Future looks bright for electric cars in China

Wang Jinliang, vice-chairman of the China Battery Industry Association, said that the next decade will be a vital time in the development of battery industry, and Chinese companies may face an industrial reshuffle.

"Small and less competitive companies will be left out and big companies will become bigger, as the companies are speeding up efforts to strengthen their capabilities in innovation and industrial upgrading," he said.

The battery industry has also laid a solid foundation for other new-energy industries, as it is an important storage component of solar, wind and other renewable energy sources, electric vehicles and other emerging industries, said Wang.

In 2013, the Ministry of Finance said that it would extend a program of subsidies for buyers of electric-powered vehicles after the current subsidy regime, part of an effort to combat pollution in cities, expires in 2015.

The subsidies were designed to help China meet a goal of putting a half-million new-energy vehicles on the road by 2015 and 5 million by 2020. But currently there are only 20,000 to 30,000 electric cars on the road, far from the government's target.

Zhang is betting more Chinese customers will buy low-speed electric vehicles and use batteries for driving in small cities and in rural-urban fringe areas.

Realizing the electric vehicles will not take off any time soon, Tianneng is also putting efforts into developing energy storage systems to bank wind or solar electricity.

Tianneng has risen 10 percent this year in Hong Kong trading, outpacing the 2.3 percent gain in the benchmark Hang Seng Index.