The great Chinese road trip is about to begin. In the next fortnight, tens of millions of motorists will shortly join at least 1bn others heading home for that mother of all Chinese holidays: lunar new year[15 feb].
My bronchial passages congest at the mere notion of so many pollution producers taking to the roads all at once. So I was delighted to learn that China’s State Grid had finished building quick-charging stations for electric cars along the 1,200km motorway from Shanghai to Beijing — and eager to give the vehicles a test drive. Xinhua, the state news agency, crowed proudly about the completion of 50 stations capable of charging eight cars each in 30 minutes flat.
And about time too: China is the world’s second-largest market for electric vehicles, and nouveau riche renminbi have poured into purchases of the Tesla model S, the coolest green motorcar on the block. For at least a decade, Beijing has been decanting subsidies into the creation of a homegrown electric vehicle industry, hoping to leapfrog conventional engines and go straight to world dominance of green car technology. And China’s air pollution problem is so big that it must, like the Great Wall, be visible from space. So selling electric cars here ought to be about as easy as selling protective face masks. But it’s not.