I would rather focus our efforts on improved density so that most people will choose walking, transit or bicycles as means of transport. These ways to move around our towns are also "better for the environment".
There are many places in the Midwestern US where there will never be density and the people there don't want it. In those places, people drive everywhere. Shouldn't we try and make their transportation less damaging to the environment? Public transportation isn't practical there due to the size of the area and the lack of density (which won't change).
It's easier to give people better tools than it is to try and change how they live their entire lives.
Whether you look at manufacturing, sourcing of battery materials (which get recycled), energy production needed to power the vehicles, it all boils down to EVs being far better than gas powered vehicles.
Why is that? Kwh for kwh, EVs are just far more frugal with the energy. Petrol contains lots of energy, most of that is converted into vibrations, heat, noise, etc. And a little of it propels the vehicle forward. EVs produce a bit of heat, very little noise (tire friction mostly), and convert most of their power into forward motion and can actually recover some of the energy when you slow down through regenerative breaking.
Even if you use brown coal, which is a nasty fuel, to power an electricity plant, about half of it turns into energy and most of that ends up being used for useful things by the car. It gets more miles per kwh worth of CO2 emitted relative to ice vehicles. If you add the emissions needed to produce the vehicle (which you'd also have to do for an ICE car), it boils down to any difference being eliminated by this within 1 or 2 years of the vehicle hitting the road. Even if it is a bit more co2 emissions to produce the vehicle (which is debatable), the difference is wiped out early in the life of the vehicle by it just being more efficient. After that every year the vehicle manages to not break down, which as it turns out is mostly quite long, it just gets better.
Why is this important? One of the many myths that people keep rehashing, is that EVs are more polluting than gas guzzlers. This article attempts to rectify that. Of course, there's a lot of good work being done in the EV industry to improve things further. Cheaper batteries with less exotic metals, more efficient motors without rare earths, recycled materials, using renewables to power rapid chargers, etc. But even without all that, EVs are already cleaner.
Human population, the sociology of capitalism, industrialised consumerism, the unscalability of communities problem (both established structural debt and newer dysfunctional debt) and the consumerist voting fallacy ("I will vote with my money").
If there were fewer people, if there were less industrial-scale consumerism, if communities were scalable, if consumers were in fact globally engaged as purchasers and voting citizens...
I have heard an environmental scientist say that the order of responsible choices from worst to best is:
= buy an ICE vehicle
= buy a zero-emission EV
= DO NOT buy a vehicle
Of all the difficult sociological challenges that could certainly bring change, it seems that those likeliest to change are the human population (fewer) and zero-emission vehicles (more).
Maybe increased density is relevant for some US cities, but European ones should definitely lower their density considerably. Most European cities are dead zones for anything but rats and pigeons, and people fare similarly badly.
The higher the density the less actual Nature needs to be bulldozed over for development. See:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO6txCZpbsQ&t=9m28s
Fifteen minutes pedalling in one direction is downtown, fifteen minutes in the other is farm land.
By have more people in a given land area, the remaining land area can be left alone.
Too small living quarters are the problem, not the density.
How would you improve density if you aren't shrinking the space people live in?
Why would the inner city need to be a "concrete hellscape"? You can have decent density without 'concrete hellscapes'. The Oh the Urbanity channel has a video on the (misguided/misinformed) idea that "urban living" = Manhattan / Hong Kong apartment blocks:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCmz-fgp24E
Want a front yard, back yard, and garage (attached to a laneway)? Plenty of that was built pre-WW2:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0&t=1m8s
Examples (Streetview):
* https://www.google.com/maps/place/125+Hampton+Ave,+Toronto,+...
* https://www.google.com/maps/place/50+Geoffrey+St,+Toronto,+O...
* https://www.google.com/maps/place/70+Jackman+Ave+Toronto,+ON
Even when the "surrounding land" is a 15-20 minute bicycle ride away, or a hoping on a train to smaller a little farther away (or perhaps have train stations at Nature preserves)?
Or perhaps green spaces like New York's Central Park or Toronto's Leslie Street Spit:
* https://tommythompsonpark.ca/about/
* https://www.google.com/search?as_q=Leslie+Street+Spit&as_st=...
regularly interspersed between housing. Toronto used to have a number of rivers/ravines that got filled in for housing:
* https://www.blogto.com/city/2014/02/5_lost_rivers_that_run_u...
People need a green outlook out of their windows, surrounding greenery is linked to various kinds of psychological goodness. Having to commute to an overcrowded, dirty, needle-ridden park or outskirt somewhere isn't an option.
And for wildlife, continuous bands of greenery and routes of migration with only small interruptions (like street crossings) are necessary. Isolated islands are almost useless.
We can and should do both. When density increases smaller electrical vehicles, some entirely charged by solar on their roof, become practical. They are much lighter, use a lot less resources than a standard car, travel somewhat slower and generally ameliorate car problems, while being just as practical: usable in all weather, having cargo carrying capacity. Bikes and walking will always have these sorts of limitations.
How we get there will be a combination of public transit, elecctric transportation, shared vehicles, and bicycles.
But the US has more than 278 million vehicles on the road and trucks are the most popular type of vehicle.[1]
The change to a zero-emission strategy will take more than one generational cycle.[2]
[1] _ https://www.forbes.com/advisor/car-insurance/car-ownership-s...
[2] _ https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/tailpipe-greenhouse-gas-em...