[mmcdermott]

Any sort of mass transit system requires a certain density of locations and passengers to make sense. While there are certainly urban centers in the United States that answer to that description, a good chunk of the country doesn't. There was a recent HN article that talked about this a little bit (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34475508). Whether your goal is to cut emissions or cost, it seems like there would be a good chunk of the States (in both space and population) where more net harm would be done than good.

On a less strictly policy level, the idea of "punish everyone until they do what I want" makes me at least a bit uncomfortable. On top of the authoritarian undertones to it, there is the more basic idea that clearly a large amount of the population doesn't believe that switching to an EV is in their best interests. People can certainly be wrong, but disregarding the signal out of hand seems a bit short-sighted.