Can EVs even help to improve housing affordability?

Exploring the potential impact of massive car fleet electrification on housing markets and evolution of residential properties in inner cities.

In my article Fallacy Behind Fast Charging Networks Build-up I alluded to the idea that electric vehicles (EVs) can enable us to hit two birds with one stone: (1) cleaner transport and (2) energy storage for smart grid flexibility and rebalancing. But what if we could actually hit three birds with one stone thanks to the upcoming EV adoption?

The curse of the “Main Street”

Prior to the car boom of the 20th century, it used to be desirable to live close to the city center as distance mattered and living in proximity to all the shops and services brought both social and economic advantages. However, over the course of the twentieth century the ever-increasing car traffic has made many parts of modern cities if not outright unlivable, then definitely undesirable.

Plzeňská street, Anděl, — one of the main Prague arteries affected by heavy traffic

I can speak of my own experience: Back in 2009 we were renting a small apartment in the Anděl district of Prague, a newly renovated and revamped quarter. The apartment had a relaxing view into the atrium with garden (pictured below) and as long as we did not have kids, we enjoyed the location.

A view from our Anděl City apartment with atrium garden

However, when our son was born, we quickly realized that this location is not good for families. There are several main arteries nearby, so the air pollution gets bad, especially in the winter. It took my wife a good ten minutes to reach the Mrazovka park when going out with a stroller (and another ten minutes on the way back). In less than a year, we were already shopping for a new apartment in a different, quieter, and cleaner location.

Types of car traffic pollution

Cars powered by internal combustion engines pollute the local environment in two main ways: (1) air quality due to toxic exhaust emissions including fine dust particles and (2) increased noise levels. Diesel car engines are the worst offenders in both categories, being both dirty and noisy, while modern naturaly aspirated gasoline engines tend to be fairly quiet and produce less toxic dust particles.

Prague inner city in decay due to heavy car traffic

Small turbo-charged gasoline engines, which became so popular in recent years, are somewhere in between them: They offer better fuel economy, thus reducing the overall emissions, while simultaneously being noisier than the naturally aspirated equivalents. The three-cylinder turbo-charged petrol engine B38A15M0 in my BMW 2 Series Active Tourer gets almost as noisy as diesel, especially when cold.

Prague traffic heatmap via Mapy.cz: Watch out for the red lines — you might want to avoid living nearby.

Regardless of technicalities of a particular internal combustion engine technology and fuel in use, most of today’s cars are dirty and noisy rendering entire parts of our cities abandoned and depopulated. In some extreme cases, not only is the residential use-case affected, but also business activity becomes severely impacted, and such streets turn into ghost towns.

An abandoned traditional butchery store on Plzeňská street, Prague

A glimpse of things to come

Imagine for a while that most of the cars on the road became EVs.

We already experience a preview of such a future in some circumstances. As e-commerce companies such as Alza.cz and Rohlik.cz already electrified portions of their delivery van fleets, we can smell and hear the difference. When on a calm morning someone in our street receives a delivery by an EV van quietly buzzing along like in science fiction movies, it makes a stark difference compared to the traditional delivery van with tractor-like diesel engine noise and smell hurling into the street. But you get hundreds of cars passing by on busy streets, so the EV difference becomes amplified!

Takeaway

Based on that experience, I believe that if we succeed in electrifying most of the cars driven in cities, we will enable revitalization of whole quarters alongside the main roads and arteries. Those building blocks could not only have beautiful atriums with gardens, but their surroundings could also become greener, more livable, and desirable for families.

Currently whole apartment blocks are abandoned due to the heavy local traffic creating air pollution and elevated noise levels. Bringing them back on the property market would increase the supply and make residential city housing more affordable.