The market share of electric vehicles (EVs) is expected to reach 30% of China’s total vehicle sales by 2030, thanks to fast growth momentum due to technological breakthroughs in fuel cells, the car-sharing economy, and the younger generation’s green lifestyle. Wan Gang, Chairman of the China Association for Science and Technology, said as the mileage of electric vehicles in China is still relatively limited, the country will deploy more resources in the research and development of fuel cells to improve the endurance capacity of batteries. Wan is China’s former Science and Technology Minister.

Many Chinese cities such as Taiyuan, Shenyang and Shijiazhuang have encouraged clean energy-powered transport as part of the nation’s efforts to protect the environment. Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, plans to more than triple the number of full-electric buses on its roads to 10,000 this year. A work plan issued by the provincial government in 2017 required that all of Guangzhou’s buses should be electric by 2020. The city currently has more than 14,000 buses powered by both electricity and gasoline. With more than 16,000 electric buses on its roads, Shenzhen has also set targets to upgrade its city buses to electricity by the end of this year and transfer all its taxis to electric power by 2020.

The government should also step up the transformation of the country’s diesel-powered trucks in the logistics and mining sectors as they generate a large amount of carbon emissions, said Luo Xin, CEO of GCL System Integration Technology Co, a Jiangsu-based energy company specializing in clean and sustainable power generation. “China also needs to accumulate more technologies and practical solutions to produce batteries for electric vehicles in a cheaper way and handle old batteries in a sustainable way,” he added, as reported by the China Daily.