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UAW strike could disrupt EV rollout. Environmentalists support it anyway.
(www.politico.com)
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this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2023
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This isn't about more windmills though, this is about EVs perpetuating the atomization and car dependency that got us into this mess, and thus being at best a band-aid fix and at worst preventing better solutions from taking form.
EVs are a distraction and driver funding from public transport options to spaces for cars. Cars need infrastructure such as traffic stops, crossings, parking, etc. And with metropolitan areas becoming increasingly crowded, all of this infrastructure takes up space and costs the city a lot of money as the land value rises.
For example, a car parking space where I'm from will cost something like $70/day. A shop double the size would be leased at $30k/month. Our rate money goes into subsidising the car parking spots because they need to sit somewhere where they're not being used.
EVs (in car form) still use the same spaces as cars and use up money that could be better spent on other things to improve city accessibility. That's a bit of the money part.
From an efficiency perspective, any kind of car (EV or otherwise), is extremely inefficient in Metropolitan areas because a large portion of the time is spent waiting in traffic. Any other type of transport moves more people per second than cars such as motorbikes, scooters, bicycles, trains, trams, buses etc. So, you're allowing a significant chunk of infrastructure to be occupied by an extremely ineffective mode of transport in a city of millions. If you remove the entire aspect of private vehicles in Metro areas, you free l suddenly free up a lot of space and increase efficiency for the other modes of transport.
EVs or cars would be useful in low density areas where the efficiency would be higher than using any other type of transport and would have a much more minimal impact on the climate than if large cities all used EVs.
We have the technology and the smarts to build a better world but we need to rip the band-aid off and understand that the problems that arise in our day to day is of our own making and that we can absolutely rebuild it from the ground up so that it is more sustainable.
In a single lifetime, we have moved into severe car dependency. Our cities are purposefully built so that only cars can be used. Don't you see? This is a problem that we've created completely by ourselves. If we keep heading in that direction because it's cheaper and easier, i.e. leaving the band-aid on, major investment into public transit simply will not happen because it's 'too expensive and too hard'.
I never said not do both, but I'm seeing time and time again that new roads are being invested rather than investment into other options. What usually happens in reality is one or the other. Look at Egypt, look at the US, look at Australia. Then look at places like the Netherlands.
Netherlands still have roads but in Metropolitan areas, there are a huge number of alternatives.
By the way, when you say you don't have other means of transport, what locations are you referring to? What I was referring to was Metropolitan areas. Regional areas, where there is a lower density, should still be provided with roads as a means of travel. It's ridiculous to think that Metropolitan cities don't have pubic transit infrastructure in first world cities.