6 Minute English / E-rickshaws driving away pollution

Note: This is not a word-for-word transcript.

Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I m Neil.

And I m Beth. I had my first drive in an electric car yesterday, Neil. It was amazing!

Electric cars are great, in theory, but who has the money to buy one?!

It s true that electric vehicles, or EVs as they re also called, are expensive, but in some parts of the world, the switch to electric vehicles has been a major success story in the fight against climate change. And it s not just rich people switching to electric - in India, poorer workers are embracing it too.

Yes, In India it s the drivers of small vehicles like motorbikes, mopeds, scooters and rickshaws, known as two- and three-wheelers, who dominate the road, and now over half of these are electric. In this programme, we ll be discussing the growing role of electric vehicles in the fight against climate change. And, as usual, we ll be learning some useful new vocabulary as well.

Great, but first I have a question for you, Neil. In India many different vehicles use the road, but which country s car market is the biggest? Is it:

a) The US?b) China? or,c) Japan?

Well, I ll guess it s the US that has the world s largest automobile market.

OK, Neil, I'll reveal the answer at the end of the programme. While electric vehicles score better than petrol or diesel cars in most environmental tests, there s some debate about exactly how green they are. A lot depends on how the electricity is generated in the first place, and in India more than three quarters of the electricity used continues to be generated by coal.