Falling lithium-ion battery costs and mass production made battery-electric cars and buses commercially viable from around 2010, with the Nissan Leaf, Tesla and China's BYD among the pioneers and China dominating manufacturing and adoption. Battery-pack prices fell by roughly an order of magnitude over the 2010s, narrowing the gap with petrol vehicles. Public and private charging points became a new layer of urban infrastructure competing for kerb, parking and grid capacity. Electric buses and two-wheelers spread fastest in Chinese cities.
It began decarbonising urban transport and reshaped planning for kerbside charging, parking and electricity-grid capacity. Crucially, it largely preserved car-dependent urban form, swapping the powertrain rather than the spatial model.