Automobile Industry under China’s Carbon Peaking and Carbon Neutrality Goals: Challenges, Opportunities, and Coping Strategies

China has already committed to peaking carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060 (referred to as the 30·60 Target), which has brought both daunting challenges and great opportunities to the automobile industry in China. However, there is still a lack of comprehensive and in-depth studies on the challenges, paths, and strategies for reducing carbon emissions to fulfill the 30·60 Target in automobile industries. Therefore, this paper proposes low-carbon development strategies for China’s automobile industry. This study’s method is to integrate the results from different literature to summarize the status, challenges, opportunities, and refine the coping strategies for carbon emission of the automobile industry. The results indicated that the paths for achieving the 30·60 Target include joint carbon emission reduction by upstream and downstream enterprises inside the industry. It also needs cross-industry and cross-sector coordinated decarbonization outside the industry. Meanwhile, the low-carbon policy and regulation system should be established to provide a direct driving force and fundamental guarantee for the low-carbon development of China’s automobile industry.

Subsidizing Fuel-Efficient Cars: Evidence from China’s Automobile Industry

This paper examines the response of vehicle purchase behavior to China’s largest national subsidy program for fuel-efficient vehicles during 2010 and 2011. Using variation from the program’s eligibility cutoffs and the rollout of the subsidy program, the program is found to boost sales for subsidized vehicle models, but also to create a substitution effect within highly fuel-efficient vehicles. Estimates imply that ignoring the substitution effect would lead one to conclude that the program is welfare enhancing, whereas in fact the marginal cost of the program exceeds the marginal benefit by as much as 300 percent. (JEL D12, H25, L25, L62, O14, P23, P36)

Environmental Impact Analysis of Automobile Laminated Glass Production

The rapid development of China’s automobile industry has led to increased demand for automobile glass. Combined with the present situation of China’s automobile glass industry, life cycle assessment(LCA) method was adopted for this study, through investigating the energy consumption and emissions during the raw and auxiliary materials acquisition stage and product production stage for auto laminated glass. Then a life cycle inventory was worked out and the data was characterized and normalized by CML analysis method. The results showed that the most serious environmental impacts were Marine Aquatic Ecotoxicity Potential, abiotic depletion potential-fossil and global warming potential, whose proportion of total environmental impact was 92.2%, 2.41%, 1.75%, respectively. Further analysis showed that the influence of float glass was 36%,42% and 33.9% respectively.

Technology Acquisition in China’s Automobile Industry: Focusing on the Local Producers

China’s automobile industry has succeeded remarkably since the 1980s. The Chinese government welcomed foreign automobile companies to form joint ventures. The local automobile companies began to enter the market in the late 1990s. To compete with the foreign rivals, they needed to acquire advanced technologies. Meanwhile, technology transfer through foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows was not so successful. Some of the local automobile producers developed their technologies through FDI outflows. The large local automobile producers have paid much attention to their own research and development (R&D) activities. China has tried hard to build its human capital. Acquiring intellectual property rights from foreign manufacturers has been another way for the local producers to acquire advanced technologies. They have also tried to establish partnerships with the local technology groups. The ways in which the local automobile companies acquired advanced technologies may provide meaningful policy implications for the other technology-intensive industries and developing countries trying to develop the automobile industry.

The Innovation Way of Fuel Cell New Energy Vehicle

<p>China's automobile industry has made rapid development in recent years, but the environmental pollution caused by automobile exhaust is also very serious. In order to reduce the environmental pollution caused by automobiles, new energy automobiles have become the main development direction of the automobile industry. Fuel cells are one of the new energy sources. Although China has a very rich variety of fuels, the research and development of new energy vehicles is still in its initial stage and still faces severe tests.</p>

Learn to be good or bad? Revisited observer effects of punishment: curvilinear relationship and network contingencies

Purpose Although supplier-initiated punishment is widely used to manage distributors’ opportunism, its spillover effect on unpunished distributors (i.e. observers) within the same distribution network remains under-researched. Specifically, this paper aims to investigate the curvilinear effect of punishment severity on an observer’s opportunism, and how such an effect is contingent on the observer’s network position. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses regression analysis with survey data gathered from 218 distributors in China’s automobile industry. Findings Punishment severity has an inverted U-shaped effect on the observers’ opportunism, and such effect is weakened by both the observers’ network centrality and their degree of dependence on the supplier. Practical implications The findings should encourage suppliers to focus more on the spillover effects of punishment on observers. To this end, the supplier must deliberately initiate the appropriate level of punishment severity against its distributors because an inappropriate level of punishment severity (e.g. too lenient) may unexpectedly raise the unpunished observers’ level of opportunism. Moreover, the supplier should be fully aware that observers’ specific network positions may produce varying spillover effects of the punishment. Originality/value This study enriches the literature on channel governance by revealing the curvilinear mechanism through which punishment severity influences observers’ opportunism. By applying social learning theory to channel punishment research, this study unveils both the inhibitive learning and the imitative learning forces inherent in a single punishment event, and it delineates their joint effect on an observer’s opportunism. In addition, this study outlines the observer’s vertical and horizontal relationships within the distribution network and explores their contingent roles in determining the spillover effects of punishment.