CHINA will likely miss the national automaker association’s target to more than double sales of green energy vehicles this year, domestic media quoted an association official as saying Friday.

    Dong Yang, a top official with the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM), said the country will likely miss the target to sell over 700,000 electric and plug-in electric-petrol hybrid vehicles this year, with 500,000 being a more realistic figure, the Shanghai Securities Daily reported.

    The projection compared with the 331,000 green energy vehicles sold last year. Yang attributed the weaker-than-targeted sales to the late implementation of subsidy policies for 2016, the newspaper reported.

    A raft of government policies, including billions of dollars in subsidies, helped sales of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles in China to more than quadruple in 2015. However, the discovery of widespread cheating within the subsidy program has cast uncertainty on the policy’s future.

    Sales of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles in China, the world’s largest auto market, totaled 289,000 units in the first nine months of 2016.

    (SD-Agencies)