How Tesla conquered the city of Shanghai with just one license plate

“Congratulations on becoming a Tesla owner and thank you for joining us in driving the global transition to sustainable energy.”

That was the welcome message Tesla employees sent to Wu Haiyun, a doctorate in cultural studies at East China Normal University, when she received her new car late last year. Ms. Wu loved that message, but that was not the reason she chose to buy the car. She also did not choose a car because she was convinced by Elon Musk’s loud statements on social networks. In fact, the factor that decided her car purchase had nothing to do with Tesla. Ms. Wu was forced to come to this decision after being led by a maze of new traffic rules issued by the Shanghai city government.

Shanghai is a leading city in China in promoting new energy vehicles, and to accomplish this goal, the local government has launched a series of new policies in recent years to ” green” its roads. They do everything, including putting pressure on citizens to buy a new car when the old car still doesn’t need to be replaced.

The trump card used by the city in its strategy is the vehicle registration system. Shanghai is different from other cities, especially Beijing. The capital Beijing has for years been known for its strict restrictions regarding license plates for private vehicles, including restricting license plates from being allowed to go out on specific days and banning refunds. All non-locally registered vehicles on the road on weekdays. Shanghai is more relaxed in many regulations, even for those driving from the suburbs.

As a result, in the last few years, despite living in Shanghai, Ms. Wu and many other city dwellers have been driving a licensed vehicle in another area. The reason for not applying for a license in Shanghai is simple: the cost is too high. This is the problem many cities around the world face: the streets of New York are always congested with cars registered out of town or even out of state to reduce sales taxes and other expenses.

Even by New York’s lax standards, Shanghai is an exceptional case. And when traffic spirals out of control, the city has been rolling out a separate license plate registration system for new registrations since 1994. By 2013, the price for this local license plate registration was up to 90,000 yuan (equivalent to more than 323 million), and kept at that price throughout the past decade. People here often joke that the city’s blue license plate is “the most expensive piece of tin on the planet”.

A Shanghai blue sea costs more than 9000 USD

Even if people like Ms. Wu want to comply with the law, it’s hard for anyone to accept paying the same price as a cheap domestic car to buy two pieces of flat metal. Besides, for many years, it wasn’t much of a difference to drive a locally registered car versus a non-local vehicle in Shanghai. The only difference is that vehicles registered outside the city are prohibited from using the expressway into the city center during rush hour weekdays. For Ms. Wu herself, who doesn’t drive to work every day, it makes more sense to register for a cheap license plate outside of the local area.

However, over the years, foreign car owners have become more and more inconvenient. The city has invested heavily in new urban highways, both elevated and underground. Suddenly, by 2020, the traffic departments gradually expanded the definition of “rush hour” to the period from 7 am to 8 pm, almost banning suburban registered cars from good roads. most of the city.

This situation has forced those who want to drive in the city like Wu to start considering registering a local license plate despite the sky-high fees. The problem is that a Shanghai license plate cannot be bought with money.

In fact, there are many people who are willing to pay hundreds of thousands of yuan for a Shanghai license plate auctioned by Shanghai International Commodities Auction. The joining process issued by the company is also extremely cumbersome and bureaucratic. For example, if you want to participate in the auction, you must first pay 1000 yuan (equivalent to 3.5 million dong) to buy…6 auctions. In each auction you participate in, you have to pay an additional 60 yuan (equivalent to 215,000 VND) to reserve a place; If there is no auction for 6 months, your account goes to zero, which means you have to register again, and pay more.

The auction itself is held online on the third Sunday of each month. There are about 150,000 participants per session. You start bidding at the “alert” price set by the system, allowing you to be subscribed to the session. After that, you will have two more bids, each of which cannot exceed 300 yuan (1 million VND). After that, you will wait 59 minutes in silence, then jump into a race with more than 100,000 people to bid in the last minute, whoever is lucky to choose the right price at the right time will be the winner.

You must be scratching your head? If so, then you’re not the only one. Ms. Wu also attended 6 times and had to leave empty-handed with anger. Of course, that is a normal outcome in a system where only 6% of participants win the bid.

At the same time, the Shanghai government is increasingly taking tough measures with license plates registered outside the province. Since May last year, vehicles registered outside the city are banned from all inner city roads on weekdays from 7am to 10am and from 4pm to 7pm. For a city dweller like Ms. Wu, this means her car is “hanging”.

Desperate and exhausted, Ms. Wu turned to expert parties, known as “authorized auctioneers”. This is a new industry unique to Shanghai, which arose out of the city’s troublesome auction system. Logically, it’s illegal to act like they’re, but that doesn’t stop the auctioneers from selling a service that many people are willing to pay to use. It is now widely accepted that the chances of winning the bid are close to zero without hiring a professional.

Through a friend, Wu contacted a person claiming to be a “gold-level authorized auctioneer”. He assured Wu that his company had top-notch professional auctioneers, with extensive real-world experience and business-specific broadband internet access and related “big data”. to ownership to improve the probability of winning the bid. The price of “family members” that the guy promises is 10,000 yuan (equivalent to 35 million dong) if he succeeds in the auction.

Since she didn’t have many options, Ms. Wu had to put down a deposit and entrust the account to the “commissioned buyer”.

But at the same time, she also considered another option: buying a new car.

Free green license plates for electric vehicles are becoming an alternative to expensive blue license plates

According to Shanghai’s regulations, people who choose to buy cars classified as “new energy vehicles” are allowed to register their vehicles locally under a special category. These license plates will be green instead of blue – and most importantly, they are free.

In theory, what appears to be a hole in the license plate registration mechanism shows the city’s efforts in motivating people to buy electric vehicles to achieve its extremely ambitious green energy and carbon reduction goals. of the Chinese government. In March of this year, Shanghai announced that electric vehicles need to account for 50% of new vehicles purchased by 2025 – this goal would be easier than when newly registered petrol cars had a registration tax rate. up to 100,000 yuan (equivalent to 359 million dong). And the initial results show that the plan is working. After the ban on vehicles registered outside the province was implemented in November 2020, sales of new energy vehicles in Shanghai increased sharply. Over the next half year, new energy vehicle (NEV) sales doubled from the previous 11 months, and the city of Shanghai quickly led the country in NEV sales.

But while policy goals are very nice, the speed of policy implementation too fast can lead to many consequences as well as waste. For example, Ms. Wu’s old car is still running fine, and if it weren’t for the crisscrossing laws, she would probably have used it for many more years. That was also the reason why she still put her faith in the auction.

But months passed, she still did not pay the winning price. Wu himself does not blame the head of the household; she even felt a little guilty because he put so much importance on this defeat; As Wu thought, her bad luck made it difficult for other people’s work.

With no other choice, Wu decided to buy a new car. But even with that, she’s not interested in buying a Tesla or an all-electric vehicle, but wants to buy a hybrid that’s both petrol and electric just in case she can’t find a charging station.

Tesla factory located in Shanghai

But, by another new policy introduced last year, if a hybrid vehicle wants to qualify for a green number plate, owners must first provide documentary proof that their neighborhood or unit charging equipment can be installed. They must also prove that they have charged their car at least four times a month, or their blue license plate will be automatically canceled.

Of course, that’s a smart rule. The government knows that many people prefer to buy hybrid cars to get free green plates and then use them as petrol vehicles, and this would undermine the aim of the policy.

Ms. Wu’s proxy gave up, and her backup plan fell through. Suddenly, Tesla announced another price cut. The company previously worked closely with Shanghai for many years to build vehicle factory projects as well as build dense charging systems throughout the city. Before this opportunity, Ms. Wu was completely convinced to buy an electric car.

It was the journey that led Ms. Wu to a Tesla store and ordered a car she didn’t think she wanted or needed. Even the car salesman assigned to guide her wasn’t more excited to receive the money than when Wu dropped the money.

“We have too many people asking for this car,” he said bluntly. “You’ll have to wait two months before you can bring it home.”

Ms. Wu smiled wryly and looked out the window. The lane that passed before her eyes was filled with only green seas.