As an American too often I hear people say “EVs will never be viable for people who don’t own their own garages”.
Well I just got back from Shanghai, a city where 99.999% of people live in high rise apartments or condos, a city where now EVs account for close to half of all new car sales.
Here is a short clip I took of an underground garage of a high rise office building in Shanghai: https://imgur.com/a/hup2cFg
Here is the parking lot of an average apartment complex in Shanghai: https://i.imgur.com/oajSzCG.jpg
If the U.S. won’t have that, it will be because people here aren’t willing to, not because we physically can’t. We are the world’s only indisputable technological, economical and military superpower. We put a man on the moon when China was still a country of starving farmers.
So yeah, we can build some fucking chargers if we want to.
That’s all and thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
Sure, of course, a transition is possible if there’s enough will. But you’re also talking about the country that historically can’t pass universal healthcare, can’t fund public transit, can’t fix gun violence. Willingness has always been the issue — the US is structurally incapable of having the collective willingness to solve large problems promptly.
A proximate issue is the anti {policy provision du jour} side starts off with “it is utterly impossible and impractical to do {policy provision du jour}”
Then we spend a decade or so showing how every other developed country and even major developing countries are doing exactly that thing.
Then the anti side goalpost shifts to “welp we spent it all on the military industrial complex and tax cuts. Can’t spend anything more. Too bad so sad!”
The sooner we move from the first phase we can at least get to the second phase of inaction.
This is a country that just spent hundreds of billions widening highways which didn’t need widening…