(Yicai) June 4 -- China has launched this year’s campaign to promote new energy vehicles in rural areas, and it has a broader coverage than last year.

This year’s NEV promotion campaign includes 124 models from BYD, Geely Automobile, GAC Aion, Xpeng Motors, Leapmotor, Li Auto, and other automakers, according to a joint notice issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and four other departments.

This year, 25 more NEV models were added to the campaign, including US electric carmaker Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y.

The campaign selects county-level cities and townships with low NEV penetration rates and high market potential, and there it holds special events, including exhibitions and test drives, to promote the use of NEVs. It adopts an ‘online + offline’ approach that promotes online ordering, with offline deliveries.

Moreover, to improve the NEV after-sales environment, the campaign will support maintenance, charging, battery-swapping, and financial service companies in expanding their presence in rural areas.

The campaign will also promote the application of vehicle-to-grid technology in rural areas, implement policies such as vehicle purchase tax exemptions and trade-in programs, and address shortcomings in county-level charging and battery-swapping infrastructure to encourage automakers to enrich product offerings, improve after-sales services, and promote NEV consumption in rural areas.

Over the past five years, these NEV campaigns held 29 special events and hundreds of exhibitions across more than 10 provinces, cities, and regions nationwide, with over 400 NEV models participating, according to an official from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

China’s NEV production and sales surged 48 percent and 46 percent to 4.43 million units and 4.3 million units, respectively, in the first four months of the year from a year earlier, according to CAAM data. NEVs accounted for nearly 43 percent of new vehicle sales in the country in the period.

Editor: Futura Costaglione