Attention: fossil fuel marketers. A large market has just signaled its intention to close. China joins the U.K., Norway, the Netherlands and France in planning to ban the internal combustion engine.
It might be time for fossil fuel companies to review their timelines and assumptions about future product sales volume. And for all others in this fossil fuel business to rethink such things as pipelines.
Joe McDonald writes from Beijing in the Independent about a policy signal that’s hard to sweep under the rug.
China is the biggest auto market by number of vehicles sold, giving any policy changes outsize importance for the global industry.
A deputy industry minister, Xin Guobin, said at an auto industry forum on Saturday his ministry has begun “research on formulating a timetable to stop production and sales of traditional energy vehicles,” according to the Xinhua News Agency and the Communist Party newspaper People’s Daily.
Meanwhile, in Bloomberg News:
China will set a deadline for automakers to end sales of fossil-fuel-powered vehicles, becoming the biggest market to do so in a move that will accelerate the push into the electric car market led by companies including BYD Co. and BAIC Motor Corp.
Xin Guobin, the vice minister of industry and information technology, said the government is working with other regulators on a timetable to end production and sales. The move will have a profound impact on the environment and growth of China’s auto industry, Xin said at an auto forum in Tianjin on Saturday.
The world’s second-biggest economy, which has vowed to cap its carbon emissions by 2030 and curb worsening air pollution, is the latest to join countries such as the U.K. and France seeking to phase out vehicles using gasoline and diesel. The looming ban on combustion-engine automobiles will goad both local and global automakers to focus on introducing more zero-emission electric cars to help clean up smog-choked major cities.
“The implementation of the ban for such a big market like China can be later than 2040,” said Liu Zhijia, an assistant general manager at Chery Automobile Co., the country’s biggest passenger car exporter that unveiled a new line for upscale battery-powered and plug-in hybrid models at the Frankfurt motor show last week. “That will leave plenty of time for everyone to prepare.”
Seems something happened to my post here. I don’t think electric cars are the answer to the question that needs asking. Banning internal combustion engines is of course needed, but it does nothing to address the issues with a society based on automobiles and related infrastructure.
We (the royal we) need to do better.
I agree. The world plateau and decline of car dependency needs to be accelerated concurrently with building more walkable and transit-oriented communities.
Why? Because it’s 2017.
Hot investment tip: buy shares in lithium producers quickly. When the monolithic Chinese government makes a decision , they act quickly. Just look at their massive PV panel production (now with very high quality products) and high-speed rail build-out. Lithium, like oil, is a non-renewable resource.
Is this what you meant?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_we
Fossil fuel companies need to diversify. If they don’t, they may suffer the same fate as companies like Kodak, who failed to change quickly enough.