Hong Kong can become the launch-pad for Chinese EVs and benefit from global boom: academic

Hong Kong can deepen its electric vehicle (EV) testing and certification expertise by leveraging its status as an international city to help launch more Chinese-made EVs to the world, said Chan Ching-chuen, Hong Kong’s first academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE).

“Hong Kong’s biggest advantage is its internationality – Hong Kong’s standards are international standards,” Chan, who is also director of the research centre for EVs and chair professor for EVs and smart energy at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, told the Post. “So if an electric vehicle can be used in Hong Kong, it means it can be used in other parts of the world.”

Although the city does not have a local automotive industry, it can still find opportunities in the booming EV sector by acting as a bridge between China and the rest of the world and promoting the low-carbon transition in the transport sector, he said.

China, the world’s biggest automotive market, has taken a significant leap in the net-zero transition towards clean energy vehicles, by selling around 7.7 million pure electric cars and plug-in hybrids in 2023, a 36 per cent year-on-year growth. According to a forecast by Rystad Energy, about 11.5 million new EVs will be sold in China this year, a 44 per cent share of all new car sales versus 34 per cent in 2023.

In the city’s annual budget speech for 2024, Hong Kong’s finance chief has proposed green technology as a priority area for Hong Kong’s economic development. The government in 2021 set out its road map to carbon neutrality by 2050, unveiling a string of measures designed to popularise EVs and phase out new purchases of internal combustion cars by 2035.

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Although China is leading the world in the production and sales of EVs, it still lags behind foreign countries in technologies such as automotive chips, operating systems, and computing power, said Chan who was called Asia’s “father of electric vehicles” by the CAE, considered the highest honorary and advisory academic institution in China’s fields of engineering sciences and technology.

As home to five of the world’s renowned universities and as Asia’s finance hub, Hong Kong leads mainland China in basic scientific research and boasts of a mature financial ecosystem, but it lags behind China in turning scientific breakthroughs into applications and an entrepreneurial ecosystem to cultivate leading high tech enterprises, he said.

Hong Kong should work closer with other cities in the Greater Bay Area, such as its neighbouring city of Shenzhen to make up for its shortcomings in developing new technology industries, attract international talents, and become an innovation hub for emerging technologies, said Chan.

“Only when Hong Kong and Shenzhen collaborate with each other can it gather more talents from around the world and become a paradise for global talents and a treasure trove of innovation,” said Chan.