The Green Car Of The Future
We’ve seen a number of extravagant and ridiculous ideas for trying to extend the life of the automobile, and they do manage to fail spectacularly after burning through a few hundred million dollars, so this convinces me that there is, in fact, hope for mankind.
As proponents for positive change, we want to not only ridicule dishonest and destructive ideas, we want to be able to offer better ideas. Of course, the bicycle addresses many of today’s problems in more effective ways than any harebrained new technology ever could, but there is one technology that has been with us for quite a while that may prove to be more useful than we were originally led to believe. Some people are convinced that they need to use personal motorized transport to get from Point A to Point B. For those people, I want to offer a suggestion they can use during the transition period to a carless future.
Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you, the Green Car Of The Future!
That’s right, the car of the future is the car of the past - neighborhood electric vehicles — golf cars. Sure, some idiots managed to kill off the electric car industry back in the day, but in doing so they may have managed to leave us walk and bike advocates an opening. If it wasn’t for the seemingly-evil nature of big car and oil companies, the automotive industry might not be near total collapse today. If the electric car of the past were allowed to live, we might never have had the political opening we needed to properly address the incredible harm of the automobile - whether it was to be powered by gas, electric, solar, whatever. Now we have that chance - right now. Nobody who is interested in a better quality of life on earth should waste their time attempting to extend the life of the automobile.
From a society and bike/walk perspective, there are lots of upsides to this new/old type of electric car technology:
- These cars are less effective at injuring and killing people - pedestrians, cyclists, and other drivers.
- These cars are much less frightening than conventional cars and trucks. They weigh a fraction as much as existing cars, and therefore have less capacity to run over and drag to death, less capacity to launch, in short — less capacity to intimidate and terrorize active transportation folks.
- These cars are more cost-effective, so people don’t have to choose between house or car.
- These cars take up less room than a traditional car. We’ll save so much room by introducing these cars that we’ll be able to tear up the concrete from any number of parking lots and plant food gardens.
- These cars will use less energy than a traditional car.
- Electric operation of these vehicles is already a mature technology.
- With shorter ranges, these cars have a lot of the ’shrinking’ effects of walking and biking - they naturally lead to more compact development, more efficient use of space and resources.
In short, everything that is bad about the traditional car is slightly less bad with this type of car. That’s an idea worth considering.
Unfortunately, car-enslaved society will need to work to slowly introduce these types of replacements for the death monsters that currently dominate our streets. I believe the biggest negative to this type of technology may be a lack of personal security. Riding around in one of these things, it just seems to me like it’d be a lot easier to become the victim of some type of attack. It’s unfortunate, but one of the side effects of car culture is a much less socially-cohesive society - one with great disparities of wealth, justice, etc. These conditions lead to all sorts of pathologies which result in anti-social behavior (i.e. crime). When we start reducing our dependence on death monsters, I expect we’ll see a corresponding dip in crime (Incidentally, I’m very interested in these types of numbers if you have them.).
It is true that these new cars still suck badly — they are prone to the same types problems that traditional cars suffer — but it is my opinion that these cars are significantly less harmful to society than their traditional counterparts, so they should be considered for use wherever we may be able to substitute them for existing automobiles, and we are unable to convince folks to forgo motorized transport altogether.
As usual, I’m only half-kidding with all of this.
We laugh because the streets of San Francisco are so geared towards death monsters, so incredibly inhospitable towards humans, that it’s difficult to imagine anyone or anything actually sharing the road with traditional death monsters - even these new types of cars, which might earn the nickname ‘injury monsters’ - but the streets are going to continue to change for the better. People will start walking and riding more, and it’s possible that different types of transportation will come into favor.
Some city agencies already use golf carts to get around - the parking folks have a whole fleet of these three-wheeled golf carts. And you know what - they’re not so bad. Public employees should be using bikes and walking, and we should propose this to them, but these golf cars are a heck of a lot better than traditional cars:
[Photo: Flickr/pecanpieguy]
…The U.S. Army wants in on the action.
Leave comment (0)[p.s. The Forums are open for participation.]
