China until recently had bold goals for plug-in car sales, starting with a 8 % quota for next year, followed by 10 % for 2019 and 12 % for 2020.
However, German automakers Chancellor Angela Merkel seems to finally have convinced China’s Premier Li Keqiang to lower those quotas.
While there isn’t much detail yet, it’s believed that the 8 % quota was pushed back a year to 2019, instead of 2018.
It’s ironic that Europe Union has always been very strict when it comes to protecting environment and the health of its citizens, in some cases – especially in the food industry – it has even exaggerated with excessive regulation, but if given the choice between our health and the automakers profits, EU officials always choose the later… They’ll mandate to test CO2 emissions in some ridiculous good for nothing test cycle called NEDC and don’t even bother with more dangerous air pollutants such as Nitrogen Oxide (NOx), because diesel rules.
Anyways, I see this plug-in car sales goal push back in China as a missed opportunity, considering that plug-in hybrids are also accounted and German automakers already have plenty of them. BMW, Mercedes and Volkswagen could comply with China’s regulations by just selling plug-in hybrids if they wanted to.
With the Europe Union lagging and the USA completely absent, we’re left with China to lead the effort to electrify the auto industry.
