China plans to require that all new cars sold after 2035 be eco-friendly “new energy vehicles” . The plans were announced in a future road map for new energy vehicles and will be regulated under China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
The specifics of the plan state that as of 2035, 50% of new cars sold in the country will be either electric, plug-in hybrid, or fuel cell vehicles, and 50% of new cars will be conventional hybrids, which still run entirely on gasoline.
Currently, “new energy vehicles” — a category which includes plug-in hybrids and fuel cell vehicles, but most of which are battery electric vehicles — make up 5% of China’s new car market. This is a higher percentage of new car sales than all but seven countries, as of 2019. But it’s a far shot from 50%, which is the percentage China wants to reach by 2035. China’s road map targets a steady increase of that percentage from now until 2035.
The other 50% of new vehicles sold will still be conventional (non-plug-in) hybrids. China plans to gradually eliminate non-hybrid gas-powered vehicles in the next 15 years, targeting 75% of gasoline cars to be hybrids by 2030, and 100% of them by 2035. China also plans to stop manufacturing non-hybrid gas-powered vehicles by 2035, which could help force other countries to move away from gasoline.
It does need to be noted, though, that conventional hybrids do gain 100% of their energy from burning gasoline. There is no other external energy source powering them. Unlike plug-in vehicles, they cannot be made cleaner by a shift to cleaner grid electricity, as they cannot be charged through external means.
They do make more efficient use of the gasoline they burn by reducing one of the main ways that cars lose energy — through braking — but they will still burn gasoline for the entirety of their operational lifetime, which could last 10 or 20 years. If China is still producing new gas-burning hybrids in 2040 or 2050, this makes their 2060 net-zero carbon target that much more difficult.
China plans to require that all new cars sold after 2035 be eco-friendly “new energy vehicles” . The plans were announced in a future road map for new energy vehicles and will be regulated under China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
The other 50% of new vehicles sold will still be conventional (non-plug-in) hybrids. China plans to gradually eliminate non-hybrid gas-powered vehicles in the next 15 years, targeting 75% of gasoline cars to be hybrids by 2030, and 100% of them by 2035. China also plans to stop manufacturing non-hybrid gas-powered vehicles by 2035, which could help force other countries to move away from gasoline.
