Because people want a means to travel independently, as in they are in control and not riding with strangers.

/s

because in our sick culture and capitalist media, cars generate profit and growth and things with social benefit, like public transportation, is seen as a weakness and waste of money. I truly wish it were not so.

[Citation needed] on the 100000x easier part, but nice meme.

Electric cars seem like a stopgap more than anything to me.

I am all for more public transportation in this country, but it wouldn't help me personally. I live outside of city limits- the closest bus line is two miles away. My work is even further outside city limits, a 10-minute drive south of me down a four-lane highway, past farm fields and into an industrial park.

There's just no way public transportation is going to help me there. And even if I didn't have to do it down a highway, there's no way I'm riding a bike there in the middle of winter.

So do please make public transport more available and expansive. Just know that it still won't be a universal solution. Individual transport is needed by some of us.

I plan to get an electric (not a Tesla) for my next car. I currently drive a hybrid.

Well that's a topic that intrigued me recently.

Here in France there was already some debates about how worth it was, mostly because it takes a few years to compensate the cost of production of the battery. But in France we think of the electricity as basically carbon-free (our energetic mix is something like 70% nuclear, 7% gas+coal, then "clean" energy)

However, in the world I think something like 70% of electricity production is fossil (with ~40% of coal), I don't get how electric cars are even a thing, say in the US?

Batteries used gives you150 ebikes for every e-car

B-but think of the iNdIvIdUaL!

Because they give people a lot more freedom than trains

if you own a car. If you don't own a car but live in a society where everybody else has one you are kinda screwed.

Because places like America are so spread out (by design) that rail networks, especially in the Great Plains and Southwest, are viewed as impractical unless all of their population moved to cities or towns in close proximity to rail lines, and Americans tend to take up a large chunk of the bandwidth.

People here are saying a lot that cars are convenient because there's more roads... like... let public transport run on those roads? People seem to literally be unable to realize that things are the way they are now solely because you refuse to believe they can be in any other way and don't solve problems because "it's not practical". Short termed thinking runs too much

Public transit good, but in america public transit is not well funded and only really available in big cities. I think sadly it will be years before americans can give up the independence of being able to have transportation direct from point a to point b. Consider that in rural areas it could be a 30 minute drive to get groceries with no transit options. As long as americans are going to drive cars, we can at least try to make them electric vs ICE.

I will continue to vote for public transit initiatives and if we had a bus or train system in my town I would use it. I have a fuel efficient ICE car but trying to buy electric as soon as I can afford to buy something that isn't a telsa pile of crap.

People associated "freedom to go anywhere" with cars but it's a disguised argument. For the most part it's about not traveling with others. To a degree it's also about status symbol but for the most part they want to be alone and dictate their own schedule. If they really cared about freedom to move wherever they would get offroad motorcycles and never need to pay for parking again.

Yeah, but no train takes me from my front door to my job/the movies/my vacation place. And my car works even if the state decides to shut down the trains/buses.