Webinar
Zero-emission commercial vehicle development: Webinar 3
Key notes and takeaways:
Dr. Cristiano Façanha, CALSTART
- It is necessary to set a harmonized medium- and heavy-duty vehicle development target. The governments should release more powerful signals to the whole industry. It is suggested that countries should set more progressive climate targets at COP26 to cut down pollution from medium- and heavy-duty vehicles.
Zhanhui Yao, CATARC-China Automobile Strategy and Policy Research Center
- Policy status in China: A system covering top-level design, operational subsidies, purchase premiums, tax waivers, and supporting infrastructure is being set up for ZE-HDV development.
- Policy outcome: Electric buses have been rapidly deployed in China. The penetration rate of electric buses reached 96.6% by 2020. More use cases are also being explored with the assistance of local policies.
- Future trend: It is still important to support the development of electric bus fleets in China. Extension of tax waiver policies is recommended, and authorities should study the “green tax system” based on the energy-saving and low carbon specifications of vehicles. In the future, policy should also guide the development of NEVs with the integration of electrification, intelligence, and communication technology.
Yihao Xie, ICCT
- It is highly meaningful to set a long-term strategy and target of sales for ZE-HDVs, which will consolidate ZE-HDV manufacturers’ confidence on this market.
- A complete package of policies should be applied for better effect. It will be beneficial for ZE-HDV development with policies covering both supply and demand, and throughout the manufacturing and use phases.
Lijie Jia, CATARC-ADC
- Characteristics of ZE-HDVs by current policy tools: Highly dependent on tax and fiscal policies; buses are mostly electrified, while urban logistics and sanitation vehicles need more effort; local economy and supporting policies highly impact the electrification of heavy-duty vehicles; the fuel consumption and pollution standards are becoming more stringent than ever.
- Problems with commercial vehicle electrification: A high dependency on financial subsidy; motivation for electrification is still missing in some regions. Additionally, it should be noted that ongoing single-vehicle-limitation regulation does not promote the application of advanced technologies.
- A credit mandate system should be introduced to promote commercial vehicle low carbon development. A new energy commercial vehicle credit mandate policy has been drafted. Further topics, such as a corporate average fuel consumption standard on commercial vehicles, single/dual credit system, PV-HDV credit transfer scheme, etc., will be discussed and analyzed.
Pierpaolo Cazzola, ITF
- Vehicle safety: Specific regulations on HDVs are still missing, especially for hydrogen fuel-cell HDVs. It is quite significant to ensure that vehicle safety regulations will cover all segments of electric and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles with varied management requirements on light- and heavy-duty vehicles.
- Electric vehicle charging: The current management framework works for buses and logistics vehicles, but not for trucks. It will be beneficial to develop charging methods over 1MW for electric trucks. In the meantime, different stakeholders and policymakers, such as the transportation and energy sectors, should be involved with enacting regulations.
- Hydrogen fueling: Manufacturers prefer to use a fueling tank of 70 MPa for trucks. But to date, the management framework is not ready and a technical scheme of refueling should be made.
- Environmental performance: Pollution regulations are far ahead of GHG regulations. It is suggested to harmonize regulations on GHG emissions and energy-saving management, where any relevant regulation on low/zero emission HDVs should also be included in the framework. Additionally, the environmental impact of batteries should be particularly taken into consideration.
- International cooperation is essential to ensure greater international harmonization of regulations and standards, and international harmonization can accelerate the transition towards clean vehicles by making product development cheaper and by reducing administrative burdens.
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