WEDZ accelerates shift toward real economy

A Dongfeng Sharing-VAN is seen passing WEDZ's landmark Chunsun. [Photo provided to en.whkfq.gov.cn]

The third group of national advanced manufacturing clusters was issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on Oct 27, which included the Wuhan-Xiangyang-Shiyan-Suizhou automobile cluster led by the Wuhan Economic & Technological Development Zone (WEDZ).

Ouyang Minggao, an academician from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said at the 2022 China New Energy Vehicle (NEV) Development High-Level Forum in September that China will strive to maintain rapid growth of its NEV sector, while consumption of petrol vehicles is expected to decline dramatically, and NEV sales to surge to more than 50 percent of China's total automobile sales before 2030.

Having gathered more than 100 enterprises in the intelligent connected vehicle (ICV) industrial chain, such as Dongfeng Motor, Ecarx, Neusoft, and SiEngine, the zone has become an accelerator of the high-quality development of Wuhan's auto sector. The zone's government has also coordinated with enterprises as well as universities, including Wuhan University, Tongji University, and Jilin University, to establish R&D innovation platforms and consortiums.

In the first nine months of this year, the zone's NEV sales came in at 101,000, with its NEV output being 17.46 billion yuan ($2.41 billion), which is 1.55 times more than that of the same period last year.