China's global dominance in electric cars helped it overtake Japan as the world's biggest vehicle exporter last year, official data confirmed Wednesday.
Japanese giants such as Toyota and Nissan have been much more cautious than their Chinese counterparts like BYD on electric vehicles (EVs), banking instead on hybrid models.
Figures released Wednesday by the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association showed shipments of cars, trucks and buses rising 16 percent to 4.42 million last year.
But China exported almost 500,000 more -- 4.91 million vehicles in total, as reported by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers this month.
China's customs bureau put the number even higher at 5.22 million, a huge year-on-year rise of 57 percent, with one in three fully electric vehicles.
The country had already been shipping more vehicles than Japan on a monthly basis, but Wednesday's data confirmed that it was also number one for a whole year.
