They each know that without time boxed regulation they'd all try to defect and let the others take the early losses leading to the entire industry collapsing.
It's fixing a prisoners dilemma.
Our nation's continuing to emit a little CO2 from automobile tailpipes is not so dire a danger that we can't meet our goal with a sufficiently drastic tax on fossil fuels, enabling those few consumers and organizations that benefit the most from emitting CO2 from automobile tailpipes to continue to emit a little.
It is hard for policymakers even to imagine all the ways an outright ban on something will incur costs -- and most of the time, they shouldn't even try.
This is an interesting one. Public transit can pretty much only be built after there is demand. Because we limit growth so much, there are very few places where we have allowed growth that would support transit.
If you were to overturn land use regulation as a whole, you would get dense places, and then we could get more transit...
It has nothing to with urbanism or social engineering, it's just about the need for transportation.
> We have a perfectly acceptable drop in replacement for gas cars in the form of EVs.
No, we don't. Not yet. There are still serious problems around charging that remain showstopper issues for many, mostly lower-income, people.
I like the goal: no more gasoline cars. And if governments can grow a pair and set a realistic end date for them it would work out great. A suggested timeline: no gasoline cars manufactured after 2028, no new sales after 2030, complete road ban after 2037 unless you buy carbon offsets etc.
The roadmap I suggested above is already highly aggressive and will generate massive pushback. Doing it overnight would be disastrous. No politician will do it while Americans remain in love with their gasoline tanks.
It's financially disastrous for poor people to take a loan to buy a depreciating asset that sits parked 95% of the time. And requires monthly expenses for insurance and parking.
Moving to EVs means middle- and upper-middle class people have a decision to make: spend money on switching, or join everyone else in public transit.
The middle income quantile spends $11,000 per year on transportation. The median US car payment is $749 new and $529 used. The sooner we force middle class people and up move to EVs—which they can afford to do—the sooner we can create a robust market for used EVs for the bottom quantile.
[1] One of the biggest differences I noticed between Baltimore, where I lived, and rural Oregon, where my wife’s family is from, is that people in Baltimore are trapped in dangerous neighborhoods with no job prospects. Their lack of mobility turns them into wards of the state. People in rural Oregon are just as poor, but they can move around looking for housing and work. E.g. someone who loses their job can move in with family in the middle of nowhere and still commute to find part time work or pursue job leads in the towns.
