@lettosprey collectively as a society. We just can.

@quixoticgeek To the point where more people can be less dependant on cars, yes. A lot of people would still need them,we cannot avoid that.

Many people live in areas where public transport is not viable, as population density is too low. To give "good enough public transport" for everyone would be way too wasteful.

As it is, a lot of people are left with the option to either buy electric or buy gas. I am happy they buy gas.

Also, forcing companies to let people that can and want to work from home, work from home, would help a lot :O

@lettosprey public transport is always viable. People might choose to not live in certain places if cars became too difficult. Private car ownership is not sustainable. We need to reduce it by about 99-98%

@quixoticgeek Nothing about capitalism is sustainable, absolutely nothing. People don't generally "choose to live" where they do, it is practicality vs cost. Cities are expensive. Make cars "too difficult" and you create even more social differences.

Unless you take away the capitalism equation.

Moving people to make this possible will probably be even less sustainable than having cars.

We have painted ourself into a corner that will be rather tricky to get away from. The problem isn't cars, as such, but the need for continious growth to maintain the economy or else marked collapse and people loose everything and have nothing. This is not sustainable.

How do we fix that?

@lettosprey making cars too difficult only creates imbalance if you don't provide an alternative. We're happy to talk induced demand when it comes to additional lanes in the motorway. But when it comes to buses, trams, trains, and bike lanes, we have someone out with a clipboard measuring how many people are swimming across the river.

Build better towns, cities, and villages. Design it so we don't need cars. People will choose the better option if it's available.

@quixoticgeek It sounds like you live in a place where public transport is bad / non existent. The city I work in was built for horses. We have high speed train and loads of busses shuffeling a huge amount of people every day. Several people live in the city without having a car.

I can take bus & train to the city to get to work, I get there faster with train than car.

Still, it is near impossible to live where I do, without a car. Making it possible would require such an extended amount of busses that it would require way too much resources and run busses mostly empty. Bikes is not an option since distances are too great, and winter is a thing...

Make cars too difficult, and people that have enough money to move, will move, and those that dont will not, you will create "slum" situations. A LOT of new apartments in cities will need to be built, and houses here torn down. This is not good use of resources.

EVs are sadly part of the solution.

@quixoticgeek We see now however that the push for bigger and bigger cars is completely unhinged. There are solutions to drastically reducing the impact of cars and still letting those that need them, have them. Cars dont need to have the size they do now. Drastically reduce size can drastically reduce the required battery. Cars sold now have often 70-100kWh batteries. 30-40kWh would be plenty. They could make 3-4 cars with the resources it takes to make one big SUV.

Building good public transport would eliminate a lot of the daily need for cars, such as commuting. But it does not eliminate a lot of peoples need to own a car. We can however drastically reduce the impact this has, by taxing cars by size & weight.

@lettosprey for a lot of people they don't need to own a car. For the times public transport or bike doesn't work, a car share system would be just what they need. Large sections of our society have a built in dependency upon ownership and maintenance of 2t metal boxes. Electric or dinosaur burning. That is simply not sustainable.

@lettosprey I live in a city with some of the best public transport in the world. I am 100m from a metro station, and the same from a tram stop. I have cycle infrastructure that can get me anywhere in the country in under a day. I've never owned a car. This should be the norm, not the exception. Requiring car ownership to partake in society is placing participation behind a paywall made up of thousands of surprisingly large MICR transactions. It is not sustainable.

@quixoticgeek You keep saying it is not sustainable.

This does not help people that are completely dependent on cars. We have two options. Gas cars and EVs.

Will you require people to move to a setting that you are in to ditch cars? You ignore the points of how much resources it would cause to do so.

You also ignore the difficulties it would cause for people that do not have the resouces to relocate.

Yes, we should build for better infrastructure but we will be dependant on cars for a long time, and we can then pick if those cars should be EVs or gas cars.

The "EVs are not sustainable" is basically giving a free pass to gas cars to keep on "until we one day have the perfect solution".

As I pointed out, NOTHING in the capitalist economy is sustainable. Unless we fix that, no amount of public transport will save us.

EVs remove our dependency on oil, do not ruin city air, and can even be used to balance grid power and simplify transition to solar.

They are NOT the same as gas cars.