Abstract:Over the past four years, the measures for the parallel administration of the average fuel consumption and new energy vehicle credits of passenger vehicle enterprises in China (hereinafter referred to as the “dual credit policy”) have been implemented, and the initial effect of promoting energy conservation, emission reduction, and green development of the automotive industry has been evident. Automobile manufacturing enterprises are under the transformation pressure of reducing the production of traditional fuel vehicles and increasing the production of new energy vehicles. The long-term issue of enterprise competitiveness under the influence of the policy is worthy of attention. Taking the listed enterprises of new energy vehicles as the research object, they were divided into an experimental group for passenger vehicle companies and a control group for commercial vehicle companies. The difference-in-difference model is applied to analyze the effect of the duel-credit policy on enterprise competitiveness, and the heterogeneity of policy effectiveness is tested based on the nature of enterprise property right and life cycle. The results show that the duel-credit policy significantly reduces the enterprise competitiveness represented by the asset contribution ratio by promoting the transformation of new business. The competitiveness of state-owned automobile manufacturing enterprises has declined significantly in the short term, and private enterprises have taken advantage of the first-mover advantage in developing new energy vehicles, and their competitiveness is not significantly affected by policies. The competitiveness of enterprises in the recession period drops significantly, while the enterprises in the growth period and mature period are not significantly affected. It is also found that increasing the scale of R&D investment has no moderating effect on the impact of policies, but expanding the scale of new business helps to weaken the negative impact of policies on enterprise competitiveness. It is recommended that automobile manufacturing enterprises with dual-credit imbalances increase the production of new energy vehicles in light of market demand, alleviate technical policy compliance pressures, reverse the operating risks caused by the imbalance of credits, and moderately increase investment in the research and development of energy-saving technology for fuel vehicles, and make full use of the credits accounting discounts given by the revised policy on low-fuel consumption vehicles. The government should further improve the supporting infrastructure of new energy vehicles, appropriately increase incentives for new energy vehicle consumption terminals, and consider supporting differentiated R&D subsidies, project funding, and other incentive measures for enterprises.