I’ve seen a lot of posts here on Lemmy, specifically in the “fuck cars” communities as to how Electric Vehicles do pretty much nothing for the Climate, but I continue to see Climate activists everywhere try pushing so, so hard for Electric Vehicles.
Are they actually beneficial to the planet other than limiting exhaust, or is that it? or maybe exhaust is a way bigger problem?
People who say EVs do nothing just want to complain for the sake of complaining a lot of the time. EVs aren’t ideal, but they are better and more crucially they shift the consumer thinking away from ICE cars and towards alternatives.
But it’s also really dumb to go the other way and focus so much on EVs, isn’t it? Why replace our cars with slightly-different cars, build a whole new charging infrastructure for them, and then phase them out, say, another 40-50 years down the line? It’s not just tailpipe CO2 emissions at issue, it’s poor land-use causing a major housing crisis, it’s the cost of cars skyrocketing out of financial reach of many people, it’s habitat destruction causing populations of wild animals to crash and many to go extinct, it’s particulate matter from tires causing human maladies like dementia and cardiovascular disease, it’s an epidemic of social isolation and loneliness, it’s traffic violence killing over a million people a year, it’s sedentary lifestyles leading to diabetes and cardiovascular problems, it’s CO2 emissions from manufacturing cars and building the infrastructure that they need, it’s the large-scale use of fresh water for manufacturing, it’s the loss of autonomy for children, it’s municipalities going broke trying to maintain car-centric infrastructure, it’s the burden on people in poverty needing to buy and maintain a car, etc. etc.
I mean, the ultimate solution is to have cities and towns that don’t force us to get in the car to drive everywhere, for every little thing, every day. There’s little meaningful difference between transitioning cities away from ICE cars and transitioning cities away from electric cars. We could just start now, and maybe Millennials might be able to see some benefit before they retire. EVs are fine as a stop-gap measure while we work on that, but I see them being treated as the main event.
So you want to change the entirety of human society in a few years. Nice plan there genius, have you ever met another human? We need more palpable incremental steps or else a proposal like yours just gets completely shut down.
the entirety of human society
Lol wtf? How long do you think car culture has been around for?
It’s not “the entirety of human society”. It’s American, Canadian, Australian society since the 1950s and '60s.
I have met plenty of people who can phrase a counter-argument without sounding like an asshole.
EVs do something - they’re better than ICE. But we’re wasting a lot of money on them that could go towards better public transit. We desperately need less cars and the EV vs ICE debate can distract from that - I think that’s why you see so much of a pushback against EVs.
Hybrids are great, but straight evs only work if you have two vehicles and use the EV to commute around locally in a city. EVs lose around 1.5 to 2% of range per year and lose 30% of their range during cold weather. Then if the battery fails in a long range EV you’re looking at a $10,000 to $25,000 bill to replace it, making all those vehicles you can see now that are 20 years old and still road worthy a thing of the past. If the US actually swapped to mostly EV it would destroy anyone who has to rely on buying older vehicles to get by.
EV also in its current state is no good for anyone in apartments or renting or places that can’t easily plug in their vehicles from home. A for lightning for instance takes like 4 days to charge on a 120v outlet and while it advertises a range of 300 miles, it’s cold weather mileage is about 210 and stopping at a fast charge station to quick charge up to 90% will cost you $50. No better and often worse on prices than an ice. In this sense it only works out well if you have a house with a garage for your vehicle and an added bonus if you have solar panels. Right now though, that’s not most of the population at all.
I have a different experience with EVs.
I’ve got an EV with 265mi of range and an ICE car. I almost never use the ICE car, except for 2 reasons: is a 7-seater and sometimes I need both cars at the same time. In 100% of all cases, no matter how short or long the drive is, no matter the temperature outside (I live in an area where we get all the way to -40 and multiple months below 32F/0C.
I’ve never had any problem with that. I mostly charge home, this is where I agree that it’s a lot more convenient if you have a driveway, but all new and recent constructions are required to come with EV plugs in apartment complexes, etc. More and more lvl2 chargers are being installed throughout the city. Spent 5 days at my sister in law’s in the city while we lost electricity at home, I simply charged at work during the week and one time I went to charge at the corner of the street (<2min walk) for a few hours. It was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be.
The range decrease is no real issue during winter, my day starts with 100% of range everyday and in long road trips I will stop more frequently, but only for about 15-20 min max every few hours and will cost about 10$/charge. Super simple.
I thought I’d wanted to keep an ICE car as the second one, but already I see no point in it.
The only concern I think is valid is degradation in the long run. But best EV cars have very little degradation (as you mentioned), but also we technology improves, the batteries get better and better as well as cheaper, so I believe the batteries in 20 years will be incredible compared to today’s which is already super impressive. Also the infrastructure will be a lot better. Replacing a battery won’t cost as much.
2 years with an EV now and I can’t see many reasons to use ICE cars. Only left are heavy lifters (pickup trucks who tow big trailers everyday in winter, that’s a 75% range reduction). But this will also improve.
Honestly, the rabid part of the fuck cars crowd are letting perfect become the enemy of good enough for now. The sort of thing they want could never stand a chance of happening. Not anytime soon, not under this breed of capitalism where corporations have a say in the government.
EVs are good enough to slow down emissions to the point where maybe our descendants will have enough time to shift public opinion and get rid of cars entirely. Until then, cars are going to stick around, best thing to do is compromise for now, and use the time bought to have a chance of getting everything you want later.
