So China is first world?

Though I do admit, electric is less compelling where the electric grid is unreliable.

Well this whole first/second/third world nomenclature is not really pertinent in most cases but yes, I rank the parts of China that do buy cars as developped even though other parts of the same country is in a completely different state.

Still not negligible.

but not enough to make a impactful dent in carbon emissions, especially if the electricity used charge them is produced by fossil.

When I ran the numbers off of the actual CO2 emissions of the actual California grid, an EV created something like half the CO2 for a trip in the equivalent gas car.

The calculation wasn't straightforward though. And varies widely by locale.

EV mileage is reported in eMPG. Which means, "The miles you get when you charge the battery with the same energy as is in a mile of gasoline." The problem is that to deliver that much to the battery, you have losses at the charger, losses in the grid, and losses during power generation. None of which are counted in that figure. If your electric car is running off of a coal power plant, that 120 eMPG Tesla can easily perform about like a 30 MPG Camry. But as soon as you have a significant fraction of your grid being generated by renewables, now the electric car is running on a fraction of the CO2 emissions of the gas car.

In the end using a car is using a car. It takes an awful lot of energy to build, and then to move, more so often to transport only one or 2 persons, in a very short trip. It needs huge infrastructure that are energetically and financially costly to build and maintain.

All these needs to be cut down and EV won't help us. People need to be able to reach safely schools, workplaces, shops, restaurants by foot or by bike regardless of their age and fitness level.

What we help us is better infrastructure for non motorized vehicles, better public transport (even if they are not financially profitable), walkable spaces, security (with a density of human presence making sure we are safe, not useless cameras), transforming suburbs, commercial and social areas so there is no physical separation anymore between people and where they need/want to go and spend time, effectively bringing back the village/small town paradigm.

EV goes way way way way down the list and we should focus first on EV for public transport and transportation of good rather than personnal toys and vanity possession.

Large energy plants are still more efficient than individual ICEs.