China sets 2012 deadline for clean-energy vehicles

China’s Ministry of Science and Technology aims to put 5,000 hybrid buses, 20,000 hybrid taxis and 5,000 electric vehicles on the streets in 10 cities by 2012, said Zhan Zhihong, deputy director-general of the ministry’s Department of High and New Technology Development and Industrialization. Zhang said the project would save 780 million liters of gasoline and diesel oil and avoid generating 2.3 million tons of carbon dioxide. He said the ministry had sent officials to Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Chongqing and Anhui Province to choose the cities for the vehicles. The ministry did not specify what companies would make these vehicles, but suggested that they would use domestic technology. (December 12, 2008)