Forecast of passenger car market structure and environmental impact analysis in China

To evaluate the future passenger car market related environmental impact, first, a competitive prediction model was introduced based on Lotka-Volterra model. Further, the limit of passenger car life cycle system is extended to analyze the scale of future energy consumption and pollutant emission. The proportion of new energy passenger cars, average rate of change in the quality of passenger cars, and the share of renewable energy power generation were used as evaluation indicators to conduct scenario simulations for assessing the environmental benefits under the following policy scenarios: lightweight, electrification, and end-use energy cleaning of automobile. The results show that market share of new energy passenger cars will surpass traditional passenger cars around 2040. The energy consumption per unit mileage of the four types of passenger cars throughout the life cycle is 3.88, 3.51, 3.23, and 3.72 MJ/km. Compared with traditional passenger cars, new energy passenger cars will decrease by 17%, but less than expected. The total amount of VOC, CO, and CHG emissions from passenger cars will reach the peak in 2030 and then rapidly decrease. The amount of NOx emission will slowly decrease after reaching a peak of 11.6 ten-kilo-tons around 2040. The total emission of SO2 and PH2.5 will increase as the number of passenger cars increases. However, the growth rate will decrease to 4–6%. Finally, with the continuous advancement of three policies, the energy and emission factor will decrease by 10.0–13.5%. Among these factors, the impact of end-use cleaning energy in the mid-end terminal is the highest due to the sensitivity to fuel cycle. However, traditional single policy may not be effective since they do not consider the structure of vehicle cycle.