Range Coopetition: NEV Automakers' Strategies Under Dual Credit Policy Influences

This study investigates the strategic selection in R&D and production stages between competition and coopetition for duopoly heterogeneous new energy vehicle (NEV) automakers under the dual credit policy (DCP), considering R&D Subsidies and Range Preference. Four coopetition models are formulated: a full competition strategy, an R&D cooperation strategy, a production cooperation strategy, and a full cooperation strategy. The study examines the optimal strategy and analyzes the impacts of related factors on strategy selection from various perspectives, including the government's subsidy rate, R&D investments, outputs, profits, and social welfare. The results show that the R&D subsidy incentivizes R&D investment, but it is only sometimes consistent with optimal profit coopetition strategies. The full cooperation strategy maximizes profits when technological spillovers are low, while the complete competition strategy becomes dominant as technological spillovers increase. The full competition and R&D cooperation strategies are always better than the production cooperation and complete cooperation strategies in promoting R&D investment, expanding production scale, and improving social welfare. The level of technology spillovers, product differentiation, range preference, and credit price positively affect the equilibrium results under the four strategies, but a higher credit price is sometimes better. Therefore, the government should formulate dynamic subsidy policies, create a fair market competition environment, encourage knowledge flow and technology transfer, advocate differentiated competition, improve the charging infrastructure, and implement measures such as the credit pool management system.