A car tax to fund public transit is such common sense, but I don’t see it ever being popular enough to become policy in North America.

Some cities have massive underground parking infrastructure which is best of both worlds.

People who want the luxury of driving can, they just have to pay the high parking prices, meanwhile the city is still walkable because we’re taking advantage of vertical space.

It’s the big flat parking lots and big box stores that make a city miserable to live in without a car

There’s a lot of people who do want to live in dense neighborhoods, enough to drive up prices fighting over the tiny supply, but from a whole population point of view it’s a minority. Politicians still listen exclusively to the suburbanites. Even in the dense neighborhoods, the NIMBYs are listened to more than anyone wanting our cities to look more like Europe or (the good parts of) Asia.

Exactly, instead of comparing EVs to ICEVs we should compare them to public transit.

If every dollar spent on EVs was being put into LRTs and regional rail where would we be?

Yeah we need cars in rural areas, but that’s not where most people live.