China's Top EV Expert: Hybrids Are Already Declining, Pure EVs Will Take 90 Percent of Market by 2040
Professor Ouyang Minggao of Tsinghua University, one of China's most cited automotive technology researchers and a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, addressed the Intelligent Electric Vehicle Development Forum in Beijing on April 11 and delivered a clear, data-backed forecast: pure battery electric vehicles will hold a 9:1 ratio over plug-in hybrids in China by 2040, and PHEVs and extended-range EVs have already entered a downward trajectory.
The milestones he set out are specific. By 2030, new energy vehicles, which includes BEVs and all types of PHEVs, will exceed 70 percent of new car sales in China, with a 7:3 BEV-to-PHEV split. By 2035, NEV share stabilises above 80 percent, with the split moving to 8:2. By 2040, the 9:1 ratio in favour of pure EVs is the projected steady state.
Those ratios become more revealing when converted into whole-market terms. If NEVs exceed 70 percent of sales by 2030 and BEVs make up 70 percent of that NEV pool, pure electric vehicles would account for just over 49 percent of all new car sales. Using the same logic, a market with 80 percent-plus NEV share and an 8:2 split in 2035 means BEVs would represent at least 64 percent of total new-car sales.
By 2040, if NEV share stays above 80 percent and the mix moves to 9:1, BEVs would make up a little over 72 percent of the overall market, while plug-ins would be pushed down toward 8 percent. So the real meaning of Ouyang's projection is not just that BEVs dominate the EV market. It is that they become the single overwhelmingly dominant powertrain inside total new-car sales.
The argument is not purely commercial. Ouyang's core point is one of physics. Pure electric drive using green electricity is roughly twice as energy-efficient as hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, and about four times more efficient than synthetic fuel internal combustion engines.
That efficiency gap, he argues, makes the outcome structurally inevitable once green electricity supply reaches sufficient scale. PHEVs carry both a combustion system and a battery, which adds weight, cost, and mechanical complexity without matching the efficiency of a well-managed BEV in real-world daily use.
China's NEV market has been dominated by PHEVs and extended-range EVs in the past two years, largely because buyers in lower-tier cities where charging infrastructure is limited found range anxiety with pure EVs a real concern. BYD's DM series and Li Auto's extended-range models drove enormous sales volumes on exactly that proposition. Ouyang's point is that as charging infrastructure expands and battery energy density improves, the PHEV advantage in range anxiety diminishes and the BEV efficiency advantage takes over.
His own timeline implies a clear decline path for plug-ins. In 2030, they still account for 30 percent of NEV sales. By 2035, that falls to 20 percent. By 2040, it drops to just 10 percent. That is a two-thirds reduction in mix share over one decade. In other words, he is not saying hybrids disappear overnight. He is saying they move from being a transition solution to a shrinking niche as charging access and battery performance improve.
The forum audience expected Ouyang to be bullish on solid-state batteries, given the level of corporate investment going into them. He was measured instead. All-solid-state batteries still face unresolved scientific problems around interfacial stability, including thermal, chemical, mechanical, and air stability at the electrode-electrolyte boundary. He projected that solid-state cells achieving 300 Wh per kg energy density would likely appear commercially by the end of 2030, but cautioned companies against using the technology as a marketing tool before it is genuinely ready.
For context, current mainstream lithium iron phosphate batteries deliver around 150 to 180 Wh per kg. A 300 Wh per kg solid-state cell would therefore represent an energy-density jump of roughly 67 to 100 percent over today's common LFP packs. That is why the industry keeps talking about it. The gain is large enough to either deliver much longer range from the same battery mass or keep range constant while meaningfully cutting battery size and weight. Ouyang's caution is that these theoretical gains still have to survive real-world durability, safety and manufacturing scale-up.
The relevance for readers here is straightforward. China sets the pace in EV technology, cost, and manufacturing volume. The models sold here from BYD, SAIC MG, and others are downstream products of exactly the R&D ecosystem Ouyang is describing. When China's leading researchers say PHEVs are already in decline and BEVs will dominate inside 14 years, it is an early signal about which technology platforms will get the most investment and therefore which vehicles are likely to offer the best value in the medium term.
Via CarNewsChina