But all-electric vehicles are free to drive in the capital at any given moment.
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While talking about improving the air quality, he told the press of plans to reduce the consumption of coal, limit the use of automobiles, cut industrial pollution and control dust from construction sites.
Wang, who runs a Beijing food wholesale business, said in a statement that driving restrictions have prompted them to think for electric cars. The government issued only an orange alert, however, one tier below red – possibly because China’s president was at the opening of the Paris talks, an inconvenient time for news photos of his masked countrymen to appear across the globe. Communist Party leaders have promised to change the scenario, but people think it would many years to see that change. He said questions about the e6 pure electrical version of the company were upward by 8-9 percent.
BYD, backed by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (BRKa.N), is also playing off the smog in its advertising. Its off-the-chart pollution would be illegal in Western industrialized nations and its continuation could soon become hazardous to China’s other interests, such as government stability.
“Activate the green cleaning (system), make PM2.5 vanish in a puff of smoke”, the ad continues, referring to particulate matter that forms the smog.
But now, those cars have packed the roads (and even sidewalks on bad rush-hour days) of China’s ballooning cities, aggravating the toxic air.
Drivers opting to leave their petrol-powered cars at home were offered free chauffeur-driven rides in the company’s electric cars on Monday through Wednesday, Yang said.
Automakers can’t be certain the increase in inquiries will translate into sales.
Although the emergency measures seem drastic, even the alternate-day vehicle restrictions probably won’t do much, as Tanvi Misra points out at CityLab.
Regardless of the electric auto market’s potential, Peter Ford, The Christian Science Monitor’s Beijing correspondent, describes the blinding pollution as an immediate threat.
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Over the next three years, China has pledged to close some (but, crucially, not all) of its coal-fired power plants, which are the biggest contributors of harmful emissions.
