In Urban areas that's what buses, trains, taxis, bikes, motor bikes and even feet (walking) are for generally. I have a car not because I actually need to use it every day - but it's there when I want it at my convenience.
Those methods may or may not be practical depending on the city and government.
Taxis are very expensive and I'm certainly not walking 10 km carrying any more than a couple of kg (or a bulky item like a HD TV).
For example to travel from the city centre to my house would probably cost:
- ~$20 by taxi
- ~$4 by bus (any type)
- ~$3 by car (petrol)
- ~$2 by car (diesel)
- ~$1.50 by car (electric)
Bus patronage (where I live) clearly indicates that most people won't walk more than a couple of hundred metres to catch a bus, during good weather.
This means that there needs to be a bus route every couple of blocks (which no government or private business is going to fund).
An electric limited rage car would stop you making an "ad hoc" or spur of the moment decision - to say nothing of an emergency where you needed to drive 300 KM or more especially with no gurantee of being able to re-charge it at the other end.
Apart from war zones, where in the world is the nearest hospital more than about 10 km from most suburbs?
If you live in a regional area (or you regularly have to drive large distances) then you will still need a petrol powered car.
Where I live I could make:
- 6 trips to the city centre and back, before recharging
- 12 trips to the nearest urban shopping complex and back, before recharging
- 30 trips to the nearest supermarket and back, before recharging
What I am excited about is the use of LNG (Liquified Natural Gas ) - as distinct from LPG (which is a product created by distillation in Oil refineries when Gasoline is being made) or even better Hydrogen -- the products of that are simply WATER - perfectly clean. LNG is also comparatively clean.
We have some LNG powered buses.
Apparently they take a very long time to refuel vs petrol or diesel buses.
Obviously that is faster than recharging a giant battery, but buses could use swappable battery packs.
Unless you combine LNG or Hydrogen with pure Oxygen in a fuel cell, you will still get pollution caused by the other gasses in the atmosphere (e.g. nitrogen compounds).
Both these technologies will probably kill off the Electric car - manufacturing the batteries is a polluting process and the drain on the electricity supply as people charge up these things will cause old polluting power stations to have their lives extended considerably into the future - that's a real contribution to a "Green Planet" !!.
There are numerous ways of generating electricity that don't require combustion.
Electricity is very easy to distribute (shipping LNG or Hydrogen is more problematic and arguably more dangerous).
Obviously Hydrogen could be created locally using solar or other "renewable" power sources.
Improved high strength, low mass materials (think carbon fibre) could significantly improve the performance and efficiency of standard and electric vehicles.
All that is really required is that governments swap the current multi-billion dollar subsidies from the old energy companies to the renewable energy companies.
Our new right wing government:
- Has just eliminated the "Carbon Tax"
- Is fighting "tooth and nail" to eliminate all renewable energy
- Wants to jack up the tax on petrol