The German government is again causing trouble in the EU - this time, it is not Transport Minister Wissing but the Chancellor himself. Olaf Scholz is said to have intervened in the dispute between the EU and China over raising tariffs for Chinese EVs with a compromise offer.
Most cars sold in the EU are still combustion engines. Replacing them with EVs would make enviromental sense and China giving state money to make EU EVs cheaper is not that bad a move.
Problem is obviously that the EUs automotive industry has to compete, but that can be done by matching subsidies as well.
Personal EVs are not a solution. We need less cars overall, not replace combustion with EV. EVs still significantly contribute to pollution, noise and car-centered infrastructure. EVs are just the car industry’s way of continuing business as usual without changing anything and is not environmentally friendly.
The only solution is more and better public infrastructure, more bikes and walkable cities, where the important things are either close by or sufficiently accessible by public transport.
EVs are not the solution but they should be part of the solution.
And EVs are still better then combustion engines. Even better the EU is not going to be able to match Chinese subsidies. So the EU car industry is going to die and replaced by Chinese cars. However those will have a much harder time lobbying for car focused infrastructure. Just compare Germany and the Netherlands for example. One has a massive car industry and the other does not.
That works in small rich countries. There’s just so much area outside of big cities that we need to address as well.
Naah. Not really:
re: rich countries: Car infrastructure is very, very expensive and the additional car infrastructure between every building also makes life in cities much more expensive. Also, cars themselves are very expensive. So, no, you don’t need to be rich to build public transit and bike lanes. It actually makes most sense when you’re not.
re: small countries: For one, “small” doesn’t make any sense — “densely populated” makes a bit more sense. However, when you look at it, the vast majority of humanity lives in cities today and their commutes are short, even in the US. And these commutes would in fact on average become shorter with more public transit and biking.
Cars have a place but right now, any industrialized nation has several times more cars than it would need, especially if city planning were more sensible.
There is literally nothing stopping you from doing this, while also transitioning people away from petrol cars to much, much cleaner cars.
Not everyone is privileged enough to live in a city. Especially not one that has great transport links and lots of stuff nearby.
Cars will be around for decades, whether you (or I!) like it or not, so it makes sense for them to be as low-impact as we can make them.
As we replace ICE cars with EVs people will think “problem solved” and refuse to fund transit, bike lanes, denser housing. I see the point you are making but I’m worried society’s capitalist attitude will use EVs as an excuse to kick the can of centric planning down the road.
We need to both. We need to bring all urban areas up to walkable standards and make them serviceable by transit. We need to provide EVs for rural people and those who refuse any other mode of transit for whatever reasons.
Just building the same way but with EVs instead of ICEs is still a massive impact on the environment. It wastes vasts amount of valuable urban lands while also being one of the least energy effecient modes of travel.
Yeah! More subsidies for car makers! What could possibly go wrong?