World News

I think personal car ownership in European cities is on the way out. It's unaffordable, annoying, and unnecessary, many young people don't even have a drivers license (in Germany it now costs three months pay at minimum wage to obtain a basic driving license). I managed even in a less dense (semi-urban?) area for nearly six years before there wasn't another option.

For car sharing small EVs definitely make sense. It is a missed opportunity in the way that there is a market which the European manufacturers haven't really taken hold of yet. EVs are still an upper middle class status symbol, even as European politics are pushing EVs as a big part of the solution to climate change. An EV for the people (like the original Volkswagen - the Nazi politics of that put aside) just isn't available here yet.

In another way it's a missed bullet as the electrical supply and grids as they are can't handle transportation energy demands, and charging at home (especially with high voltage) is probably only realistic for wealthy property owners.

What would be great is if the money spent on subsidizing car companies would be redistributed to rural public transportation and long overdue investments in existing rail. But instead we're hearing about how maybe it isn't possible to stop selling combustion powered cars by 2035 after all.