Skip to footer

China sets ambitious goals for new energy vehicle sales

China takes another step toward reducing pollution and reaching its goal of a total ban on traditional fuel cars. China hopes that the new energy cars will make up 10 percent of all car sales by 2019, a goal that has been met with some support by automakers. 

|
Bobby Yip/Reuters/File
A worker in a BYD auto factory passes by an assembly line in Shenzhen China on May 25, 2016.
  • By Reuters Staff Reuters

| Beijing/Shanghai, China

China has set a deadline of 2019 to impose tough new sales targets for electric plug-in and hybrids vehicles, slightly relaxing an earlier plan to launch the rules from next year that had left global automakers worried about being able to comply.

Car makers will need so called new-energy vehicles (NEVs) to hit a threshold equivalent to 10 percent of annual sales by 2019, China's industry ministry said in a statement on Thursday. That level would rise to 12 percent for 2020.

The targets, announced by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), remove an explicit 8 percent quota for 2018, but otherwise match previously announced plans.

The quotas are a key part of a drive by China, the world's largest auto market, to develop its own NEV market, with a long-term aim to ban the production and sale of cars that use traditional fuels announced earlier this month.

However, global automotive manufacturers wrote to Chinese authorities in June, urging a softening of the proposals for all-electric battery vehicles and electric plug-in hybrids.

Under the rules, car makers will receive credits for new-energy vehicles that can be transferred or traded. These credits will be used to calculate if firms have met the quotas.

"We welcome the Chinese auto industry's shift towards greater adoption of NEVs and will comply with relevant regulations presented by authorities," Ford Motor Co said in a statement responding to the announcement.

General Motors Co said it would "strive to comply with the NEV mandatory requirements," though it added "continued joint efforts by the government and companies are essential to build broad-based consumer acceptance for NEVs."

"GM has sufficient capacity to manufacture NEVs in China," it said in a statement.

Japan's Honda Motor Co Ltd said it planned to launch an electric battery car in China next year and would "try to expand our lineup of new energy vehicles" to meet the quotas.

China is keen to combat air pollution and close a competitive gap between its newer domestic automakers and global rivals. It wants to set goals for electric and plug-in hybrid cars to make up at least a fifth of Chinese auto sales by 2025.

Reuters reported in August that China would delay the implementation of the NEV quotas until 2019, giving global automakers more time to prepare. 

This story was reported by Reuters. 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to China sets ambitious goals for new energy vehicle sales
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2017/0928/China-sets-ambitious-goals-for-new-energy-vehicle-sales
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe