The Chinese automobile market is huge: 18 million passenger cars alone were sold in 2013. That’s ten times that of India and around 2.4 million more than were sold in the US. But so far, electric vehicle sales have been pitiful. Last year, just 17,600 plug-in cars of any sort, many of which were buses and taxis, hit Chinese roads.
Despite this, the Chinese market’s size (and the government’s push to finally curb the country’s awful pollution problems) mean it’s still seen as an area of great potential for electric vehicle sales. BMW expects that China “will become the largest market for [electromobility] in a few years”, Bloomberg reports.
In fact, it could reach that point in just five years “at most,” according to BMW’s head in China, Karsten Engel. China is rapidly expanding its charging network, one of the major existing barriers to electric car use. Power companies like State Grid, along with private companies such as Tesla, are already planning widespread expansion of charging points throughout Chinese cities.
Public charging points put up through a BMW and State Grid partnership will feed not just BMW’s i3 and i8 plug-in vehicles, but those from major Chinese firms like BYD and SAIC Motor Corp, too. They won’t be compatible with Tesla’s vehicles, but Tesla has promised its own Supercharger network and regular charging posts around the country, too.