My 2 favorite cities that is lived in were San Francisco and Rio de Janeiro. Apart from both of them being gorgeous and fun, one of the best things was that I did not need a car.

It's because on the modern internet, everyone is all-or-nothing when it comes to their chosen issue. Nuance has become unacceptable.

This community in particular can get a little out of touch at times. In North America in particular, even if every level of government agreed to begin working towards a car free society immediately, we'd still be facing a decades long construction campaign as entire towns and cities would have to be restructured. In the meantime, a shift to electric vehicles is something that can drastically help the global warming issue, and can be implemented in less than a decade.

In reality, we should be shifting to electric cars in the sort term, while we work towards eliminating the need for them in the long term.

Also, I'm convinced that the brake dust/tire wear particulates talking point is the result of oil industry astroturfing. The brake dust thing especially is actually better on electric cars, since regenerative braking reduces the amount of brake wear.

Its because EVs are being marketed as a green solution, not a stepping stone. If a car must exist it might as well be electric but we should be asking how do we reduce the cars that exist and their frequency of use. Building electrified transit and keeping ICE cars would as a whole be more beneficial than just converting all cars to EVs.

While those are great improvements over fossil fuel based cars, they also exasperate existing issues.

Almost all of these EVs are in the SUV category. These vehicles take up more space on the road and parking lots. This results in less capacity for our road systems causing traffic engineers to incorrectly add more and more lanes to roads. Additionally combined with parking minimums, more and more land is developed into parking lots, which in term increases pollution and increases the heat island effect.

The increased weight and instant torque both causes increased tire dust (as another commenter mentioned) as well as accelerated wear to the roads. The high power figures results in inattentive selfish drivers being able to reach high speeds quickly adding risk for pedestrians.

I understand that the SUV craze existed before EVs were popular however as EVs are normalized it'll only further enforce people buying oversized dangerous sub-4s 0-60 bricks.

Yeah, this comic is putting perfect in the way of good.

Not to mention, there are people who do need vehicles, the trades being one example.

They also increase tyre wear particles due to their greater weight and torque

It definitely is not that. However, it is a reminder that, even with electric vehicles, there is a serious, environmental and social impact.

This, to me, shows cars are more damaging than what just comes out of their tail pipes. Maybe the illustration could have included impacts of cycling and transit to help illustrate the point it is trying to make by comparing the impacts.

Also noise pollution. Under 35 mph, most car noise is engine noise.

EVs would be an objective improvement if people actually bought small sensible ones, but of course that would entail actually changing their lifestyle and thus it cannot happen.

The only good car is a kei car.