In several cities across Henan province, diesel and gas-powered heavy trucks that meet China’s stringent 'National VI' emissions standard are being turned away at factory gates unless they are hooked to electric tractor heads. Faced with access controls and camera recognition systems, drivers have resorted to swapping their diesel cabs for rented electric ones outside plants so trailers can enter to unload coal, alumina and other bulk cargoes.
The practice, widely reported in January, has spawned a small on-site market: operators rent battery-electric tractor heads for between 200 and 400 yuan per use, with longer waits and slow unloading driving some invoices as high as 700 yuan. Replacing a tractor head can take only ten minutes, but queues for scarce electric tractors mean many drivers wait hours or even days to get their turn.
Transport bosses and drivers say the factory gate rules are non-negotiable. One carrier owner, using a pseudonym, says dozens of his vehicles have been forced into the swap routine since certain paper mills, power plants and smelters began enforcing a “new-energy-only” entry policy in October 2025. The factories frame the measure as compliance with a provincial drive to boost ‘‘clean transport’’, a target embedded in Henan’s 2023–25 environmental action plan.
Provincial environmental officials, however, say the blanket bans exceed policy intent. Zhang Fan, director of mobile-source pollution regulation at Henan’s ecology and environment department, told reporters that the province never required enterprises to bar National VI trucks and that local implementation may have gone awry. The department has dispatched a team to investigate sites where head-swapping has proliferated.
The regulatory backdrop helps explain the confusion. Henan’s three-year plan set ambitious goals for decarbonising freight: by 2025, heavy bulk transport in industries such as power, steel and chemicals should be 80 percent 'clean' — a category that includes electric trucks, hydrogen, rail and inland waterways. Provincial guidance and factory-level performance metrics have pushed firms to hit those ratios, while door-control systems and camera-based plate recognition give companies a simple way to enforce exclusions at the gate.
The result is an example of last-mile regulation producing unintended consequences. Policy instruments designed to influence fleet composition have translated into a practical, enforceable rule at individual plants — that only visibly electric tractors count as 'clean' — leaving compliant National VI diesel or gas tractors effectively penalised. Small carriers, who typically operate trailers and lease heads, have borne the cost in both time and money.
The phenomenon also opens room for arbitrage and informal markets. Contractors offering electric tractor heads have set prices by distance to plant and expected unloading time, while some drivers have tried to circumvent controls with fake electric-vehicle plates. Those responses underline the gap between high-level environmental targets and the realities of dispersed logistics networks.
For companies, local governments and national regulators, the incident poses a governance choice. Authorities can tighten rules to require only truly higher-emitting vehicles to be barred, expand subsidies and charging infrastructure for heavy electric tractors, or accelerate modal shifts to rail and waterways for bulk goods. Each option carries fiscal and operational trade-offs and will determine whether the policy reduces emissions or simply redistributes costs.
The immediate policy fix is procedural: provincial inspectors will need to clarify that National VI-compliant vehicles are not categorically banned and to correct one-off factory practices. Longer term, Henan’s challenge illustrates a familiar policymaking tension in China — ambitious environmental targets can produce sharp local enforcement that prioritises measurability over proportionality, with visible but uneven impacts on supply chains and small businesses.
Beyond Henan, the episode is a cautionary tale for jurisdictions pursuing rapid electrification of freight. Without accompanying infrastructure, enforcement standards and transitional relief for incumbents, well-intentioned directives can spur rent-seeking, operational disruption and the social discontent that undermines environmental governance.