China's carmakers increasingly electric per S&P report

China's auto industry is going green, with more new energy vehicles produced and sold on the market thanks to government support and stronger infrastructure, as well as competitive domestic automakers, according to a report released by S&P Global Ratings on Aug 4.

The report, titled "The Future Is Increasingly Electric for China's Automakers", said China is on track to reach its target of having new energy vehicles account for 20 percent of new auto sales by 2025, compared with 5.4 percent in 2020.

As China has targeted NEVs as an important strategic industry, nine of the country's top 10 electric car makers are domestic, the report said, adding S&P has raised its assumptions for NEV wholesale volume in China to 2.4 to 3.4 million units for 2021-2022, from the previous 2.0 to 2.8 million units, which represents a growth of 40 to 75 percent annually.

The number of NEV models under production grew to 327 from 105 in 2017, as carmakers launch more models to meet consumer demands, the report said, citing EV Volumes, a global EV database.

As OEMs are providing a greater variety of products with differentiated price tags, lower-tier cities are seeing NEV sales expand, according to the China Passenger Car Association. NEV passenger car sales in small cities and counties accounted for 28 percent of total sales in the first half of 2021, up from 20 percent in 2017.

The number of charging piles has soared in the past five years, reaching 1.9 million as of June 2021. As China now owns about 6 million of electric vehicles, this means one charging pile is shared by roughly three EVs.

Supportive government policies also include requiring newly built residential areas to put space aside and meet conditions for installing charging piles at a later stage.

The report also noted Chinese local brands are likely to continue to dominate the country's NEV market for the next one to two years. CPCA data showed among the top 10 electric passenger vehicle sellers, Tesla remains the only foreign brand.