TL;DR: Norway subsidised electric cars a lot, that money went to the rich more than the poor, and left them with less money to spend on transit which delivers better outcomes for cities.
TL;DR: Norway subsidised electric cars a lot, that money went to the rich more than the poor, and left them with less money to spend on transit which delivers better outcomes for cities.
Clickbait headline, and stupid article. At no point are they making the claim that EVs are worse than combustion engines. The author posits that bicycles and walking are even more climate friendly than driving a car of any kind (duh). This entire article could be replaced by the sentence, “We should keep building trams and bike lanes in the EV era”.
The point is that the money spent on electric car subsidies went mostly to more wealthy people and took money away from investing in things like better public transport.
Fair enough, I guess. But seems like a zero-sum-game attitude, especially given Norway’s stark urban/rural divide. Certainly Oslo should be preferring mass transit, but out in the many rural villages of the fjord-laden countryside, where density precludes mass transit, EV subsidies seem appropriate.