I was feeling revved up after I read in METRO that people who buy electric cars, or e-cars, will be able to take a detour around the city's license plate lottery. What a breath of fresh air the idea is.
General Motors Co said May vehicle sales in China fell 2.7 percent from a year earlier, its second consecutive monthly decline amid a slowdown in the world's largest auto market.
Honda Motor said on Tuesday its car sales in May in China fell 32 percent from a year earlier.
The national guidelines on auto parts joint ventures for new-energy vehicles released in April have sparked heated discussions over the pros and cons of the proposed policy, according to industry sources.
Chery Automobile Co Ltd is in talks with Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd about a possible joint venture to produce Fuji Heavy's Subaru brand vehicles in China, according to insiders of the two parties.
During the 1980s, one of the major seeds of change sprouting from China's new market economy was the all-new motoring industry.
Among China's first drivers were newspaper photographers, who took advantage of the faster form of transport to follow fire trucks and zoom to action hot spots. Veteran China Daily photographer Wu Zhiyi and former China Daily employee Chen Xiong can remember Beijing in the 1980s when driving a car in the capital was a sheer delight. There were sunny blue skies, very few cars and no traffic jams.
When I was asked to write this column, I felt a little embarrassed. The main reason is that as a senior correspondent and editor covering the auto industry over 12 years at China Daily, I'm still not a car owner, although I got a driving license eight years ago. For this, I'm always ridiculed by many colleagues.
The Beijing municipal government said on Tuesday that the city will use its odd-even license plate system to reduce the number of cars on the road during important festivals, events and cases of extreme weather.
Beijing's daily license plate restrictions are to be extended to include bad weather conditions, major events and festivals, according to a municipal work plan released on Tuesday.
Chery Automobile Co will break new ground in Latin America when its $200 million factory in Venezuela starts producing vehicles for the region later this year, a move seen as further enhancing foothold in the overseas market of the automaker.
A senior industry expert predicts that China's automobile production and sales will both grow to about 30 million units by 2015 compared to the 18 million vehicles sold last year.