[Traster]

The question is whether it really is the right answer to invest enormous sums of money and infrastructure into enabling rich people to have electric vehicles, or does it make more sense to just... not. Don't upgrade onstreet parking, take the money and build a bus service, a train service etc. Cars are fundamentally a non-scalable solution for dense urban areas. They're just really inefficient and if you're living in a city where you can only get onstreet parking you're probably better of taking a bus or a train to get around anyway. It's also a massive bonus for everyone between you and where you want to commute that they don't have to deal with your traffic anymore.

London has already made this decision - they go out of their way to make it uneconomical to drive in London. Why suddenly unlearn everything about public transport.

[tachyonbeam]

That's fair. If self-driving cars pan out, then ideally, we'll soon be able to live in a world where we can all ride in electric cars without owning one. These self-driving electric taxis can then charge at fast chargers on lots somewhere out of sight.

Apart from that, why invest in charging infrastructure? Probably because, even though we've made it inconvenient to drive, some people insist on owning a car in the city. Maybe they are just being idiots, or maybe they need it for their work/business. If we don't make it more convenient to go electric, they will just stick with gas cars. Every little bit counts.

Trains, yes sure, but people love the convenience of a door-to-door service. I think Elon's idea of electric robotaxis and tunnels to alleviate traffic is not a bad one. It could work. We could also eventually have hyperloop "pods" that route themselves in a network tunnel underground. This would make it possible to avoid having to transfer from one train to another multiple times. Sounds sci-fi? Sure, but without a vision, there's no innovation.