JAPAN TO BAN SALES OF NEW GASOLINE-POWERED VEHICLES IN MID-2030

Thu 03 December 2020:

Japan wants to ban sales of new petrol cars in around 15 years’ time as part of efforts to reach carbon neutrality by 2050, reports said Thursday.

The move would follow Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s pledge in October for Japan to slash carbon emissions to zero on a net basis by 2050 and make the country the second G7 nation to set a deadline for phasing out gasoline vehicles in a little over two weeks.

Japan’s industry ministry will map out a plan by the year-end, chief government spokesman Katsunobu Kato told a news conference on Thursday.

The likelihood of state interventions to lower carbon emissions is fuelling a technological race among carmakers to build electric cars and hybrid gasoline-electric vehicles that will lure drivers as they switch from gasoline models, particularly in the world’s two biggest auto markets, China and the U.S.

Measures already in place in Japan mean Japanese automakers, particularly big ones such as Toyota Motor Corp with greater research and development resources, could use electric vehicle technology they have already developed at home.

Japan’s industry ministry is considering requiring all new vehicles to be electric, including hybrid vehicles, NHK reported earlier, adding the ministry would finalise a formal target following expert-panel debates as early as the year-end.

Japanese automakers for now are keeping quiet on what impact those measures could have on their businesses.

The move has been welcomed by activists and the UN, but Japan is still heavily reliant on fossil fuels and the government has not yet laid out details of how it will achieve this.

The country’s current target is to increase the share of low-emission cars sold — both hybrid and electric — to 50-70 percent by 2030, from around 40 percent in 2019.

In September, California announced a goal for all passenger vehicles sold in the US state to be zero-emission by 2035.

Britain meanwhile has set a more ambitious target, aiming to ban sales of petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030.

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