Deliveries of all-electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids jumped 53 percent year on year to 777,000 vehicles in 2017 with the aid of government subsidies. Automakers sold 652,000 all-electric vehicles and 125,000 plug-in hybrids, said the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. Among the battery EV sales, 468,000 were passenger vehicles and 184,000 were commercial vehicles. Of the plug-in hybrids, 111,000 were passenger vehicles and 14,000 were commercial vehicles.

It’s easy to become blase about China’s auto market, especially now that growth there has gone from white hot to merely off-white hot. Up 15 percent in 2016? Ho-hum. But just stop and marvel for a moment at the volume even a plateauing Chinese market represents — 24 million passenger vehicles last year, according to IHS Markit. Twenty-four million! With numbers like that, it ought to be China — not the U.S., Europe or Japan — that dictates the future of what we call global ve