Unfortunately. All that luxury exacts a huge weight penalty and insulates you from the road. In other news, the SEC is now suing Elon Musk and trying to ban him from running companies over his "go private at $420" tweets. Unfortunately the damage has been done and electric cars are an actual thing now.
Electric cars are a thing because people buy them. Capitalism 101. And in a comfort-oriented car, insulation is the point. And in most driving 'round town, you need bump absorption more than cornering speed.
Yeah, 100%, however that does seem to be what most people are looking for, so probably counts as a bonus for the majority of consumers. Not to say that lighter cars shouldn't exist, because they totally should. Its unfortunate that quite a few car manufacturers have jumped on the "literally everything we sell should be targeted to one single demographic" bandwagon, rather than offering a diverse selection of vehicles. But I think there have been some push backs against that recently such as the Renault Alpine, which is nice to see. Since its been a long while since the sports car category has had much if any competition. One of the things he has done recently which I would consider as being monumentally dumb. The guy needs to learn how to handle his emotions better, or at least learn not to turn to twitter when he is struggling with that. That is unless he is looking for a way to ditch Tesla, but that would be quite an extravagant exit plan even for him
But that "single demographic" is varied, from "good value for money", to "prestige and offroadability", to "maximum fun-to-drive daily driver". And heavier cars perform better in the typical driver's daily activities, hence the popularity. We are examining cars from a perspective that is completely useless from the market standpoint, at least in the case of ordinary family cars.
That's a varied market, targeting multiple demographics. However, look at Ford US for example, completely ditching everything that isn't an SUV or Mustang (or absolute rock bottom of the range Focus Active). They have decided that they only care about serving people interested in SUV's. I think that might come to bite them at some point when SUV's become boring and the next trend starts. Since generally a sustainable business diversifies to ensure that if one market dies, they can move to another. For example all the current investment in renewable from oil companies, they are diversifying since they think its likely that their primary business is going to need to shrink. I would argue that heavier cars are not necessarily better for most people though. Since lighter cars tend to get better fuel economy, and are just more efficient in general, since less power is needed to make them move (or the same amount can make them move quicker). So while many of the things that make cars heavy are desirable to consumers, the weight itself is not. However, this of course won't be true of anyone wanting to tow anything, since for them the additional mass is super useful, since ideally whatever you are towing should weight less than 85% the weight of the car, above that things start to get a little more sketchy. Which is part of why offering a diverse selection of cars should be a priority for car brands imo. This isn't to say that Fords plan is dumb, it could pay out big for them if they can move with the times quick enough. I think this is somewhat a reaction to American culture, my understanding (which could be very wrong), is that in the US it is generally rare for young people to buy new cars. So why bother competing so much in that space, just offer 1 car (the Focus Active) and be done with it. My understanding is that cars tend to get passed down, or people buy the cheapest second hand car they can (for example people might get their grandparents old car). While in the UK (and I presume the rest of Europe) cars don't tend to get passed down, quite often parents might buy their children a new car, or they get a used car first, but buy (often finance) a new car after a few years of working. Hence there is quite a vibrant market for trendy/fashionable small cars aimed at young or new drivers. But I am not going to claim there is truth in the above, its just a hypothesis.
Partially, but the fact remains that pretty much no one made them before Tesla. There were a few EV nerds here and there, but the vast majority of the market was liquid-fueled and was going to stay that way for some time. Then along comes Tesla, starts hawking them to upper-crusters who can work around their deficiencies, fails to go out of business like so many of the others did, and thereby convinces everyone that BEVs are ready or almost ready for prime time despite numerous problems that no one wants to admit are problems, from grid overloading to spontaneity-killing range & recharge time issues to deteriorating, toxic batteries made with communist Chinese rare earths. Meanwhile, the typically-hysterical talking heads and politicians continue shrieking that we'll all be underwater within 10 years if we don't go back in time to retroactively cease all CO2 emissions. All this together, plus regulatory pressure from places like California, convinces manufacturers that they'd better get on the BEV bandwagon before they get left behind, and then governments start subsidizing BEVs to make the insane initial costs more palatable, and then people start convincing themselves that since they typically only drive ___ miles per day, they don't really need the range or quick refuel of an ICE car after all, especially since the modern consensus seems to be that the best things in life are all city-centric (personally, I hate cities). In other words, Tesla basically created a market that should not exist, and as a result BEV technology is now advancing at a rate that threatens to solve range issues and thereby push the ICE out of mainstream vehicle types entirely within the next two decades, after lying basically dormant since the dawn of the automobile. See though, that's the thing. Basic & mid-level cars may have been comfort-oriented to some degree, but back in the 1990s and early 2000s, neither the technology nor the cost-justification to build a truly enthusiast-hostile car existed yet. Even the slushiest "old people car" was simple enough and had enough in common with its lesser brethren to be, at least in theory, salvageable from an enthusiast perspective - and manual transmissions were much easier to find, since automatics were still slushy, horsepower-absorbing, MPG-destroying 4-speed monstrosities. Now that said technology and cost-justification do exist, the temptation has proved too great for manufacturers and consumers alike to resist. See that's the problem though - the sports category is pretty much the only one with a healthy selection of genuinely fun-to-drive cars. It used to be, almost every manufacturer had a simple, honest sport compact - Chevrolet had its Cavalier Z24 and Beretta Z26, Ford had the Mazda-based Probe (which also appeared under that brand as the MX-6) along with various sporty Escorts (GT, ZX2) and Focuses (SVT, ST), Honda had its Civic Si, Toyota various GT-S and XRS models at various points, Nissan the Sentra SE-R, of course Volkswagen had the Golf GTI & Jetta GLI, Hyundai had the Tiburon (or as I like to call it, "the last of the V6 interceptors"), and even Saturn, i.e. the brand whose mission was literally to be as bland as possible, got in on the action every once in a while. Even after Mitsubishi started selling Lancer Evolutions here, they went out of their way to create mid-level sports versions of the Lancer. On the higher end of the scale, cars like the Honda Prelude, Mitsubishi Eclipse (Talon, Laser), Integra Type-R, and Chrysler's well-known line of sports turbos from the Omni GLH-S down through the Neon SRT-4 continued to provide exciting performance at reasonable prices while still remaining somewhat in reach of the base models (the key word being somewhat). But some time around the middle of the last decade, the music died and the simple, honest sport compact started dying out. Now about the only choices are Hyundai, Kia, maybe Honda (assuming they still make a reasonably-priced and -powered Civic Si), and maybe Volkswagen (assuming the Golf GTI hasn't also outgrown itself). With other manufacturers, you basically have two choices: an overweight, overinsulated base model, and possibly an overweight, overpowered (at least 250 horspower, frequently over 300), possibly AWD, and still overcomplicated "hyper hatch" (i.e. wanna-be rally car) sitting halfway between an economy car and a true sports car. Others no longer have any sports trims at all. Honestly, it was bound to happen at some point; those older cars are similar in concept and frequently even market position to the modern Civic Type-Rs, Focus STs/RSes, and their ilk. All that was missing was the technology to make it happen. And childhood/teenage me even applauded as it began, with cars like the Chevy Cobalt SS Turbo (260HP) and Dodge Caliber SRT-4 (300HP) signaling the beginning of a wholesale change in what a sport compact was. It's only now that I can realize that their lesser predecessors had genuine merit, and that the current dearth of said cars in the marketplace is an unfortunate thing. Sure, the Ford Focus ST and RS are impressive, but where's the Focus that takes the base model, spices up the engine to 180 or 200 horsepower while remaining naturally aspirated, stiffens the suspension a little, and leaves the rest alone? The same thing is happening with body styles. In America, the basic bodystyle was a four-door sedan, and most cars were also available as coupes, wagons, or both. Some manufacturers (esp. Big Three) would add a convertible as well. Hatchbacks were sort of there since the 1980s, but often in the "liftback" style (i.e. notchback or fastback roofline, but with the rear glass attached to the trunklid), and traditional body styles remained well-represented. Now, the landscape is almost unrecognizable. Wagons are basically dead with a very few (usually mid- to high-end) exceptions. Coupes likewise; the only people I can think of that still make compact coupes (outside of BMW who only sort of counts anymore if they ever did to begin with) are Honda and Kia (assuming they haven't discontinued those offerings). Well, and Toyota/Subaru with the GT86 and its variants. The midsize segment is even worse. Convertibles basically no longer exist outside of sports and high-end segments. Sedans are still there to some degree, but at the small end of the scale, they can begin to look like an afterthought (cough Chevy Sonic and probably a lot of other things in its size class, not that their predecessors were always good looking either cough Geo Metro). In place of all these are chopped-off three- and five-door hatchbacks. What really mystifies me about these is that their main reason for existing is space-efficiency, which is mainly a European/Japanese concern. Here in the US, there are still plenty of wide-open spaces, so who is convincing people that they actually want these ugly things? See above. The problem is that, in modern lineups, "maximum-fun daily drivers" are usually either overpowered or nonexistent. Not that having a certain amount of horsepower is inherently "wasteful" or otherwise bad, it's just that, as horsepower increases, the amount of practice needed to control it increases as well while the number of opportunities to practice safely decreases at the same time. It would be nice to have something in the middle that's easier for less-skilled (or less-rich) drivers to learn in (and then modify to match as they start to gain skill), or that just doesn't feel quite so much like "a task" to wring out, or that isn't quite as easy to get in trouble with if you have a momentary lapse of attention.
You would certainly like the new Toyota Land Cruiser, too bad it's not sold in the US. It has lost a lot of sound insulation compared to the previous one and the new 2.4 is slower than the old 3.0 it replaced. All surrounding sounds freely entering the car and a new little engine that performs worse than the big old one, what else would you wish for? Electric cars were a thing long before Musk was born. No electric car is profitable as of now. Major automakers add them to their lineups just to lower fleet emissions.
Apparently the current Honda Civic SI is pretty good, there is a smoking tyre episode on it if you are interested. Its not too fast, but has good handling, and also isn't slow. Its very practical too ofc. I also think that many people prefer how hatchbacks look. Then you also get the advantage of additional boot space, with bigger opening making it easier access. As well as folding rear seats so you get van like boot space, making them rather practical, since you can fit furniture and all sorts in them. --- Post updated --- I very much doubt that they aren't profitable. Perhaps not as profitable as ice due to high initial research and development costs, since ice is already a sunk cost for automakers. But they are profitable.
Sedans usually have bigger boots than hatchbacks, just with less practical shape. There used to be a nice car like you described in Europe, which was the top-spec Nissan Pulsar, a FWD compact with 180 hp and manual only. Too bad all Pulsar versions were pulled out of production recently due to poor sales. I'm sure if Nissan didn't make a stupid mistake and included an automatic 180 hp version, it would still be alive. Let's face it, a lot of people want an automatic nowadays, but the best Nissan had to offer to them was a 115hp 0-100/0-64 in 13 s slushbox version. In most climates, a convertible can be driven with roof down for only a couple of months and only rich people can afford an extra car that's used that little, that's why low and mid class convertibles died out. A modern convertible is also much heavier than a normal car, so I don't see why should anyone like you miss them. Personally, I don't.
I should also add that not all electric cars are heavy, for example the BMW I3 is around 1200kg (2635lb). From what I have heard, the I3S is actually a pretty good drivers car, with good road dynamics. Now of course they did go all in with the carbon and plastic construction, but regardless its quite impressive. Edit, actually I stand corrected. You are right, the sedan does have more liters of space than the hatchback. However you do get more vertical space out of a hatchback without the parcel shelf installed. Then with the seats folded you get a very large load area. (I wouldn't put much confidence in the exact numbers that Google quotes, they seem to mostly pull them out of their arse) I have just checked official spec sheets. Saloon = 390 / 845 Hatch = 340 / 1180
And yet electric cars are being used by people in rising quantities, as theur practicality rises. Also, China is only communist in name. It's more of a capitalist authoritatian/fascist state. Strawman much? Part of capitalism is following market trends. Incentives they are backing out of as EVs start being in. Often true. So you just want everyone to adjust to your specific needs? I don't like it =/= should not exist. As usual, muh feelings. And the actual typical person gets a car that works better for them. Toyobaru? GTI? Abarth? Si/Type R? LX Body R/T? Mustang/Camaro? Minis? Abarth? Ease of maneuvring. A product for people who are a small, often used-buying, group, isn't good for profit.
That's exactly the thing though - how did this happen? How could anyone look at these lozengeoid neo-Gremlins, and perceive any sort of beauty at all? Even an old Cavalier is a looker relative to most hatchbacks, with the coupes from 1988 onward getting a lowish, sleekish roofline and proportions that seem to suggest RWD. Granted it wasn't the best on headroom, but still. Even if you want/need a monospace form factor, a wagon still looks better than a sawed-off hatchback. The styling ideal that prevailed here from the 1950s through at least the mid-2000s was, basically, longer, lower, and wider, with curvaceous side lines. To my way of thinking, its Europeanized "shorter, taller, narrower, blander, gotta maximize that space and be all efficient and stuff" replacement is not welcome here. Looks, tradition, they aren't hatchbacks. That's pretty much the it of it with me and convertibles. They might be heavy, they might tend to become chick cars, but at least they don't look like half a wagon. Also, they are a traditional part of an American model lineup whereas hatchbacks absolutely aren't. They still treat their people like trash, which was the point. Even if those trends should have never started in the first place, such as this one. Well it's a little late now isn't it! They should never have been subsidized in the first place. See that's the thing though. It's not about having "just enough", especially when you're downgrading from "more than enough" by default when switching to an EV. See, even here in Alaska, a high-end EV could probably handle most of my driving needs, but having to constantly worry about range and power consumption would make everything that much more of a pain, and I'm rapidly heading towards a situation where it just plain wouldn't be enough. See, my job is going to want me to go to Homer for a day this coming week. Originally I was going to fly, but then my boss realized that there aren't really any rental car agencies in Homer, so I would have to drive instead. IIRC, the distance from my house to my destination in Homer, with a couple of stops at other places where I have tasks on that day, came out to 257 miles or something, and I've decided that since the task I'm being sent to do is not going to take up all of my time in Homer, I'm also going to go investigate some twisty roads while I'm down there. Because I have an ICE car, I should, in theory, be able to make it in one tank with some to spare for my road searches - and if I can't (since I'm starting to think I'm not getting the fuel economy I should be), I can completely refuel in well under 5 minutes. Now, let's say instead that I had a recent longer-range Tesla. I might be able to do it on one charge, but I might have keep the heater and the stereo off the entire way and adjust my driving style to something that will make both myself and anyone stuck behind me want to go postal after about 5 miles (it's a fast, hilly trip). Once I'm there, there can be no backroad hanky-panky since getting stranded will throw everything off. The next day, I still can't go exploring because I'll need all the juice I can get to get home and the company is only paying for one night, so it's straight out for another awful efficiency-conscious 5+ hour drive of misery. An extended-range electric like a Volt could do it, but that's technically liquid-fueled (with reduced power, no less) after the first few miles anyway, just with less of the things that make liquid-powered cars enjoyable. A "lesser" EV, or an older one which was starting to suffer from battery deterioration, would be a straight-up no-go, so I'd have to rent an ICE car just for this trip, and that would actually be wasteful and annoying. Also not likely to be cheap or easy when you're 23 years old and may still have a huge ticket lurking in your record. It's like Jeremy Clarkson on devices which are rated as waterproof to blablabla depth - "I'm probably not going to take my watch diving, but it's nice to know it'll be OK if I drop it in the kitchen sink." Likewise, it's nice not having to plan your trips and adjust your driving style around ranges and recharge times. Furthermore, when you start to test the limits of an EV's range, you make yourself vulnerable to all kinds of unforseen circumstances. If there's a wreck that gets you stuck in traffic or blocks your way home, especially in bad weather, then you're in some trouble... and then maybe you finally get home only to get a phone call telling you a friend or relative is dying in a hospital 40 miles away and wants to see you one more time before they go. "Sorry mom, my green cred was more important. See you on the other side I guess." Or maybe it's nothing so dark, but suddenly you realize that you left some critical task undone at the office and are about to get in trouble. Or you forgot to pick something up at the store and now you have no dinner tonight. And now both are outside your range. Also, power outages. They are a thing. Electric cars: the true poverty experience, now for only $10,000 more than an equivalent ICE model! I just wish cities didn't run the world. If you want to live in a cramped, smelly, ugly, expensive, idiot-run, crime-ridden concrete sardine can that fences you in and constantly stresses you out, then more power to you, but when enough people start thinking like that to have a major effect on things like car design, that's when I start to have a problem. I just come out feeling like the (often leftist) sardine-canners are functionally in charge of everything important and the rest of us are just along for the ride. Well, duh. That's exactly what it's about. Putting the left brain above the right - the numbers above the feelings - will lead to a very boring life, which is exactly what it's doing right now. In an ideal system, the right brain comes up with the ideas, and the left brain is in charge of making them work. Emotionally designed, rationally engineered. The problem we have now is that most cars seem to be designed from the ground up by left-brain execution types rather than right-brain artistic types, so while they might be comfortable, practical, and have the best bells and whistles you ever saw, they are also ugly and boring. Of course, there have always been ugly, boring cars, but the thing is, of lot of this problem is regulatory in nature, and the more "optimized" a car gets, the harder it is to fix those problems. You can stick all kinds of vents and spoilers to it, but it's still a lozenge car with a big, blunt pedestrian-safety nose, plus all kinds of ridiculous swoops and flourishes to disguise its true shape. You can try to tune it, but when the ECU is non-reprogrammable, capable of updating wirelessly, and tied into everything from the ABS to the freakin' radio, it gets to be more trouble than it's worth. [/quote]Toyobaru? GTI? Abarth? Si/Type R? LX Body R/T? Mustang/Camaro? Minis? Abarth?[/quote] Mentioned the Toyobaru, but it's more of a dedicated sporting machine than a sports variant of a lesser vehicle. I mentioned the GTI and Si. Abarth I plain forgot, but it along with the Fiesta ST are afflicted with that horrible "shorter, taller, narrower" aesthetic that has no business existing in the US. The Type R is one of the hyper hatches I was using as an example of overdoing it. LX body R/T appears to be a Dodge Charger which was freshened into the LD body 8 years ago and is also a bit larger and more expensive than I'm thinking of here; a sporty Dart would be more along the lines of what I'm thinking of, and to be sure, it seems there was one, though that entire model range seriously needed a diet. Mustang and Camaro also, even in base form, can't really be considered entry-level or even second-rung vehicles like a hypothetical Chevy Cruze Z24 or SS would be. Minis, I also forgot. To counter, however: Acura: seems to have completely abandoned their sporting pretensions except for the NSX halo car which is still too soft and heavy to be a real sports car or supercar. Has rearranged their alphabet soup so many times that I barely even know what they sell anymore. BMW: 3-series, assuming it could ever have been considered a sport compact, has ballooned into a mid-size. A massively over-engineered mid-size, that is. 1-series appears to be going the same way, but in the US market it was always too high-end to be a true sport compact anyway. General Motors: Cruze continues to be an example of everything wrong with modern car design and as far as I know still makes less power in top gasoline-powered form (138 HP) than even the first base-model Cobalts (145 HP, also much lighter and probably more responsive too). Pontiac, Saturn, and Oldsmobile, i.e. the other GM brands which have produced legitimate sport compacts during the last 30 years, are all dead. Ford: Had the Fiesta ST (too tall and narrow) and Focus ST/RS (overpowered hyper hatches). Now has nothing in that line, because everything must be a Stupid Utility Vehicle. Mercury died years ago, but got rid of the Cougar years before that. Fiatsler: Did have a sporty Dart, I guess, too bad those were all way too heavy anyway and are now discontinued. Abarth does exist but honestly needs less height, more width, and less cuteness to get me to take it seriously. Toyota: Celica dead after 2005, XRS models either functionally or actually dead after... I don't know, 2008 or something? Scion also, to the best of my knowledge, died and took the tC with it. Note that they do finally seem to be getting their chops back, but more on that later. Nissan: As far as I know the Sentra SE-R is gone, not that I'd trust any modern Nissan in high-intensity driving after the freak brake pressure switch failures on the track. Mitsubishi: Appears to be following Ford down the SUV toilet. Mazda: Some Mazda3s might count, I guess? MS3, if it still exists, is a hyper hatch. There are probably others but this list is getting too long already. Did I mention that I hate it when things become city-centric? Besides, even in the city, my Sunbird coupe never seemed too big to maneuver (of course, that wonderful 90's outward visibility probably helped a lot). Maybe the reason car enthusiasts are so loath to buy new is that new cars are so loathsome. It's like someone somewhere decided that headroom, luxury, fuel economy/emissions, and the perception of safety (even if it comes at the expense of actual safety via higher c.g. and reduced outward visibility) were all that mattered, and everyone just sort of went along with them. I suppose there is a little hope somewhere, however. I was at the grocery store today, went through the magazine aisle in search of time to kill, opened up a Road & Track, and quickly found an advertisement that simultaneously gave me hope and made me really angry. So angry, in fact, that I blew 6 bucks I really don't have on said magazine just so I could scan the ad and show it to you all. Does this, seriously, look like the advertisement of a company that's trying to turn its back on car culture and become blander than Saturn ever was? That doesn't look like a company trying to shake off a boy-racer image that it blames for slow sales. That looks like a company trying to get its boy-racer image back after too many years as the official car of people who don't care about cars. So what are they really up to with their licensing trollery? Are they just afraid that no one will pay attention to their new cars as long as their old ones are being featured? That wouldn't really surprise me, considering the typical AAA developer's fanatical dedication to featuring only the highest of the highlights. I mean, really, even if Toyota still makes some decent driver's cars, they aren't fast enough to be supercars, nor are they old enough to be cult classics (obviously), and their off-road specials aren't as powerful as a Ford Raptor, so why would you bother putting any of them in a game? So goes the logic of a racing game developer whose target market isn't old enough to drive yet. Seriously though, if that thing weren't a hatchback, I'd assume they'd designed an entire car based on my forum rants. The engine seems to be just about perfect for an entry-level driver's car, it doesn't seem quite as ugly as a typical hatch (from the side and rear at least), and YES, THANK YOU TOYOTA, CARS DON'T NEED TO BE 10 FREAKING STORIES TALL. On the other hand, I think the fact that any of that is actually advertising-worthy is a pretty good indication of how far automotive design has fallen in recent years. Other than the power output itself (which is actually pretty normal for 2018 anyway), everything there, from the 2-liter NA engine to the "lower, wider profile", would have been fairly standard once upon a time.
Different beauty standards, I guess. To your feelings. Tradition is less important than what is needed now. And we can at least give them a decent living standard by buying Chinese stuff. Because you don't want them? Don't buy an EV. Just like being unable to find a gas station. Only if you are too serious of a gearhead in the boonies. Well, a minority can't push their opinions on the majority. Because in a world where most people don't care about cars, this is objectively the best thing. We all know a company in which the engineers were given the lead role. RIP British Leyland. Still better than dead pedestrians. With enough will, nothing is untunable. And so what? Then don't buy it... ah, you don't have the money anyway. It's in the area more expensive import sport compacts. The Ecoboost/Ecotec can. Found a new market in stately buyers. Blend of handling and practicality. I guess sport compacts just weren't bringing people to the bowtie. 250 HP is the new 180. What does personal luxury have to do with that? Or just go by fun. No parking lots outside cities? Because that's all the average buyer needs? No, because Toyota is now working on more fun cars. Maybe? Can't blame them. Budget cars, plus we have the Tundra TRD. Everybody is going further in reaching the needs of their target groups, and Toyota decided to targed those who want fun.
In the future for cities i think public transport is the only way to go. Yes people won't like it, but eventually the traffic, emissions and govt road tax etc will win over most drivers. It will get bad enough for cars to be ditched in cities, it almost has to. Call it dystopian, but it's probably the future.
On one hand, that is dystopian. On the other, cities are terrible places anyway. A target-rich environment for criminals and terrorists, a death trap if society is shaken, a place for delusional Starbucks socialists to congregate and elect idiots, a big city is all of these things and more. About the only thing worse than city-grade vehicle pollution regulations is the fact that some cities actually do need them. That's just what happens when you try to cram eleventy billion people into a tiny space by building ultra-tall, closely-spaced buildings that trap pollutants at ground level. And then the rest of us get to drive the same scrunched-up, beaten-down Proletarian Transportation Modules and suffer under the same draconian post-purchase modification laws because someone somewhere thought it would be cool to play a scaled up game of "how many people can fit in a single phone booth".
I actually have a slightly more radical idea. Make it so that in the inner city, pedestrians, busses, and cyclists have priority of way at all junctions over cars. This way no one can complain about the poor being pushed out because they can't afford EV's and hybrids. Since it would affect everyone equally. Unlike plans to make the centres EV only which heavily disadvantage those who can't afford EV'S. It would dramatically increase air quality in inner city environments, by encouraging mass transit and efficient means of personal transport like bikes/skateboards/(push) scooters/mobility scooters, as well as electrically assisted versions of the above for those who want some assistance. It would probably be great news for peoples health too. Less lung related issues for the health services to deal with, while bringing increased levels of fitness. Overall reducing the amount of health problems. In turn reducing the amount of taxes that need to be spent on that (or insurance bills for countries with mafia-esque health systems). With an overall reduction of cars, you get the same result as increasing emissions standards heavily, but without needing to do that. I guess it would also increase the supply of second hand cars, reducing the cost for people who actually need one. --- Post updated --- Also, Musk is no longer a chairman at Tesla. Which could actually be a blessing for Tesla. Since they keep him as CEO, but he is now legally required to reign in his twitter posting.
I could sort of see that working if and only if there was plentiful and cheap parking around the perimeters of these areas. If I have to circle for hours to find a place to leave my car, and then dump half a day's pay into a meter to do so, then I'm going to reach the conclusion that whatever is inside that zone is not worth the bother. Even with sufficient parking, however, I can still see problems. Mainly, this will encourage further densification of urban areas, while also making them even harder to leave (especially if you need to leave quickly). The discouragement of private vehicle ownership and use will further damage car culture as a whole, since people won't become interested in cars if they never have the need or opportunity to drive one, and even if they are interested, they won't bother if they have to park it in a garage miles from home or dodge pedestrians for an hour before reaching normal roads. On top of which, this may also strengthen the so-called "sharing economy", which is an utterly cancerous idea and needs to die. On the other hand, by getting normies out of cars, this may increase the overall average sportiness of new cars, however it may also increase costs and decrease the number of available choices, however it may also make it harder for the kind of person who would bicycle recreationally on a mountain road to reach a mountain road in the first place... tradeoffs, tradeoffs...
