There’s One Big Problem with Electric Cars They’re Still Cars
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
People will soon be spending larger portions of time in their cars, and there will be novel ownership models once fully autonomous driving is achieved. We may even end up living and working there.
Anti-car sentiment will become a luddite view. Transportation (as well as the networking of physical spaces) has always been a major driver (no pun intended) of human progress. Perhaps it's fitting that a "newspaper" is expressing this sentiment.
We can make them pollute less, we can eliminate the cost and burden of ownership, we can reduce the safety problems by eliminating human drivers.
But other issues involve basic values of what kind of world we want to live in, and a better car won't fix these problems.
The UN in 2018 estimated 55% of humanity lives in urban settings. The EU estimated 76%.
https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/news/how-our-planet-became-more-...
You mentioned safety. It's a matter of personal risk profile whether you consider cars to be dangerous, even at status quo (autonomous vehicles with coordinated motion planning have the chance to render accidents a thing of the past).
RE potential terrorism, should we consider banning airplanes and busses as well?
Trash collection, package delivery, etc could've been delivered more like water. Via pipes.
You wouldn't want to be in a situation where you empty bedpans by lugging excrement to the curb so that a sewage truck can pick it up. We thankfully have pipes for that.
We should expand the use of pipes. Imagine not needing to dispose of cardboard boxes all the time after receiving every package. It arrives in a canister, which returns itself.
The water pipe leading to your house is very narrow (0.5 or 0.75 inches). The sewer pipe is bigger but you aren’t going to fit a big package through it. Tree roots growing through sewer pipes is a constant problem.
The roads are a form of a pipe. It just happens to be above ground and for people and general goods. A tunnel is just a pipe.
The automation of package delivery sounds nice but is orthogonal to pipes. You can probably accomplish that with automated delivery vehicles who can dock to a port on your house. No need for packaging.
So let's imagine cars are phased out. Maybe self-driving taxis or other transportation will replace cars, but don't be surprised if they are more expensive than expected. That's what happened with the railroads.
Electric cars still require roads to drive on, many of which are asphault, which contains cancer causing aromatics, and is the lowest, heaviest product in a refinery crack tower.
Many lubricants which are derived from fossil/petro are used in electric car transmissions, etc.
Electric cars have no less fossil/petro derived plastic and polymers than conventional cars.
Non-petroleum-based plastics are becoming more mainstream, and I look forward to when they're mechanically and economically competitive enough to displace petroleum-based plastics entirely.