License plate policy or license plate lottery for fuel vehicles? — Study on policy options for the development of new energy vehicles

In order to alleviate traffic pressure, multiple cities in China have introduced various policies restricting the fuel vehicles, which to some extent has affected the competition between the new energy vehicles and the fuel vehicles. Based on the above reality, this paper constructs an automobile market competition decision-making model composed of a fuel vehicle automaker and a new energy vehicle automaker in consideration of consumers’ anxiety about the new energy vehicles’ range or energy replenishment. This paper analyzes the optimal decision-making of the two types of automakers under the government’s three policy scenarios (license plate policy, license plate lottery, and the combination of the above two policies), and compares the equilibrium results of the various policies scenarios to explore the threshold conditions for the dominant policy choice of these two automakers in terms of demand and profit. The results show that these two automakers can always realize the optimal profits under the license plate policy, while they can realize the optimal profits under the license plate lottery and the combination of these two policies only when the degree of anxiety of consumers about the fuel vehicles caused by the license plate lottery is lower than that of the new energy vehicles. In addition, the license plate lottery and the license plate policy will not change the prices of these two types of vehicles. Finally, from the perspective of demand and profit, the combination of the license plate policy and the license plate lottery cannot be an optimal choice for the fuel vehicle automaker, while the license plate lottery cannot be an optimal choice for the new energy vehicle automaker. When consumers are highly anxious about the fuel vehicles and the new energy vehicles, the license plate policy can be an optimal choice for these two types of vehicle automakers. However, as the government imposes stricter restrictions on the lottery of the fuel vehicles, the likelihood that the license plate policy becomes a predominant choice for these two automakers will gradually decrease. © 2024 Systems Engineering Society of China. All rights reserved.