08 / Norway's electric car experiment.

The prompt for this week's audio was David Zipper's recent Vox article, titled "Why Norway — the poster child for electric cars — is having second thoughts."

Electric cars as the salient solution to climate change does a disservice to another brand of innovation: simplicity that works. Or, as we call it, biking, walking, public transit, and the like.

We discuss:

• David Zipper's article on Norway's past decade of heavily incentivizing electric vehicle ownership.


• Why EVs cannot be the bulk of the solution to our cities' climate challenges.


• The geometry and economics of cities and their space.


• The common disconnect between Federal goals and cities' best interests, and how funding for one can severely undermine the other.


• Eisenhower's Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, and the risks of blanketed national policy and subsidy.


• Bifurcation and classism.


• Cautionary learnings for American planners and politicians.


• What American's can do to evangelize simple innovation that works.

Explore further:

• "Why Norway — the poster child for electric cars — is having second thoughts" by David Zipper (Vox)

• Background on Eisenhower's Federal-Aid Highway Act, from KPBS in San Diego.

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