In France, we’ve had electric trains since the 60s, diesel train were phased out except for some lines with exceptional difficulty.
We also had electric streetcars in big, medium and small cities before ww2, they were taken out to make more place for… ICE cars.
Public transportation tech has been ready for a long long time. Cars are the worst way of transportation, saying tech was not ready because electric cars were “garbage” does not make a lot of sense.