Explore the environmental benefits of new energy vehicles: evidence from China

New energy vehicles (NEVs) are considered to ease energy and environmental pressures. China actively formulates the implementation of NEVs development plans to promote sustainable development of the automotive industry. In view of the diversity of vehicle pollutants, NEV may show controversial environmental results. Therefore, this paper uses the quantile-on-quantile method to explore the relationship between NEVs and skewed patterns of pollutants distribution, aimed to comprehensively evaluate the role of new energy in the automotive industry in the environment improvement. The results show almost invisible environmental-friendly benefits from the current new energisation development. The main reason is that the industry is still growing, and technology and service have to be improved. Traditional and new energy power in the automotive market coexist. Hence, the final air pollution brought by the automotive is also changeable due to the scale of new energy vehicles, which the energy-environment model supports. In particular, the results evidence that the performance of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) is better than plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. As the total amount of BEVs increased, air pollution has effectively alleviated. This also confirms that NEVs play an indispensable role in exhaust emissions pollution prevention, although their effect remains to be displayed more obviously.