This paper presents the Gompertz function of per capita GDP and vehicle stock to forecast the vehicle ownership of China through to 2050 against a background of increasing energy use and CO₂ emissions associated with the potential demands of on-road vehicles. We forecast the level of vehicle stock in China based on the extant patterns of vehicle development in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, Europe, the United States and Japan. The results show that the OECD pattern and European pattern are more suitable for describing China’s vehicle stock growth when compared with Japanese and U.S. patterns. The study finds that China’s vehicle stock has developed as an S-shaped curve. During the forecast period, the inflection point of the increasing curve appears around the year 2030, with the annual growth of vehicle ownership increasing from 6.13% to 9.50% in the prior period prior and subsequently dropping to 0.45% in 2050. Based on the sensitivity analysis and robustness check, the impact of different Gompertz curve parameters and GDP growth rates on vehicle stock projection are analyzed.

The transportation sector is a crucial source of greenhouse gas emissions, and the degree of its low-carbon transformation is closely related to the achievement of China’s carbon neutrality. Based on high-frequency passenger vehicle sales data and motor vehicle real-time monitoring big data, we developed a low-carbon transition planning model of China road transport (CRT-LCTP) to explore the pathways toward carbon neutrality. The study found that although the number of new energy vehicles (NEVs) increased four times from 2016 to 2019, the average annual growth rate of road traffic emissions was still as high as 20.5%. The current transportation electrification may only reduce 0.6% of the total emissions in this sector, and it could be increased to 1.4% if the electricity completely came from clean energy. Under the enhanced policy scenario, the transport sector could peak its carbon emissions at around of 2030, with the peak level being 1330.98 Mt. Transportation electrification along could not meet the climate targets in 2060, and the continued inertia of fuel vehicles will slow the path of the road transport toward carbon neutrality, which depends on the forced elimination of fuel vehicles and more substantive decarbonization measures.