The Problem With Cars
Freedom created by the car brought prosperity, people and the world together. The ICE car has been overwhelmingly successful – one of the top 10 selling products ever produced. But success has come with a price. I have covered climate damage already, but the car has caused a multitude of other impacts. Cars invaded and utterly transformed city centres. What were once quiet streets, save for the sound of horse hoofs, because noisy and crowded. City streets, with fast moving automobiles, became dangerous. Cities are unrecognisable since the dawn of the car. Traffic lights, parking meters, road signs, painted road markings clutter the thoroughfares. Traffic, serious congestion and human frustration are a feature in every major city on Earth.
We are used to noise pollution and have tuned it out when walking on a busy city street sidewalk. It is only when you try to speak with someone, try to listen on the phone or on headphones that you realise just how incredibly noisy ICE cars are. I never really paid too much attention to this until I converted to an electric car. When an ICE car accelerates past me now, knowing the noise is the by-product of 80% wasted energy together with a dose of air poisoning and carbon emissions, I get a little angry. With way more impressive acceleration, an electric car can do the same and more with little noise and zero emissions.
After congestion, noise and pollution, the next major issue is parking. Every driver has had the experience of trying to find a parking place when late for an appointment. Overpriced parking lots, parking fines, wheel clamps, tow trucks and parking wardens are the antithesis of freedom. Over the decades the car has developed a bad name. Anti-car lobby groups, city restrictions and even congestion charges designed to push cars out of cities are now commonplace.
When I was 17 years old, I had the single dream to have my own car. Living in the Dublin suburbs I would imagine my future with total freedom to go wherever and whenever I liked. My friends all thought the same way; getting a car was everything. I had a poster on my bedroom wall of a BMW 3 Series, E30 model (the boxy 1980s shape) that read ‘the ultimate driving machine’. With summer and after school jobs I saved up and finally realised my dream, buying a used 3 Series when I was 19.
But owning a freedom machine, for young city dwellers today is no longer an attractive option. The total cost of ownership with parking, fuel, insurance and depreciation doesn’t appeal to new generations. 64% of millennials surveyed across multiple European cities said they have no intention of ever owning a car. This is different for suburbanites with young families, but the trend is overall the same; people are turning away from car ownership. Ride sharing, car sharing, peer-to-peer (AirBnB-style own car sharing) and new leasing models now offer the driver alternatives to buying a car. The electric car revolution is happening in parallel to these new ownership models and in many ways enabling a new era of mobility. Electric cars are being developed with future shared ownership in mind.
Electric cars alone don’t solve all the other problems associated with the car but they are acting as a catalyst for change in how we move. The electric car revolution is not just about swapping gasoline for a battery, there are seismic shifts taking place in parallel. Ownership behaviours, changing cities and autonomous cars will mean not just an electric future but an entirely different transport experience in the decades ahead.
