New Green License Plates Hit Shanghai
On December 1st, Shanghai began issuing special license plates, made exclusively for clean-energy vehicles. The plates differ from normal ones in that they have six digits instead of five, their number sequences all begin with either “D” or “F” and of course, they are green instead of blue.
The new plates will come along with certain perks for sure, although those haven’t been explicitly laid out yet and may vary from city to city. It’s expected that there will be more privileged policies for clean-energy vehicles, such as tax and insurance reductions, and no restricition on days you can drive (which Beijing currently implements). It’s also expected that the new-energy vehicle plates will be much easier to obtain, ultimately incentivizing drivers to opt for clean-energy vehichiles and reducing the amoung of pollution in major cities.
Plates have been introduced in Nanjing, Wuxi, Shenzhen, and Ji'nan, and will be available throughout China in mid/late 2017.