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Explore the environmental benefits of new energy vehicles: evidence from China

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Abstract

New energy vehicles (NEVs) are considered to ease energy and environmental pressures. China actively formulates the implementation of NEVs development plans to promote sustainable development of the automotive industry. In view of the diversity of vehicle pollutants, NEV may show controversial environmental results. Therefore, this paper uses the quantile-on-quantile method to explore the relationship between NEVs and skewed patterns of pollutants distribution, aimed to comprehensively evaluate the role of new energy in the automotive industry in the environment improvement. The results show almost invisible environmental-friendly benefits from the current new energisation development. The main reason is that the industry is still growing, and technology and service have to be improved. Traditional and new energy power in the automotive market coexist. Hence, the final air pollution brought by the automotive is also changeable due to the scale of new energy vehicles, which the energy-environment model supports. In particular, the results evidence that the performance of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) is better than plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. As the total amount of BEVs increased, air pollution has effectively alleviated. This also confirms that NEVs play an indispensable role in exhaust emissions pollution prevention, although their effect remains to be displayed more obviously.

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Notes

  1. PM10 refers to air suspension particles below 10 microns, called inhalable particles. PM2.5 is a 2.5 micromerate or less, also referred to as a lung particulate matter.

  2. Data can be obtained from the Ministry of Ecology and Environment of the People's Republic of China.

  3. The data of NEVs (BEVs and PHEVs) comes from China Automobile Industry Association.

  4. The leptokurtic distribution can be described as having a wider or flatter shape with fatter tails resulting in a greater chance of extreme events. The opposite is a platykurtic distribution.

Abbreviations

CO:

Carbon monoxide

HC:

Hydrocarbon

SO2 :

Sulfur dioxide

NOx:

Nitrogen oxides

PM:

Particulate matter

NEVs:

New energy vehicles

R&D:

Research and development

QQ:

Quantile-on-quantile

PHEVs:

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles

BEVs:

Battery electric vehicles

O3 :

Ozone

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Funding

The funding was provided by National Social Science Fund of China (Grant No. 20BJY021).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics, Qingdao University, Qingdao, China

    Chi-Wei Su & Xi Yuan

  2. Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, West University of Timisoara, Timisoara, Romania

    Chi-Wei Su

  3. Newcastle Business School, The University of Newcastle, Callaghan, Australia

    Xuefeng Shao

  4. Department of Finance, West University of Timisoara, Timisoara, Romania

    Nicoleta-Claudia Moldovan

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  1. Chi-Wei Su
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Su, CW., Yuan, X., Shao, X. et al. Explore the environmental benefits of new energy vehicles: evidence from China. Ann Oper Res (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-023-05282-w

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