In rich countries the dominant imaginary about transport is “one family, one car” (or even two or three cars); This imaginary has also spread to other parts of the world.
There are currently few doubts that the traditional model based on massively burning petroleum derivatives must change due to the climate emergency and that you must do it quickly. Private transport is the main demander of oil and a very important contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.
However, many see the gradual disappearance of current cars as a purely technological change towards electric cars without having to rethink the mobility model. This is a serious mistake for many reasons.
The private car is an extremely inefficient alternative in energy terms and more so in the case of electric cars, which are generally much heavier than traditional cars, mainly due to the weight of the batteries. To move one or a few people, you must move a structure that can weigh one and a half tons and even more.
The transition to 100% renewable electricity is neither easy nor without conflicts (as we well know in Catalonia!) and if we persist in the private car model, the speed with which we can make the transition will be less, since to the electricity demand for other uses, it will be necessary to add the electricity demand to supply the car park. The result will be more emissions in the transition period and dependence on more energy infrastructure.
It must be added that the deployment of renewable energies and their storage in batteries is highly dependent on certain scarce minerals such as lithium, cobalt or some of the so-called “rare earths”. For years now, reports from institutions such as the International Energy Agency and the World Bank have been alarming about the dependence on what have been called “critical minerals & rdquor ;, whose demand will multiply in the coming decades. The extraction of these minerals generates many environmental impacts and conflicts although we don’t see them because they usually occur far from wealthy areas. Climate change is not the only environmental problem. In addition, the mining of these materials and their transport are not powered by the sun and the air, but by fossil fuels, also contributing to the emission of CO2.
Many people associate the sustainable city of the future with a city full of electric cars. However, the alternative to the current model is the radical reduction in the use of cars (electric, yes) and the promotion of public transport (much more energy efficient) and walking and cycling (which only require the energy we get from food).
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Compared to current cars, electric cars do not directly generate CO2 and they cause much less local pollution that affects our health (although they also emit particles from brake and tire wear and lift particles deposited on the ground). These are obvious improvements, but the negative externalities of mobility by car in cities go much further: accidents and massive occupation of public space to the detriment of the space available for walking, living together or playing.
A future of electric cars? yes but above all a future with far fewer cars. It is necessary to do courageous policies to build new mobility models as many leading cities are doing.