JINAN, CHINA - After five years behind the wheel of a diesel-powered, smoke-spewing taxi in the city of Jinan, cabby Dong Zhichuan is keen to go green.

He hopes to be picked as one of the 400 to drive hybrid petrol-electric taxis when Jinan, capital of eastern China's Shandong province, rolls them out over the next three years.

"China needs more eco-friendly vehicles and I want to be one of the first to drive one," said the 43-year-old.

However, he also added a crucial caveat: "But only if the government subsidises the car - I've heard they are much costlier than regular ones."

Convincing the likes of Mr Dong is proving to be one of the biggest challenges for a Chinese government eager to transform its polluted roads into ones with more breathable air, and to turn the country into a global leader in clean-energy transport.

While Beijing has made clear that green transport is a top priority, with plans to put 500,000 eco-friendly cars on the roads by 2011, observers say the take-up has been slow.

Critics argue that there are insufficient incentives to make green vehicles attractive to wealthy Chinese.

"Who's going to pay for green car incentives? And are the people willing to sacrifice their big status symbol cars and switch to green transport?" asked a Beijing electric car expert, who declined to be named.

For the growing middle class, green cars are still much more expensive than regular sets of wheels. A petrol-electric hybrid can now cost more than 250,000 yuan (S$51,150), while a similar- sized petrol- guzzling sedan can be had for less than 120,000 yuan.

Drivers like Mr Sheng Tao, a Beijing company manager in his 40s who owns a Buick, said money may still be the best way to persuade people to switch.

"Many Chinese - including me - are not that environmentally conscious when picking a car. We just think about the price and convenience," he said.

Green cars are also seen by the Chinese as being less reliable and slower than regular ones.

In an online poll last month, 58 per cent of 1,150 respondents declared ambivalently that they were "looking forward" to owning an electric car.

When probed further, however, more than 40 per cent said the conditions for them to switch to green cars included not having to take more than 20 minutes to recharge their car batteries and prices falling below 100,000 yuan.

Chinese electric car and battery maker BYD reportedly sold only 80 of its F3DM cars, which cost almost 150,000 yuan each, in the first five months after the model's launch in December last year.

Twenty of those were bought by the government.

But the government is pumping in good money to jump-start the sector - a 20 billion yuan incentive programme for public- and service-sector vehicles, such as buses, taxis and government vehicles, and a further 10 billion yuan for research and development over the next three years.

Already, 13 cities are offering incentives to offset the relatively high prices of hybrid cars. For example, Shanghai offers buyers a one-off 20 per cent subsidy on clean-tech vehicles, up to a maximum of 20,000 yuan for a passenger model.

Other cities are going beyond financial carrots to help would-be green drivers address other bugbears of owning a clean-energy car.

Chongqing municipality in south-western China, for instance, plans to equip all petrol stations with car battery chargers within the next three years.

And Shanghai is planning to use 500 zero-emission vehicles to ferry millions of visitors to the World Expo 2010 as a way to extol the virtues of such vehicles to the public.

According to local media, it hopes this will help accelerate the large-scale adoption of green transport in China.

China's National Games, currently being held in Jinan, also abounds with eco-friendly messages, such as the 100 electric buses used to ferry athletes around, and the red banners urging residents to adopt "green thinking".

Mr Dong thinks this public education approach may help the city's campaign to persuade locals to drive energy-conserving vehicles. He hopes the fleet could be 10,000 strong within the next few years.

"Once you get the price and the heart both in the right place, many green car drivers will step up - like me."

graceng@sph.com.sg

Additional reporting by Lina Miao

This article was first published in The Straits Times.

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