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It’s a summer of greener pastures for environmentally friendly cars
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Despite the chill rippling through China’s auto market amid the national economic slowdown, the new energy vehicle segment has remained as hot as a Shanghai summer.
In the first seven months of this year, sales of green vehicles surged 2.6 times from a year earlier to 89,549 units. That figure comprises a tripling of all-electric cars to 55,180 units, and a doubling of plug-in hybrids to 34,369.
Though the green market segment represents only a pittance of the more than 13 million conventional cars sold in China so far this year, the data portend China’s potential to become the world’s largest new energy car market, according to the latest China Auto Consumer Insight white paper.
“The new energy vehicle market is moving from the demonstration stage to the growth stage,” said Dong Yang, secretary-general of the China Association of Auto Manufacturers, which published the paper jointly with market research firm Nielsen.
It is a highly diversified market with different growth patterns, but it is generally driven by preferential policies at local government levels, said Cui Dongshu, deputy secretary-general of the China Passenger Car Association.
By the reckoning of this association, up to 67 percent of new energy car sales occur in cities that have slapped restrictions on the purchase of conventional internal-combustion engine models in the fight against pollution.
That seems to confirm the belief that car purchase behavior can be influenced by a license plate quota policies that exempt green cars as found out by a survey in the white paper.
Although 51 percent of respondents in the survey said they don’t consider quota policies as a decisive factor in their car shopping, 16 percent said the restrictions prompted them to consider buying new energy vehicle. The tilt toward purchase surpassed plans to postpone buying a car or plans to circumvent the quotas by buying out-of-town license plates for gasoline vehicles.
In all Chinese cities with license plate quotas, three different green revolutions stand out, said Cui.
In Shanghai, the new energy market is being driven mainly by individual buyers. In Beijing, private purchases and public fleets contribute an equal share. The streets of Hangzhou are full of green cars for rent.
The market is quite divided in terms of model choices.
“Almost 90 percent of plug-in hybrid sales are concentrated in mega-cities, while purchases of all-electric cars are highly scattered,” said Cui.
A persistent anxiety about all-electric cars tends to be amplified in big cities.
Jeffrey Zhao, auto director of Nielsen China, said the plug-in hybrid is more appealing to Chinese consumers for its longer-range mileage and its lesser reliance on charging facilities.
The white paper discovered an interesting disparity between awareness and intention related to all-electric cars versus plug-in hybrids. More than 72 percent of respondents said they are aware of all-electric cars, versus 48 percent for hybrids. But 14 percent said they would buy a hybrid, compared with only 8 percent for all-electric cars.
“It signals unmet needs for plug-in hybrids and is worthy car manufacturers’ attention, especially while the electric car market is still in the throes of changing from being policy driven to being demand driven,” Zhao said.
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