Sales of EVs will continue, old gasoline cars will still exist. Then there's biking, walking, public transit, and living closer to your day-to-day needs. If anything this will help the poor.
Here's a better thing to think about: why do we as a society in various countries require poor people to buy a car in order to participate in society? Maybe instead of doing that, we should treat cars as luxury objects and an after-thought and instead actually build correctly and in a equitable and afforable way?
Telling people who aren't rich to just walk to work is a joke right?
Electric cars will come down in price and I'm all for the push. But the timelines seem unrealistic to me.
Legislation (Inflation Reduction Act) passed this month allows the full federal EV tax credit on the Bolt again as of Jan 1 2023, so subtract $7,500.
California EV tax credit of an additional $2000 (income under $135K single, $200K joint)
There are additional regional EV credits in certain California metro areas that can further discount the price by hundreds or thousands.
So, price for any low to mid income Californian will be a maximum of $16,100.
And, there is an additional program for low income folks in California that provides grants toward EV purchases (new and used). This program is severely underfunded and (temporarily) closed to new applicants since March 2022.
Purchase price after incentives is roughly at parity with an equivalent ICE vehicle.
Current lack of charging infrastructure for apartment renters who park on the street seems a bigger hurdle, to me.
If you can't walk or bike to work, your society has failed to build affordable housing relative to low to moderate incomes, or it has failed in urban planning. It's certainly one of those two.
Obviously there exclusings for people such as farmers or if you actively choose to live far away from your job, but in doing so you should directly feel that cost with high purchase prices for a vehicle (which means you'll also repair it, right to repair and all right?), high fuel tax, and extreme inconvenience if you are driving to a city.
Ultimately economic physics will dictate this reality, no new technology will "save us" in time before costs become too extreme for this car-centric lifestyle to continue. I'm just hoping there isn't too much damage done to human civilization via resource conflicts and that we survive our stupidity.
Move to Franklinton and you'll have buses and scooters and no need to own a car. Most of my neighbors have cars but they don't use them most days. I bike to the gym and all of downtown. I do take my car grocery shopping (carry bags on bus or scooter sucks) and to work (when I go) but that's it. I enjoy cars but I avoid driving out of obligation.
The lifestyle you chose is car-centric but you chose it, and I think that's a very important detail.
The cheapest new cars I can find (in the US) are $16k for the Mitsubishi Mirage G4 and $20k for the Toyota Corolla. I certainly don't think the Mirage qualifies as "extremely nice". I think Toyota makes fantastic cars and the Corolla is all the vehicle most people could ever really need, but honestly, I still think "extremely nice" might be pushing it.
By the way, what are the consequences for these unrealistic timelines? Some people like to pretend like the sky is falling and we'll have hundreds of thousands of people walking along the side of highways to get to work like some post-apocalyptic wasteland. But the reality is, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Timelines get changed all the time. It's a step. A best effort.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-vehicle-prices-...
Nissan Leaf "Starting MSRP $27,800": https://www.nissanusa.com/vehicles/electric-cars/leaf.html
I know because my wife owns one, it gets 40mpg. Like I said, I'm excited for these new offerings. But acting like they are competitive on pricing or will be soon is just not realistic.
Closer to $50k. The cheapest Tesla for sale these days is the Model 3 Rear-Wheel Drive which starts at $46,990 plus a $1,200 delivery fee, so $48,490.
10 years later used one is going to be 4k
I believe this framing is wrong. "Participating in society" is a loaded term because it is so ambiguous. I believe the truth of the matter is the owning a vehicle enables so much more movement and activity.
>"Maybe instead of doing that, we should treat cars as luxury objects and an after-thought and instead actually build correctly and in a equitable and affordable way?"
I get the sentiment, but I find it to be glib because it glosses over why this would be so hard to implement, and how we got to this situation in the first place. In a way, it seems like "Instead of things being bad, why don't we make things good?"
> why this would be so hard to implement
I definitely agree that it's hard to implement, but that's because of design and special interests in not implementing it. It would be cheaper for sure. You can think through it yourself because cities a long time ago (which were less complex and had less access to technology) built this way, and then as they "progressed" they built more difficult to build and more complex highways, cars, and roads. So it's easier to implement walkable cities and neighborhoods almost by definition because that's what was built first.
I take challenge with this because it is hyperbolic. It is one thing to say mass transit is insufficient, but to claim there are no alternatives whatsoever is flat-out wrong. And, the claim that someone has to own a car in order to "do anything related to society in the physical world" is just as bad. People absolutely manage without this, and it also discounts all the mass transit options you already support and want to see expand.
Part of what upsets me so much about the car-critical movement is how fast and loose people play with words.
So it's then fair to say that our society is built around motor vehicle ownership and that an inability to afford one excludes you from all that our society has to offer?
One of the contributing factors to racism and bigotry in America at least that we have stratified society and locked everyone into homes out in the suburbs where they don't interact with people from other socioeconomic classes, different ideas, or different life stages. It's easy to hate people when you read about them on the Internet. It's nearly impossible to do so when you see them at the park with their children living the American dream just like you.
Others may have different interpretations and such, but that's what it means to me in an over-simplified nut shell.
