THE government said it will work to improve the standardization of its electric vehicle industry — a sector it is aggressively promoting to help combat smog and to position the country as a leading electric car making giant in the future.

This year its standardization efforts will focus on recharging technology, battery design and fuel consumption, the industry ministry said in a statement.

China will also work to promote its own standards and benchmarks for electric and plug-in electric vehicles overseas, taking advantage of economies of scale to become a global leader in standardization, it said.

Some 777,000 new energy vehicles were sold in China in 2017, a jump of 53 percent from a year ago and the most sold in any one country. The government aims to bring annual sales to 2 million units by 2020.

China has already drawn up more than 100 technological benchmarks relating to electric vehicles, but the lack of standardization has been identified as one of the major challenges facing the sector. Some local governments have even set different requirements to restrict firms from other regions from accessing their markets.

A lack of standardization has also made it harder to create safe and cost-efficient automated recycling facilities, delegates to the National People’s Congress said this month. China will have to deal with an estimated 170,000 tons of spent electric vehicle batteries this year.

(SD-Agencies)