Dongfeng opts for green autos

China's third-largest auto group Dongfeng Motor Corp plans to invest 3 billion yuan ($443 million) in the next five years to hasten the commercialization of fuel-efficient and eco-friendly new-energy vehicles.

The blueprint, released Thursday, comes in the backdrop of high enthusiasm shown by car makers to ride the development of China's green cars, which may attract 100 billion yuan in investment over the next 10 years.

Dongfeng, the Chinese partner of Honda Motor Corp and PSA Peugeot Citroen, said it will focus on hybrid cars for commercialization before extending self-developed battery technologies to pure electric passenger cars and commercial vehicles.

The company, based in Wuhan, Hubei Province, aims to sell 100,000 medium and full hybrid vehicles and 50,000 pure electric cars by 2015. Its long-term plan is to make the energy-saving and new-energy vehicles account for 20 percent of its total Dongfeng-branded passenger cars.

Dongfeng will also strive to sell 800,000 new-energy vehicles through 2020.

"We have set new-energy vehicles as our mid-to-long term strategy, and we want to grab the business opportunity and lead the industry," Xu Ping, chairman of the board of directors of Dongfeng Motor, said yesterday.

Currently, Dongfeng has registered 67 patents for new-energy vehicles. More than 400 vehicles powered by new energies or energy-saving technologies are running on trial in cities such as Wuhan and Shanghai.

In early June, China announced plans to subsidize purchases of energy-efficient cars in five cities with hopes to spur the sales of green cars by more than 4 million units by 2012.

That encouraged car makers, including Toyota Motor Corp and General Motors Corp and China's home-grown auto maker BYD, to raise output of alternative-energy vehicles.

In another national draft plan for alternative-energy vehicles during 2011-2020, China wants to be the world's largest new-energy vehicle market by 2020 with a vehicle population of 5 million units. The nation also aims to sell the most fuel-efficient autos, including hybrids, in the world by then with annual sales of more than 15 million units.