The issue is the article actually had a tired argument, your broken attempt to reframe electric cars as useless is really bizarre and not fitting at all to the sentiment it just points out how shallow and negative you are being
That "genuine development" you talk about is over 140 years old. In fact the very first cars in mass use were electric and it was only later ICE cars became more popular due their advantages (back then).
It's not a new or even great development at all if nothing changes in the end - you still need to build these cars, old ICE cars won't just disappear either - they'll be shipped to poorer countries in turn increasing their air pollution and need for infrastructure.
So instead of viewing my point as "shitting on things", how about refuting it with counter facts instead? Like, how is it better to still rely on individual transport, huge wasted areas due to sealed natural ground for roads and parking spaces, the inefficiency of urban sprawl and ridiculous zoning laws which necessitates cars in the first place, deaths and injuries from car accidents, etc. etc.?
Electric cars are like treating symptoms instead of the cause and the treatment basically just trades one symptom (air- and noise pollution) for another (need for more infrastructure) while leaving others untouched (roads, parking spaces, cities built for cars not humans, etc.) and celebrating them as a solution to environmental problems is... very irritating, to say the least.
No one's gonna refute the ""arguments"" because it's a fucking long dipshit statement of epic proportions. Who wants to argue with a 5 year old?
Put in the actual work yourself instead of shifting the blame on others for not enacting the changes you desire.
Note: I agree all the issues you listed (mostly city life related) are real important issues. And they are hard issues. Especially because they are not technical issues. And I would love to see them fixed. But they are not Musks responsability.
By the way Musk did and still does claim to provide "fixes" for these problems: tunnels, hyperloops, and point-to-point rocket flights, because "I would love to see my customers in Riyadh, leave in the morning and be back in time to make dinner" - you know, as one does. [1]
The thinking there isn't visionary at all - it's good old 20th (or even 19th) century thinking with 21st century tech applied to them. I mean - why even fly all the way to Riyadh in the first place if you could instead improve tele-presence to the point that physically going there doesn't make much difference anymore?
> Put in the actual work yourself instead of shifting the blame on others for not enacting the changes you desire.
First of all - cheap shot, especially since it's not me who declares that electric cars are the solution to pollution and climate change and it's not me who advocates for personal lifts into underground tunnels under every home to fix traffic. Secondly - I don't own a car and take the bike, the bus and the train instead. I live by my principles, even if it hurts sometimes. What about you?
[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/gwynne_shotwell_spacex_s_plan_to_f...
Oh come on. Electric cars are a fix, just not a total fix. Cars are going to be replaced by new cars anyway, and replacing them with electric instead of ICE is strictly, objectively better for the climate problem, as it cuts emissions down and increases energy efficiency. Would it be better if we had less cars and more public transit? Sure. It's also a completely orthogonal problem. Also, what would be even better than more of current public transit? Fully electrified public transit. That is a possibility now only because of development done for electric cars.
I'm reminded of "Copenhagen Interpretation of Morality" - the view that if you as much as touch or comment on an issue, or worse, try to do something towards fixing a part of it, you suddenly become responsible for it all, and judged by not coming up with a complete solution.
See THIS is were I disagree completely. An electric car that replaces an ICE is NOT better than an ICE car that's not being replaced at all (be that by using it longer or by simply not needing it anymore).
Actual fixes exist and I listed some of them. You don't even have to get rid of all cars - it'd already be a huge step forward if the average number of personally owned cars per capita went down below 1.
You see, the problem with seeing electric cars as ANY sort of fix or improvement is that it's actually preventing much needed change from happening. This has nothing to do with any bullshit philosophy matters - it's just a facts-based assessment of the situation.
There's even more to the whole fixation on personal transport by means of automobile that I didn't even touch on. Not a single traffic problem will go away with electric cars and the inefficient and destructive suburban lifestyle will be actively supported even longer. Again, and I can't stress this enough - if you actually care about climate change and efficiency, you need to change your LIFESTYLE, not your car.
Lipstick on a pig...
> An electric car that replaces an ICE is NOT better than an ICE car that's not being replaced at all (be that by using it longer or by simply not needing it anymore).
That's not on the table, though. People who now drive ICE cars will continue to replace their cars. The immediate choice is between buying an ICE and buying an electric, and the latter is strictly better. Over time, this will eventually (hopefully) replace ICE cars with electrics.
> ANY sort of fix or improvement is that it's actually preventing much needed change from happening
It's not preventing anything, as new cars are going to be bought anyway. You can argue that it reduces perceived urgency of reducing the number of cars on the road. That I'm willing to admit.
> Not a single traffic problem will go away with electric cars and the inefficient and destructive suburban lifestyle will be actively supported even longer.
True. But that's exactly orthogonal to the idea that, ceteris paribus, replacing ICEs with electric is an improvement.
> if you actually care about climate change and efficiency, you need to change your LIFESTYLE, not your car.
Yeah, that ain't gonna happen at scale, though. There are three tried-and-true ways to get people to change their lifestyles: economic pressure, religion and new technologies. Just asking isn't going to help.
You don't even have to change anything if you just keep driving your 2010 ICE car until it literally rusts away under your buttocks instead of buying a new car (electric or not).
It'd be interesting to compare the actual CO² and energy use difference (including manufacturing costs for the new car) between driving an existing ICE car less frequently and keeping it longer versus buying a new electric car while keeping the the same driving habits.
This one tired old argument again. While reducing air pollution is a plus (at least in city centres), electric cars are nothing but green washing. If you really are concerned about climate change and pollution, reduce the need for cars and own no car. Abandon Euclidian- and single-use zoning (i.e. reverse urban sprawl and make cities liveable again), improve public transport, make cities walkable, improve bike infrastructure, etc. etc.
In other words, put in the actual work instead of shifting the problem around and creating even more intrusive infrastructure that needs to be built and maintained ("tunnels", "hyperloops", blah).