I found this article at the Institute for Art and Ideas by Conor Bronsdon interesting enough to share:
If we’re still sprawling outwards as populations grow, we’re not going to be able to achieve the efficiency needed in transportation and housing to meet our climate and space needs. We’ll also deeply damage our environment, getting rid of green space for single-family housing, cutting down trees that are doing important work filtering carbon from the atmosphere, and poisoning our rivers and streams with the heavy metals present in car tires.
The short version: you don’t need to just take my word for it. Even if you believe that global climate change is a risk, even if you believe it is an issue, electric vehicles are at best a patch and at worst a false step and a waste of effort.
The author’s view is that we should be aiming at greatly reducing vehicular transport. My own view is that the first step shouldn’t be EVs but to stop subsidizing sprawl. WFH may be a good step in that direction by allowing those workers who are able to eschew commuting entirely thereby reducing the public support for the interstates that enable sprawl.
My grandfather walked 1/2 mile to his job as a steam fitter in a textile mill in Methuen, Mass. But in Boston, I took a bus (sometimes electric, other times diesel) to the MTA elevated train, thence to downtown.
As antiplanner (blog) documented, buses and cars are the best for moving people, since on a passenger-mile basis they are cheapest in terms of capital cost, operating cost, fuel consumption, and emissions. Trains are the worst in every category. Trains are also inflexible, and they require cars or buses for the last mile, unless the destination can be walked. Real fun in heavy rain. I got home soaked to the skin many, many times.
In general, cities, especially large cities, are uneconomic and require subsidies from the suburbs and country. Once they couldn’t even maintain their population, and required continuous immigration. Flint, MI, and Jackson, MS, are in that condition now.
Once upon a time, when people walked to work, cities made sense as manufacturing hubs, and they generated enough value to justify their existence. That was 70 years ago. Todays service dominated cities do not generate enough value to justify their existence. They function by redistributing welfare and other subsidies.
EV’s are the ultimate in virtue signaling meets politics meets subsidy.
Bjorn Lomborg is certainly a believer in AGW and that its a serious enough problem to warrant actions. However, he is a very sane voice. He has a nice piece on EV’s in a book and a YouTube video. I’d recommend it. He’s not a fan.
As basically a manager of businesses, I take a dim view of work at home for all but some very specialized functions. Organizations function best when people interact on site.
As an aside, I find it ironic that people of a certain philosophical persuasion have encouraged policies that have turned large cities into crime infested hell holes that people don’t want to live and work in; yet they are the ones advocating urbanization.
A transition to EVs will require 100% subsidy over a period of 20 years, the time required for a complete fleet turnover. Banning the sale of new IC won’t do it. You’d need to ban the sale of USED IC as well. I don’t believe that will happen.
Unless we are mining, refining, and processing the necessary materials that would end up being an enormous subsidy to China.
Plug-in hybrids are a better choice.
Hybrids are certainly more feasible than straight electrics.
I for one, don’t believe the enviro-zealots will be able to come to grips with the necessary battery related issues involving mining/refining. They have shown their hand with their resistance to nuclear energy.