Coronavirus disease 2019—COVID-19 to its friends—hasn't racked up a bodycount like the influenza epidemic of 1918, but in this far more globalized world, it's still causing quite a degree of havoc. There are now over 71,000 confirmed cases reported so far, and fears of that number growing by orders of magnitude have resulted in the postponement or cancellation of large public events both in China and beyond. Last week we learned that Mobile World Congress, an annual tradeshow in Spain, won't happen in 2020—now we can start adding auto shows to that list.

On Monday, it emerged that the Beijing auto show—which was scheduled for April of this year—will be postponed, presumably until the health crisis is over. According to Autocar, rumors that the show would be cancelled or postponed had been circulating for a week, with no official response until now.

The Beijing auto show is in good company; last week the promoters of the Chinese Grand Prix—an F1 race scheduled to take place in Shanghai on April 19—successfully petitioned the FIA (the sport's organizing body) and Formula 1 to postpone the event until an as-yet-undecided date toward the end of the 2020 F1 season. Although there is no official word on the inaugural Vietnam Grand Prix—set for April 5—some in the sport are concerned about attending that race in Asia as well.

Similarly, the Chinese round of the Formula E series will now not take place as planned in Sanya on March 21—like the Chinese Grand Prix, it seems the plan is to reschedule the race, but no one is making concrete plans while the epidemic still rages. Finding new dates may prove tricky for both series. F1's 2020 calendar is the busiest since the sport began in 1950, with 22 races originally scheduled to take place between March 15 and November 29. Formula E may be in an even tougher spot—its calendar ends with a pair of races in London on July 25 and 26, although the series has mooted the idea of making the New York ePrix—planned for earlier in July—into a double-header as well.

Could coronavirus cancel carbon cuts?

The loss of a couple of sporting events and a trade show are hardly the end of the world, but Chinese travel restrictions and quarantine rules could still have an outsized effect on the rest of the world. Emilio Herrera, chief operating officer for Kia Europe, said that it's possible the virus could cause the European Union to miss its ambitious CO 2 reduction target for 2020.

Specifically, factory closures in China could cause production slowdowns elsewhere in the world as critical parts or subassemblies become unavailable. Kia and Hyundai are already struggling to meet demand for their battery electric vehicles (BEVs) due to battery supply constraints, as is Jaguar Land Rover, and from this year automakers need to sell many more BEVs in Europe to meet stringent new EU emissions rules.

"Our planning to hit the targets has been many years in the making, but coronavirus is a curveball that of course nobody has factored in. Today we don't know the impact, but it could be that the whole industry is left in a position where it cannot fulfill the sales necessary and we have to go to the EU and plead for force majeure. We are not at the point yet where our plans will be disrupted to a point where we can't fulfill our promise to hit the EU target, but there is a potential worst-case scenario that we have to be prepared for. I just hope we don't have to go there," he told Autocar.