NEVs to account for 80% of GWM sales in 2025

China's largest SUV and pickup maker Great Wall Motors aims to scale up its annual sales to 4 million vehicles in 2025, with 80 percent of them being electric cars, plug-in hybrids and fuel cell vehicles, said founder and chairman Wei Jianjun on Monday.

Last year, Great Wall Motors delivered 1.1 million vehicles. To realize the 2025 target, Wei has announced a massive investment plan of 100 billion yuan ($15.49 billion) in research and development in five years.

"The Chinese auto industry is faced with two major tasks: one is decarbonization and the other is to consolidate our advantage in terms of new energy vehicles and smart vehicles," said Wei in a speech at the carmaker's headquarters in Baoding, Hebei province.

Great Wall Motors, which is celebrating its 31st anniversary this year, plans to be carbon-neural in 2045, earlier than China's overall target of 2060. Its first plant with zero emissions will be unveiled in 2023.

Meng Xiangjun, rotating president of Great Wall Motors, expects sales of the carmaker's electric car brand Ora to reach 1 million in 2023. A a new upscale electric car brand will roll out its first vehicle in 2022 to help boost Great Wall Motors' total NEV sales.

Besides the NEVs, Meng said hybrids will play an important role as well in the carmaker's push to slash carbon emissions.

Wei called on Chinese carmakers to step up efforts to consolidate their advantages in NEVs, as international companies are catching up and rolling out their models.

"It would be essential for us to work harder if we would like to remain in the leading position, and I believe the time window will disappear in three to five years," he said.

Great Wall Motors has been working on smart functions including autonomous driving.

Mu Feng, the carmaker's vice-president, said 40 percent of its new cars sold in 2025 will be preinstalled with high-level autonomous driving functions.

It is working to scale up the number of software engineers to exceed 10,000 in two years from now, more than triple the current figure. Its total number of engineers will double from around 15,000 this year to 30,000 in 2023.