New energy vehicles in China: policies, demonstration, and progress

Since 2009, China has become the largest new vehicle market in the world. To address the energy security and urban air-pollution concerns that emerge from rapid vehicle population growth, China has initiated the Thousands of Vehicles, Tens of Cities (TVTC) Program to accelerate the new energy vehicle (NEV) commercialization. In this paper, we summarize the efforts made by the Chinese government since 1995 in the areas of research and development, demonstration, and communalization of NEVs; evaluate the progress of NEV demonstration; and provide some recommendations for future development. Our analysis has determined that the deployment of NEVs for the TVTC Program is lagging behind the original plan and, on average, only 26-36% of the goals have been attained by October 2011. Although China has approved many NEV models for sale, significantly more than 50% of them are not in production. On the other hand, stimulated by the policy shift, electric vehicle production has increased considerably, thereby contributing 23% and 44% of the total NEV production in 2010 and 2011, respectively. Additionally, because of the constraints imposed by price and technology maturity, lead-acid battery technology is a substantial factor in the high-volume sales of top NEV car models.