I am highly critical of electric cars as they exist today. We are building an electric version of an internal combustion engine car and in so doing we're using tons of materials and the like building a simulation of something that exists.
For me, this is closer to what I think makes sense. We need to step away from the assumptions of the automobile, and start looking at what options we have available once we're working with batteries and motors. I suspect that 90% of transportation could be taken care of by a small, light, enclosed vehicle with a relatively short range that sells for less than $5,000.
Something like that could revolutionize and democratize transportation more than even the automobile did. Get the price, and the parking requirements, and the insurance requirements, and the licensing requirements down, and suddenly people in lower classes who were never going to be able to buy a car could get 4-season transportation they have full ownership and control of. Even better, despite having many more cars on the road, stress to roads would be less, less material would be used overall, less energy would be used overall.
sj_zero 2 years ago
I am highly critical of electric cars as they exist today. We are building an electric version of an internal combustion engine car and in so doing we're using tons of materials and the like building a simulation of something that exists.
For me, this is closer to what I think makes sense. We need to step away from the assumptions of the automobile, and start looking at what options we have available once we're working with batteries and motors. I suspect that 90% of transportation could be taken care of by a small, light, enclosed vehicle with a relatively short range that sells for less than $5,000.
Something like that could revolutionize and democratize transportation more than even the automobile did. Get the price, and the parking requirements, and the insurance requirements, and the licensing requirements down, and suddenly people in lower classes who were never going to be able to buy a car could get 4-season transportation they have full ownership and control of. Even better, despite having many more cars on the road, stress to roads would be less, less material would be used overall, less energy would be used overall.