Last I heard, 2,000 new cars hit the roads of Beijing daily, last year. According to this report, 800,000 new cars hit the streets, which would work out to be about 2,191 new cars a day. More pertinent perhaps, is not the capacity to churn out new wheels, but the desire to own one. Ten times oversubscribed, 215,425 license plate applications for Beijing’s 22 million population in a month does reflect the thirst for upward mobility.
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Beijing car plate applications hit 215,425 in Jan
Xinhua
Source – China Daily, published January 09, 2011
BEIJING – The Beijing transport authority on Sunday revealed it had received 215,425 new car license applications, after this month’s application period closed late Saturday night.
But only one tenth of the applicants will get license plates this month, as only 20,000 new license plates are now issued each month in Beijing under its new license plate lottery system, or 240,000 for the year.
Beijing launched the new system on Jan 1. Under it, car license applications are received in the first 8 days of the month, and then a lottery is held on the 26th day of the month.
In 2010, a record 800,000 new cars came onto Beijing’s roads.
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