The car industry on Thursday urged the government to provide more support for the recycling of electric vehicle batteries, saying Hong Kong has the capacity to handle them if land is made available for the development of recycling facilities.

The call came after Chief Executive John Lee announced in his policy address that the government will include electric vehicle batteries in the producer responsibility system.

Edward Chan, an adviser to the Hong Kong E-Vehicles Business General Association, said Hong Kong has the necessary equipment and engineers.

"Equipment is not a big deal. We have the know-how. We have the engineers... but where are you going to build it? The land is an issue," he said.

"We should think about when we doing some collaboration with the Shenzhen government, maybe we should think about work out some areas in Hetao or near the border, or somewhere near there, so we can have some lands to develop some processing plants."

Cylis Cheng, the regional service manager for Tesla, emphasised the urgent need for local recycling facilities. He explained that lithium batteries cannot currently be transported out of the city for recycling.

"We have a batch of batteries in Hong Kong that cannot be transported out of the city due to a recent combustion incident. As the shipping companies suspended carrying these batteries, we are still waiting for other shipping companies to ship these batteries out of Hong Kong. So, it really helps us a lot if there is any local treatment facility." he said.