In Beijing's lottery in February, there were 2.8 million qualified individual applicants for license plates, according to Beijing Traffic Management Bureau. Among them, just 6,333 were able to get tags for conventional vehicles. This means that roughly one of every 1,907 applicants were able to secure plates. In the latest lottery in December, 2017, one of 883 applicants were able to obtain them. A joke among the applicants says that winning a license plate in Beijing's lottery system is as harder than winning the actual lottery.
At the beginning of 2011, Beijing restricted the purchase of automobiles by distributing new license plates via a publicly-held lottery. By contrast, EV licenses are not awarded by lottery but through queuing. However, as the EV market becomes more established, it is also facing license plate scarcity. The annual quota of 54,000 NEV licenses in 2018 was exhausted in February, leaving 206,723 NEV applicants having to wait after 2019.
Zhou Haitao is a smart man. He chose to buy an EV early in 2014, after he bought a new house in the north of Beijing. At that time, electric cars is a new thing for most people. Zhou owns a private garage in his house. So that he could set up a charger for private use. Charging is a big problem for those ownerships who cannot have a private charger. Not long before, Zhou bought another EV for his wife. He became a fan of electric cars.
"I am going to buy the third EV after I get a new tag in the lottery of Feburary." Zhou Haitao announced proudly. He said he hadn't paid attention to conventional cars for a long time after he drives his EV. He has confidence for the development of EVs. He wish that he could buy a long-range EV in two to three years after he replaced one of his cars.
