Five Departments Launch 2026 New Energy Vehicle Rural Campaign With 155 Models

Five departments, including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Commerce, have jointly issued a notice to organize the 2026 new energy vehicle (NEV) rural campaign. This is the first nationwide NEV rural campaign launched under the background of the 15th Five-Year Plan for Accelerating Agricultural and Rural Modernization, which promotes the expansion and upgrading of rural commodity consumption and supports NEVs in rural areas. With overlapping policies and accelerated implementation, NEVs are moving from 'selling cars to the countryside' to 'ecological co-building', injecting green momentum into the accelerated modernization of agriculture and rural areas. From the product perspective, the 2026 NEV rural campaign includes 155 models, an increase of 31 from 2025, with some high-end brands of certain automakers joining the campaign for the first time. In addition, to address the pain point of charging in rural areas, the proportion of hybrid and extended-range models has increased significantly, showing characteristics of both quantity and quality improvement. From the market perspective, with rising rural income levels and improved material living standards, green travel is gaining popularity, and the rural market is an important direction for NEV sales growth. Sales of NEVs under the rural campaign reached 9.431 million units in 2025, about 24 times the 2020 figure, and spurred over 1 trillion yuan in rural NEV consumption. On the consumer side, most rural buyers are first-time car owners, primarily considering price, range, model suitability, after-sales service, and paying more attention to domestic products with high intelligence and novel designs. This reflects that rural car consumption is shifting from basic transportation to quality travel, and consumption potential is accelerating. The NEV rural campaign is not only a short-term consumption stimulus policy but also an important engine to promote the high-quality development of China's NEV industry. Its role and impact have gone beyond the automotive industry itself, deeply integrating into the process of agricultural and rural modernization, restructuring the industrial ecosystem. Application scenarios in rural areas impose stricter performance requirements on vehicles than in cities, forcing industrial technology upgrades. With the continued promotion of NEVs in rural markets, the aftermarket service sector faces huge incremental space, and new growth points will emerge in facility maintenance, battery recycling, and used-car transactions, effectively driving local economic growth. The NEV rural campaign can serve as an opportunity to upgrade rural energy infrastructure, playing an important role in making up for the shortcomings of rural charging facilities and optimizing the rural energy structure. The country's first village-level integrated charging station combining wind, solar, storage, charging, inspection, and discharging was built in Tuantang Village, Haitong Town, Sheyang County, Jiangsu Province, innovatively forming a multi-model of 'green power generation + convenience services + collective income increase', providing a replicable practice sample for rural green transformation and industrial revitalization. The rural consumer market has the particularity of scattered population and diverse demands, placing higher requirements on the NEV aftermarket service, driving the industry to transform into refined operations. Driven by demand, inclusive finance will accelerate its penetration into rural areas, offering more flexible financial products for rural users, lowering the threshold for car purchases, and further releasing the consumption potential of the rural market. The aftermarket service network will accelerate its layout, spawning a large number of localized technical service forces and creating more county-level automotive service jobs.