this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2024
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What percentage of people live in apartments?
Surely those people should be taking public transport anyway not buying a car when they live downtown.
An enormous percentage, especially in the current housing market, however...
Many (most?) American cities have wildly inadequate public transit and are prone to sprawl. Many Americans live in apartments, but are a multiple mile walk from their grocery store. If there's any public transit at all it's probably an infrequent and unreliable bus line that may not go anywhere near their home to begin with. They live in apartments, but are not anywhere near 'downtown'.
These are problems that need to be solved, and quickly, but public transit is best grown with a city, which didn't happen. Inserting a subway after the fact is difficult, expensive, and slow.
The reality of right-now (which is all a renter is likely to be able to consider financially) is that a reliable car is an essential item in most parts of the country.
According to Quota its ~80% of people live in houses.
Classic 80:20 rule. Making excuses for why the most difficult 20% doesn't work is the wrong way of thinking about it. Most of the result for least effort cones from dealing with the 80%.
You explicitly asked about apartments tho
The title is about why "Americans" aren't buying EV's. The excuse of them living in an apartment only applies to ~20% of the population.
That's not enough to explain why Americans aren't buying, just why 20% if Americans aren't.
And like I said you don't start with the most difficult and you don't push a solution onto a problem when it isn't the right solution anyway.
Great, and I’m sure the same applies to public chargers, for those making the excuse that there aren’t any near them.
Yes, we need a lot more public chargers, especially to make charging convenient, but there really are some near most of the population
You realize not all apartments are located in big cities? Plenty of people live in small towns with no or shitty public transportation.
The better question here is what percentage of likely EV buyers live in apartments. People that would be a potential customer if it weren't for living in an apartment.
Depends what the point is. If we want to sell EVs for some goal of selling EVs that fine I guess. But it still goes back to the point of you start with the easiest 80% first.
But if we want to improve everyone's life on this planet and the planet itself. Trying to convince people who shouldn't own a car to buy an EV is very poor planning. It just so short sighted and consumerist for the sake of consumerism.