Trouble looms for Nigeria as China seeks to ban petrol and diesel vehicles
China, the world’s biggest car market, plans to ban the production and sale of diesel and petrol vehicles, further threatening the future profitability of oil — Nigeria’s major revenue source.
The development is coming two months after the UK, like Germany, France, India, Norway and Netherlands, revealed plans to ban fuel-run cars, as part of efforts to reduce air pollution.
The ban will lead to a reduction of oil demand in China, as the country is currently the world’s second-largest oil consumer after the US.
China wants electric battery cars and plug-in hybrids to account for at least one-fifth of its vehicle sales by 2025.
Xin Guobin, China’s vice industry minister, said it had started “relevant research” but that it had not yet decided when the ban would come into force, BBC reports.
“Those measures will certainly bring profound changes for our car industry’s development,” Guobin told Xinhua, China’s official news agency.
China made 28 million cars last year, almost a third of the world’s total production.
Chinese-owned carmaker Volvo said in July that all its new car models would have an electric motor from 2019.
Geely, Volvo’s Chinese owner, aims to sell one million electric cars by 2025.
Other global car firms including Renault-Nissan, Ford, and General Motors are all working to develop electric cars in China.
According to the Nigeria Crude Oil Exports by Destination report, India got 19.90% of Nigeria’s crude while China got 1.23% as at December 2015.
Netherlands, the second highest importer of Nigeria’s crude, got 15.5%.
I wonder how viable the electric and hybride car would be. I know that forklifts run on heavy duty batteries but with limited speeds. If the electric cars are bult with solar roofs there is chance that they could be sustainable. One significant problem with electric cars is thunder storm, that could be very dangerously damaging. I think one of the best ways to deal with air polution is efficient public transit system especially the expansion of the rail and electric rail system. The number of cars per houshold should also be drastically limited. And there should be effective emission testing so as to spot the vehicles that have high carbon monoxide emissions.