China issues planning for 2021-2035 development of NEV industry

China's State Council formally issued on Nov. 2 the planning for next 15 years' development of new energy vehicle industry, which notes that new energy vehicles (NEVs) will account for 20% of the country's overall new car sales in 2025.

NEVs mean automobiles adopting new types of power systems that are fully and mainly reliant on drive by new types of energy. The NEVs as referred to in this Planning mainly include battery electric vehicles (BEVs), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and fuel cell vehicles (FCVs).

The development vision under the Planning stresses an evident improvement in China's NEV market competitiveness for the year of 2025. Aside from the sale target, China aims to lower the average power consumption of an all-electric passenger vehicle to 12.0kWh/100km, achieve commercial applications of highly-automated vehicles in designated areas and specific scenarios, and further boost the facilitation of NEV charging and battery swapping services.

Through 15-year strenuous efforts, the core technologies of China-made NEVs should hit a global advanced level, and the country will be good enough to vie with global peers in both NEV quality and brand familiarity. NEVs will become a mainstream option for new car shopping, FCVs will be commercially used, and highly-automated vehicles will be put into scale application.

Over the next 15 year, China will enable the market to play the decisive role in resource allocation and the enterprise to play the principal role in the selection of technical routes and the construction of production & service systems.

The government should create a sound environment for industrial development, fully exercising its capabilities of drawing up strategic planning, setting laws and standards, overseeing quality and safety, maintaining market orders, and encouraging green consumption.

Regarding the R&D deployment, China resolves to strengthen the technical innovation in NEV assembly. To elevate NEVs’ comprehensive performances, it will research and develop the next-generation modular high-performance complete vehicle platforms, make great efforts to achieve breakthroughs in the integration design for BEV chassis, the assembly of multi-energy power system, the generic technologies such as the intelligent energy management, light weight and low friction of complete vehicles, and step up the safety level in battery management, charging connection and structural design.

To improve the NEV industry's basic capabilities, a supply system of core auto parts and technologies, which focuses on the power battery and battery management system, the driving motor and power electronics, as well as the intelligence and connectivity technologies, will be formed. Thus, endeavors will be made to research and develop the technologies of advanced modular power batteries and fuel cell system, to explore the next-generation car-used solutions for motor drive system, to bolster the development of the core parts and system related to intelligent-connected vehicles (ICVs), to make breakthroughs in the technologies of basic computing and control platform, to remove the bottleneck of supporting technologies for FCV application.

Compared to the planning set for 2012 to 2020, the newly-issued one makes clear of the role of fast charging model in the construction of EV charging and battery swapping network. Under the “Internet Plus” initiative, China will vigorously promote in residential communities the charging service model which is primarily based on the intelligent orderly slow charging and takes the contingency fast charging as accessory. Besides, it will move faster to deploy a public charging network covering highways and urban & rural areas which relies primarily on fast charging and is supplemented by slow charging model.

To enhance the reliability and facilitation of charging products and services, China will encourage the application of battery swapping model, and step up the R&D of such new technologies as orderly charging, high-power charging and wireless charging.

As part of efforts to perfect the policy and law system, local governments in China will be encouraged to offer greater support to the NEV operation in public service and car sharing areas, and provide preferential policies for NEV parking and charging. Starting 2021, NEVs should account for not less than 80% of the vehicles newly added and replaced to public transport areas of the fields like the national ecological civilization pilot zone and key regions for prevention and control of atmospheric pollution.

To boost the innovation application of core systems, China will work on building a development and application ecosystem featuring in-depth cooperation among developers of complete vehicles, core components, basic data and software, and pivoting around car-used operating system.

Additionally, to meet the application demands of NEV intelligence, companies from industries of complete vehicles, auto parts, Internet, electronic information and communications will be encouraged to work together on improving the safety, reliability and convenience of car-mounted operating system and application programs.