Do car batteries not degrade? How are they different from other batteries?
> The "fuel tax" is more than made up for by all the many benefits of EV
From the government's perspective, it's lost cash flow.
https://storage.googleapis.com/geotab-sandbox/ev-battery-deg...
In the UK, the government also pays for the dementia and asthma that the car pollution creates, and importing the fuels is a cost, as is the lost efficiency, cost of meeting net zero targets and upgrading the grid (which EVs help with) so it evens out.
As I say, they'll probably start taxing them anyway, and thats good, London has a "Congestion Charge" so exceptions for EV make sense as a short term incentive, but they still cause "congestion" and should still pay.
From the curves in your link, it seems EVs have fewer cycles per year than mobile phones or laptops.
But after 15-20 years, their batteries will still most likely be dead.
We can expect battery tech to improve in the next 8 years, and hopefully become cheaper, but a move to EVs could still drastically limit availability of cheap vehicles for those who need them.
Removing private cars from cities won't revolutionise them, when the roads are still going to be full of commercial vehicles, buses, and taxis. Yeah, it'll make it somewhat safer for cyclists and reduce air pollution and noise a little - but not enough to turn a declining urban dystopia into a desirable place to live.
Unless of course, you're very wealthy and can live in a luxury apartment with good security and plenty of distance from the 'rough areas'.
That sounds pretty revolutionary to me already? Why don't you think so?
There's lots of existing plans to improve those other things too, pedestrian only zones, car-free superblocks, e-cargo bikes replacing some commercial vehicles, bike shares, subways and metro systems, bus rapid transit corridors, seperated bike-lanes, mixed-usage districts so that people have everything they need within a walkable radius.
Plan for cars and you get cars, plan for people and you get people.
Even if I accept your premise that cities are descending into "Escape from New York" territory, how does allowing ICE cars to spew pollution do anything but make that worse?
Do you have a source for that? Here in NYC things seem as popular as ever, with record-breaking rents due to high demand. Is it different elsewhere?
Regardless, even if it's true that some cities are struggling, that only makes it more important for them to focus on improving quality of life: a rise in WFH means people have more options, and a city that doesn't want to depopulate has to be an attractive place to live independent of economic opportunity.
The ban has already been brought forward in multiple jurisdictions, that's the general trend, as people realise all the lies they've been told about EVs aren't true, so delaying it would be very surprising. In London, they have the low emission zones on top of that, so any poor person buying an old ICE car for use in London would be paying hefty sums to drive around.
There's multiple serious efforts to build large-scale public (and private) EV charging infrastructure. Why do you think there isn't? How can you think that? They're popping up everywhere.
The ban doesn't even ban PHEVs currently (though there's reasonable chance that it will be strengenthed in some way as the transition accelerates) so even ignoring all EVs with lower TCO than equivalent ICE cars available today, which will be 8 years old in 2030, there's also tons of hybrids for these poor people to buy.
Degraded battery packs? Now that's a classic, thought that one had died out, along with "toys for the wealthy".
The "fuel tax" is more than made up for by all the many benefits of EV (less pollution being a key one) that society gets, but it's good that governments will probably tax EVs as cars, even EVs, have multiple negative externalities that the people who use them should pay for, so the people cycling or on the train don't need to pay for other people's bad decisions. Otherwise we'll end up with inefficient American sprawl rather than healthy, livable cities.