High tech

Electric cars, and swapping the battery新能源汽车

More than half of new cars sold in China are now electric or plug-in hybrid, and the visible consequence is that Chinese city traffic is quiet — the scooters went electric years earlier. The brands are ones most visitors have never sat in: BYD, which sells more electric vehicles than anyone in the world, plus NIO, XPeng, Li Auto and now Xiaomi, whose first car arrived in 2024. NIO's answer to charging is worth seeing in person: instead of plugging in, the car drives into a station, the floor swaps the depleted battery for a charged one, and it leaves in about three minutes. All of these brands run showrooms in ordinary shopping malls, which are free, staffed and happy to let you sit in the cars.