & CHEN Chunyou

In 2022, Chinese manufacturers delivered a total of 6.8 million electric cars and plug-in hybrids. These automobiles accounted for 25.6 percent of China's overall vehicle sales in 2022, surpassing the goal of 25 percent set for 2025 in the national plan. This was something frequently mentioned and applauded by participants at the China EV100 Forum held in Beijing from March 31 to April 2.

At this forum, participants from central departments, research institutes, and car manufacturing companies gave their insights on promoting the high-quality growth of the new energy vehicle (NEV) industry.

The NEV market is expanding, but its development still faces some challenges, said Wan Gang, president of the China Association for Science and Technology. For example, the current product performance and quality cannot meet the consumers' demand for a full day's use in all applied scenarios.

Vice Minister of Industry and Information Technology Xin Guobin, said the global NEV industry is entering a new development period, and some technical challenges need to be solved together, such as improving vehicle safety and low-temperature adaptability, and ensuring the reliability of autonomous driving systems.

In addition, Xin stressed the importance of a stable supply of upstream resources, such as lithium, cobalt and nickel, for the high-quality development of this sector, while calling for increasing the charging facilities in residential communities, expressways, and rural areas.

Xiangli Bin, vice minister of science and technology, said the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) will continue promoting integrated innovation between NEV sectors and related technology fields, such as hydrogen, energy storage and smart grid, and intelligent transportation, while encouraging automobile enterprises to cooperate with spare parts enterprises and academic organizations.

An Conghui, chairman of Geely Auto Group said the innovation ability of Chinese NEV enterprises has been greatly enhanced by strengthening original innovation.

An said vehicle electrification and intelligence have created more demands and produced more application scenarios. To enhance their market competitiveness, NEV enterprises have increased product attributes in environmental protection, and energy efficiency, which in turn expands the NEV industrial pattern.

In order to sharpen industrial strengths, MOST will continue strengthening investment in basic research and applied research in the NEV sector, increase support for technological frontiers, such as all-solid-state batteries, and mobile resources to overcome technological challenges in operating systems and basic tool chains, added Xiangli.