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Beijing, China — Electric vehicle industry insiders recently revealed that China’s Ministry of Science and Technology has no plan to publicly release the “12th five-year” (2012-2016) plan for electric vehicles. Nevertheless, the Ministry has already begun carrying out the plan. The application process for the first phase of 77 projects has been completed and the projects have won funding with the ministry totaling RMB780 million (approx US$120 million). There are also plans in place to provide additional funding as the projects progress.
Reportedly, the main goals of the ministry’s plan include advances in key electric vehicle technologies including batteries, electric motors and electric control systems with a focus on the development of light pure electric vehicles over the next five years, and calls to:
- Reduce production costs of batteries by 50 percent and to have
- Have one million electric vehicles on the country’s roads by 2015
- Expand the country’s annual production capacity of power batteries to 10 GW
- Establish a system standard for electric vehicles
- Increase the number of model EV cities by a factor of 10 annually, with an aim of exceeding 70 cities by 2015
- Install over 2,000 charging stations and 400,000 charging bays in the model cities
In order to achieve these goals, the ministry has set goalposts for the plan. For batteries, the plan dictates power battery modulation as the solution, scaling them up to a mass production capability. The plan also establishes a goalpost for the development of whole-vehicle integration technology to achieve a breakthrough in the performance and price ratio of hybrid vehicles to gain greater market share. Another goalpost includes the innovation of the technology support infrastructure with advances in light electric vehicle technology platforms and electric vehicle standard systems, focusing on battery recharging and replacement technology.
Professor Ouyang Minggao, Group Leader of 863 Major Project on Energy-saving and New Energy Vehicles, previously expected the country to have the capacity to produce 200,000 to 300,000 light electric vehicles annually by 2015.
According to the plan, Hangzhou, Zhejiang province will install 56 battery charging and replacement stations with 590 AC charging bays this year. By the end of 2016, Beijing will establish a smart battery recharging and replacement network consisting of 182 replacement stations, 68 recharging stations, 6 battery charging points and 210 battery distribution centers. Beijing aims to fully meet the capital’s needs each step of the way as its use of electric vehicles increases.
