The streets of Beijing have changed dramatically within just a few years. The noisy, smelly thrum of traffic has been replaced by an unusual quiet for a megacity. Roads course with a stream of mostly electric vehicles, all with their distinct, green license plates.
This is not just a Beijing phenomenon. For those arriving in many of China’s major cities from countries dominated by gas-guzzlers, the quiet will be their first impression, said Li Shuo, director of the China climate hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute.
It’s like stepping into the future, he told CNN.
By any measure, China’s EV growth has been extraordinary. More than half of new cars sold are electric, putting the world’s largest automarket on a path to all but erase gas-powered cars over the coming decades. Last year, China’s EV sales soared to 11 million, a nearly 40% increase on 2023, according to data from UK research firm Rho Motion. It’s an “irreversible transformation,” Shuo said.
I’d like that to be the case, but nearly every US city, no matter the size, is designed for cars. And the connections between cities prioritize highways, not rail. The US might be able to adopt electric cars, but it’ll never be able to create the kind of walkable, bike-friendly, public-transport focused cities, because that would entail pulling up a lot of cities and neighborhoods by the roots. Once that is built up, its nearly impossible to undo it, and your only choice is to add innefficient kludges on top.
This is why it’s so crucial to do what China and a lot of Asian countries did, and priorizite metro/rail first, and not build your cities around highways.
Old east coast cities were built around streetcars
There’s a good episode about how they destroyed new york’s neighborhoods and rebuilt it around the car: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bb1IijxVR7c