China has announced it will ban the production and sale of petrol and diesel cars, marking a milestone in the fight to reduce pollution and carbon emissions.
While it has not yet settled on a date for the ban to come into effect, industry minister Xin Guobin told Xinhua, China’s official news agency, he had started “relevant research” that “will certainly bring profound changes for our car industry’s development”.
China produced 28 million cars last year, about one third of the global total, making it the world’s biggest car marker.
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News of ban follows promises by the UK and France to prohibit the sale of new diesel and petrol vehicles by 2040. Chinese-owned Volvo has said all its new car models will have an electric motor from 2019, while Jaguar Land Rover has made the same commitmentfrom 2020. Renault-Nissan, Ford and General Motors are also developing electric cars.
“Automakers are jostling for a slice of the growing Chinese market ahead of the introduction of new rules designed to fight pollution,” says the BBC.
The rules say at least one fifth of vehicles sold in China by 2025 must be plug-in hybrids or fully electric.
“This will also have a knock-on effect on oil demand in China, which is currently the world’s second largest oil consumer after the US”, says the BBC.