Answer to Beijing Air Pollution Under Olympic Noses

When Beijing won the privilege of hosting the 2008 Olympic Games, seven years ago, the Chinese capital promised to improve its air quality, but as the Olympics now are in full swing and air quality has been a visibly controversial issue, ZAP asks if anyone realizes there is an electric car factory just outside of Beijing building hundreds of zero-emission electric vehicles for export by ZAP to the United States?

The Bird's Nest Olympic Venue in Beijing. (Credit: an drew, Flickr)The Xebra electric car and truck factory in Shandong Province has been building a record number of vehicles for ZAP. With high gas prices, ZAP has been working with the factory to boost production for all the vehicles it builds in China. The Xebra factory itself has been praised by the Chinese government and has appeared on national television during the past two years of growth.

China is not a new market for ZAP. In 1996 ZAP began working to manufacture its vehicles in partnership with the growing Chinese manufacturing base. ZAP introduced one of the first electric bicycles and scooters to China, a market that experts say has grown domestically to hundreds of millions used daily with hundreds of companies building models.

Of course, Olympic cyclists would probably scoff at an electric drive system on a bicycle and many other things as well. When part of the cycling team arrived in Beijing, they walked off the airplane in specially designed gas masks US organizers offered to all the athletes. [DIPLOMATIC SIDE-NOTE: While we understand if some people want to wear gas masks, you might not want to wear a gas mask when you first arrive in the most populous nation on Earth that has been working overtime to improve air quality.]

Athletes say they notice a difference. "We all expected to feel a bit more tired than we're used to. I myself was still a little bit surprised at how thick the air was," Canadian soccer player Kara Lang told the BBC. "We were getting winded going up the stairs," said teammate Rhian Wilkinson. "The smog is something everyone has to deal with. ... It's not like you can adapt to it. I can't see any way your lungs can adapt to that."

Among the many plans that the Chinese government vowed to make to reduce air pollution, they said that hundreds of highly polluting factories would be eliminated. While it seems the Xebra factory is far enough away for Beijing not to notice the electric cars and trucks, it was also far enough away to avoid being shut down. However, the Washington Post reports that the factories iXebra Production in the Shandong Province of China. were simply moved to other parts of the country.

Chinese officials continue to praise all the efforts to improve are quality and report some success. However the day of the opening ceremony, the quarter of Beijing in which the Olympic Green is situated was colored green on the map, marking an air pollution index (API) of 101-150. The government's safe limit is 100, and the city authorities' figures put the API at 95. The reason for the "green" color was high levels of particulates, known as PM10. Again, while the online map gave a fail for the Olympic Green, the figures for the nearest monitoring station in Beijing showed a pass.

At first the pollution-monitoring site was freely accessible, but after complaints by the Chinese authorities, it was restricted to users by password only. Later on the Friday before the opening ceremony, subscribers to the website received an email saying the site would no longer be visible by password. "I am very sorry to have to let you know that at the request of our Chinese partners in this project we are unable to provide public access to the Beijing Air Quality forecasts during the Olympic Games period," the email said.

After a little research, we discovered that the Olympics did implement the use of electric vehicles. Indeed, on the Olympic Website there is a press release about 50-passenger electric shuttle buses being put into service. While Aluminum giant ALCOA claims they provided the lightweight wheels for the 50 electric buses, there has been little evidence that the buses are improving air quality. One blogger hinted that the buses weren't effective at all.

Luckily, it seems that Mother Nature came in to provide some relief. The first weekend some precipitation helped "wash away the pollution" according to Associated Press reports. Although, many say the visibility has not improved noticeably and in some cases the haze and humidity have only reduced visibility. There are many conflicting reports in the media that on one hand the Chinese government and Olympic organizers have done a great deal to improve air quality, while others say air quality is at levels that are harmful to your health, much less a finely tuned Olympic athlete.

Chinese are quick to point out that the sky is truly blue, the trees change colors and the temperature drops in "Golden October." That month, or even September, would have been a better time to introduce the city to the world. But organizers settled on the auspicious date of Aug. 8, 2008 - eight is considered the luckiest of numbers in China - in one of the hottest, most humid and smoggiest months on the calendar.

Unluckily, it's a difficult problem to tackle, but if we put things into perspective, Beijing is just the latest city to try to tackle these issues. Remember Los Angeles and Madrid? We can all use the luck, but at ZAP we wish luck to all the Olympians and to the people of Beijing. ZAP is going to try to have to do things the hard way and make its own luck.