However, I am also interested in what you said before. What makes you say the electric cars are excluding parts of society? Is it an echo to what other posters said about the price of these vehicles? Or is it something more.
Oh there's definitely more.
Before that, I should a) correct you - I wrote "car-centric societies" (or you could call them "car-dependent", po-tay-to, po-tah-to). Some of these problems already do exist to a large degree in areas where the car is the only mode of transport
by design and would hardly go away should we switch from ICEs to EVs, or other concepts like hydrogen cells. That is to say, we would likely see a reduction in both CO2 emissions as well as noise pollution - something research has linked to being a contributor to high stress levels.
And b), I'd like to apologize in advance for some of my later points - I'm German, white and (mostly) able-bodied, so if I'm putting something out there that's either far-fetched or false, feel free to correct me.
Car-dependent societies are in so far riddled with issues in that they exclude people by age - this mainly applies to children who legally cannot drive, but it also affects the elderly who may lose abilities such as spatial perception (saw this in my grandmother, she gave up on long-distance driving about a decade ago because of that) and have lower reaction times, leading to an increase in accidents.
They exclude people with disabilities - that is not to say that we needn't do a whole lot more for people with disabilities, including making the use of public transportation and spaces more friendly for them, but in many ways, these people can still be dependent on someone to drive them to appointments. Now, you CAN fit a car to be driven by someone with disabilities - mainly paraplegics - but that can be extremely costly and may require the absence of the car for a long time.
Which brings us to the other issue - cost. Keeping a car is costly (apart from the act of buying it) and while no concise studies on the subject have been made, I've seen people mentioning that not owning a private car can raise the amount of money they have available for other things. I know that's probably not super important, but, uh... idk, wouldn't it be swell if you could use the money you waste on your car to just go to the office for something nice, or even just not worrying about food or rent?
The point about racism is something I've not seen elsewhere but the US, but I think it's important to point out that for a lot of modern car infrastructure, neighborhoods mainly populated by people of color were torn down or split in two because rich white people didn't want the Interstate going through their backyard.
There's a plethora of other issues car dependency brings with it - inefficient and expensive infrastructure due to planning are just one - but overall I think my point has been made. And I don't think we should completely get rid of cars either, there's plenty of use for them in business and service and I think car sharing services could fill the need for a privately owned motor vehicle, should the need arise. I think EVs are useful, but overall, I think they're more of a stop-gap to a society that is less dependent on cars.
