It's simple. It's more mobility options, especially safe active transportation. EVs are still cars. It's a change in the margin. What is really needed is people biking, walking for their daily errands instead of using a car.
As for the safe part, it does not require anything special. The aspirational world of the future will be made real with bollards and trees. The american brain today cannot comprehend this. Yet it is a certainty.
what will become impossible is the current fad of living in the "country" with a city lifestyle.
I wrote safe mobility options for all, so active modes of transportation are a viable alternative to the car. That applies both to the city and the country.
To make walking and biking safe, the implementation will be largely low-tech. Trees, bollards.
It's not EVs (high tech) that will trigger the transformation to curb pollution. It will be people choosing to walk and bike iso choosing to the drive.
What we have drifted into is a tech supported civilization that is covering the planet from corner to corner with myriad of footprints (emissions, particulate and chemical pollution of all types, habitat alteration or destruction etc).
The story of ozon layer depletion was an early warning. Greenhouses another dimension. Microplastics and nitrates another etc etc, with no end in sight.
Imagine homo sapiens communities spread around in the billions and a steady stream of polluting stuff emanating from them, not temporarily but continuously and forever.
This is the challenge we are facing and its monumental. How to take that out-of-control, scant regard for externalities tech enabled economic "growth" mindset and turn it around.
Bold ideas are welcome. Burrying heads in the sand not an option.