Pros of golf carts and neighborhood electric vehicles (NEVs) replacing all private cars within a city:

  • Only goes as fast as a bicycle, so isn’t a viable suburban commuter vehicle, meaning you’ll probably only take it to the nearest transit station
  • Only goes as fast as a bicycle, so isn’t likely to kill people
  • Excellent visibility, so less likely to run over children
  • Much smaller and lighter, so building parking garages for park-and-rides would be a lot cheaper and less objectionable than with our current style of cars
  • Electric
  • Smaller batteries than jumbo EVs
  • Compatible with dense, transit-oriented city development
  • Could be installed with mandatory speed limiters

Cons:

  • Less profit for GM and ExxonMobil
  • merc@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    9 months ago

    You have proposed making company towns for mines,

    Nope, you’re the one who said that. You can’t put words in my mouth and then say why the thing you said is bad. What I said is that they should be densely populated.

    Deadwood, South Dakota is famous as a “wild west” town, but the reason that it exists because of the gold rush. And, guess what, it was densely populated. You can look up historical images, you’ll see that even if it was a “rural” location built around mining, it was densely populated because at a time when cars weren’t an option, it made sense to make a dense area.

    Second you proposed. Centrally located services for the few farmers who are allowed to live in the country.

    Again, putting words in my mouth. If you can’t make your point without doing that, I’m just going to say I won because clearly you can’t actually attack what I’m actually saying. At no point did I say anything about people being “allowed to live in the country”. I only talked about farms being the only place where you actually had to live on-site in a very low density rural area.

    This could easily put them 6 to 8 hours drive from any kind of service.

    That’s absurd. There’s nowhere in the continental US that’s a 6 to 8 hour drive from a built-up area that exists today.

    So even if they had a much higher energy use(I have never seen any information to suggest that is true.)

    “cities have the lowest annual energy use per household (85.3 million Btu) and household member (33.7 million Btu) of all four categories. Rural areas consume about 95 million Btu per household each year”

    “Why the difference? Aside from environmental factors, it’s a combination of infrastructure and behavior, Battles says. The compact construction of urban condo towers and apartment buildings helps insulate their indoor climates, while large homes common in less dense areas need more energy for heating and cooling, and have a harder time keeping air from leaking outside.”

    https://www.treehugger.com/urban-or-rural-which-is-more-energy-efficient-4863586

    The research is everywhere. Dense housing where people share walls means lower heating and/or cooling bills. Using public transit instead of a car means far lower emissions for transportation. Smaller housing means less energy to heat and cool, and fewer leaks.

    All of your proposals seem to require longer drives not shorter ones.

    Suuuuuuure…

    because the charging infrastructure is not there

    Riiight… because when talking about a theoretical future world where more people live in built-up areas, the right thing to do is to consider current charging infrastructure.

    Did I miss any of your points?

    Pretty much all of them, and deliberately it seems.