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Electric cars: The equivalent of switching from binge drinking whiskey to binge drinking wine.
(lemmy.ml)
this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023
569 points (78.1% liked)
Fuck Cars
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I'm sure this is unpopular this community but I feel like "fuck cars" folks are either living in a dream world where public transport can answer everyone's transportation needs. If you live in a city with all the amenities you need where public transport is good and economically viable sure, "Fuck cars", but if you don't...
If you only have the option to drive and it looks like it will never change where you live, then yes, driving electric is better than driving an ICE car. You're not the problem for needing to live your life with the limited options you have access to. However, that does not mean the intrinsic problems with cars disappear the instant they become electric, and this meme is mainly meant to respond to the techbro people who think just because electric cars exist now it makes transit obsolete or it solves literally everything wrong with cars in general, and use that to actively resist public transportation or attempt to turn public opinion against it. I should have added additional context to make that clearer.
Well I do drive electric now but I could not get by without a car. Honestly I would love it if public transport were viable for everyone. In London and Zurich I have experienced public transport that worked. Where I live a 1 hour car journey can mean a 3 or 4 hour trip by public transport and only if you are travelling at the right time of day. Unfortunately I don't necessarily get to choose when I make some of those trips because it is part of my job. Unfortunately here, public transport is slow, expensive and unreliable here.
I know electric cars don't solve everything, and maybe this meme is not exactly what I'm responding to, but for a lot of people, public transport is just not a viable alternative.
Like I said I know it's not going to be a popular sentiment here.
People are advocating for denser cities with better public transport, not for you to use the shitty bus in your suburb.
Haven't driven in over a decade, can confirm it's like living a dream
...then either you're a farmer or the area you live was built wrong and needs to be fixed.
I'm not a farmer, my nearest grocery store is 8 miles away. It's rural and the cost of living is extremely cheap. it also snows a ton and often drops to sub zero temps.
What my solution? How does this get fixed for me?
Did you know that most people live in cities? About 60% of North America live in what is considered to be a metropolitan area.
In most of these areas aggressive expansion of public transit is a no brainer.
It doesn't have to work everywhere to be a good idea
It doesn't. But that's okay, because nobody gives a shit about special snowflakes way off the tail end of the bell curve like you -- solving the problem for the 80% of everybody else, for whom reasonable solutions do apply, is plenty good enough!
Demanding that any solution be perfect enough to solve it for literally everyone including you is just bad-faith reactionary bullshit.
Bad example that you provided. I do not lease or make payments on my car. I may be on the end of the been curve but you save assume every person ever pays what's in the articles headlines.
Using the calculator literally provided in the article you are citing my monthly cost for my car is $120. A lot less than the $1000/month they say as an average.
I'm also saving way more than that per month in rent by living where I do outside of a town or city.
Well, can't you resettle in a more compact town?
You assume your proposal is an "easy" solution. The main reason I live here in the first place is because the surrounding cities, that do have amenities and public transport, are much more expensive to live in. Is not that the town I live in is large in area, it's quite walkable, it simply doesn't have much.
It also reminds me of a guy I used to know who said he didn't need a watch. Claiming he didn't need to know the time that often. But what did he do? He asked everyone around him what the time was instead. Quite often. Oh and he was usually late to class.
Why am I telling you about him? Because it is the same sentiment as "I don't need a car, if I want to see my friends (and relatives) I simply ask them to travel to me."
You are clearly pointing one if the real solutions to individual motorized transportation, which is shared motorized transportation. In my area, people constantly borrow vehicles, equipments, tools and so on.