英闻天下——573 Beijing's New Emission Standard Begins Feb 1

 　　The capital will raise its automobile-emission 2 standards on Friday, making them the strictest in the nation. The Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau said the move is expected to reduce auto 1 pollution by 40 percent to better improve the hazardous 3 air quality in Beijing.

 
　　While Beijing citizens hail the government's effort to lower pollution, they also worry that if the new standard will raise the costs of new vehicles.
 
　　Most purchasers won't have trouble since the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau has approved more than 1,300 models that meet the standard and some 4S shops started selling some approved vehicles last year.
 
　　Lei Haidong is sales manager at Zhen Haotai Shanghai Volkswagen 4s store in Beijing,
 
　　"Since last October, all models we sell are in line with the new standard including the new Lavida, Polo, Passat, Tiguan and everything. The prices aren't higher compared to the old model. And we don't foresee a supply shortage because we started the transition early."
 
　　High-end brands such as BMW have also finished the transition to new standard vehicles with no rise in prices. Cheng Xu is sales manager of the Hua Debao BMW dealership 4
 
　　"The new standard will indeed set higher technological 5 requirement for car manufacturers. But since BMW is an international brand and already has had the technologies in possession for quite some time, so the cost won't fall on customers' shoulders."
 
　　However, domestic car makers 6 like Geely don't seem to be rushing to put updated vehicles in stores. Sales manager surnamed Zhang who declined to reveal his full name works for the Geely Zhong Qi Shuang Hui dealership.
 
　　"As of now, we don't sell vehicles observing the new standard and we haven't got any information on when we will have new models to sell."
 
　　Although automobiles 7 meeting the stricter emission standards require a higher standard of fuel, car owners don't have to worry about higher gas prices for the next couple of months, because Beijing finished upgrading fuel supplies in gas stations with cleaner fuel almost a year ago.
 
　　According to an employee at the Yongding Gas Station in western Beijing, fuels sold in Beijing gas stations match the new emission standard cars well. There is number 92 gasoline and a higher quality type, number 95.
 
　　However, most Chinese cities don't have supplies of cleaner gasoline, so for situations when car owners have to run new standard vehicles outside Beijing on low quality fuels, Li Kunsheng, director at the Beijing Environmental Protections bureau, has some advice.
 
　　"We did tests. The filter won't break down after running on gasoline with a sulfur 8 content 15 times higher than that of Beijing's for 30 thousand kilometers, but it needs the engine to run on cleaner fuels for some time to fully 9 recover from the damage."
 
　　For CRI, I'm Wang Wei.