Will electric cars speed up suburban sprawl?

[Neo]

Admit it, the biggest reason you take mass transit is to save on the costs associated with fueling up your vehicle. With electric vehicles on the horizon for all, do you think this will speed up the rate of suburban sprawl? If it only takes $0.50 to give your electric car a full charge, would you still be willing to pay the $3/day for mass transit?

[The Voice of Reason]

Admit it, the biggest reason you take mass transit is to save on the costs associated with fueling up your vehicle. With electric vehicles on the horizon for all, do you think this will speed up the rate of suburban sprawl? If it only takes $0.50 to give your electric car a full charge, would you still be willing to pay the $3/day for mass transit?

[Rural King]

Given access to mass transit, esp. rail, I would take it over driving in traffic any day of the week without hesitation. I'd gladly go from two car household to a one car household if I and/or the fiance could use a mass transit system to commute to work. I am pro-walking as well.....so if the mass transit even gets relatively close to my start and ending points its viable for me.

To actually answer the question though; I believe electric cars could be a detriment to the growth of mass transit usage and promote the continued growth of suburban development patterns.

[go_vertical]

The thing we all have to understand here is that the members of this website are a different breed. We invite and enjoy the urban lifestyle whereas a majority of the citizens of this country do not. A car that has nearly zero fueling costs will keep alot of people off mass transit. That is until, like Cloudship stated, the traffic and the hassle of finding parking becomes too much of an annoyance. Hopefully commuter rail and light rail will be in use in more and more places before an electric vehicle is as common as a Civic, and if we're lucky a large number of those car lovers will have been converted to transit lovers.

[InitialD]

Admit it, the biggest reason you take mass transit is to save on the costs associated with fueling up your vehicle. With electric vehicles on the horizon for all, do you think this will speed up the rate of suburban sprawl? If it only takes $0.50 to give your electric car a full charge, would you still be willing to pay the $3/day for mass transit?

[monsoon]

...

Take for example the EV1, that was created over a decade ago, yet we don't see anybody driving them on the street. ...

[InitialD]

Did you actually read the article you quoted? There are no EV1s because GM did not sell them. They were leased to individuals in California and once the leases were up, GM took them back and ended up crushing them. GM canceled the program because it took too much to develop. Now disposed CEO Rick Wagner says it was a mistake to have done that as the decision, which was based solely on short term profits, ended up costing them a decade's worth of technological development. GM instead developed vehicles like the Hummer H2 & H3.

[TheBostonian]

Admit it, the biggest reason you take mass transit is to save on the costs associated with fueling up your vehicle. With electric vehicles on the horizon for all, do you think this will speed up the rate of suburban sprawl? If it only takes $0.50 to give your electric car a full charge, would you still be willing to pay the $3/day for mass transit?

[The Voice of Reason]

Our local utility here in CT is developing an electric filling station network.

I guess it is one of the first in the nation, but it is also definately one of the largest.

Northeast Utilities supplies power to half of New England. so I guess it would be a pretty large network.

500+ filling stations.

[aboutmetro]

If this new ultra-capacitor technology turns out to be anything, it could revolutionize electric cars. The advantage is a fraction of the charge time.

GM Volt considering it - link

Zenn Motors in production with 50 U.S. dealers.

[nashbill]

Electric cars will have no impact on sprawl one way or another. Drive time, cost of parking, convenient mass transit are the things that get people out of vehicles. I don't see much changing for a while.

And as GM, Nissan and Tesla receive government dollars for electric cars and the Nissan plant here in TN actually expanding to produce the cars next year, nothing will change.

[nashbill]

I take mass transit to avoid the cost of owning and operating a vehicle. If people accept the cost of owning and operating their vehicle as a given and compare the cost of a mass transit trip only to the marginal cost of a car trip (gas), the car may often win. But if one takes the average daily cost of owning and operating a car (purchase price, insurance, repairs and gas) and compares that to the cost of a mass transit round trip, the car is more likely to lose.

[lordwd63]

I do not think so. In the other hand, it will affect suburban negatively !