> "the only" group that needs a car as a necessity and not luxury are parents.
I'm as pro-public-transit, pro-cycling as they come. But yes, there are plenty of reasons cars are needed:
- Parents (like you said)
- People without the ability to walk long distances (older/sick people, etc)
- Anyone who needs to go to Ikea / Costco / whatever and buy something big
- Delivery vehicles (not everything is suitable for cargo bike delivery)
- People who live outside urban areas
etc
And that's all fine. In a dense city, I think there is plenty of middle ground where everyone is happy and most people get along great most of the time without driving.
I agree that articles like this claiming absolutes are silly.
I feel like the use-case identified for ultra-light cars in this article is the worst argument for cars of any size. There are lots of cases where a small urban electric vehicle could be all you need, but a lot of those cases are also (or better!) covered by public transit or biking or something similar. In cases where you actually need a car, you're probably better off with a slightly larger vehicle. For a lot of the downsides of cars, like traffic, parking, etc, making cars smaller doesn't solve the problems nearly as well as getting them off the road entirely.
To put it another way, ultra tiny EVs you use for every trip seem like a much worse future than a future where you have a larger EV you don't have to use as often because there are good alternatives to driving that cover a lot of your needs.
I'm as pro-public-transit, pro-cycling as they come. But yes, there are plenty of reasons cars are needed:
- Parents (like you said)
- People without the ability to walk long distances (older/sick people, etc)
- Anyone who needs to go to Ikea / Costco / whatever and buy something big
- Delivery vehicles (not everything is suitable for cargo bike delivery)
- People who live outside urban areas
etc
And that's all fine. In a dense city, I think there is plenty of middle ground where everyone is happy and most people get along great most of the time without driving.
I agree that articles like this claiming absolutes are silly.