20 years ago I was in Hamburg, Germany for several months. The intercity electric train transportation is the S-bahn/U-bahn and a connecting bus system for outside the city. City to city trains were diesel. In the city, it is much easier to take the train than rent a car, take a taxi or drive your own car. Schools kids, grandma and grandpa, city workers and others used the train. Different classes and races of people. If you could afford to live outside the city, you drove your car to the car park and took the train or bus into the city. Naturally if you had to haul something like several bags of groceries, you would drive your car. If you took vacation, you drove your car or rented one.
German car inspection, compared to American, is severe. You can be fined for having a rusty fender. It's very difficult to have a specialized car on the road. There are old car/truck motor clubs in Germany like in the USA but the car has to be kept original (or repair parts made to original specs) or you can't drive it on the road.
Today gasoline averages $1.6 per liter or $6 a gallon in Germany. 2020 EV car sales are pushing 11%. I suspect by now, car parks have rental spots for EV plug-ins. Also I suspect there are some EV busses.
The German government has been, for a long time, very active in controlling (organization, rules, laws, government owned) public transportation where here in America it's basically left up to a free enterprise system. The transportation mindset of the German people has adapted to being efficient. In Germany the EV makes sense.
I searched the net for, "why is traffic in L.A. so bad". One official said, "As cities grow, and L.A. has become a global city and it’s continuing to densify it has very heavy traffic congestion, not because people drive a lot; people actually drive less in L.A. than they do in most cities. It’s because our densities are are moderately high. And so you have more people driving a modest amount, but crowded together and still depending largely on the automobile".
Using L.A. as an example, the EV car may be a significant improvement to reducing pollution but I think it's a temporary band-aid. The EV that makes sense in high population areas is the electric train.
Happy Turkey Day
Last edited by buoymaker; 11/26/2020 5:59 PM.
