Last month, I found myself in the slightly surreal position of having a heated argument with my uncle Derek about electric cars while standing in the frozen food aisle of Tesco. Derek, who’s spent forty years in the automotive industry and considers Top Gear to be essential educational programming, was proudly telling me about his new hybrid SUV and how he was “basically saving the planet now.” I made the mistake of suggesting that perhaps a two-tonne vehicle that still uses petrol might not be the environmental savior he imagined.
Three packets of peas and one lecture about battery mining later, the woman stocking the ice cream started giving us pointed looks, so we called a truce. But the conversation stuck with me, because Derek isn’t wrong about everything. Electric vehicles do have environmental challenges – from resource extraction to electricity generation – even as they represent a significant improvement over conventional cars. The bigger issue, though, is that we’ve narrowed our vision of green transportation to “cars, but make them electric,” when the future could and should be so much more interesting than that.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not anti-electric car. They’re certainly better than their fossil fuel predecessors. But replacing like for like – swapping one type of private car for another – sidesteps the bigger possibilities for reimagining how we move ourselves and our stuff around. It’s a bit like replacing all your single-use plastic bags with single-use paper ones instead of questioning whether you need a new bag every time in the first place.
I’ve been lucky enough to experience some genuinely exciting transportation alternatives that go well beyond the “car but electric” paradigm. Last year, I spent three weeks in Copenhagen for a series of sustainability workshops. My apartment was about four kilometers from the conference center, and each morning I’d grab one of the electric cargo bikes from the building’s shared mobility hub. These wonderful contraptions – essentially a cross between a bike and a small pickup truck – let me carry my laptop, extra clothes for unpredictable Danish weather, and even groceries on the way home, all without breaking a sweat thanks to the electric assist.
What struck me wasn’t just the practicality of these vehicles, but how they’d been integrated into a broader ecosystem. The city had dedicated lanes separated from traffic, secure parking facilities, maintenance stations, and a culture that viewed these vehicles as serious transportation rather than quirky toys. Most trips in cities are under five miles and involve just one person carrying relatively little – exactly the kind of journey where micromobility shines. The cargo bikes handled about 90% of what most people use cars for in cities, at a fraction of the environmental impact, cost, and space requirements.
And it’s not just bikes. Electric scooters, when properly regulated and thoughtfully deployed (I know, big caveat there), can fill transit gaps and connect people to public transportation nodes. I was skeptical about these initially – especially after visiting cities where they’d been dumped on sidewalks without planning, creating hazards and chaos. But proper implementation makes all the difference. In Helsinki, I saw how they’d integrated e-scooters with designated parking areas, speed limits in pedestrian zones, and clear rules of operation. The result was a system that provided convenient, low-impact mobility without the drawbacks we’ve seen in cities that treated them as a free-for-all.
But individual micromobility is just the beginning. Some of the most promising developments are happening in shared, autonomous transportation. While visiting Singapore for a climate conference, I experienced their autonomous shuttle system being piloted in the Jurong Lake District. These electric minibuses followed fixed routes but could adapt to demand patterns, operating without drivers in designated zones.
What I found most interesting was how they fundamentally changed the cost equation for public transit. Without driver costs (which represent up to 70% of operating expenses for traditional buses), these services could economically serve lower-density areas where conventional public transit is too expensive to operate frequently. The shuttles arrived every 4-7 minutes, even in areas that would normally see a bus once an hour. This kind of service frequency is the difference between public transit being a genuine alternative to cars or just a last resort for those with no other options.
Of course, not all promising transportation technologies are small and slow. For longer distances, some fascinating alternatives to both cars and aviation are emerging. I recently took Spain’s high-speed rail from Madrid to Barcelona – a journey that used to be dominated by short-haul flights. The train covered the 500+ kilometers in under three hours, city center to city center, with about one-tenth the carbon emissions of the equivalent flight. And that included the time for me to buy an extremely overpriced (but delicious) coffee from the cafe car and have a lovely chat with an elderly Spanish gentleman about his granddaughter’s environmental activism.
What I hadn’t realized before experiencing it firsthand is that high-speed rail competes with aviation not just on environmental grounds but on convenience. No airport security lines, no getting to airports far from city centers, no cramped seats, and fundamentally more civilized boarding processes. For distances up to about 800km, it’s often faster door-to-door, not just cleaner. No wonder China has built over 37,000 kilometers of high-speed rail in just 15 years.
Even more intriguing is the revival of overnight trains across Europe. I took a night train from Paris to Berlin last autumn – boarding around 8 PM with a small bag, eating dinner in the restaurant car while watching the French countryside slip by, sleeping reasonably well in my compact berth, and arriving in central Berlin at 7 AM ready for my meeting. The alternative would have been an evening flight, a taxi to a hotel, and the standard Berlin morning traffic. The emissions difference was dramatic – about 15kg of CO2 for the train journey versus nearly 200kg for the flight.
Night trains occupy this fascinating middle ground where they’re too slow to compete with flying for same-day travel but perfect for overnight journeys where the travel time can overlap with when you’d be sleeping anyway. They’re experiencing a renaissance across Europe, with new routes and upgraded services targeting precisely those mid-distance overnight journeys that are too long for day trains but short enough that much of a flight would be spent on airport procedures rather than actually flying.
At the more experimental end of the spectrum, I’ve been following the development of technologies like hyperloop – the vacuum tube transport system that promises speeds of up to 1,000 km/h. I’ve toured Virgin Hyperloop’s test facility in Nevada, where they’re developing a system that could theoretically connect cities with the speed of aircraft but the energy efficiency closer to trains. The engineering challenges are formidable, and I’m not convinced the economics will ever work out, but it represents the kind of thinking we need – reimagining transportation from first principles rather than incrementally improving what we have.
Freight transport is undergoing similarly radical rethinking. During a research trip to Rotterdam last year, I visited a pilot project for autonomous electric barges designed to move containers between the port and inland distribution centers. These zero-emission vessels operate without crews, can navigate existing waterways, and run 24/7 without driver regulations limiting operating hours. Given that shipping goods accounts for about 10% of global emissions, rethinking freight is just as important as passenger transport.
For local deliveries, cargo bikes are already proving remarkably effective. In central London, studies have shown that cargo bikes deliver parcels about 60% faster than vans during peak hours, while using a tiny fraction of the energy and taking up far less road space. I interviewed the founder of Pedal Me, a London-based cargo bike logistics company, who told me they’re already cost-competitive with van delivery in urban areas, even before accounting for environmental benefits. Their bikes can carry up to 150kg, enough for most urban deliveries, and aren’t affected by congestion.
What connects all these diverse technologies is that they’re optimized for specific journey types rather than trying to be all-purpose solutions like cars. This specialization is key to their efficiency – cargo bikes are brilliant for urban deliveries but useless for cross-country journeys. High-speed trains excel at connecting major population centers but can’t reach small villages. The future isn’t one magic bullet technology but a diverse ecosystem of options, each playing to its strengths.
The biggest barrier to this transportation future isn’t technology – most of what I’ve described already exists and works well – but policy and infrastructure. Our cities and regulatory systems have been built around cars for generations, creating a self-reinforcing cycle. We design sprawling cities that necessitate cars, then widen roads to handle the traffic, which enables more sprawl, requiring more cars… breaking this cycle requires deliberate policy choices.
I’ve seen how this can work in cities like Vienna, where each new public transit line is coordinated with updated zoning to allow higher-density development near stations. Or Amsterdam, where parking requirements for new buildings have been replaced with mobility requirements that can be met through car-share memberships, public transit passes, or bike parking. These policies recognize that transportation and urban design are inseparable, each shaping the other.
The good news is that these changes create positive feedback loops. Better walking infrastructure and public transit make dense, mixed-use development more appealing, which in turn supports better transit service, which reduces car dependency, which frees up street space for wider sidewalks and protected bike lanes… once the cycle starts running in this direction, momentum builds.
I eventually made peace with Uncle Derek in the bread aisle after acknowledging that yes, his hybrid is better than his previous V8 petrol guzzler, and no, I don’t think he’s single-handedly destroying the planet. But I also invited him to visit me in Bristol, where I promised to show him our new e-bike share system and the surprisingly comfortable express bus with WiFi and actual legroom. He seemed skeptical but agreed, especially when I mentioned the excellent pub at the end of the bus route.
And really, that’s how change happens – not through abstract arguments about climate impacts or technology specifications, but through direct experience of better alternatives. I don’t expect Derek to sell his hybrid tomorrow, but maybe after experiencing some of these other options, he’ll start to see cars as just one tool in the transportation toolkit rather than the default for every journey.
The future of green transportation isn’t just about changing what powers our vehicles – it’s about rethinking what vehicles we need, for which purposes, and how they fit into our communities. That future is already arriving in pieces, not evenly distributed but emerging in urban pilots, national infrastructure projects, and innovative services around the world. And it’s far more interesting than just cars with different motors.
