The Chinese government has signalled it will join the line of nations queuing up to ban the sale of diesel and petrol vehicles in the coming decades.
T he Chinese government has signalled it will join the line of nations queuing up to ban the sale of diesel and petrol vehicles in the coming decades.
A senior official has told the Chinese car sector that the industry department in Beijing has begun “research on formulating a timetable to stop production and sales of traditional energy vehicles”, according to a report from the state news agency Xinhua.
T he comments by deputy industry minister Xin Guobin are viewed as a major boost to development of electric vehicles and the associated infrastructure. China is now the world’s largest car market with 25.53m cars and light vehicles sold in the country last year, according to industry analysts JATO.
Sales were up 14.6pc on the previous year and far outstripped the next biggest market, the US, which saw anaemic growth of 0.4pc to 17.55m last year.
Motorists in China are also already the biggest buyers of cars powered by electric and hybrid systems – which use a combination of batteries and internal combustion engines.
Since 2015,336,000 of these vehicles have been sold in the country, representing 40pc of global sales. In the first seven months of this year, 204,000 electric vehicles were sold in China and Ford has predicted that demand for electric vehicles in the country will reach 6m a year by 2025.
