China will end foreign ownership caps on local auto companies by 2022 and will remove restrictions on new-energy vehicle ventures this year, a major shift that will open the market wider to carmakers such as Nissan and Tesla. The country will remove limits on companies making full electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles in 2018, commercial-vehicle companies in 2020 and the wider passenger vehicle market by 2022, China's state planner said in a statement. The move, which comes am

It’s easy to become blase about China’s auto market, especially now that growth there has gone from white hot to merely off-white hot. Up 15 percent in 2016? Ho-hum. But just stop and marvel for a moment at the volume even a plateauing Chinese market represents — 24 million passenger vehicles last year, according to IHS Markit. Twenty-four million! With numbers like that, it ought to be China — not the U.S., Europe or Japan — that dictates the future of what we call global ve