At this point, the question may not be whether cars are going to transition, at last, to electric, but whether solar farms will be able to provide enough relatively clean electricity to meet the demand. China is certainly on board with EV, having received an unlikely nudge from SARS. From Dennis Taylor at the Monterey County Herald:

“What was lost on that audience, he said, is the fact that China now has more than 200 million electric-vehicle drivers — a statistic that by next year is expected to eclipse the total number of drivers in the United States.

A big part of the electric-vehicle surge in China can be traced to the 2002 epidemic of the SARS virus, during which many mass-transit users became afraid to board a bus and discovered that for $200 to $450 they could instead purchase a 1-horsepower electric motorcycle.

The alternative caught on: In 2013, the Chinese bought 37 million two-wheeled electric vehicles, Jurvetson said.

Electric motorcycles (which look a lot like bullet bikes), electric cars, even electric boats were among the vehicles showcased just outside the Hyatt’s convention center as Jurvetson spoke to a large and enthusiastic crowd at the symposium, drawing parallels between the future of electric cars and commercial space-travel vehicles that are the focus of SpaceX.”