Or just be me, WFH and never leave the house
If only employers cared. It has been nice, now my employer is rolling out a arbitrary but mandatory 4 days return to office policy. In like 8 years of employment I never needed to be there that much. Whatever, 100% remote job market looks decent for me, hopefully find a better place soon.
The people making the deliveries still need to have a way to deliver your groceries to you + not everyone has the money to pay someone to deliver all their groceries. Wfh is great, but it does not mean the transportation system doesn’t need to be reformed, since not every job can be done from home, and people usually have other places to go besides work and grocery stores.
Most of the criticisms that come from the right are solvable problems, such as lack of chargers, electricity coming from dirty sources, or lithium mining. We pretty much know how to solve all those at this point. Just a matter of doing it.
Criticisms that come from the left tend to be more fundamental. Things like car-based cities being too spread out, infrastructure costs spiraling out of control, or having the average person operate a 2 ton vehicle at speeds over 60mph and expecting this to be safe. None of those are specific to EVs, and are only solvable by looking at different transportation options.
Oceanic sources. The projects getting underway are focusing on brine pools like California’s Salton Sea, but sea water sources of lithium in general are basically indefinite, and can work anywhere with a coastline. Other harvested salts may also produce useful byproducts, and you may even be able to run it as part of a general desalination plant for freshwater.
Not to mention there are advances with lithium recycling, both in facilities and new processes to make it more efficient.
Now, this is interesting!
Seawater contains 230 billion tons of lithium, compared to just 21 million tons in conventional land-based reserves. Lihytech estimates that extracting just 0.1 per cent of all lithium from seawater would be enough to meet humanity’s technology needs.
Source: https://www.theengineer.co.uk/content/news/kaust-spinout-will-extract-lithium-from-seawater/
The problems you’re describing from vthe right and the left are really the same problems. They’re just expressing their perception of them differently. Infrastructure solutions and spiraling costs are more challenging in less dense areas where the right tends to hold more sway. It isn’t a simple, cost effective answer. Yet.
I tell people yes do get an EV for your next car. But also use this chance to really think about if you need the car at all. Or does every adult in the household need a car each. Our city is trash for everyone having to own a car.
Best is to run your car to the ground. Then get an EV if you must own a car.
Unfortunately mass transit that works for everyone is the enemy of vehicle manufacturers.
And the rich. They need to differentiate themselves somehow from the poor
Live in a not so small town in Germany. I haven’t had the need to have a car after I have been living for 9 years.
I commute with bike to work, take public transport when it’s a farther journey.
Until I have a daughter a couple of months ago. I realize that I really need a car. :(
It’s hard to have a baby without a car. It’s for sleep, for nappy changing, your closet and your pantry. Those first few years especially. If you need one even for a few years it’s totally understandable.
Yeah. It’s very difficult. Going to pediatrician for example. Or if it’s raining. It’s so troublesome to bring a baby with a bike in that situation.
Even in America, I have seen a fair few parents carrying their kids around by bike. It seems it’s not totally impossible, though you may need to put your bike through some upgrades.
It’s possible, but it’s really obnoxious and shitty. Especially if the weather is too cold for a new born to be outside.
New born parents is one of the few true excuses to use a car over a bike, imo.
But that’s okay, we’ll still need roads for emergency services anyway so it’s okay if some people use them.
I bet those people are doing it for economic reasons, not environmental ones. A bicycle is probably the most dangerous form of transportation for you to have your kid on.
I have two kids and use a bike (for ecological reasons). I realize I’m incredibly lucky my area has very good and safe biking infrastructure. Had to upgrade to a electric cargo bike when the second one came about, but I don’t regret at all, it’s more’confortable and safer for the kids. I do own an old ICE car, which I considered replacing with a new EV, but since I drive maybe a few hundreds of kilometers per year, I figured it’d make more sense to keep the old diesel than to replace it.
If I could guarantee that my job is remote forever, or have it written in my contract, I would sell my car.
I live a short bike ride away from the shops. I have some side bags for the ebike I built so lugging groceries isn’t too much of an issue.
The biggest shift is learning you wouldn’t shop the same way you do with a car. With a car you go to a big supermarket and load up a trolley. Spend over a hundred for a week’s worth and drive home. With a bike you kinda just buy as needed for the next couple days. You do more trips throughout the week which is kinda nice too. Forces you to get out of the house more. Benefit I realised when doing this was vegetables were less likely to just die out in the fridge since I bought as needed. Which meant I spent a little less overall.
Your car will be worth less the longer you hang on to it. You can sell it and hang on to the money until your company tries to get everyone back in the office.
This is likely not going to be the case for the classics (old->modern-day). A Honda Jazz will lose it’s value, a classic Aston? Less likely - even static some of them are works of art.
Best is to run your car to the ground.
Absolutely not if you have an older ICE car with bad gas mileage and/or a diesel. Even getting a NEW EV would be better for global warming and the health of your fellow humans than continuing THAT shit show.
Of course, as per the OP, bicycle and mass transit is still much better than any EV, but the really bad emissions cars should NOT stay on the road until their “natural” death unless absolutely necessary.
I don’t understand. I thought there’s more emissions being made from the creation of the EV and its lithium battery than using the remaining life of a gas beater.
They offset the Co2 used in production at around 40k miles, but the batteries are extremely recycleable as battery banks for solar systems, or as raw material for new batteries since it is already out of the ground and they have processes to recycle it now. The gas burned by a car can never be recycled or reused and is extremely inefficient in moving a vehicle. Not to mention the toll extracting fossil fuels is having on this planet. EVs get almost 200 mpg equivalent because of their efficiencies of motors and aerodynamics.
The idea is the concentration of lithium production can be more controlled (and recycled?) as opposed to leaving gas guzzlers out on the road. Plus the distribution of gas to gas stations and such.
As much as I want an EV. My country is just not set up for a smooth transition to EV yet. Until then it’s best to just not give the auto industry more sales and run what you have until you’re realistically ready.
That’s a commonly believed myth. In reality that’s only true for the most efficient ICEs, not the ones I mentioned.
People don’t want to change the status quo or inconvenience themselves slightly in any way for the greater good. People want a magic drop in replacement that magically “fixes/solves” the environmental crisis and allows life to continue on as is. (So they don’t have to take “yucky” public transit)
What really needs to be known though is life has to somewhat drastically change so we can make the world a healthier place for generations to come in the future.
You’re being downvoted because you’re right. I’ve had people argue that EVs still aren’t a good alternative because they may require a bit more effort every once in a while. Like, charging for 30 minutes at a charger on a long road trip vs just gassing up. Other than that they are pretty much a drop in alternative and people still balk at them.
Then trying to get them to use public transit instead? Doesn’t even matter if it’s more convenient, they’re stuck in their ways and will refuse to change ever.
Get out of your ruts people. Just because “this is the way things are” doesn’t mean it’s the best way. Ffs the amount of midwesterners who come to my city to visit and think we’re being “unsafe” by using the train, just get out of your mindsets.
What’s kinda funny is we already have a mode of public transit almost everybody, even those who drive everywhere, use: elevators. Buses, trains, etc. are only seen as “yucky” because most people (at least in America) don’t use them and refuse to spend their tax dollars on them, leaving them to be used primarily by the poor and desperate. But when you have public transit that is used by everybody, like elevators, you find they’re well-funded and well-kept, and absolutely no one will bat an eye about having to use it.
It really boils down to 2 things. First is the obvious comfort, they think it’s more comfortable to be in a car. But that is broken down with traffic. You bring up traffic and they’ll complain for hours about it.
Second is fear. They won’t admit it but they’re just terrified because they just hear of the big bad city and think stepping on a train is a one way ticket to getting stabbed, while never having any real knowledge of what it’s like.
Commuted for a decade - never got stabbed, but got mugged a number of times. My parents told me repeatedly how fantastic catching the tram, train, bus etc. was - they loved catching it in on a Sunday at 11am and leaving around 2pm. They never did the 8am rush hour crunch or 6pm post-school commute. Public transport can be as fancy as you like, but if you need to travel via a rough area and the transport lacks security…
Well either you could move to a different location if you want to, convince your community and local politicians to build better infrastructure, or realize that you are a minority, an edge case that usually is not adressed in these talks because a few people in remote locations using a car doesn’t hurt if we could get rid of car dependency in densely populated areas where the vast majority of humans live.
Vote to allow more dense, mixed-use, transit-oriented development as well as more and better public transit. In many cases there’s a chicken-and-egg problem of NIMBYs blocking new, denser development because of fears of bringing too much traffic, but the public transit that would allay those fears isn’t built because there’s not enough density.
And so what happens is places get stuck in a trap of perpetual car-dependence, which is bad for the environment, bad for the economy, and bad for social equality (cars are super expensive and thus a particular burden on lower income folks, and many people with disabilities simply can’t drive).
The only way to break the cycle is for people to recognize what’s happening and intentionally vote their way out of it.
“Vote to allow more dense, mixed-use, transit-oriented development as well as more and better public transit.”
But I don’t want that. My neighborhood is great, and I don’t want to turn it into my local small city or my local big city. Plus, what you’re describing is very expensive, and taxes are already high.
On bike those distance are fine. Ebikes exist also. Either way I’d rather life and society adjusted itself to a slower commute than the danger and depression of car based transportation infrastructure. I used to ride my hike one hour to get groceries and an hour back. Those who are disabled can ride the bus and train. A lot of changes need to be made. Infrastructure and people need to change. I’d rather have a car free safe road for walking and riding my bike. We will all live longer to just from exercise and safer travel in general.
In some cities, e.g. Vienna, public transport already beats cars. For playing your own music I have some mid/low-range noise cancelling and can watch movies
I’m entertained by the fact that everyone gets hung up on how EVs are still not totally green because the electricity comes from coal fired plants or that there’s still manufacturing emissions and stuff…
It’s like, yeah, but compared to an ICE car, which has all the same problems (environmental cost of manufacturing the vehicle, mining and refining the fuel, transporting it, etc) but EVs don’t actively pollute nearly as much during use, and they speak as if these are of equal environmental cost, and they’re not. Additionally, ICE vehicles need a lot more oil to operate that needs to be changed and disposed of every few thousand miles.
It’s like doing less harm isn’t valuable to the people arguing against it, but then again, those are probably the same people who drive their V8 truck to get groceries.
Plus there are plenty of people, like myself, who live in areas where the electricity comes from mostly renewable sources.
Me too. I’m pretty well surrounded by nuclear and hydro-electric here in southern Ontario.
It’s like, yeah, but compared to an ICE car, which has all the same problems (environmental cost of manufacturing the vehicle, mining and refining the fuel, transporting it, etc) but EVs don’t actively pollute nearly as much during use, and they speak as if these are of equal environmental cost, and they’re not. Additionally, ICE vehicles need a lot more oil to operate that needs to be changed and disposed of every few thousand miles.
None of that is the real problem with electric cars.
The real problem with electric cars is that they’re still cars, which means they embody the same arrogance of space as regular cars. In other words, they take up too much space – both while driving and while parked – physically forcing trip origins and destinations further apart and ruining the city not only for pedestrians, cyclists and transit riders, but even also for the drivers themselves.
(That last link is from the perspective of a car enthusiast, by the way.)
I’m not going to argue with you on that point, I think cars are too big in the first place. With electric vehicles they can be reconfigured to ebikes or something much, much smaller. but I’m only mentioning the ICE vs EVs cost of manufacturing and how “green” they are. It’s a step in the right direction; it’s not the whole journey. Walkable cities and more compact designs of metro areas is still something that needs to be done, but it’s an entirely separate argument to the one I was making.
As someone who primarily drives because I live in a small suburb in the middle of a farm region, I’d be happy to park at the edge of a larger city and walk/bike/e-scooter/transit my way into the city. I think transit costs and the costs associated with most of the bike/e-bike/scooter services to be a bit high, given that I just drove to the city in the first place, but that’s a minor gripe among the plethora of other issues it could and would likely solve to have the city more pedestrian friendly.
Personally, given where I live, I’m more or less obligated to have a car, and if that car is a PHEV or full EV, would benefit the world overall; maybe not by a lot, but certainly more than using ICE vehicles to get around.
I just visited the US and I was dumbfounded how insane your city planning is. Like you literally can’t just make a short shopping trip on foot. You’d have to walk half an hour to even reach basic stores because the sprawl is so bad (City in CA with about 100k inhabitants) and then there are parking spaces everywhere. Like atleast half to 2/3 of the land space is used for parking. And ofc most parking is planned so they can accomodate everyone which means they’re always atleast half empty.
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Also, charging from the electrical grid means EV’s immediately get future improvements in CO2 usage when the grid improves its mix of power sources.
Environmental impact is still less than ICE, yes, but until we figure out a better way to process lithium and make batteries last longer hybrids still have a smaller environmental impact over the lifetime of the vehicle. Eventually we need to cut out petrol entirety of course, but until we get clean batteries the better short-term solution is hybrids when a vehicle is strictly necessary, and bikes or waking in all other cases. An electric motorcycle might be a good short-term solution too, but as of now battery manufacturing is unacceptably dirty. But as you said, it’s still better than ICE. I just think hybrid would be better as a transition while the technology is improved.
I agree that battery tech needs to be better. We also need to put in the work now to improve the grid so that when there’s wide scale adoption, the grid won’t collapse under the strain.
For the most part it’s a transit issue… we simply cannot move that many watts of power.
For the rest of it, and hybrids versus full electric vs bikes vs walking, that’s a much larger discussion, since not everyone will be able to adopt something more green than a highly efficient vehicle (whether hybrid or EV or otherwise)…
My main point is that they’ll argue dumb crap like manufacturing, that causes so much pollution, and say it in a way that almost seems like they think that ICE cars are better for that, somehow?
It’s like, we know it’s not “carbon neutral” or whatever… it’s just carbon massively reduced and that’s the point Carl.
Hybrids are often times even worse dan pure gas cars. Don’t believe the oil lobby.
From a practical standpoint, hybrid cars make no sense. You inherit the problems of both electric and fossil and you gain pretty much nothing. I don’t understand why they are still being made.
