I originally wrote this post in 2010, after speaking with Bill O’Driscoll of the Pittsburgh City Paper for an article he was writing about electric vehicles. My perspective from 11 years ago is as accurate today as it was when first published. 

I had a slightly different take than EV enthusiasts: changing the source that powers a large vehicle does not begin to address the rest of the problems caused by developing our cities and countries around privately-owned vehicles.

“An electric car is “still a multi-ton vehicle that requires a lot of money and resources from all over the world to produce,” notes Lolly Walsh. Walsh, a staffer for advocacy group Bike Pittsburgh, speaks as part of the loose-knit international Car Free Network. “If we just develop a different type of car… it’s just going to push back any change that we need to make.”

 

Electric cars still use as much space as other cars

Though not included in the feature story about Carnegie Mellon’s electric car, I also noted that land use is one of the major problems with continually structuring our transportation system around cars — electric or otherwise.

 

If we just redevelop the car so now we plug it in to an outlet powered by dirty mountain-stripping coal, we’re not improving much.

 

An electric car is still a car -- it's still heavy, dangerous, and uses a tremendous amount of land. (For more on this, see my article “Housing is Expensive for People but Free for Most Cars”).

 

We still allow cars on nearly every single street no matter if the residents of that street are young children, elderly, deaf, or blind.

 

A different type of car is not the answer because cars are not the answer.

 

We need to fully fund public transportation and eliminate user fees to get people to use it widely.

 

 

As I’ve said before, we should invest in excellent public transportation that is: