> Some of the size forcing is for "safety," that is, we have larger vehicles because they need to survive crash tests at high speeds. But if you have a city that decides they want to set all speed limits at 20 mph and design streets so that it's physically very difficult to exceed that speed, you can get away with much smaller vehicles (no vehicles over a certain weight allowed within city limits, for example).

But people need their vehicles to drive on highways as well as side streets (where 20mph is more reasonable). There's a reason EVs began with smaller, low-capacity batteries that were suitable for the kind of driving you're describing, but grew larger because people want to be able to travel between cities effectively.

> Not every place needs to be a "dense metropolis," but designing everyone's lives and modes of transportation around the needs to people who live 20 or more miles from the nearest city doesn't make a ton of sense. Too often this discussion is presented as either/or when it can be both/and.

I agree that we shouldn't try to treat urban areas like rural areas or vice versa. That said, I don't think we're optimizing for rural areas (I've lived in both kinds of environments). Specifically, I think cities can do more to optimize for their own conditions both without imposing on people in suburbs, exurbs, and rural areas and without necessitating the creation of "side-street-only" cars. Specifically, I think this looks like "better planning"--invest in more, faster, and higher-throughput highways so people can get around quickly without relying on side-streets. Side-streets should be slow and pedestrian-friendly, highways should be fast and car-friendly. Get cars off side-streets and onto highways. Note that this is eminently compatible with more investment in public transit and cycling infrastructure (fewer cars on the streets = more room for bus and bike lanes). I reject the premise--we aren't "designing everyone's lives around the needs of people who live 20+ miles from the nearest city". People who live in cities can (and do!) buy fewer, smaller cars than people who live in rural areas. I think you're right that cities can do more to optimize for their own needs, but I think this looks more like "planning" than building cars that are only safe/useful on side streets. With respect to planning, I think cities can do a lot more to make fast, high-throughput highways so people aren't using city streets for commuting and thus city streets can be slower and more pedestrian friendly. This is also compatible with investing more in public transit and cycling.

Ban people from manual driving on public roads and even highways could work with lighter vehicles with less passive safety. Of course that might be more of an long-term outlook, as in "late this century", but it seems like an option.

Moving intercity traffic to mass transit be it trains or busses seem entirely reasonable. Ofc, this means that those services should be better or as good as private options.

There's a ton cities can do to make public transit a lot more comfortable without billions for building out new public transit infrastructure (which isn't to say that the latter is a bad idea!). Like, put some police on trains and buses so people are less likely to stab, urinate, smoke, blast music, etc. Clean buses and train cars regularly. Keep a high standard for antisocial behavior (if someone is being disruptive, kick them off). Run more trains and buses on existing infrastructure (don't make people wait half an hour for a train, keep people from being packed so tightly into train cars and buses). Keep reliability high.

If we can't manage these fundamentals, I don't know how much of an improvement we would see by building out new infrastructure.