The average modern person, by one calculation, spends more than 1,600 hours a year to pay for their cars, their insurance, fuel and repairs. We go to jobs partly to pay for the cars, and we need the cars mostly to get to jobs. We spend four of our sixteen waking hours on the road or gathering the resources for the car.
Since the average modern American, by one estimate, travels 7,500 miles a year, and put in 1,600 hours a year to do that, they are travelling five miles per hour. Before people had cars, however, people managed to do the same – by walking.
By contrast, a person on a bicycle can go three or four times faster than a pedestrian, but uses five times less energy in the process.
I didn’t interpret the article as presenting bicycling as the only transportation option.
Although trains and public transport can fill in the gap for longer distances, EVs will be necessary in limited cases. The point is that our dependence on all types of cars and the infrastructure that comes with it is excessive and a massive contributor to the destruction of our climate. They are also literally killing us, hence auto insurance being mandated in most states/provinces.
EVs are better than ICE cars and should be used as one of the replacements - but not nearly enough to solve our climate crisis by buying an electric car. That’s why there is also a push to designing cities for active transportation and public transportation. The emmissions from walking and cycling are incomparable to those of an EV.
If the narrative that electric cars and renewable energy are all that’s needed to solve our climate crisis continues, then our planet will continue to warm.