The production of electric vehicles should be halted, as stated by Rocco Pendola in City Life.
When it comes to the problems that Tesla is experiencing and the sluggish growth of the electric car market as a whole, the underlying problem is rarely brought up in the conversations that are taking place.
The issue is not the sort of fuel that is used to power our passenger vehicles, whether or not there is a driver behind the wheel, or whether or not you are "sharing" the ride with a friend, an independent contractor driver, or both. From the very beginning, it is the manner in which we organize ourselves.
The push toward electric automobiles is representative of a culture that does not only reject large thinking; rather, it refuses to properly examine the possibility of such thinking.
We try to implement Band-Aid solutions that do more to feed the egos and aspirations of billionaires than they do to improve the quality of life for all members of society and seriously address real issues such as climate change. This is in contrast to the practice of crafting sustainable and long-term solutions to problems that have been around for a long time and have deep roots.
A remark that Grace Ombry provided to one of my Medium articles that was about a different topic was absolutely spot on.
As a result of our refusal to invest in low-emissions mass transit or to permit remote work, the kind of mindset that you have described also explains the jaw-dropping lunacy of "transitioning everyone to electric vehicles." It would appear that we would rather waste resources and put up with the pollution that comes with the production of millions of new electric automobiles in order to allow the billionaire class to become zillionaires for the time being. “I know! Let’s create a somewhat less—we hope—polluting way for workers to wait in traffic for four hours a day!”
Right on.
If you look at a picture of pretty much any American city at or soon after the start of the 20th century, you’ll notice light rail tracks running down the middle of more than a few streets.
Like this one from 1910—at the crossroads of Elmwood and Allen in Buffalo, New York.
That’s still a great neighborhood. By our poor American standard of what makes a community excellent.
But it’s not as great as it could be because of the dominance of the automobile. A domination that helped kill or, at least, harm most U.S. cities and contributed to the expansion of suburbia.
Source: WNY Heritage
This would be a 242-minute read if I narrated the complete thing.
But—bottom line—we could live like many Europeans do. In walkable urban environments where cars take a backseat to dynamic public space and other kinds of mobility, allowing for all types of social contact and a greater quality of life.
Today, Americans mainly reject that type of lifestyle. However, this wasn’t always the case.
Big companies and our own government created this scenario. The PBS documentary Taken for a Ride captures the story as effectively as anything I’ve seen—
Before freeways, traffic congestion, and air pollution, public transportation was a major feature of the American environment. Jim Klein and Martha Olson mix investigative journalism, urban history, and social commentary to expose General Motors’ involvement in demolishing streetcar transportation in the 1930s and in catapulting the vehicle to the center of our national culture.
Antitrust at its best. And that resulted in a $5,000 punishment for General Motors and $1 for its treasurer.
We don’t like to think large. Not as a society, at least.
One guy thinks big, and we follow. We go around like sheep in a car that—when it comes down to it—is precisely the same as the millions of other cars ruining our built environments.
If we thought large, we would undertake the type of major public works project that brought us the nation’s highway system.
We would actually do something with the data that indicates, “52% of all trips, including all modes of transportation, were less than three miles, with 28% of trips less than one mile. Just 2% of all journeys were greater than 50 miles.”
We would cease building electric automobiles. We would stop with these delusions of forcing everybody to own one.
We would work—as a nation—to ensure that you could take those one- and two-mile trips in circumstances suitable to walking. Not in circumstances where you’d have to have a death wish to dash out for a gallon of milk on two feet or your bike.
If we genuinely want to tackle enormous problems—and offer people at all rungs of the economic ladder fantastic jobs—we would take a long, hard look at our way of life and admit that much of our past was one giant error. We would begin—with national cohesion—to turn car-dependent districts (in suburbia and the city) into pedestrian-oriented locations we can be proud of.
On the other hand, rather than doing it in the image of one or a handful of billionaires who presumably do not have as clear a vision of a sustainable future as they and we once thought they did, we may dream large and make change collectively