You’ve probably heard the adage “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” It’s been attributed to various thinkers, including Abraham Maslow, famous for his eponymous Hierarchy of Needs. It applies to many aspects of our lives. I find it particularly instructive when thinking about cars.
American driveways are stacked with hammers. Heading down the street for a cup of coffee? Making your weekly trip to the supermarket? Pining for some fresh air and a bit of skiing in another state? The same set of keys routinely takes you anywhere from 2 miles to 200 miles, spanning 2 orders of magnitude.
Of course, this versatility is no accident. It’s the result of decades of car-centric development. And while it makes mode choice simple, there are obvious downsides to this one-tool strategy. We’ve woven the automobile so thoroughly into our lives that it’s not just the default option, it’s often the only option. This is not a function of cars becoming more versatile over time. The basic blueprint (2 tons, 4 wheels, 5 seats) hasn’t changed much in the last 100 years. Rather, we’ve thrown away all the other tools.*
The downsides of using a hammer for everything are sobering: from traffic-induced stress to widespread obesity, from not knowing our neighbors to choking our cities with pollution. Taking 2 tons of metal with us to buy coffee is like using dynamite to open your front door.
Thankfully there are signs of that our our transportation monoculture is diversifying. If you live in one of the U.S. cities where electric scooters now line the sidewalks, you’ve witnessed how quickly mode choice can change. Car detractors see the scooter revolution as the tip of the spear. Finally, there is a socially relevant alternative to driving (or being driven in) a car.
I see it in “glass half full” terms. We don’t need to throw away the hammers, we just need to use them more intelligently.
The dramatic adoption of short-range scooters is puzzling when viewed through a car-centric lens. These devices offer no weather protection. They’re self-evidently unstable, with a hilarious center of gravity and tires that can be swallowed by the smallest of potholes. The average trip is 1.6 miles and costs $2.92**, which is more than it would cost to drive.
What’s going on here? On paper, this is a vastly inferior product. But look at it another way: it proves the primacy of convenience. No traffic. No parking. No worries. You could buy one of these scooters and be ahead after ~100 trips, but you’d have to lug it around, lock it up, worry about maintenance, etc. For some reason we don’t bat an eye about doing this with a full-size automobile.
I’m intrigued by this willingness to forego what what we thought were essential features. If you’ll risk life and limb to slice through traffic on a shared scooter, perhaps you’re open to using an urban EV to get your cup of coffee? If not, what are the remaining barriers?
The federal government is spending billions of dollars to subsidize the adoption of full-size EVs. Maybe we’re aiming at the wrong target. Small urban EVs are an order of magnitude less expensive than full-size EVs. Horace Dediu’s chart shows that half of car trips are <5.2 miles, which means urban EVs could solve half the problem (on a trip basis) at 90% lower cost.
What would it take to add them to our toolbox?
- *public transportation and cycling are viable options in certain U.S. cities, but involve some combination of longer travel time, more weather exposure, and greater safety concerns.
- **https://qz.com/1325064/scooters-might-actually-have-good-unit-economics/