Tomorrow is China's 'no-car day'

In the lead up to next year’s Beijing Olympic games, the Chinese government is organizing a ‘no-car day’ in 108 of its cities scheduled for tomorrow to help clean its smoggy air. It won’t be a complete blanket ban. The ban will be in force for only a few select streets in each city, however all residents will be encouraged to leave their cars at home.

Last month, Beijing conducted a four-day trial where nearly 1.3 million cars were taken off the streets. However, according to Reuters, this is less than half of the three million cars registered in the city, a tally that grows by more than one thousand cars per day.



When the Olympics roll in, officials will be shutting down the worst-polluting factories and switching thousands of homes running on coal-based energy to start using gas.

With every major carmaker planning to release minicars over the next five years we can expect the use of automobiles in China to increase exponentially. With so much trouble already being caused by heavy pollution we wonder what these cheap new cars will do to the environment.

Photo: Bodak