Beijing is a polluted city. Beijing's air was a hot-button issue for the media during the 2008 Olympics. Despite ongoing efforts to clean the air since 1999, things remain pretty bad. In the run up to the Olympics, some 200 factories were shut down or moved out of the city, tens of thousands of coal boilers were replaced with natural gas, Beijing inaugurated the world's largest fleet of natural-gas buses and taxis, and gradually ratcheted-up automobile emission standards until they were among the toughest in the world.
Nonetheless, Beijing remains one of the most polluted cities in the world. To be fair, any city with the population the size of Australia and some 5 million automobiles is bound to be encapsulated in smog.
Beijing's leaders soon realized that the problem was not so much in the industrial sector as it was in the rapid growth in automobiles. Between 1997 and 2011, the number of cars in Beijing quintupled. It didn't matter how many factories were closed or how tight emission standards became, the growth of cars outpaced pollution mitigation efforts.
After the Olympics, Beijing got tough. They began a program that basically made it illegal for car owners to drive one day per week based on the last number of their license plate. If caught driving on a day their car is not allowed on the road, they could be ticketed. They hoped this program would reduce congestion and pollution, but results have been mixed.
Instead, in mid-2009 Beijing began encouraging buyers to purchase plug-in hybrids and electric cars with subsidies of $7,500 and $8,800 respectively. However, those subsidies were initially limited to fleet buyers, (meaning government agencies and companies like taxi services that could be many vehicles in one order.) Thus, the adoption of electric vehicles has been extremely slow.
Now, things are beginning to change. Beijing has begun offering those same subsidies to private vehicle buyers as well. They have also promised to double the subsidies, to some $17,000 to defer the cost of electric vehicles until their price falls.
In 2011 Beijing adopted the most draconian measures yet to reduce congestion and pollution: car rationing. Some 800,000 vehicles were purchased in 2010 alone, but Beijing would only allow a maximum of 240,000 new vehicles in 2011. The rationing is done by lottery, every month 20,000 people are chosen who are eligible for a license plate. This means if one wants to buy a car, they must wait until they win the lottery. They cannot simply buy a car...say..tomorrow.
Here is where it gets interesting. Besides generous subsidies, Beijing is exempting EVs from various taxes (car taxes in China are extremely high), and excepting them from the one-day-per-week driving curfew. But here is the kicker...they will be exempt from the license plate rationing system. That means, if you want to buy a car in Beijing, you have two choices: You can buy an electric tomorrow and get the accompanying benefits OR you can wait until you win the lottery.
In effect, Beijing is making the electric car more attractive than their gasoline counterparts. Clearly they hope that the quieter electric vehicles will replace gasoline ones and make the city less noisy, while cleaning the air, helping Beijing meet China's strict energy efficiency requirements, and making the city less dependent on unstable oil markets.
This doesn't mean that Beijing will become an electric city overnight. There are few electric cars available right now, and production capacity remains low; most electric car makers cannot keep up with demand. But over time, competition and improved technology promises to bring the cost down for everyone.
This piece of news has largely been ignored in the Western media. This is surprising considering all the interest in electric cars right now. China seems poised to beat the US past the 1 million electric vehicle goal set by Obama for 2015. The United States must get its act together or it will be buried in the clean-energy race.
