China eases rules on hybrid cars
CHINA reclassified petrol-electric hybrid vehicles yesterday so they get more favorable treatment than all-petrol or diesel counterparts under new clean car rules, making it easier for automakers to meet environment quotas and offer more choice.
China has some of the world’s strictest rules regarding the production of fossil-fuel vehicles, as it battles air pollution in its crowded cities.
Those rules have pushed both domestic and international automakers including Tesla and Volkswagen to spend billions of dollars on the development and production of new energy vehicles, such as all-electric, plug-in hybrid and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
Automakers in China are obliged to manufacture NEVs to win “points” to make up for a portion of the negative points they incur when they produce internal combustion engine vehicles.
The policy published yesterday by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology allows automakers to gradually make more petrolelectric hybrids and less of the more costly all-electric vehicles from 2021 through 2023.
Such hybrids would still be considered fossil-fuelled but re-classified as “low fuel consumption passenger vehicles.” Significantly, the number of negative points incurred for making petrol-electric hybrids will be less than for petrol-only vehicles.
That could see more of those traditionally powered vehicles replaced with petrol-electric hybrids, experts and industry officials said, because when automakers produce those hybrids, they would not have as many negative points to make up for.
Experts have said the beneficiaries of such change would include global petrol-electric hybrid leaders Toyota Motor Corp and Honda Motor Co, as well as Chinese makers Geely Automobile Holdings, Guangzhou Automobile Group Co and supplier Hunan Corun New Energy Co.
China hopes NEVs will account for around a quarter of all vehicles sold in the country by 2025.
The ministry said the revision is a way to achieve the planning goal of average fuel consumption of new passenger cars reaching 4.0 liters/100 kilometers by 2025, and the proportion of new energy vehicle production and sales will reach 20 percent of the total number of vehicles.
China issued its new energy “point” policy in September 2017. It requires carmakers to generate new energy credits equivalent to 10 percent of sales in 2019, rising to 12 percent in 2020. Car manufacturers that fail to meet minimum production targets must “buy” points from other companies.
During the implementation of the policy, there is need to update technical standards, insufficient investment in fuel-efficient technologies and unbalanced supply and demand in the credit trading market. To further optimize the management mechanism as well as promote high-quality development of new energy vehicle industry, the ministry said it started to revise the policy in early 2019.
The new policy also takes COVID-19 into consideration. It adds provisions that can be used to determine the extension of the compensation period according to the development of auto industry.
(Shanghai Daily/Reuters)