Alcohol.
Lots and lots of people lean heavily on it and think that alcohol is the spice of their life. When, it contributes to so many problems than it’s so-called benefits. We tried, in America anyways, to outright ban alcohol. Problem was that the person who wanted it banned, was too extremist.
Like he didn’t think it all through and think just going for the jugular of the problem is what will work. When, it didn’t and just made people work around it until eventually the ban was dismantled.
So, since then, we’ve been putting up with drunk drivers, drunk disputes, drunk abusers and other issues. I still wish we could just slam our hands down at the desk and demand we sit to discuss in how to properly deal with this issue than people proclaiming that it’s not a problem.
In the US and Canada?
Car dependency / Car centrism.
Sure, we have a few large cities with non roadway mass transit.
But uh, in general, we’ve got terminal car brain, and I do not see this fundamentally changing.
The vast majority of places will continue being designed around cars instead of people.
Cars and fuel costs will keep going up, less and less people will have them, and (again excepting a few extremely dense and expensive cities) we will just go to mass private car rentals/shares instead of actual mass transit or meaningfully redesigning cities.
Sidewalks? Bike lanes? Go fuck yourself, you don’t matter if you don’t own a car, wait an hour for a bus (if one exists), get an uber, have a friend with a car.
Wait til the petro dollar crashes. It’s going to be hilarious
EVs are coming, no matter how expensive/wasteful, you’d always have a car option.
Are there EV longhaul trucks that are at cost and performance parity with ICE longhaul trucks on the horizon?
I don’t think so.
That means that logistics costs for basically everything gets significantly more expensive when ICE fuel costs go up.
We could lessen this problem by building out more freight rail capacity, and a whole lot more minor rail lines so that trucks don’t routinely drive halfway across the continent and are used less often…
…but we are not.
So, that means that when gas/diesel prices go up, everything gets more expensive… including ICE and EV personal vehicles.
Currently, generally, EVs (and Hybrids) are already 20% to 30% more expensive than their ICE counterparts, even after subsidies/rebates, and are only less expensive than the ICE counterpart in a long run of 10+ years due to lower ongoing fuel costs…
But if gas/diesel prices significantly rise and never go back down…
All vehicles become more expensive.
If ICE vehicle ongoing fuel costs are now so high that an average person can’t afford them…
The only other choice is EVs … but those now have a stupendous sticker price.
So you end up with even less people being able to afford any vehicle whatsoever, but a society that is physically designed to… require one.
So then you end up with a society of an upper class of EV owners, and everyone else who used to be able to afford a midrange ICE car now having to use ICE/EV motorcycles or EBikes… for daily commutes, in all weather.
No more AC or Heating for your completely environmentally exposed 30 minute to 2hr commute to work through a heatwave or heavy snow or rain.
They’d have to rent an EV vehicle to do 2 weeks worth of grocery shopping or move any kind of substantial cargo like a bed, or move more than 2 people a considerable distance, start arranging ride shares to and from work in some kind of comfort.
Oh, and a ton of Americans are functionally too obese/unhealthy/injured to be able to actually use a motorcycle or EBike. So just count them out of the workforce if they can’t find ride shares I guess.
As they do, they’re quickly turning into indicators of privilege. If/when the petro dollar crashes I totally don’t expect billy bob that drives his eight cylinder diesel to hold any resentment towards EV drivers when he’s stuck paying for something that he can’t afford gas for. But hey what do I know I prefer old school bicycles.
If I had more time under my belt I’d probably buy one. The 100k+ pricetag is just too much right now
$100k+ in what currency? The base model of the EV I drive is under $45k
U$. The Rivian I want is about $120k