EVs only give off about 30% more carbon than rail per passenger-km (on current UK electricity mix). And they are significantly more versatile! Carbon efficiency will at least double in most areas as we move to greener grids, without people needing to get new cars.
https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint https://afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/electric_emissions.html
Don't confuse disliking cars with environmentalism!
There's just no way to keep current use of private cars and achieve climate goals. Even if EVs would be magically twice as efficient as they are, just having a car is disastrous to the future of our planet, hence we should put efforts into reducing the need for cars, rather than trying to shave a few grams of particulate matter.
Also, I'm not just talking about tailpipes. EVs are better from a carbon perspective over the whole life of the car, including both manufacturing and use.
The only way to achieve our climate goals is to actually reduce carbon emissions. It's not necessary to eliminate private cars to do this. I think we should invest in plenty of other transit types that are proven to lower carbon emissions. But cars aren't going away and they don't need to.
It's a false choice between "reducing the need for cars" and "making cars more efficient". We can do both, but EVs are going to be a major part of reducing carbon emissions for personal transport.
There are ~1.5billion vehicles worldwide (2019)
A Tesla apparently has 8kg worth of battery lithium per vehicle.
That's 12,000,000 tonnes of lithium.
The reserves worldwide are 14,000,000 tonnes
(End of Google info)
So once the whole world is on EV, we are either reducing cars or pulling from the ocean.
Only one of those options is doable by a politician and they will 100% take the easy route. Every single time.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1253739/lithium-reserves...
Politicians, for the most part, fail to do anything well. This will be no exception. So how do they reach the goal?
Outlaw ICE vehicles.
Slowly but surely you will see less and less cars on the road. The income needed to own a car will go up. Any government incentives will be eaten by increasing prices (as happened with Ford not even a week after a rebate was announced.)
Just a guess of course.
Additionally, someone buying 4 or 5 new electric vehicles is not a problem. Unless they put the old car in a landfill, that will still replace 4 or 5 gas cars on the road as they are resold down the line. The carbon costs of producing them are already factored in!