Global luxury carmakers bet on China's NEV market

HAIKOU -- Global luxury carmakers attending the third China International Consumer Products Expo have set their sights on the world's largest new energy vehicle (NEV) market.

Volkswagen brought its luxury brands, including Porsche, Bentley, and Lamborghini, to the expo held in Haikou, the capital of South China's Hainan province, from Monday to Saturday.

Porsche showed its purely electric car model Taycan 4s, and Bentley exhibited a plug-in hybrid. Meanwhile, Britain's Lotus showcased a fully electric SUV.

China's NEV market has seen booming development over the past few years, luring more carmakers to vie for a piece of the market.

China's NEV sales nearly doubled to 6.89 million units last year, accounting for over a quarter of the total automobile sales in the world's largest auto market, said Xu Xingfeng, an official with China's Ministry of Commerce, at the expo.

Young customers particularly love the all-electric models, said Sheng Tantzscher, vice-president and chief financial officer of Porsche China.

Over 50 percent of Porsche's new vehicle sales worldwide are expected to be all-electric or plug-in hybrids by 2025, and that figure would reach more than 80 percent by 2030, she said.

More and more Bentley customers are choosing to buy hybrid cars due to the green and low-carbon consumption trend, even as most are not worried about gasoline costs, said an exhibition staff worker with Bentley.

Oliver Blume, chairman of the Board of Management of Volkswagen AG, told Xinhua that the German automaker is pushing forward its electrification strategy and has made a good start.

Blume said Volkswagen hopes to leverage its experience to produce more high-quality new energy vehicles and further achieve good sales in the Chinese market.

Mirko Bordiga, managing director of Maserati China, said that Maserati has confidence in the Chinese NEV market and will soon launch new fully electric models in the forthcoming Shanghai International Automobile Industry Exhibition.

By 2025, all Maserati models will have electric versions. By 2030, the entire Maserati range will be electricity-powered only, said Bordiga, adding that Hainan's planned ban on oil-fueled vehicles is a revolutionary response to the burgeoning trend toward electric vehicles.

Hainan has announced a plan to phase out the sales of traditional oil-fueled vehicles throughout the province by 2030.