Climate Talk

China's 67% EV share: worth reading the small print

Not trying to rain on it, it's a big number. But the GONOM post itself points out that the 67% covers all 'new-energy vehicles', which includes plug-in hybrids. The 1.3 million figure from electrive is pure battery-electric only.

Plug-in hybrids can be great or almost useless for emissions depending on whether people actually plug them in. In Europe there's been a fair bit of debate about hybrids that mostly run on petrol in practice.

Also worth asking how clean the electricity is. A battery car on a coal-heavy grid is still usually better than petrol, but by less.

So: impressive, real, and also more complicated than the headline. Both can be true.