electric cars should be our worse-case scenario
check out this company that will be rolling out its all-electric SUVs and SUTs in 2010, they are called phoenix motorcars.
you can reserve one now, and hopefully if everything goes well you’ll be driving one in 2010!
if you’ve visited this site before, you might have recognized that i am not a fan of the automobile … not in our cities anyway. a fantastic film like who killed the electric car frustrates me from two levels … the first being that we have the technology available to have zero-emission cars, but the car companies don’t want them to roll out … so they keep them from us. if you haven’t heard of this, watch this documentary …
the second level being that electric cars aren’t even the answer! … they are simple the worse-case scenario that we should allow ourselves. there are countless other environmental and social consequences that our car culture contributes to. roads are a huge issue for wildlife and waterways, and in the cities they take up so much space that room for people and their kids is very limited.
if we didn’t have to build so many roads for cars, what would we do with the space filled by roads today? look out your front window and imagine that as a grass (wild grasses, not lawn) covered lane, with more trees, some wildflowers, and maybe a small creek flowing by … the point being: there doesn’t have to be a road there.
not only would such alternate uses of roads make life more enjoyable, it would make being a kid so much wonderous … just run out the door and there is a world ready to explore and run around in, where there aren’t cars zipping by every 2 seconds … kids should catch frogs, not car exhaust when they are playing outside with their friends.
… my very convoluted point being that electric cars are not the answer. the answer is that we need to replan our cities, creating transportation systems that allow us to live without automobiles on a daily basis. we need to do this for the environment (there is no doubt), but also because it will improve our lives, it will bring beauty back into places that are currently rather ugly, and because it is simply a better way to live.
… but in the meantime, we still need to get around while our cities are being reimagined … and to do that, we should only be using all-electric cars (hybrids are not enough).
so, put your name on the list, and drive one off the lot in 2010!!
ps - there are a bunch of electric car options out there, some smaller than these … do some searching and see if you find something that interests you! … this treehugger article might be a place to start …
c.
