Fuel economy of Chinese light-duty car manufacturers: An efficiency analysis perspective

Highlights: • Auto companies' task response of fuel economy targets are examined. • Light-duty fuel economy will reach 6.81, 6.23 and 5.50 L/100 km by 2020, 2025 and 2030. • Fuel economy targets for light-duty commercial vehicles are also calculated. • Low fuel economy targets would prompt manufacturers to shelve fuel-efficient technologies. In 2012, the State Council of China released the auto industry development plan to accelerate the deployment of energy-saving vehicles (ESVs) and new energy vehicles (NEVs). Based on milestone fuel economy policies, China has set overall fleet-average fuel economy targets of decreasing the fuel consumption per hundred kilometres to 5.0, 4.0, and, 3.2 L/100 km by 2020, 2025, and 2030, respectively. In this study, the task responses of these targets from auto companies (i.e. car manufacturers and imported car dealers) are examined using a unique database of test-cycle fuel economy parameters for 35,129 models. Malmquist decomposition is used to estimate the technical progress of the auto industry towards achieving the fuel economy targets and the technical efficiency of each company for catching up with the best practice. To explore the effects of new policies on fuel economy improvement, three scenarios regarding technical changes are designed to predict company-level fuel economy. The estimation results show that according to the current rate of technical progress and technical efficiency increase, the average fuel economy indicator of the light-duty fleet will reach 6.8, 6.2, and 5.5 L/100 km by 2020, 2025, and 2030, respectively. This indicates that Chinese light-duty car manufacturers still need to accelerate the development, adoption, and marketisation process of fuel economy technologies to reach the mandatory fleet-average fuel economy targets timeously.