By the end of 2022, there were 10.45 million battery electric vehicles (BEVs) in China, accounting for 79.78 percent of all NEV ownership.

China's new energy vehicle (NEV) market continued to grow rapidly in 2022, but the share of such vehicles in total vehicle ownership is still very low, implying significant potential market space.

By the end of 2022, China had 13.1 million NEVs, or 4.1 percent of the total 319 million vehicle ownership, according to data released today by the Traffic Administration Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security of China.

After deducting the number of scrapped and written-off vehicles, the latest NEV fleet increased by 5.26 million, or 67.13 percent, compared to 2021.

Of these, battery electric vehicles (BEVs) accounted for 10.45 million units, or 79.78 percent of all NEV ownership.

Newly registered NEVs in China are 5.35 million in 2022, accounting for 23.05 percent of the total 23.23 million newly registered vehicles, an increase of 2.4 million, or 81.48 percent, compared to 2021.

As a comparison, the number of newly registered NEVs in China was 1.07 million in 2018.

By the end of 2022, China had 319 million vehicles, an increase of 17.52 million, or 5.81 percent, compared to 2021.

A total of 84 cities in China have more than 1 million vehicles, an increase of 5 cities compared to 2021.

Thirty-nine cities had more than 2 million vehicles by the end of 2022, and 21 cities had more than 3 million vehicles.

Beijing, Chengdu, Chongqing and Shanghai had more than 5 million vehicles, Suzhou, Zhengzhou, Xi'an and Wuhan had more than 4 million, and 13 cities including Shenzhen, Dongguan, Tianjin, Hangzhou and Qingdao had more than 3 million.

For the full year 2022, China's retail sales of new energy passenger vehicles were 5.67 million units, up 90 percent year-on-year, according to data released yesterday by the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA).

Retail sales of all passenger vehicles in China in 2022 were 20.54 million units, an increase of 1.9 percent year-on-year. This represents a 27.6 percent penetration rate of new energy passenger vehicles in China in 2022.

The penetration of NEVs in China will continue to increase rapidly in the future, with retail sales of new energy passenger vehicles expected to reach 8.5 million units in 2023, with a penetration rate of 36 percent, the CPCA said.