Nah...true progressives favor the elimination of private automobile ownership and a transition to public transportation. And yes, that scares the hell out of me.
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https://www.statista.com/statistics/...pend-by-party/
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I've always had the same question.

I've never understood the push back on stuff like solar power and electric vehicles.
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Being objective here without taking sides, there are two main components.One is it's because Republicans are generally the party who doesn't want to have a choice made for them and want the government to stay out of things. Then you look at climate change and if you chose to believe that this is a problem, then government action is likely going to be needed in the form of regulations and possibly tax money being implemented to help solve the problem. Republicans are not a party that historically supports those things unless absolutely required. Since electric cars are pushing for a better environmental impact, they will inevitably be lumped in as supporting climate change initiatives.

The second one, and this could be bigger than point one, is how they are marketed. Electric and clean energy has long been an enemy of Republicans because rural towns that relied on older fuel sources like coal for jobs can't just transition to electric jobs. Therefore it's an easy point to bring up to rural voters: do you support a technology that crushed your way of life or do you want to go back to your old way of life you were more than happy with? It's an easy talking point that generates emotion. Pair that with the face of electric cars being a silicon valley tech bro, and the states/cities heavily favoring progress on EVs are the most progressive voting areas out there. None of that exactly speaks to the Republican base and it makes electric cars a symbol of everything they oppose.
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Agreed on the emotional side. Though I do think rural American will be prioritized for building a lot of clean energy infrastructure. So I think some of that argument fades away

The bigger divide that I see is practicality for urban vs rural.that smart infrastructure will accelerate commerce and right now we’re way behind China. Faster, cheaper and most importantly way smarter shipping. But struggling to see the ROI of building massive ev infrastructure on tens to hundreds of miles of country road. Let alone justify ev in a rural area where parking and traffic are way less a concern. A part of me feels like gas only got off the ground because of public investment in gas stations and drilling. Ev cant be scaled until it gets the same. But understandably rural America doesn’t feel they should foot this bill
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In before stevieray jizzes himself over the OP
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:-)
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I am very much interested in the electric F-150.
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I'm ready to buy an electric 6 seat truck as soon as it's available, but it looks like Ford is only going to offer 5 seats in the F-150, at least for now.
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6 seat truck? Is that like an Expedition with a truck bed attached.
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Crew cab with a bench front seat. Every large truck is available with this setup, including the gas and diesel F-150s. Just not the electric one yet.
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Everyone has different needs, but a six-seat need is exactly the opposite of me. I would actually consider buying a one-seat EV, though two would be better. I haven't been in a three-person or more car trip in years.
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Further, I've read that in many cities cars weren't even a foregone conclusion when they showed up. The same technology that was helping cars was helping streetcars, trolleys, and trains, so for a while you had horses sharing the streets with cars which were sharing the streets with things like trolleys. It just happened that cars overwhelmingly won the market battle. That would be an interesting thing to go back in time and observe, and see people's attitudes.

The technological changes in that era were so immense once electricity came into common use. I mean, my house had both electrical supply and gas supply (or kerosene or something) to the light fixtures because apparently both were still considered viable options.

And in a forty year period you got the telephone, cameras, motion pictures, refrigerators, phonographs, cars, and even airplanes. Did people love all that new stuff or were they wary of it?
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Everything in the 40yr period you mention improved our lives. Electric cars and green energy as a whole are a step back. The very premise of this Green New Deal is unproven. In the 70's scientists were calling for an Ice Age!

And yes edave.....once people could afford a car they ditched the buggy! Common sense 101!!!!
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To me, it's not about being progressive or green or whatever you want to label it; the problem is that technology advances at it's own rate and people accept the technology when it become practical and more cost effective than what they're currently doing. This really seems like something that hasn't been well explained to people who don't understand the cost of lithium mining, electricity production, charging times, load on the existing grid, infrastructure changes, fuel taxes and probably more things than I can think of.

Unfortunately, it seems that there's a lot of things that people don't know about and yet are being forced down our throats as the savior of the planet. Any attempt to go against the prevailing message is seen as 'bad'.

All of the advances in the last 100 years have been because of cheap, plentiful energy. I won't see it however I believe that humans will move beyond oil and coal to more efficient forms of energy production. For that to happen, there's a whole lot more that needs to change than driving electric cars, solar panels and wind turbines.

And that, is a subject for DC...
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