Originally Posted by
Robert Foster
More than 10 years ago GM introduced the EV-1 and Toyota had a fleet of leased Rav4 EVs in New York. So Five years ago they were all dropped for Hybrids. GM even refused to allow people to buy the EV-1s they had. China and India may or may not drive up the price of fuel I can’t say but there is little chance that will affect mankind’s preference for non human powered transportation.
As we humans have advanced from walking everywhere to all the other forms of transportation cycling always been a footnote in the transportation world. I don’t expect that will change in my lifetime or my children’s. I think we will bust our collective bottoms to develop EVs, Fuel cells, or anything that doesn’t require us to physically move ourselves. All shopping malls have stairs but people use the escalators and elevators. Kids in school today have never had a TV that didn’t have a remote and more that 90 percent of the American driving population drives a vehicle with an automatic transmission. What chance do you think there is that people will turn to bicycles rather than a self propelled vehicle in the next 50 to 100 years? I say slim and none unless society collapses.
What would you say the odds are?
Preference has nothing to do with it, if energy costs make powered transportation cost prohibitive.
I've also got to disagree about cycling being a footnote in the transportation world. In most of the US that's certainly so. But again, we have societies where not only gasoline, but real estate for roads and parking is much more rare and therefore expensive, you can see a tremendous increase in 'self powered' transportation.* America is urbanizing fairly quickly, and I suspect in 50 to 100 years, it just won't make sense for everybody to have these huge honkin' machines out on the road.
*
http://www.copenhagenize.com/2009/07...ly-cities.html