Beijing (ZXZC)- China’s auto industry is developing and growing stably as a whole, Guobin Xin, vice-minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said at the International Forum (TEDA) on Chinese Automotive Industry Development on September 4.

Preliminary statistics show that the country’s auto sales and production output are expected to surpass 16 million units for the first eight months of this year, up by 10% from a year ago. Total volume of automobiles exported from January to July was 1 million units, more than doubled by 124% year on year. The cumulative sales and output of new energy vehicles (NEVs) are likely to be tripled for the first eight months, to over 1.7 million units with a market share of over 10%, the vice-minister added.

sodium-ion battery; photo credit: CATL

In addition, China has achieved good progress in vehicle intelligence and electrification territories. In terms of electrification, local companies have developed technologies which can offer vehicles another 200 kms of range with only 5 minutes of charging and the energy density of sodium-ion batteries has been raised to 160GWh per kilogram. In vehicle intelligence field, intelligent vehicles with L2 driving functions have a market share of 20%.

The vice-minister also stressed the concerns over data securities. Since the advancement of automotive technology comes with various security risks, such as un-authorized personal data leakage and crucial data harvesting, supervision measures need to be enforced to ensure a secure and optimized development environment.