Whether the New Energy Vehicle Promotion Policy (NEVPP) enhances supply chain resilience is pivotal to China’s green transition and global industrial security. Using data on A-share listed automobile manufacturers from 2012 to 2024, this study employs a multi-period difference-in-differences approach to identify the policy’s impact. Results show that NEVPP significantly strengthens supply chain resilience, and the findings remain robust across alternative specifications. Mechanism analysis reveals that the policy raises managerial attention, eases financing constraints, and stimulates technological innovation, thereby enhancing resilience through managerial, financial, and technological channels. Heterogeneity analysis by ownership, geography, R&D intensity, analyst coverage, and institutional ownership shows that the effect is stronger for state-owned enterprises, firms in central and western regions, low-R&D firms, those without analyst coverage, those with high analyst attention, and firms with low institutional ownership. This study provides firm-level evidence on the economic consequences of NEVPP, advances understanding of industrial policy and corporate resilience, and offers policy implications for supporting the global energy transition and safeguarding supply chain stability.

Digital identity and battery-passport systems can make electric-vehicle battery lifecycle records traceable, but traceability alone does not guarantee verifiable evidence or physical recycling compliance. We develop a normative two-stage Stackelberg model in which a regulator chooses audit intensity and verified incentives and a representative obligated firm jointly chooses pre-verification evidence quality and recycling compliance. The benchmark is stress-tested under reduced eligibility-confirmation effectiveness, alternative evidence–recycling interaction, decentralized manufacturer–recycler decisions, and implementation costs. Baseline traceability can leave evidence quality at the reporting floor and compliance incomplete, while additional responsibility exposure can conditionally increase recycling compliance while reducing evidence quality. Coordinated verified incentives improve both decisions and welfare in the benchmark complementarity domain. At zero eligibility-confirmation effectiveness, the fixed positive-rate package can become marginally welfare-inferior under finite capacity; adverse interaction can reverse a cross-effect, decentralization creates coordination underinvestment, and high payment or startup costs create single- or no-positive-payment regions. The model is therefore a forward-looking governance analysis rather than an empirical evaluation or legal calibration of current Chinese or European Union rules.