Confirmed ban on fuel - powered vehicles, Hainan releases new "15th Five - Year Plan", passenger vehicle sector weakens, oil assets start depreciation countdown

Hainan to Ban Gasoline Vehicle Sales by 2030 as First Pilot, Driving Transformation Across Multiple Industries

According to Forward Energy, the Hainan Provincial People's Government recently released the "15th Five-Year Plan for Hainan National Ecological Civilization Pilot Zone", officially confirming the ban on fuel vehicle sales by 2030 — China's first province to phase out new fuel vehicle sales has been finalized.

The capital market immediately responded with pricing adjustments. As of midday on July 13, the A-share passenger vehicle sector fell by more than 4%, with stocks such as Changan Automobile weakening in tandem. The 4% sector decline marks a market revaluation of the remaining lifecycle of fuel vehicles. Capital always votes with its feet, and the outcome of this vote is: The countdown for fuel vehicles is no longer a slogan — it has been converted into tangible valuation discounts.

The question is, what gives Hainan the confidence to do this? Why can't other regions follow? How much time do midstream and downstream oil assets have to complete depreciation and restructuring?

Hainan Has Been Preparing for This Day for Seven Years

Hainan's 2030 sales ban target was not a last-minute decision. When first proposed in 2019, new energy vehicles accounted for less than 3% of the province's total vehicle fleet, sounding more like a symbolic statement. Seven years later, data has transformed the nature of this policy.

The Hainan plan explicitly states that by 2030, fuel vehicle sales will be banned, and the proportion of new energy vehicles in total vehicle ownership will rise from 23.75% in 2025 to 45%.

Note that the policy uses the term "sales ban", not "usage ban". Existing fuel vehicles can still operate on roads, but new demand is completely cut off. This boundary ensures the impact will be gradual, yet the direction is irreversible.

According to data, in 2025, Hainan promoted 116,800 new energy vehicles, accounting for 62.9% of all new vehicle registrations. By January 2026, the penetration rate reached 55.13%, with total new energy vehicle ownership hitting 544,600 units, making up 23.95% of the total fleet. In August 2025, the penetration rate reached 66.5%, ranking first among all provincial-level regions in China. The proportion of new energy vehicle ownership ranks second nationwide. In Hainan, new energy vehicles are no longer a result of forced policy promotion — they are chosen voluntarily by consumers.

More crucially, the power supply side is ready. By the end of October 2025, Hainan's installed new energy capacity exceeded 12 million kW, becoming the province's largest power source. Clean energy accounts for 87.1% of total installed capacity and 72.87% of total power generation. Wind power, solar power, and nuclear power have displaced coal power from the local energy system. What about charging piles? As of August 2025, the province had 4,895 charging stations and 232,900 charging piles, with a vehicle-to-pile ratio of 2.1:1. Highway service areas and townships are fully covered, and one mobile app can access charging services across the entire island.

Hainan's confidence to ban fuel vehicle sales does not come from a single document, but from its power system. Only when the electricity problem is solved can the vehicle problem be addressed — a condition most provinces cannot meet.

What Hainan Can Do, Other Provinces Cannot

After the news broke, many people started guessing which region would be next. The answer may be disappointing — Hainan is a special case that is difficult to replicate.

Hainan is an isolated island with a closed transportation network and moderate size. Building an island-wide charging network and implementing unified policies has far lower coordination costs than in inland provinces. The problem of severe range degradation for pure electric vehicles in low temperatures in Northeast China has not been fundamentally solved — physical laws do not recognize administrative orders. This is a hard constraint.

More fundamentally, there is still no unified national timetable for banning fuel vehicle sales at the central government level. Any claim of a "nationwide 2030 ban" is a misinterpretation of local policies. Hainan enjoys dual policy support as a "National Ecological Civilization Pilot Zone" and a "Free Trade Port", with specific authorization to take the lead in trials. Other regions neither have such policy dividends nor possess the same pilot conditions.

At the same time, we must calculate the existing inventory. Hainan's policy bans sales but not usage — after 2030, only new fuel vehicle sales will stop, and already registered fuel vehicles can still operate normally. At the end of 2024, Hainan had 1.7155 million existing fuel vehicles. With a gradual phase-out over a 10-year scrappage cycle, market demand will decline slowly. This leaves a buffer period for gas stations and refineries, but how long this period lasts depends on the replacement speed of new energy vehicles.

Hainan is a stress test field, not a rehearsal for a national policy.

Gas Station Acquisition Under Regulatory Scrutiny: The Depreciation Logic of Oil Assets Has Changed

The secondary effects of the policy first impacted the valuation of midstream and downstream oil assets, with a landmark event being the Shenzhen Stock Exchange's inquiry letter to Hainan Expressway in November 2025.

At that time, Hainan Expressway planned to spend 46.6751 million yuan to acquire a refined oil retail enterprise. The Shenzhen Stock Exchange's inquiry stated: Hainan will ban fuel vehicle sales by 2030 — how can you guarantee the going-concern ability when acquiring gas stations now? Regulators have begun to incorporate fuel ban policies into the valuation review framework for refined oil retail assets. This signal itself is more important than the acquisition case.

Hainan Expressway acknowledged that the sales ban policy will accelerate expectations for fuel vehicle phase-out, continuously squeezing end-user refined oil consumption and pushing sales into an irreversible downward trend.

The only safety margin comes from the 1.7155 million existing fuel vehicles, which can sustain operations for a while. The company has planned to transform into a comprehensive energy service provider covering "oil, gas, hydrogen, electricity, and services" — in other words, the gas station business will shrink in the long run, and alternative paths must be found.

Let's place Hainan within the national context. In 2025, China's gasoline consumption fell by 4.3% year-on-year, a reduction of over 6 million tons. In the first quarter of 2026, apparent refined oil consumption fell by 4.7% year-on-year. National refined oil demand is shrinking at a rate of over 4%, making the 1.5% annual decline assumption used in Hainan's assessment report already optimistic. When the national new energy vehicle penetration rate exceeds 50%, the decline curve of refined oil demand will shift from linear to accelerated.

Meanwhile, Hainan is promoting "distributed solar + energy storage + microgrid", and Haikou was selected as one of the first national pilots for large-scale Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) applications. V2G means electric vehicles charge during low electricity demand periods and feed power back to the grid during peak hours, turning each vehicle into a mobile energy storage battery. When millions of electric vehicles connect to the power grid, they transform from power consumption loads into flexible regulation resources.

This is both a challenge and an opportunity for the power grid. Hainan's goal is to build a demonstration province for a new power system based on a clean energy island by 2030 — If achieved, Hainan will become both the first province to ban fuel vehicle sales and the first province to implement large-scale V2G.

The real analytical value of Hainan's fuel vehicle sales ban is not that one province will stop selling fuel vehicles, but that it provides a clear time anchor for three industries.

The penetration of new energy vehicles has moved past the stage driven by policy subsidies — the 66.5% penetration rate reflects consumers' voluntary choices. The shrinking of refined oil demand is no longer a distant assumption, but a certainty already written into assessment reports — A 1.5% annual decline means the remaining payback period for gas station assets is being quantified, and this framework will be referenced in similar transactions in other regions. The power system must complete intelligent transformation within this time window, and whether V2G can expand from Haikou to the entire island will directly determine the clean energy island's regulation capacity.

The countdown for fuel vehicles is no longer an environmental slogan. It has been written into assessment reports, included in exchange inquiry letters, and reflected in sector valuations. For midstream and downstream oil assets, the question is no longer whether transformation is needed, but whether the remaining time is sufficient to complete depreciation and restructuring.