SINCE you don’t seem to be having any luck in the license plate auctions, why don’t you just buy an electric car and get a free plate automatically?

I am sometimes asked that question by associates trying to find a way to end my conundrum of owning a car with no authorized license plate. Beyond that, since buying my Mazda last year, I even get teased about my poor credentials as a green pioneer on the roads.

Guilty as charged. I sometimes reply that I just can’t find an electric car that is as loveable as my gasoline-powered Mazda.

As an automotive journalist, I suppose it would be even more unprofessional to admit that I find the futuristic look of new energy cars a bit unappealing.

“Does one need a different-looking car to drive differently? Probably yes and probably no,” commented an electric car designer, who refuses to take the blame for the quirky look of his work.

There are only so many batteries that can be packed into a car and into its price. To optimize the energy efficiency of batteries, the body design of electric cars tackles weight and aerodynamics before aesthetics. A new powertrain layout could fundamentally change the proportions of cars as we know them. Even electric hybrids, which look very much like traditional gasoline-powered cars due to their mechanical kinship, can become the butt of jokes for screaming eco-friendly.

“It’s such a silly butt,” snickered my friend Alex, when viewing a BYD Qin plug-in hybrid driving in front of us, with its signature tail-light stretching across the tailgate and radiating swagger.

Alex has ample opportunities to be annoyed. Last year, 18,600 BYD Qin units were sold in Shanghai, becoming the city’s best-selling green car, even though it’s not manufactured here. The model is named after the aggressive, powerful Chinese dynasty that unified the warring states into a single kingdom for the first time. Today, the Qin is a conqueror tearing down the protectionist walls of China’s local clean car economy.

Chinese ancient war strategists believed that victory was a matter of being in the right place, at the right time, with the right military forces. In the modern case of Qin, victory rests largely on one weapon — a free Shanghai license plate.

That’s no small ammunition in a city where “environmentally friendly” are watchwords and owners of traditional combustion-engine cars are forced to endure restrictive quotas in auctions for license plates. The privilege for lucky winners doesn’t come cheap. A plate at the most recent auction cost more than 84,000 yuan (US$12,698), more than the cost of some new cars.

Desperate for a car plate, my friend Maggie’s family even dumped its newly bought Ford last year and bought a Qin. I wondered how many similar tragic stories underlie the fact that Shanghai last year accounted for one-third of BYD’s new energy car sales nationwide.

Maggie kindly suggested that I might do the same as my situation moved into the desperate zone. After buying my Mazda, I used temporary plates for a year while I continued to try my luck in the plate auctions. My car eventually entered pariah status and I had to mothball it until my luck improves. I am still waiting for that to happen, and I admit I did toy with the idea of buying an electric car.

Neither good nor bad

Except for the ridiculous taillight, the Qin is indeed a relatively normal-looking car, fairly priced after subsidies are calculated in. It has a back-up petrol engine to relieve any anxieties about recharging batteries. I should probably be grateful for an option that comes with a free car plate.

Foreign carmakers have been cautious about launching a new energy offensive at this early stage in the commercialization of electric cars. After all, the expensive nature of batteries dovetails better with high-end BMWs, Porsches and Teslas than with mass-market products.

So the Chinese green car market is largely driven by an oligarchy of domestic carmakers keen to bow to government pressure to find more affordable answers to clean cars. This year, the Roewe e550 plug-in hybrid, made by Shanghai-based SAIC, has been rising in sales dominance in the city, to the detriment of Qin.

Roewe’s wheels of fortune turned when its buyers began receiving more green subsidies from both the city government and the carmaker. So now my friends are advising me to buy a Roewe e550. I am beginning to feel like the poor country cousin that the rest of the family is trying to marry off. If I have a car with a plate, they reason, I will settle down.

My life as a plate-less car owner has been one of a drifter. I cannot say that is it always pleasant. But gaining a license plate by buying a car I don’t really want just doesn’t seem to make sense to me.

To those nudging me to make that trade-off, I reply, “Would I want to marry a man solely because he owns a home in a city of sky-rocketing real estate prices?”

No offense to those who did purchase green cars just to get the free plates. But I prefer to follow my instincts and stick to my principle that is better to make choices according to what you truly believe in. Compromise can lead to regret.

Deep down, I harbor doubts about the true environmental impact of electric cars, given the fact that China generates the majority of its electricity by burning coal, and that isn’t likely to change anytime soon.

Operating an electric or hybrid plug-in car requires a big change of user behavior. Instead of dropping by a gas station and refilling the tank in minutes, clean cars must be left at charging poles for hours. On long trips, the itinerary has to be carefully planned to take that into consideration.

I know I am too carefree to turn into a nervous calculator with mileage anxiety. I can see myself driving to the last bar of electricity, like I sometimes do on my smartphone — only to find there’s no one around to lend me a portable charge. A few times calling a tow truck would certainly cure me of that carelessness with a purely electric car. If I drove a plug-in hybrid, I would probably cheat by refilling its gas tank, just as a lot of Qin owners are accused of doing on the sly.

Every solution, of course, has its own problems.

I know a woman named Zhang Yan, who spent four months sorting out all the paperwork to obtain her free Qin car plate. She told me she almost regretted buying the car.

“Never before did I have to endure such pain to be a car owner,” she said. “How can the government wrap favorable policies in so much red tape?”

Speaking of pain threshold, a little more than 40,000 electric cars were sold in Shanghai last year, when free car plates and subsidies were doled out more generously than they are now. Starting in April, subsidies for green cars were scaled back, and free car plates were available only to green car drivers with spotless credit records and access to a private charging source. By contrast, more than 270,000 people bid in this month’s Shanghai auction for traditional car plates, with only 4 percent emerging victorious.

The market is full of evolutionary energy-saving solutions that help people salve their environmental consciences. The Mazda I drive, for example, boasts higher energy efficiency through optimizing traditional engine technologies.

The Toyota hybrid, which sources electricity generated within its gasoline-powered system, is quietly making inroads in China. It needs no external charging, almost halves fuel consumption and sells at a price not much higher than its combustion-engine sibling.

If that car were eligible for a free green car plate — which it is not — it would quickly be all over the streets of Shanghai, my auto journalist friend Mr. Shen and I agreed after test driving a Toyota Levin hybrid. Over the past five months, little more than 9,000 units have been sold in China, outperforming Roewe e550. I would have probably bought a Toyota hybrid if it had been on the local market earlier.

Industry experts told me that half-way solutions like the Toyota hybrid aren’t the solution to China’s air quality problems. As a journalist, I agree with that argument if I take a long-term view. But as a consumer, I don’t see it as my mission to help China start a new energy vehicle revolution.

When economic incentives and moral imperatives together don’t work their magic on the majority of the public, the crux of driving an electric car in Shanghai boils down to a free license plate.