I'm all in favour of trains. I only take the train to work, and it's so convenient I even take my kids to the city via train, to entertainment or shopping. However, even though I live inside the capital city in a Western European country, the train we take is powered by diesel. The government has been talking about electrifying the track for years, and the current estimate is that it will take another decade or more to get it done. There's a single electrified rail line in the entire country, and based on the electrification progress it will take several decades to electrify the rest (if ever). Based on this experience, I'd venture to say that electric cars are far easier to deploy than electrify train lines.

B-but think of the iNdIvIdUaL!

We 100% need more trains. But in rural America, we need cars to do anything.

Trains are great to connect cities. But a train trip for me will tipically take me will typically take 3 times longer than it would with a car. Last time I had to take the train/bus it took me 6 hours and had to change between 3 busses and 1 train. I could have done the whole trup in 2 hours, no changes and actually same price as I spent on fuel for my car.

And this is in Scandinavia where things run pretty smoothly!

I agree that within cities public transportation is great. But there are people who need cars no matter how many trains you set up or electrify. For us, EV is a good option (when they become more affordable)

In cities, yeah. Outside cities, impossible

But I'd love to rent autonomous electric cars to move

Because trains aren’t economically viable for the vast majority of the US, and where they are economically they are the topic of conversation.

As far as why the conversation would center around the US, that’s just the regular American-centric tilt english conversations generally lean towards. Most of Europe has their shit together in some topics like this (public transportation, for instance) and the US is a huge consumer of automobiles and no one if building mass transit between the middle of nowhere to the other middle of nowhere where we could ‘efficiently’ move individually insignificant numbers of people at a time.

[Citation needed] on the 100000x easier part, but nice meme.

Electric cars seem like a stopgap more than anything to me.

How many trains run from my garage to the convenience store at anytime I want? Or from my garage to work at anytime between 8 and 9 am and then home at whatever time I want to leave? What about the trains that run to my mother's house or my sister's house in different cities? What about the one that goes to the snowboarding resort I like it in the boonies, or for that matter, the one in the middle of the mountains? I will never live in an apartment with other people for many different reasons, and it gets both miserably hot and dangerously cold where I live. There are plenty of other things to fix before going after vehicles, especially electric vehicles. Making me operate on some strict schedule with trains and buses it other public transportation takes away my freedom to do what I want, and I will fight tooth and nail to make sure that's not taken from me, especially when both can coexist.

Batteries used gives you150 ebikes for every e-car

Because I value my autonomy and don't want to have to wait for a train to show up when I want to go somewhere. Also, paved roads are significantly cheaper to maintain than rail lines, which makes a substantial difference when you take into account the size of the US.