Road scholars

It certainly is an “electrifying time” (Editorial, October 31), but electricity is difficult and expensive to generate even when it’s from a sustainable source and must be used carefully. Yes, some of it should be running cars, but the question is, how many cars?

Private cars have been an unmitigated disaster as a means of mass transit, not just because of greenhouse gas emissions, but also because of the high amounts of embedded energy from their manufacture, the number of people they have killed and maimed (more casualties than World War I), the distortions they force on urban design that make their use difficult to avoid and come at the cost of uptake and development of public transport, and their underwriting of an ethos of entitlement to a style of mobility that the world can no longer afford.

Electric or not, self-driving or not, New Zealand’s rate of car ownership – nearly one per person – is excessive and applied worldwide would be seven