for every big, international, well run company this is basically like saying it's next year...
when i worked on marketing for target... they kicked off planning for their 2-day sale 18 months in advance... not sure it was smart, but they did it...
It also neatly coincides with 2021, which is when car manufacturers have to reduce their fleet consumption to 95g CO2/km in the EU; a reduction of about 20-30% that will be very hard to achieve given that they all try to sell more and more SUVs. In China hard quotas for electric cars will be introduced around that time too, I believe.
