I'd love to see this broken further by country -- infrastructure plays a large role in this.
Presently, and if we narrow the lens to only infrastructure, I'd be really hesitant to go back to ICE -- frankly filling up with petrol is far less convenient than plugging the car in when I park.
Fairly certain these are US numbers though it doesn't call that out explicitly in the text. Note the document has tags, and it is tagged "United States". Also the list of EV brands in the text is very US-centric in what is included and what is missed.
I don't know why the ICE folks keep repeating this narrative as if everyone is driving non-stop cross-country.
Only 0.8% of trips are over 100 miles. For 99.2% of trips, a round trip is possible with an EV range of 200 miles.
(1) 28% of trips are under a mile
(2) 52% under three miles
(3) 64% under five miles
(4) 79% under ten miles
(5) 93% under 25 miles
(6) 98% under 50 miles
For the trips >100 miles, most of these are in cities (regional) that are close by (Eg: {Dallas, Houston, Austin}, {LA,bay are}, {NYC,NJ,Philly,DE,CT}). The use-case of driving non-stop cross-country is non-existent. Nearly nobody does that, it costs 5 - 10X in gas + hotels. Even people who move, they ship their car.
I do wildlife photography and generally do a few days camping out in the national parks. EVs do not work for me. Between getting to the park and driving around, I get a lot of range anxiety with a potential expensive tow if I run out. For urban usage, EVs are great.
I think it’s less about driving non-stop cross country and more about how much of a long term decision and investment purchasing a car is. Even if only 1/100 trips I take is over 100 miles I still might want the car I purchase to be able to make that trip.
A drive of more than about 1000 miles might be nearly always unwise, but the average person drives 200+ miles in a day often enough that it is worth planning for. It's a valuable capability even if it's only needed twice a year.
Also note that, by your own numbers, a plug-in hybrid like the Prius Prime can do somewhere around 95% of trips without using any fuel. You can get nearly all the efficiency of an EV without paying the EV premium or sacrificing practicality.
I never understood the manufacturer/market(?) resistance to PHEVs.
Is it the from-wall-power inverter that was overly complicated/expensive?
It seemed like the best of all worlds with 00s/10s technology.
No range worries, majority of trips could be electric-only, no need to cram huge, expensive battery capacity in, and no user behavior training past "Also, plug your car in at night."
If the world in 2000 had mandated "And also, all vehicles must include some form of PHEV capability", we could have had a much easier transition to electrification via addition of charging at existing gas stations.
Tesla buyers skew towards techy types who bought a Tesla because it was an EV (I did).
German luxury EVs are nice (I have one), but are bought by ICE owners of the same maker. So online you'll read a lot of MB/BMW/Porsche owners who have an ICE, a PHEV, an EV, etc of the same make and are not committed to anyone one fuel type yet.
Charging would be other major factor.
In US you will have a better time on NACS than CCS, which is why everyone is capitulating now. So you'll probably see the other makers EV loyalty numbers go +10-20% in 2024-2025 as they convert.
Anecdotal, but I'm sure this is related to everyone adopting Tesla's charging standard, not just because the connector is superior. I have a L2 charger installed in my home, so my life is pretty easy, but even if I didn't the super charger network out here is pretty good. However, when I got a Tesla rental on my trip to Utah last year, I didn't realize how sparse charging is in some places.
While I could survive on Tesla's network where I grew up outside of SLC, it'd be pretty annoying... but there's no way I could handle a non-Tesla vehicle out there because there are so few charging options, and they are so slow in comparison, I'd never be able to do it
The state of CCS in 2023 is at its peak before it draws down and converts to NACS.. and yet it never even got to Tesla 2018 levels near me in NYC metro areas/I-95 corridor DC-Boston.
So they are behind where Tesla was in 2018, and Tesla was actively adding locations more quickly, with more connectors, in better locations than the CCS networks. So the gap only grew.
Even in terms of CCS connectors, via MagicDock, Tesla probably installed more in NY state in 2023 than any other CCS network, and possibly all other CCS networks combined. It's just absurd.
All that said, I prefer my car over my previous Tesla, I charge at home and am not much of a road tripper so it's all good.
Hell, I work for a charging company, and I'm buying ICE. Of course I want a truck that can haul an RV, and I don't want to spend 60 grand for it. But even if I was buying a regular car, it'd be used half the time for high elevation cold weather hikes, and I don't want to sit around for an hour charging when driving long distance. Let's face it, EVs mostly make sense for around-town driving. Rural people are gonna drive any ICE vehicle they can into the dirt until their prices go up so high that EVs are the economical choice.
EVs have some advantages at higher elevations since they don't lose power like combustion engines do. They're great with large elevation changes as well due to the power regen on the downhill legs.
If the distances are pushing things too far for current EVs I feel you, and there are a lot of places still with limited charging access.
> EVs have some advantages at higher elevations since they don't lose power like combustion engines do.
That’s somewhat true, if you ignore the “cold weather” part. Many (most?) new cars are turbocharged though, which also compensates for the higher altitude. Combine that with the fact most people don’t live in the mountains, and it’s likely range can become an issue in the winter.
Yes, cold weather can reduce range. A lot of newer EVs use heat pumps which help with that efficiency. It all depends on distances and charger availability.
If you have home charging and go on hikes in cold mountain weather within a ~100mi radius of home, or a fast charging station, you're probably fine with a lot of EVs on the market.
The next aspect is capability. 4wd/awd is nice, but in winter on mountain trails you want ground clearance too.
And finally, price is a big part of it. Some of us don't want to be saddled with a 15 year payment and interest, on top of the premium you still pay in this economy for any car. Used cars can be had for a 10th of the cost of new, and EVs are even more expensive. Why buy EV at all when ICE is cheaper? For a "regular" consumer car, EVs can be price competitive, and would have been really competitive back in the days of the big rebates. But today, more capable EVs are quite a bit more than ICE.
In 10 years hopefully offroad and heavy-duty EVs will be cheaper (and more available - I don't see any F350/F450/F550 EVs). But today there isn't really an option.
Of course. There are some very off-road capable EVs (check out Rivian) but they are pricey.
Lower prices requires scaling up mass production of batteries and cars which is what is happening. Gas cars have had a century of mass production economies of scale to reach their current production efficiency.
And generally cars do not come used and depreciated from the factory, so that market will develop over time.
As will charging infrastructure, which is expanding rapidly through lot of public and private investment over the next few years.
I guess it depends on your definition of rural. Here in southern Germany that is mostly "not far from a bigger town" but still enough space for a house with a garage and the ability to charge. Even if you manage to have a house in a city, a garage is not a given and street parking is very common. (i.e. Munich to Salzburg is 150km which sounds like the worst case, regular 10-50km drives seem much more common). (And yes, I know the article is about the US, I'm just saying that even something that might make sense in one place doesn't mean it's true elsewhere, I imagine New England to be about the same disparity)
The problem is that electric cars have honking massive battery packs which are effectively junk. Until battery tech advances dramatically allowing you to drive thousands of miles then I’ll stick with gasoline engines.
It already exists. It's called a flow battery. Basically it's a fuel cell that can run in reverse - recharge the used electrolyte/fuel allowing it to be used again. There are many types. They are not used because they don't have the same energy density as Li batteries, plus other disadvantages.
Fair enough, though my understanding after watching at least (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BfxUiF58Co - 8-Bit Guy warning), planning your route becomes important whereas with ICE, it's an after-thought as long as you get to where you want to go.
And I get charging stations are becoming more common/convenient. It just doesn't work for me and where I live (there is one non-Tesla charger in town), though my next car will be an HEV.
It does require a bit of planning. The better EVs have this all built into their nav systems, Tesla is the gold standard there.
Tesla opening their charging network to other brands is going to improve the charging situation a lot in the US.
EVs definitely aren’t for everyone yet, but people calling them junk or thinking they have to charge for hours to go 100 miles are pretty far off the mark.
If you're thinking about buying an EV you should really use an EMF meter while in the car when it is in different states (charging, parked, driving) before deciding.
EVs emit a ton of radiation. Not something people talk enough about.
EVs emit no more EMF than your standard appliances.
The internet is a vast array of misinformation and comments like this without supporting links just contributes to that misinformation.
I will buy a 40-50 dollar emf meter from Amazon and test my washer, dryer, oven, microwave, a blow dryer, the AC unit, and then drive around in my Tesla along with sitting idle and charging it.
When the numbers don’t support the “tons” of radiation will you say I’m part of the coverup?
Do you realize how much electro-magnetic radiation everything in your house reflects every second of the day? Tons. Most pipes in your house are also literally filled with dihydrogen monoxide which kills thousands of people every year. You don't want to think about the radiation exposure you get just walking outside.
Most refrigerators also do not have AM radios either, and they often do cause a lot of hell for AM. Same goes for pretty much all other appliances. When they're running I have a much harder time operating my amateur radio gear, even doing a lot of things to help mitigate it.
Most things in my house mess with a lot of radio stuff. 70cm is practically useless to listen to inside my house from all the interference that gets picked up. I find it strange how fixated you are about it specifically affecting AM radio.
But how can you safely use the meter? It too is emitting EMF! And you're going to hold this thing in your hands?!
I'm not arguing an EV does not emit EMF. After all, its one or two high power AC motors, of course they'll have an electromagnetic field, that's how they move! It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.
But hey, so does my air conditioner. So does the ventilation fan in my attic. So does my ceiling fan. So does my computer. So does my phone. So does practically everything electric around me. So does just stepping outside. I'm blasted with way more radiation standing outside in the sun for ten minutes than what I'll get riding in my EV for an hour at night.
It's fine if you do not think high EMF readings are unhealthy in any way. But you obviously know UV from the sun is not the same as EM radiation emitted from a microwave or an EV. It's also not just whether something emits radiation but the level of radiation that matters.
Fun fact: EMF from EVs is so high it interferes with AM radio, which is why AM radio does not exist in any EVs.
> It's fine if you do not think high EMF readings are unhealthy in any way
Its fine because that's what's been shown to be completely true. Standing next to an AC motor for a few hours is not going to have any negative effects on your health, other than getting your hand caught in the motor.
Don't get me wrong I'm not about to stand next to an antenna radiating a lot of energy (I do ham radio stuff), I don't want to get burned. RF burns are no joke. But the EV isn't giving off nearly as much energy. I also wouldn't put my hand in a microwave oven and turn it on, but the levels outside the box when closed aren't powerful enough to do any damage unless you've broken your microwave.
> But you obviously know UV from the sun is not the same as EM radiation emitted from a microwave or an EV
Yeah, its actually ionizing, so its massively worse than what I'm getting from my car.
> Fun fact: EMF from EVs is so high it interferes with AM radio, which is why AM radio does not exist in any EVs.
Fun fact: I own an EV, and it has an AM radio. So you're just factually incorrect saying "does not exist in any EVs." I wonder what else you might also be wrong about. Its not the best quality AM radio I've owned, but it works.
It does completely negate your "AM radio does not exist in any EVs" though.
I'm not arguing it doesn't mess with AM. I'm sure its a part of why AM kind of sucks on my EV. But it is an EV and it has AM radio, therefore "AM radio does not exist in any EVs" is 100% factually incorrect. The Chevy Bolt and Spark also had AM radios, so its not even like its just one EV that has it.
You're the one arguing absolutely no EVs have AM radios, which is trivially easy to disprove.
And even if it didn't, so what? Just because something can interfere with an AM radio, its somehow considered radically unhealthy to be around and should be avoided? Loads of things considered safe to be around mess with AM radio. The wiring in my house messes with AM radio signals, guess I gotta pull out all the wiring. Back to gas lighting it is! Heck, having another AM radio running near an AM radio can cause interference, guess we need to stop using the AM radio!
I’m just tired of cars in general. Fuck the personal vehicle. I want good public transportation and well designed cities. I’ll rent the appropriate vehicle when I need a road trip.
Saves me maintenance costs. Fuel costs. Depreciation costs. Yearly inspections with state registration. No more auto insurance needed.
Do you live in the USA? We don’t “prefer” cars. Cars are the only way to get around in this country. There are no options for a majority of people.
It’s not a preference. It’s a choice shoved down our throats by decades of destroying urban cores, bulldozing poor communities/neighborhoods in favor of massive highway projects, and removing bustling streets of human activity with useles parking lots.
The suburban experiment is a massive failure on all levels. It’s not scalable. It’s incredibly wasteful. Federal/state/local governments dump trillions of dollars on maintenance of this fucking mess.
I believe that take is ahistorical. The other options withered away because most people prefer cars and the associated lifestyle. Dense city cores are still there for the taking, if you can handle the crime.
The government heavily subsidized highway construction, set requirements for massive amounts of available parking, and through the FHA, provided affordable mortgages to white families to move to the suburbs - these new suburbs often had covenants prohibiting black residents. (The new highways were also often built through black neighborhoods, which were often seen as a "blight", were cheaper to acquire through eminent domain, and whose residents didn't have the political or economic power to put up much resistance.)
Traffic policies were set up to maximize traffic flow, which often meant more roads, and wide roads, enabling faster speed. But these make it more dangerous to do anything except drive places.
Restrictive zoning laws resulting in purely residential areas with no corner shop, so even something as simple getting some milk requires driving to the store.
Certainly some people prefer that lifestyle. But the historical truth is that much of it was deliberate top-down policy to encourage people towards that specific lifestyle, and now it's pretty well locked in.
Take for example how residential areas were often designed around cul-de-sacs. The idea was to have quiet streets where kids could safely play. However, once the kids get a bit older, what do they do? They can't drive, so can't even do a simple errand like pick up milk. Instead, one of the parents ends up as a private chauffeur, eg, a "soccer mom". Often this means the family must be a two car family as there is no other solution.
How many of these soccer moms would prefer having a good bus system so their 12-year-old can go to practice and come home on their own?
Even if people do have a preference for single-family housing with a lawn, parking, etc. why should we continue to subsidize that preference? It costs money to provide water, sewer, roads, and power, as well as emergency services and schools, and much of those are fixed costs. For the most part, wealth suburbs are subsidized by poor residents - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI .
You've been brainwashed to think there are only two options. There are more than car-dependent suburbia and "dense city cores". That's probably all that you know about, because the planning process for generations in the US has prohibited mid-rise building and multi-family homes.
In https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mV6ZENGko1I a European compare a US suburb to one in Leipzig. The latter is denser, yes, but not the city core. There are restaurants and schools within walking distance, as well as tram service.
> The government heavily subsidized highway construction, set requirements for massive amounts of available parking, and through the FHA, provided affordable mortgages to white families to move to the suburbs
Why do you think the government did this? I will posit that it is because voters wanted it to happen. It's not some grand conspiracy by evil fossil fuel overlords.
"The construction of I-81, along with the rest of America’s highway system, was a part of the federally funded program in the 1950s called “urban renewal”, which targeted formerly redlined, urban Black neighborhoods, labeled “slums’’, for removal. The former 15th ward neighborhood of Syracuse, once a thriving Black community, was the chosen location to build I-81. As a result, dozens of Black homes and businesses were bulldozed."
"These infrastructure projects prioritized the needs of (largely white) commuters in the suburbs over the lives of poor Black residents in cities. It wasn’t limited to Syracuse or New York state; across the country, federal estimates show about 1.2 million Americans were displaced by urban renewal. That legacy lives on today: in Portland, Oregon, Black residents call part of the Interstate 5 highway that runs from Washington to California their “Robert E Lee statue”. In New Orleans, the Claiborne Expressway has been dubbed a “racist monument”."
> I will posit that it is because voters wanted it to happen.
While you can posit that, bear in mind that racial discrimination was official government policy when the interstate highway system was planned and construction started in the 1950s.
"In the United States during the 1940s, the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, low-cost mortgages through the G.I. Bill, and residential redlining enabled white families to abandon inner cities in favor of suburban living and prevent ethnic minorities from doing the same. The result was severe urban decay that, by the 1960s, resulted in crumbling "ghettos"."
If you use the narrow lens that something is justified because the majority of voters want it, then you end up also justifying racial discrimination during the 1950s.
If the majority of voters want the poorest 25% of the population to subsidize suburban living, is that fair? Because that's what we have, and tyranny of the majority is a failure mode for majority rule. (Even more so given how black adults are dis-proportionally disenfranchised.)
Who is arguing "evil fossil fuel overlords"? That would be ahistorical.
> residential redlining enabled white families to abandon inner cities
aka it allowed people to do what they were wanting to do. Those people weren't forced to leave the cities, they were given opportunity to do so and chose to do it.
Nobody here is currently debating whether this was "fair" or "good" or that it wasn't subsidized or enabled by the government, just pointing out that things are the way they are because that's what the people wanted. None of your post goes against that idea, you're just pointing out racial disparity of the actions.
People chose to move to the suburbs. They weren't forced. People continue to choose to live there. Have you actually talked to a lot of suburbanites? Most that I know would say they prefer that way of life. Tons actively fight against densification/urbanization. As the old suburbs get denser and more urban, they continue to flee outwards, buying bigger and bigger lots and houses each move. They specifically don't want to live in dense urban areas. If they wanted to, they would, but they at least think they don't want to make those tradeoffs.
Do you think the vast majority of people living in the suburbs just like wake up every day thinking "man I really hate living here, welp, guess I'll do nothing about it!" Do you think the people shopping for a 3,000sqft house on a 1 acre lot deep down really want a 900sqft apartment?
> Those people weren't forced to leave the cities, they were given opportunity to do so and chose to do it.
Let's go back to xyst's comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37951319 . "It’s a choice shoved down our throats by decades of destroying urban cores, bulldozing poor communities/neighborhoods in favor of massive highway projects, and removing bustling streets of human activity with useless parking lots."
xyst never said there wasn't a choice. Instead, the thumb was pressed down on scale, hard, to encourage people to make a specific choice.
You said that was a-historical.
It was not.
> People continue to choose to live there.
What choice do they have? The US zoning system for decades has mandated either high-rises or single-family car-dependent suburbia.
If someone wants to live in a mixed-use area with walking distance from school, restaurant, parks, and restaurants, with mass-transit options ... where do you suggest they live?
> They weren't forced.
Yes, they were. Who do you think enforces zoning requirements? Answer: the police force.
Zoning restrictions are the reason why most places are only single-family homes. The duplexes and short-rises of the immediate post-war suburb I grew up in are no longer allowed.
> Do you think the vast majority of people living in the suburbs just like wake up every day thinking
Now you're just being silly - of course not!
So let's back back to the actual issue. You said xyst's comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37951319 was a-historical, but have yet to show why it's historically inaccurate.
Do you think the vast majority of people have a choice of living somewhere which isn't car dependent?
If they don't have the choice, is there really a choice? Can you really say people "prefer" a car if they have no choice without a car?
The thumb of faceless non-human things? No. The thumb of the people elected, time and time again, for several decades. Doing the policies the people wanted.
> You said that was a-historical.
I have not used that term once in this thread. I do largely agree that arguing practically nobody chose suburbs is a-historical though. Suburbs exist and continue to exist because that's what people choose.
> Who do you think enforces zoning requirements? Answer: the police force.
So what, the the police just come up with zoning rules on their own?
They do have a choice, they vote for their local city councils. Those are the people which make the zoning laws. Those are the people that made the suburbs the way they are. Those are the people which keep growing the suburbs as they are.
> If someone wants to live in a mixed-use area with walking distance from school, restaurant, parks, and restaurants, with mass-transit options ... where do you suggest they live?
Richardson, TX? Plano, TX? I used to live with a friend in Plano, it was like a block from an elementary school, just a few blocks away from the middle school and high school. It was walking distance to over a dozen restaurants. Its quite a nice place to live.
> Do you think the vast majority of people have a choice of living somewhere which isn't car dependent?
I do agree there are a lot of people which for a variety of factors cannot make that choice. But they have the opportunity to vote for city council members who will change that. But they largely don't vote for those people. You can tell that because they often don't seem to win elections.
I do agree there's probably a lot of people who would prefer to live in denser urban areas. I wouldn't argue they're the majority of the people who live in suburbs though. Because, if they were, more suburban towns would have elected people changing those zoning laws to allow it. If they're doing stuff the majority of people living there don't want, why do they get re-elected?
> of course not!
Of course not, because...get this...they enjoy living in the suburbs!
> The thumb of the people elected, time and time again, for several decades.
I feel like you haven't bothered to read or understand what I've written.
There are innumerable books on the topic, which go into depth about exactly who the people were, and the reasons they wanted to build highways, including the explicit racism.
If the people want racism, and vote in racists to enforce racism - which these highways did - then I am not going to pretend that what they wanted is something that I want, nor something that should be continued to be supported.
> I have not used that term once in this thread.
I apologize. I didn't see that you took up the exchange after
baggy_trough made that comment. Your two viewpoints were very similar.
> So what, the the police just come up with zoning rules on their own?
No. You asked what forces people to make that choice. Zoning laws, enforced by the police, prevent people from having the full range of choice. People choose from the options that exist.
> Richardson, TX? Plano, TX?
I looked around Richardson using Google Street View. It does not look like a place where it is easy to live comfortably without a car. It looks like standard R1 residential with most businesses on stroads meant primarily for cars.
Let's take 414 Salem Dr, which is for-sale, according to Zillo, and near the geographic center of the city. There is an elementary school in walking distance, and a grocery store a mile away on W. Campbell.
If after dinner you realize you need milk for the next morning, only the most dedicated of walkers will do the 40 minutes round-trip walk to pick them up vs. driving.
How do you visit the library? My local library has events for parents with newborns, and for young children. The nearest library to that address is the Richardson Public Library. It estimates 52 minutes walk time, or 47 minutes by bus (of which 35 minutes are walking). How many parents are going to do that walk instead of drive?
If on Saturday your 12-year-old wants to meet up with friends at the library "to work on a school project" (but really just to hang out), do you let the kid walk nearly an hour to the Richardson Public Library, along Campbell road and under I-75? There is no bus service for Saturdays.
This is a car-dependent neighborhood.
The fact that you think otherwise mostly shows you don't know what's missing.
> who would prefer to live in denser urban areas
Again, you are missing the point. There are people who want to live in denser suburban areas.
I pointed you to a video comparing two suburban areas, one in the US and one in Germany.
The fact that you think the only alternatives are single-family suburbs or dense urban is because that's the only two choices in most of the US.
>> of course not!
No. I mean that when I bought a house in a suburb even I wasn't all "wake up every day thinking "man I really hate living here, welp, guess I'll do nothing about it!"". Since I wasn't that way, why should I think others are? Your strawman position seems put out just to be silly, not meaningful.
> they enjoy living in the suburbs!
And how much should they be subsidized for their expensive choice which sucks tax dollars from poorer neighborhoods?
Ok yeah, if you look at a single location and ignore the multitude of other neighborhoods that aren't like that, you'll find that experience. For note though, normally the library is at Arapaho just outside the neighborhood, so an easy and pretty safe bike ride for a 12 year old. It's at a temporary location due to a fire at City Hall leading to a lot of renovations.
You're just completely ignoring all the stuff at Cityline. Walking distance to a grocer there. Right on the light rail. A few bus lines. That 12 year old could ride down to Arapaho station and hop on the bus to go to where the library usually is. Or living near Richardson Terrace. Or near Cottonwood Park. Or Glenville Park. Just because there's not a listing there today, this second, doesn't mean there won't be one there in a week or a month.
Picking the right place to live, it's entirely possible to live car-free. I know what it's like and what's possible, as I did it for a bit.
And once again you bring up zoning laws and just completely forget how those exist. Once again you're essentially arguing nobody has any control over zoning laws, they just appear from the ether ruining everyone's lives with everyone powerless to change them. It's too bad nobody could ever do anything about zoning laws, those were just written in stone 70 years ago by the gods and cannot possibly be changed by the people there.
The suburbs ultimately are the way they are today because people keep voting for people who choose to not change the zoning laws. Our towns could be different if people wanted to change the laws, but the majority don't. You can point to all kinds of history (history I do know) as the reasons why they were originally built, but ultimately they're still there because that's what the majority of people living there choose.
Ultimately, suburbs exist because that's what the majority of people choose. I'm not arguing it's right or wrong here, I'm just arguing against this concept that nobody really wants to live in the suburbs, they're only forced to. Some people are, sure, but not the majority.
Don't get me wrong, I do want there to be more choice in housing. I'm happy places like Cityline and others exist. I vote for more transit, denser zoning, better bike infrastructure, etc. But I go to City Hall, I watch the streams for planning meetings. I talk to neighbors and friends. They way more often than not like the more car dependent suburbia. I'm often seen as a nut for choosing to take transit when I've got a perfectly good car. They wonder why I choose to bike places. So don't think I'm someone who is arguing against housing choice overall, I'm very much for it. But you can't change it if you don't acknowledge reality. And the reality is, most people currently living in suburbia want suburbia.
Go read up about the Plano Tomorrow plan and all the local politics around that, then tell me nobody chooses the suburbs. Some planning for more density and suddenly city hall is packed with people ready to fight against it. I see this kind of stuff all over the country.
> if you look at a single location and ignore the multitude of other neighborhoods that aren't like that, you'll find that experience.
You specified a city, not a neighborhood, of a place I've never been.
There were plenty of worse places I could have picked in the city.
So, looking at Cityline Dr. Hah! Are you talking about the 'Residences at CityLine'? That's new construction clearly not following the traditional R1 requirements for setback that dominates much of US suburbia.
And at $600K+ it's far outside what most people can afford.
> Picking the right place to live, it's entirely possible to live car-free.
Sure. Streetcar suburbs like Oak Park, IL are a classic example of a suburb where people can live car free. Problems are 1) nearly all of them are too expensive for most people to have the choice to move there, and 2) zoning laws prohibit new construction.
And note that I said "easy to live comfortably without a car."
Give me an address in Richardson, then think about where the local preschool, playground, elementary school, pediatrician, library, grocery store, restaurants, green space, sports practice, doctor's office, dentist, optician, and hospital are.
Bonus points if you can meet up with friends at a bar, drink, and walk home at 11pm feeling safe. (Walk because you've had a few beers and don't want to risk a DUI.)
How long does it take to walk or use mass transit to get there?
And how much does it cost to buy a house there.
> And once again you bring up zoning laws and just completely forget how those exist.
Did you forget my discussion of how racism was an intrinsic component in American suburbia?
The laws about minimum lot sizes and preventing building apartment complexes in single-family neighborhoods was a direct response to keep black (and poor) people out.
> Our towns could be different if people wanted to change the laws, but the majority don't.
Isn't Texas one of the places that requires a supermajority to allow zoning changes? My research suggests a 3/4ths vote is needed - hardly a majority. (NC appears to require a 4/5ths supermajority?!)
Which means a town can't change its zoning even if a simple majority of the people want to change.
In any case, generations of bad urban planning policies based in no small part on racism mean most people think the only two options are "single-family suburbia" and "dense urban".
You yourself made that mistake.
> most people currently living in suburbia want suburbia.
Great! I don't want to change that! Suburbia is fine!
What I don't like that most people don't have a choice to live in a suburbia which isn't car-dependent.
I propose changing the laws to get rid of parking minima, and changing them to allow multi-family homes in R1-zoned area -- just like the suburb where I grew up.
For example, the Biden administration's Build Back Better Agenda is looking at using the same monetary tools that pushed the scale to the traditional post-war American suburb - federal funding - to remove restrictive zoning. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
If you approve of the democratic principles which lead the FHA to promote R1-zone suburbs in the 1950s and 1960s then you should approve of the same principles being used now to get rid of exclusive zoning.
> and suddenly city hall is packed with people ready to fight against it.
And only 25% of population can decide the future of city zoning. How do you know that represents the majority viewpoint?
I'll acknowledge, none will be as walkable as your example or other places. But I gave you a few neighborhoods, you looked at the most expensive and criticized it for it's cost for owning a luxury townhouse while ignoring the more affordable rental options. Lots aren't necessarily walkable, but definitely very bikeable. All the bus and light rail lines have bike racks so transit + bike really opens up the city. Lots of bike paths separated from the main roads connect through. I should know, I lived it for a while. And I wasn't living in a $600k house. I'd ride my bike from my decently affordable apartment to my software job and college classes, ride my bike to restaurants and shops in the neighborhood, connect with transit to Deep Ellum, Uptown, and Downtown Plano.
I have not been against your suggestion, I've said I'm for things like that. I totally agree parking minimums need to go away. I agree zoning should make it easy to add multi-family housing, and I wish there were more apartments/condos to own instead of just rentals. I like the DART is expanding and I hope to continue to see better service over time.
However, if you really think only 25% of the people in the suburbs want them this way, you're not talking to the people living there. And they don't just want suburbs because they're racists, which I feel like you're implying by constantly bringing it up. FWIW, Richardson is less white than the national average.
Traffic sucks, but I still prefer to leave when I'm ready, go directly to my destination, and bring cargo when needed. I wince when I hear people making drastic compromises to hand carry groceries; I also prefer Costco.
I cannot live in an urban setting. It is way too unhealthy for me. My recreation preferences also necessitate long distance or remote driving.
If we start to see 500+ mi ranges on an SUV-sized vehicle, that will be very tempting. I used to have an HEV sedan which got that kind of range and loved it - no great on unpaved roads, though.
> Libby adds a caveat: The household data does not necessarily measure whether an EV has been replaced by another EV. The new purchase, in other words, could be a replacement for a different household vehicle.
So these numbers would include 2-car households that buy an EV, keep an EV, but replace their other non-EV car with a new gas or hybrid vehicle.
And the title here seems a bit misleading in that light, and doesn't match up with the site's title.
Even in the case you listed, it's still true that Tesla buyers are replacing their other non-EV car with an EV at higher rates than non-Tesla EV buyers, based on the data.
This is probably all due to Tesla's supercharger network. If you like your EV, but your family's 2nd gas car needs replacement - and you have supercharger network, you can tour without any limitations.
If you don't, you now need to consider purchasing another ICE vehicle.
Tesla is the only EV in US that can do roadtrip in practice. Both of my family cars are Tesla because of that reason. Maybe things will change when more and more other EVs can also use Tesla superchargers.
In my personal anecdotal experience, knowing about a dozen people who own EVs, every one of them is looking to increase the number of EVs in the family fleet, not decrease them.
Additionally, the people I know that don't drive EVs would generally like to be doing that, and are not doing it now mostly because of the new car cost.
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[ 6.0 ms ] story [ 171 ms ] threadPresently, and if we narrow the lens to only infrastructure, I'd be really hesitant to go back to ICE -- frankly filling up with petrol is far less convenient than plugging the car in when I park.
Hard to beat the recharge time of {fossil fuels energy density} x {pump flow rate}, if you're driving non-stop cross-country.
45 MJ/kg x 0.75 kg/L x 38 L/min = 1282.5 MJ/min = ~21,360 kWh charging
(If I did my sleepy math right)
Only 0.8% of trips are over 100 miles. For 99.2% of trips, a round trip is possible with an EV range of 200 miles.
(1) 28% of trips are under a mile
(2) 52% under three miles
(3) 64% under five miles
(4) 79% under ten miles
(5) 93% under 25 miles
(6) 98% under 50 miles
For the trips >100 miles, most of these are in cities (regional) that are close by (Eg: {Dallas, Houston, Austin}, {LA,bay are}, {NYC,NJ,Philly,DE,CT}). The use-case of driving non-stop cross-country is non-existent. Nearly nobody does that, it costs 5 - 10X in gas + hotels. Even people who move, they ship their car.
https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1230-marc...
https://evstatistics.com/2021/12/99-2-of-us-daily-trips-are-...
(edit: added sources)
I regularly do 6+ hour trips.
Maybe you're different. Cool! World's big enough for different people.
Also note that, by your own numbers, a plug-in hybrid like the Prius Prime can do somewhere around 95% of trips without using any fuel. You can get nearly all the efficiency of an EV without paying the EV premium or sacrificing practicality.
Is it the from-wall-power inverter that was overly complicated/expensive?
It seemed like the best of all worlds with 00s/10s technology.
No range worries, majority of trips could be electric-only, no need to cram huge, expensive battery capacity in, and no user behavior training past "Also, plug your car in at night."
If the world in 2000 had mandated "And also, all vehicles must include some form of PHEV capability", we could have had a much easier transition to electrification via addition of charging at existing gas stations.
Tesla buyers skew towards techy types who bought a Tesla because it was an EV (I did). German luxury EVs are nice (I have one), but are bought by ICE owners of the same maker. So online you'll read a lot of MB/BMW/Porsche owners who have an ICE, a PHEV, an EV, etc of the same make and are not committed to anyone one fuel type yet.
Charging would be other major factor. In US you will have a better time on NACS than CCS, which is why everyone is capitulating now. So you'll probably see the other makers EV loyalty numbers go +10-20% in 2024-2025 as they convert.
While I could survive on Tesla's network where I grew up outside of SLC, it'd be pretty annoying... but there's no way I could handle a non-Tesla vehicle out there because there are so few charging options, and they are so slow in comparison, I'd never be able to do it
The state of CCS in 2023 is at its peak before it draws down and converts to NACS.. and yet it never even got to Tesla 2018 levels near me in NYC metro areas/I-95 corridor DC-Boston.
So they are behind where Tesla was in 2018, and Tesla was actively adding locations more quickly, with more connectors, in better locations than the CCS networks. So the gap only grew.
Even in terms of CCS connectors, via MagicDock, Tesla probably installed more in NY state in 2023 than any other CCS network, and possibly all other CCS networks combined. It's just absurd.
All that said, I prefer my car over my previous Tesla, I charge at home and am not much of a road tripper so it's all good.
If the distances are pushing things too far for current EVs I feel you, and there are a lot of places still with limited charging access.
That’s somewhat true, if you ignore the “cold weather” part. Many (most?) new cars are turbocharged though, which also compensates for the higher altitude. Combine that with the fact most people don’t live in the mountains, and it’s likely range can become an issue in the winter.
If you have home charging and go on hikes in cold mountain weather within a ~100mi radius of home, or a fast charging station, you're probably fine with a lot of EVs on the market.
And finally, price is a big part of it. Some of us don't want to be saddled with a 15 year payment and interest, on top of the premium you still pay in this economy for any car. Used cars can be had for a 10th of the cost of new, and EVs are even more expensive. Why buy EV at all when ICE is cheaper? For a "regular" consumer car, EVs can be price competitive, and would have been really competitive back in the days of the big rebates. But today, more capable EVs are quite a bit more than ICE.
In 10 years hopefully offroad and heavy-duty EVs will be cheaper (and more available - I don't see any F350/F450/F550 EVs). But today there isn't really an option.
Lower prices requires scaling up mass production of batteries and cars which is what is happening. Gas cars have had a century of mass production economies of scale to reach their current production efficiency.
And generally cars do not come used and depreciated from the factory, so that market will develop over time.
As will charging infrastructure, which is expanding rapidly through lot of public and private investment over the next few years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_battery
My average road trip charging stop is 10-15 minutes.
And I get charging stations are becoming more common/convenient. It just doesn't work for me and where I live (there is one non-Tesla charger in town), though my next car will be an HEV.
Tesla opening their charging network to other brands is going to improve the charging situation a lot in the US.
EVs definitely aren’t for everyone yet, but people calling them junk or thinking they have to charge for hours to go 100 miles are pretty far off the mark.
EVs emit a ton of radiation. Not something people talk enough about.
The internet is a vast array of misinformation and comments like this without supporting links just contributes to that misinformation.
I will buy a 40-50 dollar emf meter from Amazon and test my washer, dryer, oven, microwave, a blow dryer, the AC unit, and then drive around in my Tesla along with sitting idle and charging it.
When the numbers don’t support the “tons” of radiation will you say I’m part of the coverup?
It's dangerous out there, be careful.
EVs emit such high amounts of EMF that it interferes with AM radio, which is why AM radio doesn't exist in any EVs.
Most things in my house mess with a lot of radio stuff. 70cm is practically useless to listen to inside my house from all the interference that gets picked up. I find it strange how fixated you are about it specifically affecting AM radio.
And don't even get me started how EMF noisy a light rail train is!
This is why I only leave my 2km deep dark cave for ten minutes a day, I can't have any electromagnetic waves hitting me!
Oh wait, even the rocks emit radiation! Ahh!
I'm not arguing an EV does not emit EMF. After all, its one or two high power AC motors, of course they'll have an electromagnetic field, that's how they move! It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.
But hey, so does my air conditioner. So does the ventilation fan in my attic. So does my ceiling fan. So does my computer. So does my phone. So does practically everything electric around me. So does just stepping outside. I'm blasted with way more radiation standing outside in the sun for ten minutes than what I'll get riding in my EV for an hour at night.
Fun fact: EMF from EVs is so high it interferes with AM radio, which is why AM radio does not exist in any EVs.
Its fine because that's what's been shown to be completely true. Standing next to an AC motor for a few hours is not going to have any negative effects on your health, other than getting your hand caught in the motor.
Don't get me wrong I'm not about to stand next to an antenna radiating a lot of energy (I do ham radio stuff), I don't want to get burned. RF burns are no joke. But the EV isn't giving off nearly as much energy. I also wouldn't put my hand in a microwave oven and turn it on, but the levels outside the box when closed aren't powerful enough to do any damage unless you've broken your microwave.
> But you obviously know UV from the sun is not the same as EM radiation emitted from a microwave or an EV
Yeah, its actually ionizing, so its massively worse than what I'm getting from my car.
> Fun fact: EMF from EVs is so high it interferes with AM radio, which is why AM radio does not exist in any EVs.
Fun fact: I own an EV, and it has an AM radio. So you're just factually incorrect saying "does not exist in any EVs." I wonder what else you might also be wrong about. Its not the best quality AM radio I've owned, but it works.
https://apnews.com/article/am-radio-ford-cars-congress-bill-...
The article you shared literally says "Electrical interference and reducing cost and manufacturing complexity also played a role."
I'm not arguing it doesn't mess with AM. I'm sure its a part of why AM kind of sucks on my EV. But it is an EV and it has AM radio, therefore "AM radio does not exist in any EVs" is 100% factually incorrect. The Chevy Bolt and Spark also had AM radios, so its not even like its just one EV that has it.
You're the one arguing absolutely no EVs have AM radios, which is trivially easy to disprove.
And even if it didn't, so what? Just because something can interfere with an AM radio, its somehow considered radically unhealthy to be around and should be avoided? Loads of things considered safe to be around mess with AM radio. The wiring in my house messes with AM radio signals, guess I gotta pull out all the wiring. Back to gas lighting it is! Heck, having another AM radio running near an AM radio can cause interference, guess we need to stop using the AM radio!
What acronym is that?
Independent carbon emitter?
Saves me maintenance costs. Fuel costs. Depreciation costs. Yearly inspections with state registration. No more auto insurance needed.
It’s not a preference. It’s a choice shoved down our throats by decades of destroying urban cores, bulldozing poor communities/neighborhoods in favor of massive highway projects, and removing bustling streets of human activity with useles parking lots.
The suburban experiment is a massive failure on all levels. It’s not scalable. It’s incredibly wasteful. Federal/state/local governments dump trillions of dollars on maintenance of this fucking mess.
The government heavily subsidized highway construction, set requirements for massive amounts of available parking, and through the FHA, provided affordable mortgages to white families to move to the suburbs - these new suburbs often had covenants prohibiting black residents. (The new highways were also often built through black neighborhoods, which were often seen as a "blight", were cheaper to acquire through eminent domain, and whose residents didn't have the political or economic power to put up much resistance.)
Traffic policies were set up to maximize traffic flow, which often meant more roads, and wide roads, enabling faster speed. But these make it more dangerous to do anything except drive places.
Restrictive zoning laws resulting in purely residential areas with no corner shop, so even something as simple getting some milk requires driving to the store.
Certainly some people prefer that lifestyle. But the historical truth is that much of it was deliberate top-down policy to encourage people towards that specific lifestyle, and now it's pretty well locked in.
Take for example how residential areas were often designed around cul-de-sacs. The idea was to have quiet streets where kids could safely play. However, once the kids get a bit older, what do they do? They can't drive, so can't even do a simple errand like pick up milk. Instead, one of the parents ends up as a private chauffeur, eg, a "soccer mom". Often this means the family must be a two car family as there is no other solution.
How many of these soccer moms would prefer having a good bus system so their 12-year-old can go to practice and come home on their own?
Even if people do have a preference for single-family housing with a lawn, parking, etc. why should we continue to subsidize that preference? It costs money to provide water, sewer, roads, and power, as well as emergency services and schools, and much of those are fixed costs. For the most part, wealth suburbs are subsidized by poor residents - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI .
You've been brainwashed to think there are only two options. There are more than car-dependent suburbia and "dense city cores". That's probably all that you know about, because the planning process for generations in the US has prohibited mid-rise building and multi-family homes.
It does not need to be that way. You can have suburbs without being car-dependent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0
In https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mV6ZENGko1I a European compare a US suburb to one in Leipzig. The latter is denser, yes, but not the city core. There are restaurants and schools within walking distance, as well as tram service.
Why do you think the government did this? I will posit that it is because voters wanted it to happen. It's not some grand conspiracy by evil fossil fuel overlords.
You can't seriously disentangle the different factors. Clearly white supremacy was one factor that went into the overall vision. From https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/21/syracuse-new... :
"The construction of I-81, along with the rest of America’s highway system, was a part of the federally funded program in the 1950s called “urban renewal”, which targeted formerly redlined, urban Black neighborhoods, labeled “slums’’, for removal. The former 15th ward neighborhood of Syracuse, once a thriving Black community, was the chosen location to build I-81. As a result, dozens of Black homes and businesses were bulldozed."
"These infrastructure projects prioritized the needs of (largely white) commuters in the suburbs over the lives of poor Black residents in cities. It wasn’t limited to Syracuse or New York state; across the country, federal estimates show about 1.2 million Americans were displaced by urban renewal. That legacy lives on today: in Portland, Oregon, Black residents call part of the Interstate 5 highway that runs from Washington to California their “Robert E Lee statue”. In New Orleans, the Claiborne Expressway has been dubbed a “racist monument”."
> I will posit that it is because voters wanted it to happen.
While you can posit that, bear in mind that racial discrimination was official government policy when the interstate highway system was planned and construction started in the 1950s.
Quoting now from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight#United_States :
"In the United States during the 1940s, the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, low-cost mortgages through the G.I. Bill, and residential redlining enabled white families to abandon inner cities in favor of suburban living and prevent ethnic minorities from doing the same. The result was severe urban decay that, by the 1960s, resulted in crumbling "ghettos"."
If you use the narrow lens that something is justified because the majority of voters want it, then you end up also justifying racial discrimination during the 1950s.
If the majority of voters want the poorest 25% of the population to subsidize suburban living, is that fair? Because that's what we have, and tyranny of the majority is a failure mode for majority rule. (Even more so given how black adults are dis-proportionally disenfranchised.)
Who is arguing "evil fossil fuel overlords"? That would be ahistorical.
aka it allowed people to do what they were wanting to do. Those people weren't forced to leave the cities, they were given opportunity to do so and chose to do it.
Nobody here is currently debating whether this was "fair" or "good" or that it wasn't subsidized or enabled by the government, just pointing out that things are the way they are because that's what the people wanted. None of your post goes against that idea, you're just pointing out racial disparity of the actions.
People chose to move to the suburbs. They weren't forced. People continue to choose to live there. Have you actually talked to a lot of suburbanites? Most that I know would say they prefer that way of life. Tons actively fight against densification/urbanization. As the old suburbs get denser and more urban, they continue to flee outwards, buying bigger and bigger lots and houses each move. They specifically don't want to live in dense urban areas. If they wanted to, they would, but they at least think they don't want to make those tradeoffs.
Do you think the vast majority of people living in the suburbs just like wake up every day thinking "man I really hate living here, welp, guess I'll do nothing about it!" Do you think the people shopping for a 3,000sqft house on a 1 acre lot deep down really want a 900sqft apartment?
Let's go back to xyst's comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37951319 . "It’s a choice shoved down our throats by decades of destroying urban cores, bulldozing poor communities/neighborhoods in favor of massive highway projects, and removing bustling streets of human activity with useless parking lots."
xyst never said there wasn't a choice. Instead, the thumb was pressed down on scale, hard, to encourage people to make a specific choice.
You said that was a-historical.
It was not.
> People continue to choose to live there.
What choice do they have? The US zoning system for decades has mandated either high-rises or single-family car-dependent suburbia.
If someone wants to live in a mixed-use area with walking distance from school, restaurant, parks, and restaurants, with mass-transit options ... where do you suggest they live?
> They weren't forced.
Yes, they were. Who do you think enforces zoning requirements? Answer: the police force.
Zoning restrictions are the reason why most places are only single-family homes. The duplexes and short-rises of the immediate post-war suburb I grew up in are no longer allowed.
> Do you think the vast majority of people living in the suburbs just like wake up every day thinking
Now you're just being silly - of course not!
So let's back back to the actual issue. You said xyst's comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37951319 was a-historical, but have yet to show why it's historically inaccurate.
Do you think the vast majority of people have a choice of living somewhere which isn't car dependent?
If they don't have the choice, is there really a choice? Can you really say people "prefer" a car if they have no choice without a car?
The thumb of faceless non-human things? No. The thumb of the people elected, time and time again, for several decades. Doing the policies the people wanted.
> You said that was a-historical.
I have not used that term once in this thread. I do largely agree that arguing practically nobody chose suburbs is a-historical though. Suburbs exist and continue to exist because that's what people choose.
> Who do you think enforces zoning requirements? Answer: the police force.
So what, the the police just come up with zoning rules on their own?
They do have a choice, they vote for their local city councils. Those are the people which make the zoning laws. Those are the people that made the suburbs the way they are. Those are the people which keep growing the suburbs as they are.
> If someone wants to live in a mixed-use area with walking distance from school, restaurant, parks, and restaurants, with mass-transit options ... where do you suggest they live?
Richardson, TX? Plano, TX? I used to live with a friend in Plano, it was like a block from an elementary school, just a few blocks away from the middle school and high school. It was walking distance to over a dozen restaurants. Its quite a nice place to live.
> Do you think the vast majority of people have a choice of living somewhere which isn't car dependent?
I do agree there are a lot of people which for a variety of factors cannot make that choice. But they have the opportunity to vote for city council members who will change that. But they largely don't vote for those people. You can tell that because they often don't seem to win elections.
I do agree there's probably a lot of people who would prefer to live in denser urban areas. I wouldn't argue they're the majority of the people who live in suburbs though. Because, if they were, more suburban towns would have elected people changing those zoning laws to allow it. If they're doing stuff the majority of people living there don't want, why do they get re-elected?
> of course not!
Of course not, because...get this...they enjoy living in the suburbs!
I feel like you haven't bothered to read or understand what I've written.
There are innumerable books on the topic, which go into depth about exactly who the people were, and the reasons they wanted to build highways, including the explicit racism.
If the people want racism, and vote in racists to enforce racism - which these highways did - then I am not going to pretend that what they wanted is something that I want, nor something that should be continued to be supported.
> I have not used that term once in this thread.
I apologize. I didn't see that you took up the exchange after baggy_trough made that comment. Your two viewpoints were very similar.
> So what, the the police just come up with zoning rules on their own?
No. You asked what forces people to make that choice. Zoning laws, enforced by the police, prevent people from having the full range of choice. People choose from the options that exist.
> Richardson, TX? Plano, TX?
I looked around Richardson using Google Street View. It does not look like a place where it is easy to live comfortably without a car. It looks like standard R1 residential with most businesses on stroads meant primarily for cars.
Let's take 414 Salem Dr, which is for-sale, according to Zillo, and near the geographic center of the city. There is an elementary school in walking distance, and a grocery store a mile away on W. Campbell.
If after dinner you realize you need milk for the next morning, only the most dedicated of walkers will do the 40 minutes round-trip walk to pick them up vs. driving.
How do you visit the library? My local library has events for parents with newborns, and for young children. The nearest library to that address is the Richardson Public Library. It estimates 52 minutes walk time, or 47 minutes by bus (of which 35 minutes are walking). How many parents are going to do that walk instead of drive?
If on Saturday your 12-year-old wants to meet up with friends at the library "to work on a school project" (but really just to hang out), do you let the kid walk nearly an hour to the Richardson Public Library, along Campbell road and under I-75? There is no bus service for Saturdays.
This is a car-dependent neighborhood.
The fact that you think otherwise mostly shows you don't know what's missing.
> who would prefer to live in denser urban areas
Again, you are missing the point. There are people who want to live in denser suburban areas.
I pointed you to a video comparing two suburban areas, one in the US and one in Germany.
The fact that you think the only alternatives are single-family suburbs or dense urban is because that's the only two choices in most of the US.
>> of course not!
No. I mean that when I bought a house in a suburb even I wasn't all "wake up every day thinking "man I really hate living here, welp, guess I'll do nothing about it!"". Since I wasn't that way, why should I think others are? Your strawman position seems put out just to be silly, not meaningful.
> they enjoy living in the suburbs!
And how much should they be subsidized for their expensive choice which sucks tax dollars from poorer neighborhoods?
You're just completely ignoring all the stuff at Cityline. Walking distance to a grocer there. Right on the light rail. A few bus lines. That 12 year old could ride down to Arapaho station and hop on the bus to go to where the library usually is. Or living near Richardson Terrace. Or near Cottonwood Park. Or Glenville Park. Just because there's not a listing there today, this second, doesn't mean there won't be one there in a week or a month.
Picking the right place to live, it's entirely possible to live car-free. I know what it's like and what's possible, as I did it for a bit.
And once again you bring up zoning laws and just completely forget how those exist. Once again you're essentially arguing nobody has any control over zoning laws, they just appear from the ether ruining everyone's lives with everyone powerless to change them. It's too bad nobody could ever do anything about zoning laws, those were just written in stone 70 years ago by the gods and cannot possibly be changed by the people there.
The suburbs ultimately are the way they are today because people keep voting for people who choose to not change the zoning laws. Our towns could be different if people wanted to change the laws, but the majority don't. You can point to all kinds of history (history I do know) as the reasons why they were originally built, but ultimately they're still there because that's what the majority of people living there choose.
Ultimately, suburbs exist because that's what the majority of people choose. I'm not arguing it's right or wrong here, I'm just arguing against this concept that nobody really wants to live in the suburbs, they're only forced to. Some people are, sure, but not the majority.
Don't get me wrong, I do want there to be more choice in housing. I'm happy places like Cityline and others exist. I vote for more transit, denser zoning, better bike infrastructure, etc. But I go to City Hall, I watch the streams for planning meetings. I talk to neighbors and friends. They way more often than not like the more car dependent suburbia. I'm often seen as a nut for choosing to take transit when I've got a perfectly good car. They wonder why I choose to bike places. So don't think I'm someone who is arguing against housing choice overall, I'm very much for it. But you can't change it if you don't acknowledge reality. And the reality is, most people currently living in suburbia want suburbia.
Go read up about the Plano Tomorrow plan and all the local politics around that, then tell me nobody chooses the suburbs. Some planning for more density and suddenly city hall is packed with people ready to fight against it. I see this kind of stuff all over the country.
https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2021/09/what-comes-aft...
https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2019/07/23/her...
You specified a city, not a neighborhood, of a place I've never been.
There were plenty of worse places I could have picked in the city.
So, looking at Cityline Dr. Hah! Are you talking about the 'Residences at CityLine'? That's new construction clearly not following the traditional R1 requirements for setback that dominates much of US suburbia.
And at $600K+ it's far outside what most people can afford.
> Picking the right place to live, it's entirely possible to live car-free.
Sure. Streetcar suburbs like Oak Park, IL are a classic example of a suburb where people can live car free. Problems are 1) nearly all of them are too expensive for most people to have the choice to move there, and 2) zoning laws prohibit new construction.
And note that I said "easy to live comfortably without a car."
Give me an address in Richardson, then think about where the local preschool, playground, elementary school, pediatrician, library, grocery store, restaurants, green space, sports practice, doctor's office, dentist, optician, and hospital are.
Bonus points if you can meet up with friends at a bar, drink, and walk home at 11pm feeling safe. (Walk because you've had a few beers and don't want to risk a DUI.)
How long does it take to walk or use mass transit to get there?
And how much does it cost to buy a house there.
> And once again you bring up zoning laws and just completely forget how those exist.
Did you forget my discussion of how racism was an intrinsic component in American suburbia?
The laws about minimum lot sizes and preventing building apartment complexes in single-family neighborhoods was a direct response to keep black (and poor) people out.
> Our towns could be different if people wanted to change the laws, but the majority don't.
Isn't Texas one of the places that requires a supermajority to allow zoning changes? My research suggests a 3/4ths vote is needed - hardly a majority. (NC appears to require a 4/5ths supermajority?!)
Which means a town can't change its zoning even if a simple majority of the people want to change.
In any case, generations of bad urban planning policies based in no small part on racism mean most people think the only two options are "single-family suburbia" and "dense urban".
You yourself made that mistake.
> most people currently living in suburbia want suburbia.
Great! I don't want to change that! Suburbia is fine!
What I don't like that most people don't have a choice to live in a suburbia which isn't car-dependent.
I propose changing the laws to get rid of parking minima, and changing them to allow multi-family homes in R1-zoned area -- just like the suburb where I grew up.
For example, the Biden administration's Build Back Better Agenda is looking at using the same monetary tools that pushed the scale to the traditional post-war American suburb - federal funding - to remove restrictive zoning. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
If you approve of the democratic principles which lead the FHA to promote R1-zone suburbs in the 1950s and 1960s then you should approve of the same principles being used now to get rid of exclusive zoning.
> and suddenly city hall is packed with people ready to fight against it.
And only 25% of population can decide the future of city zoning. How do you know that represents the majority viewpoint?
I have not been against your suggestion, I've said I'm for things like that. I totally agree parking minimums need to go away. I agree zoning should make it easy to add multi-family housing, and I wish there were more apartments/condos to own instead of just rentals. I like the DART is expanding and I hope to continue to see better service over time.
However, if you really think only 25% of the people in the suburbs want them this way, you're not talking to the people living there. And they don't just want suburbs because they're racists, which I feel like you're implying by constantly bringing it up. FWIW, Richardson is less white than the national average.
I prefer to listen to music without headphones and not be subjected to the sights and smells of septa. I wasn't brainwashed. It's much better.
If we start to see 500+ mi ranges on an SUV-sized vehicle, that will be very tempting. I used to have an HEV sedan which got that kind of range and loved it - no great on unpaved roads, though.
So these numbers would include 2-car households that buy an EV, keep an EV, but replace their other non-EV car with a new gas or hybrid vehicle.
And the title here seems a bit misleading in that light, and doesn't match up with the site's title.
If you don't, you now need to consider purchasing another ICE vehicle.
In my personal anecdotal experience, knowing about a dozen people who own EVs, every one of them is looking to increase the number of EVs in the family fleet, not decrease them.
Additionally, the people I know that don't drive EVs would generally like to be doing that, and are not doing it now mostly because of the new car cost.