- An electric car on display at the Beijing Auto Show.
- AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
WSJ.com: Buyers of electric cars in China are getting yet another boost — freedom on Beijing’s roads.
In a fresh effort to promote battery-powered electric cars, the city government of Beijing will exempt these cars from a policy limiting the number of vehicles on roads during rush hours. The exemption will have effect between June 1, 2015 and April 10, 2016, the Beijing Traffic Management Bureau said this week.
Under the current policy, which has been in place since 2008, cars with odd and even license plates are banned from Beijing’s roads on alternate days, as the city is frequently hit by intense traffic jams and smog.
Vehicles are considered a major contributor to Beijing’s smoggy skies. City officials say auto emissions account for about a quarter of Beijing’s air-quality measure of PM2.5 — particulate matter measuring less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter that is considered particularly hazardous to human health.
The latest step, however, illustrates Chinese authorities’ frustration with the uses of electric vehicles. Despite a series of favorable policies such as generous state subsidies and tax breaks, sales of electric vehicles are far short of expectations.
In Beijing, for instance, fewer than 5,500 residents applied for the more than 10,000 license plates allocated by the local government for cars powered by clean energy in the first four months of this year, according to official data. By contrast, over the same period nearly 6.2 million residents in the city applied for only 36,757 license plates for gasoline-burning cars.
Nationwide, China is also struggling with an ambitious, long-stated goal of promoting alternative-energy vehicles. China wants half a million such vehicles on the road by the end of this year and 10 times that by the end of this decade. Still, only about 50,000 cars out of the 20 million passenger vehicles sold in China met these criteria last year due to the lack of sufficient charging infrastructure and the ensuing “range anxiety,” when drivers fear their cars don’t have enough power to get them to and from a given destination.
The city government of Beijing has said it will slash the quota of license plates to ease congestion and manage air pollution. By 2017, officials will give out only 90,000 license plates a year to ordinary cars, while the rest will be reserved for clean fuel vehicles.
Still, it’s hard to persuade consumers like Michael Bao to buy an electric car. Mr. Bao, a journalist in Beijing, has yet to obtain a local license plate, a prerequisite to buying a car in the city, after more than four years of participation in an official lottery for plates for conventional vehicles.
It’s all about charging, he said. “It’s too hard to find a public charging station near my home or company. It’s also too hard to get a private parking lot on which I can place a charging pillar,” said Mr. Bao
