There’s one big problem with electric cars

Not the thing itself; I’ve found electric vehicles to be superior to their fossil-powered predecessors in just about every important way, and although I am a car-crazy Californian, I don’t expect to buy a lung-destroying, pollution-spewing gas car ever again.

But electric motors are merely a power source, not a panacea. From General Motors’ Super Bowl ads to President Biden’s climate-change plans, plug-in cars are now being cast as a central player in America’s response to a warming future — turning a perfectly reasonable technological hope into overblown hype.

That problem isn’t just gas-fueled cars but car-fueled lives — a view of the world in which huge private automobiles are the default method of getting around. In this way, EVs represent a very American answer to climate change:To deal with an expensive, dangerous, extremely resource-intensive machine that has helped bring about the destruction of the planet, let’s all buy this new version, which runs on a different fuel.

But while we go about the project of building electric cars into tomorrow’s infrastructure — Biden has pledged to create a network of 500,000 charging stations around the country and replace the roughly 650,000 cars in the federal government’s fleet.

But while we go about the project of building electric cars into tomorrow’s infrastructure — Biden has pledged to create a network of 500,000 charging stations around the country and replace the roughly 650,000 cars in the federal government’s fleet with EVs — let’s not overlook a more immediate menace on the roads today.

I refer to the millions of big, inefficient trucks and SUVs that are America’s favourite cars, each poisoning our atmosphere for years beyond any transition to EVs.

The promise of electric cars grants us a little leeway to party on in the gas-guzzling present — EVs offer a politically simple, one-stop expiation for our unsustainable ways, so long as we all ignore the Escalade in the room.

Fixing the problems caused by cars with new and improved cars and expensive new infrastructure just for cars illustrates why we’re in this mess in the first place — an entrenched culture of careless car dependency.

Liberation from car culture requires a more fundamental reimagining of how we get around, with investments in walkable and bikeable roadways, smarter zoning that lets people live closer to where they work, a much greater emphasis on public transportation and above all a recognition that urban space should belong to people, not vehicles.Policy changes that reduce the amount Americans drive could lead to far greater efficiency gains than we’d get just from switching from gas to batteries.

During his time as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg, the new secretary of Transportation, advocated plans to reduce car dependency.

But asking Americans to begin to imagine a future of fewer, smaller cars and less driving will be a great political heave.

I can already imagine the Fox News segments pillorying Biden and Mayor Pete for their “war” on SUVs and pickup trucks.

I too might sound like a mirthless environmental scold. But perhaps we all need a little …o might sound like a mirthless environmental scold.

But perhaps we all need a little scolding.

Between 2009 and 2019, the average fuel economy across all vehicles increased only slightly, according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency. Our cars were getting an average of 22.4 miles per gallon in 2009, and by 2019 efficiency had grown to 24.9 mpg, a gain of about 11%. ReadMore…