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Comment by ThePhysicist | Hacker News Reader

I’m currently in China and impressed by how many electric vehicles you find on the road: Not only buses but also many cars and scooters. Besides their own brands like BYD I saw a fair amount of Teslas as well, more than in Germany. Pretty impressive how things changed since I’ve visited the country last time (10 years ago), personally I think China will easily beat Europe in switching to renewables. In general the infrastructure there improved drastically it seems, many highways, train connections and public transport systems like metros are on par or slightly above Western standard I’d say.

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Teslas are popular in Beijing because EVs have a different pool in the license plate lottery. Rich people who would’ve gotten a black Audi instead settle for a Model S.

That's good right? Incentivizing EV adoption by the trend setters

I mean, it isn’t bad. Government policies are pushing people this way, even if most of the, still lack actual parking spots for their cars where they could charge at home. Honestly, I don’t know how they do it, 70% of the parking in Beijing is on street (usually illegally). Perhaps the Model S crowd can afford parking spots, which is why you don’t see a lot of BYD EVs that aren’t fleet.

> which is why you don’t see a lot of BYD EVs that aren’t fleet.

Yes infrastructure in most places needs to catch up but even so, having taxi and bus fleets transform to EV is nothing to be sneezed at in any city.

Taxis (bith standard and Uber varieties) may often form 10% of vehicles in cities (eg. where I live in Singapore) and disproportionately contribute to miles driven and hence emissions and smoke. Having all of those transform to EV is a very good thing.

What is a license plate lottery? Does the different license plate give one privileges? Or is it about getting a license plate at all?

The latter. It can take you a year if you're unlucky, depending on city. Chances of "winning" are much higher with EVs.

It can take much longer than a year in Beijing to win a plate.

Interesting. I never heard that from any other country. I guess it's a mechanism to limit the number of cars in those cities?

Yes. Shanghai uses a plate auction instead of a lottery like Beijing.

How do you know they are settling?

Leave Shenzhen and you will see it's not all like this.

Unfortunately that doesn’t change the equation much. The lasting impression of China in comparison with the west isn’t so much their development as the lack of our. Shenzhen might be the exception, but we don’t even have that.

Shenzhen and many other major east coast cities have banned e-scooters. If you go to lots of other places, they are actually everywhere. Personal e-vehicles are therefore far more numerous in those places. So to reply to your assertion, I would say that Shenzhen is clearly a bit of a showcase bubble, but it's actually less rife with e-vehicles than many other places.

I do think electric vehicles is a bad reference.

China is the only country that pushes electronic vehicles that much. ( That's good, but not a fair reference)

Not really, Norvegia is #1 with over 50% electric car sales last month, although that was because Model 3 got available.

Is "Norvegia" a typo?

Double typo for Norway...It's too late to correct now though :(

Well, I knew that, but Norwegian doesn't have a billion people and isn't fighting against traditional car sales like China does ( I supposed).

That's why I added: that pushes it "that much"

You don't think that European car companies are trying to to lobby against electric cars in Norway?

Don't get me wrong, I understand that China's policy matters the most for both CO2 and for improving battery technology, so actually I apploud both countries for implementing these policies.

Yes, they lobby. I've never said that.

They are still in the transformation phase, sudden change would destroy a lot of jobs.

Don't get me wrong, I support electric vehicles. But before pushing it, let some car companies adjust, so we don't lose a lot of jobs in the process.

To be clear: not supporting the actions of some car companies, but I don't want to destroy jobs in the process. Eg. Germany.

Transformation should happen though. But I don't see much benefit of removing a lot of older cars, that already done the damage ( production + resources + while driving), by replacing them immediately with electric cars ( that have a long term benefit, not a short term. Since they use resources too)

I got a disease from the toxic air pollution that I was subject to for more than 30 years in my life. Nowdays I have to travel away from Europe every year for half year, because I'm affected by the air pollution even more in winter (though heating is also a part of the reason why pollution gets so bad in winter).

Millions of people are dying every year because of air pollution, but you don't see it, because it's a silent killer. It slowly takes away years from your life span.

You could say that it's not worth to get rid of cigarettes from the restaurants, because they don't have short term benefits, only long term benefits, but for people who don't have a lower amount of enzymes than you to detoxify these molecules are affected immediately.

As for me, I wish there would be just 1 nice city in the world that would get rid of air pollution, I would immediately move there (right now I'm in a natural park resort, but these resorts get quite boring after some time compared to a city :( ).

You can move to Spiekeroog (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiekeroog), they've banned cars with very few exceptions. I'm sure there are other Islands without gasoline cars aswell.

Thanks, I'll visit it, I'm mostly missing a normal city life, for example dating for me is much easier in big cities. I like going to IMAX (I like to watch almost every IMAX movie for the looks), and like to go to great restaurants with special food that cities offer more.

My main idea now is actually to create an apartment with very effective air cleaning, like what the laboratories use. I don't know yet if it's possible / practical, I will figure it out.

This is an entire new element to the discussion ofc.

In the current capatalistic world, I'd say: wait 10 years. Which pretty much sucks as an answer for you.

In Belgium, we have Wallonia. 4/5th of the country is a forest and Durbuy is getting an upgrade ( adventure, hotels,.. - lot of nature there). A lot of cities are banning the top polluting cars. I'm not sure if that information is helpful. Just a suggestion and some information to show progress.

Ps. Removing sigarettes from a restaurant is feasible and already done (BE). It's not a possible economic disaster as removing traditional cars.

also furthers the goal of reducing dependence on foreign oil I suppose

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