Research on Constraints and Countermeasures for the Development of New Energy Vehicles in China

The growing global concern about climate change due to greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles coupled with the depletion of natural resources is driving the adoption of alternative fuel technologies in the global economy. Electric vehicles are positioned as a green, clean alternative technology with the potential to enable an efficient transition to sustainable low-carbon emission transport systems and to conserve natural resources. New energy vehicles represented by electric vehicles have less pollution, low noise and high energy efficiency, which is the direction of future automobile development. Despite the announcement of preferential policy measures to encourage the adoption of electric vehicles, multiple potential barriers that interact with each other have hindered the penetration of electric vehicles in some countries. While researchers have identified some restricting factors in European and American countries, the question is “There is a lack of empirical research on the restricting factors of EV promotion in the Chinese context, and how do they interact with each other?” A two-phased AHP-FCE tools are applied. Firstly, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method is used in ranking and prioritizing the important restricting factors/sub-factors. Then, multi-level Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation (FCE) method is applied to obtain the final evaluation score. Our research contributes to a better understanding of the multifaceted nature of EV restricting factors and their interdependencies in policy and decision making. This paper provides a valuable reference for the construction of low-carbon cities and urban sustainable development.