One of the first things visitors to the southern Chinese city of Liuzhou notice is the quiet. Missing is the incessant noise of throbbing engines and clashing gears that provides the backdrop to daily life in most metropolises around the globe.
The reason: almost 30% of the cars sold in Liuzhou last year were electric, according to WAYS Information Technology, a Guangzhou-based consulting firm, more than five times China’s average — making the city of 4 million the effective capital of the biggest EV market in the world. Globally, it trails only Oslo for electric-vehicle penetration. Not only that, but Liuzhou’s air and water quality is among the best in a nation synonymous with choking pollution
This green dividend is an unexpected bonus of a push by city authorities to make Liuzhou an EV manufacturing hub, and a concerted effort to overcome concerns over range, reliability and battery safety that have held back electric car take-up globally. Working with local carmaker SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile Co. — whose tiny, dirt cheap EV has been China’s top seller for most of the past nine months, beating even Tesla Inc. — they also rolled out a slew of incentives, from extensive test drives to free parking and tens of thousands of charge points, to encourage people to buy electric cars.
It’s an approach that may provide a blueprint for other cities around the world as they try and convince drivers to give up their gas guzzlers to meet ambitious emissions targets.
While governments from Germany to the U.S. offer subsidies on EV purchases, sales still lag well behind those for conventional cars outside of a few pockets in Europe like Norway and Sweden. Liuzhou’s strategy may also be instructive for legacy automakers like General Motors Co. and Volkswagen AG, which are pumping tens of billions of dollars into a high-stakes bet that the future is electric. New-energy vehicles accounted for just under 4.5% of global passenger vehicle sales last year, according to BloombergNEF.
“At the beginning, people had many concerns about EVs, such as safety or the convenience of charging,” Gou Yi, a deputy chief at Liuzhou’s branch of the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s top economic planner, said in an interview. “What we did was to make sure our citizens felt it’s very comfortable to use EVs. People have realized how economical and easy electric cars are, and how much cleaner our air has become after more and more EVs hit the roads.”
Liuzhou’s first move was to expose wary residents to EVs. SAIC-GM-Wuling, a joint venture between U.S. giant General Motors and state-backed SAIC Motor Corp. and Guangxi Automobile Group Co., carried out a free 10-month test-drive campaign in 2017. More than 15,000 people took the automaker’s Baojun E100 for a spin, providing the company with 12,000 items of feedback. The trial was so popular that available slots ran out within minutes, and 70% of test-drivers bought one of the vehicles.
Wuling then studied residents’ needs and driving habits, tailoring the Baojun E100 for a daily commute of less than 30 kilometers (19 miles). The pint-sized two-seater — about half the length of a Tesla Model X and similar in appearance to the Smart car — comes with a similarly small price tag of around $5,000. That not only helps lower the bar for ownership, but reduces running costs such as insurance.
𝙏𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙠𝙨 𝙁𝙤𝙧 𝙅𝙤𝙞𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙈𝙮 𝘽𝙡𝙤𝙜………
Urvi Aajugiya 