Liangjiang New Area in Southwest China's Chongqing municipality held a convention on the transformation, upgrading and high-quality development of the automobile industry on April 19. It was participated in by many industry insiders and representatives from more than 70 local companies in the field.

Luo Lin, director of the new area's administrative committee, said Chongqing has leveraged market opportunities as one of China's major automobile manufacturing hubs. Against this backdrop, Liangjiang has been seeking to magnify the scale effect and raise the overall efficiency of its auto sector while striving to enhance is independent research abilities in order to pursue a more intelligent and eco-friendly development path.

Luo Junmin, deputy secretary-general of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, acknowledged the amazing results achieved in top-down design and market scale of China's new energy vehicle (NEV) market.

Chongqing needs to formulate a new industrial innovation system, strengthen government-enterprise strategic cooperation in finance, promote the convergence of production factors such as technologies, products, capital and the market, and become a benchmark in intelligent connected vehicle testing and other pilot practices, said Wan Xinming, general manager of the China Automotive Engineering Research Institute.

Ye Pei, executive vice-president of auto giant Changan Auto, cited NEV as a new growth engine for the domestic auto market and said he regarded the "software defining automobile" concept as a means of achieving a larger market share.