Assessment of the incentives on electric vehicle promotion in China

New Electric vehicles (NEVs) will not only solve the energy and environmental problems, but also promote reform and transformation of Chinese automotive industry. To promote the market acceptance of NEVs, Chinese government has launched NEV demonstration projects and issued numerous policies since 2009, which absolutely promoted NEV sales, but also resulted in a subsidies-oriented NEV market. Therefore, Chinese government decided to decrease NEV subsidies gradually in next 5 years. In order to explore the key factors that promote NEV sales, and based on which to offer suggestions on designing and formulating matching policies when subsidies decrease, we utilized multiple linear regression method to analyze electric vehicle (EV) sales with incentive measures and socio-demographic data of 41 pilot cities for year 2013-2014. The result shows that chargers' density, license fee exemption, no driving restriction, and give priority to charging infrastructure construction lands are the four most important factors, which could be continued and strengthened in next few years to keep EV market still present a perfect performance.