Strategy would include increased charging facilities for electric cars

China will invest heavily in the construction and upgrading of urban parking spaces to alleviate the shortage and to create more venues for charging electric vehicles.

Lian Weiliang, vice-chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, told a news conference on Friday that 30 million new parking spaces must be built annually to accommodate China's rising number of passenger cars. The price of the spaces will be 1.5 trillion yuan ($235.3 billion) to 6 trillion yuan.

The State Council had called on Wednesday for the accelerated construction of parking lots and charging facilities for electric cars.

Finding a place to park has been a growing headache for China's urban residents, with 154 million vehicles on the road by the end of 2014, while in major cities the number of parking spaces is only 80 percent of the number of vehicles, compared with 130 percent in developed nations.

That leaves a need for at least 50 million parking spaces, Lian said. The shortage is so severe that in some cities residents are only allowed to buy a new car if they also have a space in which to park it.

Besides building new spaces, China has to upgrade its vast number of old parking lots. Lian said the government intends to combine building parking spaces with charging spots for electric cars to promote the use of new-energy vehicles, reducing pollution and boosting related jobs.

Zheng Zhajie, vice-director of the National Energy Administration, said the government has issued directives that stipulate all parking spaces within new residential properties should install or reserve places for charging facilities, and that commercial properties and mass public parking lots should reserve at least 10 percent of their parking spaces for those with charging facilities.

China is actively drafting unified standards for charging facilities to address the problem of different standards across the country, said Zheng. All existing charging facilities will be upgraded according to the new standard.

"There is a lot of room to grow for electric vehicles, which will be less than 1 percent of the total cars sold this year but could grow to as much as 18 percent of total car sales in China by 2020," said Neil Shah, research director at Counterpoint Technology Market Research.

From January through July, 89,549 electric vehicles were sold in China, surpassing the US as the largest market, according to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

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