The largest EV market in the world may experience the biggest EV change we’ve ever seen. This market is that of China and as the most populated country in the world the pollution in some cities in China have grown to astronomical levels. In addition to experiencing some of the most polluted areas China has also grown with many new companies that offer electric vehicles to drive on the road. This has led to some of the changes that are getting ready to take place and make a difference on the road that may be something other large cities in the world should follow.

The city of Beijing has hatched a plan to actually replace a large number of the vehicles on the road that are part of the city transportation that is used by many of the citizens on a daily basis. This replacement would be to change out all of the taxicabs of the city to EV models in order to create less pollution from this part of the public transportation sector of Beijing. This change would affect a large number of vehicles that are currently polluting the air in this city.

How many vehicles would be changed out if Beijing goes through with this plan? This number would come out to be around 70,000 vehicles and it would cost about $1.3 billion if the average price per cab is $19,000. As a comparison, if you were to change all the cabs in New York City in the same way you’d only change about 13,000 models which would actually help improve the pollution of this large city as well, but can you imagine what 70,000 will do to the pollution of the city of Beijing, but this happens to be the second time that Beijing has thought about trying to change their taxicabs.

In 2014 the city actually thought about doing the same thing and was looking to replace 46,000 cabs with EV models over the course of four years which would have made a huge difference on the roads of Beijing. So far not many EV models have made it on the road and there hasn’t been a massive change in the number of cabs that are on the road in the city. There were some that were deployed in 2010 but that wasn’t enough to make a significant difference in the numbers but this may be the right time for this change.

In a market that has grown to 600,000 EV models to be the largest EV market in the world it’s time for Beijing to address the pollution problem and changing out 70,000 vehicles on the road to be EV models is the right way to make this happen. Other cities have tried to make these types of changes, but China and its capital city could easily be the first to successfully change to the EV models that will help to reduce the overall pollution in a large city, especially with the car that drive the most miles on a daily basis.