We review passenger car deployment trends in China until 2050, which are used to develop a model to explore deployment scenarios for New Energy Vehicles (NEV: plug-in hybrids and battery electric vehicles) in terms of carbon dioxide emissions, costs, and electricity demand. We find that, investing in large-scale NEV deployment minimizes overall costs over the 2050 horizon. However, far more aggressive short-term policies designed to decrease near-term technology cost trends will be needed to encourage a rapid transition to NEV deployment.