Weekly snapshot of China's local business news

BEIJING, March 10 (Xinhua) -- The following are highlights of China's key local business news from the past week.

-- Hainan to ban petrol auto sales by 2030

China's southernmost island province of Hainan will ban the sale of oil-fueled automobiles throughout the province by 2030, the provincial government said Tuesday.

The province will speed up the promotion of clean energy vehicles, and has set specific targets and outlined a roadmap.

-- China builds large power bank with retired NEV batteries

China Wednesday started construction of the country's first power storage plant recycling retired batteries from new energy vehicles (NEV). The plant in the eastern province of Jiangsu is the largest electrochemistry battery storage power plant of its kind under construction in China.

The plant designed with a storage capacity of 268,600 KWh can provide a daily electricity supply of 500,000 KWh, enough for residential use for 220,000 people per day, said Xiao Jing, Party chief of the Institute of Economic and Technical Research of the Nanjing Electric Power Company, its builder.

-- NIO reports loss in 2018

Shanghai-based electric vehicle designer and manufacturer NIO Inc. reported a loss of up to 9.6 billion yuan in 2018, up 93.7 percent from the previous year, according to its financial report released on Wednesday.

NIO announced in the report that it will terminate the plan of setting up a manufacturing plant in Shanghai, as it believes that the existing NIO/JAC plant in Hefei, capital of east China's Anhui Province, has the capacity and flexibility to support its market penetration and growth plans for the next two to three years.

-- BYD posts strong NEV sales in Jan.-Feb.

Leading Chinese new energy vehicle (NEV) maker BYD sold 43,097 NEVs in the first two months of 2019, up 174.7 percent year on year.

The strong growth was primarily fueled by the sales surge in the pure electric passenger vehicles, with sales soaring 36.4 times to 24,179 units. Sales of plug-in hybrid electric passenger vehicles rose 21 percent to 17,831 units, the Shenzhen-based company said in a statement filed to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange late Thursday.