> Those things are the climate crisis. Tailpipe emissions are only one part of the ravages that car dependent suburbia puts on the climate.

Perhaps, but again we're not going to convert our suburbs into dense urban utopias in just a few decades even if we had the political will. But as with EVs, we can move people from natural gas residential heating to cleaner heat pumps (which become even cleaner as we transition the grid to renewables).

> There is also a trivial switch to start the transition for >50% of the population. Put some paint and barnicles on the roads and end euclidean zoning.

If you want bike lanes, go for it, but you're deluding yourself if you think that's going to meaningfully reduce transportation emissions for >50% of the US population.

> The overriding concern is units of carbon emission. Halving the per km but doubling the miles travelled doesn't net you anything.

Of course, EVs don't travel twice as far as ICE cars, and their per-mile carbon emissions of an EV is about 1/3 that of gasoline cars today (https://afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/electric_emissions.html) and it only gets better as the grid transitions to clean energy sources.

> Low density is a symptom, not a cause. If you don't legally mandate low density, take the lion's share of infrastructure to enable it, and gesture to traffic making things unlivable any time anyone tries to build an apartment then you get density hy default.

Yes, zoning plays a part in density, but removing zoning restrictions isn't going to turn some exurb into Istanbul or Toronto. Density has no natural state, it's the result of interaction between dynamic social, technological, and economic forces which push people together or pull them apart. Arguing that everything would be dense enough to support public transit if only we changed our zoning laws is absurd, and I say that as someone who wants to change zoning laws.

> More of the people live in the higher density areas definitionally. Stop forcing them to spread out and let the others who actually need to be spread out use EVs (or ICEs as there are so few of themit doesn't matter).

Not definitionally, but yes, more people live in higher density areas. I'm not "forcing them to spread out"--I'm support changing zoning laws! Critically, *changing zoning laws isn't incompatible with EVs*! My position has consistently been "we should continue to invest in EVs rather than forcing everyone to change their lifestyles" (obviously this doesn't imply forcing people who are happily using public transit to adopt EVs), but it seems your position has changed from "we should force everyone to change their lifestyles" to "stop forcing public-transit-using urbanites to use EVs" (which no one was proposing).

> More money has been gifted to Elon Musk for luxury vehicles in california alone than would be required to build out a world class transit system for San Francisco and LA from scratch, at his promis of a ridiculous boondoggle, high speed rail was cancelled.

This doesn't impugn EVs. I can't speak to California specifically, but nationally it makes a lot more sense to invest in something that we know will work (EVs) than something that is politically impossible, impossibly expensive, and certain to fail to meet the required environmental timelines (getting some significant share of the country to move to areas of higher density and change their lifestyles so they can make public transit viable in the next several decades).

> It's also not self righteous or smug to say stop taking most of the infrastructure money and 90% of the communally paid for space to build a moat of death around me that is only passible if I spend a quarter of my income on a car. It's not even neutral.

I don't know how you can type that (especially "moat of death") and not realize how smug or self-righteous it sounds to people outside of the anti-car ideological bubble. I don't mean this as an attack, but to let you know how you sound to others (which is important if you want to persuade others to join your anti-car crusade!).

> It's a tiny step towards equality and you're so entitled you perceive it as an attack.

I didn't perceive an attack until your "you're so entitled", but I'm happy to overlook that. My "smug and self-righteous" wasn't an attack nor a counterattack, it's a description of how the anti-car rhetoric (and the people who espouse it) comes off to just about everyone else (you're welcome to disagree, but I think you should at least consider the possibility that I'm correct). I think there are some good points that bely much of the anti-car movement's rhetoric, but when you tell rural people to forego cars and use bikes and trains to get around it sounds like "let them eat cake" (I've lived in big cities, rural towns, and in the middle of nowhere). It's going to sound smug to just about everyone, and talking about how the US is being paved over by suburbs sounds ignorant and absurd to everyone who doesn't live on the coasts (I don't believe you've said this, but this is a common anti-car talking point).

> EVs are here to save the car industry, not the planet.

I don't think the car industry has been particularly eager to adopt EVs, but I'm sure they like the government incentives. That said, I prefer carbon pricing which would have made ICE vehicles more expensive. Unfortunately, progressives react allergically to any solution that is "market based" and conservatives react allergically to anything that is a tax, so we get government spending. It's imperfect in that society ends up bailing out the fossil fuel industries, but it's still far better than chasing an ideological pipedream.