New energy vehicles to dominate market

New energy vehicles in China will command 90 percent of the auto market by 2030, a top official at the Development Research Center of the State Council forecast yesterday.

Wang Qing, deputy director of the DRC's research institute, expects sales of new energy vehicles to total around 17 million units by 2025 and 32 million units by 2030.

Shenzhen-headquartered auto maker BYD (1211) sold 207,080 vehicles in March, a figure that represented year-on-year growth of 97.4 percent.

Of the total sales 206,000 units were pure electric vehicles, while 991 units were commercial vehicles.

And the cumulative new energy vehicles sales in the first three months of this year rose 92.8 percent to 552,000 units.

Meanwhile, BYD and Volkswagen urged Beijing to extend a purchase tax exemption on new energy vehicles as part of the policy support for the sector.

An extension of the purchase tax exemption was announced in September 2021, but that will expire at the end of this year.

Li Auto (2015) delivered about 20,800 new vehicles last month, an increase of 25.3 percent month-on-month and 88.7 percent year-on-year. The company's cumulative delivery volume as of the end of March was nearly 310,000 units.

But Nio (9866) announced that it delivered 10,400 new vehicles last month, which represented a 14.6-percent decrease compared to the previous month. Of the 10,400 vehicles 3,203 were high-end smart electric SUVs.