Premier says green vehicles are a priority

Premier Li Keqiang said on Friday that China is to further promote development of new-energy vehicles and build more charging facilities to boost sales and support industrial upgrading.

A report delivered by Li at the opening meeting of the third session of the 13th National People's Congress said promoting green cars is one of the country’s priorities.

Others include the development of new infrastructure, next-generation information networks and expanding 5G applications.

A total of 205,000 new-energy vehicles were sold in the first four months of this year, a 43.4 percent decline year on year, mainly due to COVID-19, according to data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

Building charging facilities is vital for the development of new-energy vehicles and charging poles were included in the seven areas of new infrastructure in March.

In April, the National Development and Reform Commission said it planned to invest around 10 billion yuan (US$1.4 billion) this year to add about 200,000 public charging poles, 400,000 private charging poles and 48,000 charging stations.

According to data from the China Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Alliance, its members reported a total of 547,000 public charging poles as of April. By April, the country's number of electric vehicle charging facilities had reached 1.28 million units. There are 24 large-scale operators nationwide with more than 1,000 charging poles for each company.