Deutsche Welle, 5 November 2013
China’s
capital Beijing has announced it will impose restrictions on new car purchases
next year in an effort to reduce air pollution. The new quotas are likely to
hit German carmakers.
Beijing's
car sales quota for 2014 would be slashed by almost 40 percent under plans to
cut vehicle emissions and hazardous levels of pollution, the Chinese capital's
official website announced Tuesday.
Beginning
next year, the city would issue 150,000 new license plates annually for a
period of four years, authorities said, down from 240,000 car ownership
licenses granted this year.
In
addition, city authorities decided to increase the quotas for so-called
new-energy vehicles, meaning fuel-efficient and electric cars. The number of
plates for such vehicles was planned to triple over the period from about
20,000 in 2014 to 60,000 in 2017.
At the
moment, restrictions on new car sales are imposed in three other major Chinese
cities apart from the capital Beijing. Curbs on sales were planned to be
imposed in eight more cities, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers
said in July. A license to buy a car in restricted cities is usually won in
lotteries or through an auction.
Regarding
Beijing, the new quota means that car sales will be capped at 600,000 units for
the next four years, which is lower than the number of cars sold in 2010 alone.
The measure
is likely to hit booming sales by foreign carmakers, notably from Germany.
High-powered, luxury cars by German top-of-the-range manufacturers Audi,
Mercedes and BMW have become status symbols for China's growing urban upper
class. The new restrictions are likely to force them to put more resources into
the markets of China's smaller cities.
uhe/rc (Reuters, dpa)
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