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Comment by noworld | Hacker News Reader

I’d take it a step further. Most people don’t drive by choice, but because of the zoning and regulations that create sprawling suburbs meaning almost no one can live without a car. Can’t get to work, can’t get groceries, can’t get the kids to day care without a car.

Edit: want to add the sprawl also makes efficient mass public transportation nearly impossible.

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In places with absolutely no zoning whatsoever, people still drive cars, motorcycles, mopeds, etc.

People like fast, on-demand transportation they're in control of. The answer is electric vehicles.

Cars make themselves not-fast by their sheer inefficiency unless huge amounts of taxpayer money is continually poured to the infrastructure. What’s incredible is that cars have been getting even larger, an example of astonishingly perverse incentive structures.

From my experience in the third world with quite poor infrastructure (e.g. unpaved roads, lack of traffic control devices anyone respects etc.), cars and motorcycles are still everywhere.

Some places like Ethiopia have simply switched to EVs by encouraging their import and discouraging import of non-EVs. Now, most vehicles there are EVs.

Yes. Which is exactly the problem. If cars cause traffic jams - never mind their other externalities only some of which are fixed by EVs - then that just means cars are too cheap and their true costs aren't reflected in their price. Cars are a classic tragedy of the commons, everyone in traffic would prefer that there be less traffic so they could get to places faster.

Describe how you think these “true costs” should be imposed. In the third world, infrastructure isn’t generally subsidised. People have to pay for everything. Yet cars, trucks, and motorbikes are still preferred - including EVs.

It is often a huge increase in a family’s quality of life once one of them saves enough to get a motorbike or ebike.

People nowhere pay for the full external and opportunity costs of cars, particularly ICE cars, in the purchase price (or even in fuel price), including carbon emissions, particulate emissions, noise, waste of space, perceived and actual safety, and so on.

Cars are literally an econ 101 textbook example of negative externalities.

Two-wheel vehicles are much more reasonable in all ways, I’m not arguing against them (although two-stroke ICEs are definitely terrible things).

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