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I love electric vehicles – and was an early adopter. But increasingly I feel duped | Rowan Atkinson
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2023
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Environment
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I'm a little disappointed this article doesn't seem to acknowledge that what's really better for the environment is not buying a car at all. Not only do we need greener cars, we need less cars overall.
Ebikes, public transit, walkable cities are all way more environmentally friendly than buying any type of car.
This is much easier said than done. Around large parts of the United States you can't reliably commute by public transit. For me personally, without a car, a one way 40 mile trip to the major city near me would take 5 hours. That's 2 different trains and 2 different busses.
Add that to the fact that the station closest to me only has a few trains a day and my options are very limited.
Even if we ignore the current train schedule and assume that trains come by every 5 min, it would still be a 2 hour trip that costs me $20 for one way. I could then bike the rest of the way and avoid the last 2 buses.
There are rail passes I could get, but those would cost $477/month. It's cheaper to lease a Tesla at that point.
Owning a car is pretty much the only reasonable way of getting around for many parts of the U.S.
Yes but you do recognize the person is suggesting we fix our town planning so that a car is not a requirement anymore? We did it before cars existed, we can do it again.
I understand what he's suggesting and I do agree that we need to fix up our town planning.
And that's why my point wasn't that he's wrong about his suggestions, just that, again, it's "much easier said than done."
For the foreseeable future, owning a car is the only reasonable way of getting around many parts of the U.S.
How long do you think it would take to fix up even half of the cities in the U.S?
How can we fast track it and what are reasonable expectations since there will be pushback from people?
In a way we would need some sort of Haussmannization to occur and that will not go well in the U.S.
I think part of it is building support and having conversations with people you know about ways you might improve your town, or why its important that we rethink how our towns and cities are layed out and connected by transit.
Imo the danger with an article like this is that it doesn't really address the fact that EVs are ultimately in support of a status quo of car dependency that isn't compatible with a sustainable future, so even when we do improve the tech it shouldn't distract from the long term goal of reducing car dependency.