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Comment by hotz | Hacker News Reader

How would the general population afford electric vehicles? Are people fine with only certain classes of society being able to afford private transport, the plebs can use public transport if they need to go anywhere. Public transport isn't safe in developed nations and anyone that can, uses private transport in developing ones. There's no nice way of saying it but anyone that's onboard with this is retarded to how the real world works.

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There are <$5k EVs in China (when bought new). They're not super luxurious but they exist. The west just hasn't caught up yet, but it will if there's political will.

The real world also recognizes thermodynamics, and simple physics should confirm that taking fuel from the ground and burning it is heating up the planet. You say everything will be more expensive/won't someone think of the poor? Look up food prices, friend. Russian forest fires in 2010 made them stop exporting grains temporarily. Food prices went up, hungry "plebs" (your term) in the Middle East revolted and 11 years later Syria, Libya, Lebanon are still terrible places.

A realistic solution would be carbon tax, yes making things like fuel and holidays halfway around the world more expensive. But yeah, no populace will vote for that, they still aspire to go to Thailand as cheaply as possible. (even rich-ass Switzerland voted against laws to lower CO2 emissions earlier this year).

In my pessimistic view of reality, we'll just go on like this. When the resources get low in say 20-30 years, the rich countries will steal from the poorer ones (by money and by military), even if you're a pacifist you'll not mind your country's military shooting up refugees at the border if it means you can have some food and water.

> Public transport isn't safe in developed nations

Huh?

I suspect it's either a typo or an extremely US-centric view.

For many models, electric cars have the same, if not cheaper TCO already. That trend is going to continue, very soon they will be cheaper than ICE cars even on purchase. In 5 years from now the question rather will be: how would the general population afford ICE vehicles?

> How would the general population afford electric vehicles?

I would think that the principle of economies of scale would apply in this case, reducing the cost of production. The progress regarding battery recycling will probably drive the price further down.

I don't know where you got the idea, that public transport isn't save.

If you have good public transport, then noone will want to take the car instead of public transport.

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