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?
Good luck convincing people who live outside dense population zones to bike 3 hours to work. And “just move” is not an option. Think rents and home prices are bad now? If everyone moved to cities imagine the price gouging.
E: for the record I’m all about public transportation, it’s just unrealistic to think we completely ditch cars. They are too useful so EVs make sense going forward
Imagine how much cheaper cities could be if 2/3rds of the real estate wasn’t parking? Also, moving doesn’t necessarily mean going to New York. It can also just mean moving closer to your job in a small town. Which would also be easier if you could turn all the parking lots into homes.
Also, if commercial investors had not cornered the housing market, and the government didn’t subsidize absurdly high loans.
So the implication here is that we can’t get rid of cars everywhere, so we shouldn’t reduce the use of cars anywhere?
Nope, not at all what I said. The OP made it sound like there was no practical reason for EVs and I gave one.
By all means humans should cut back on… well, everything.
The OP said nothing at about reducing the use of cars, and what’s more, people make the same objection about rural people needing a car to get to town even in discussions explicitly about creating walkable cities. Even if we read into the question an implication that we should ditch cars, where does the idea come from that it must happen everywhere, all at once? The argument feels disingenuous.
No reasonable people are expecting someone that lives rural to bike into town. Going between rural homes and cities is one of the places where personal cars are unavoidable. Ideally, they drive to the edge of town and park next to a subway station that they take most of the rest of the way.
so few people live in rural areas (as opposed to suburban cowboys who wonder why their :rural area" has so much traffic) that it’s a rounding error. like who cares about the middle of nowhere. it’s a distraction to even bring it up. this conversation is explicitly about metropolitan areas
They aren’t for anybody in rural areas. You can’t have a train going to every single farm.
I agree, but people still need to get to commuter stations. Plus take towns the size of 400 people who commute 40 miles to work, they aren’t getting a train stop for decades, maybe longer. EVs are a good solution for them now.
The problem is not the people who live far from decent public transport but those people who live in the city and uses it every day, on city, all roads are always for vehicles like cars and trucks, instead to be for pedestrian and for bikes. On bad connected places a car can make sense but most of the people in city have cars when they rarely go outside, they could rent a car and would be cheaper for them for those days they need to move away. About EV, I think we still have the same problem, but the waste it generates keeps on ground instead flying on air.
You summarized perfectly the problem I see with the “fuck cars” crowd. They never acknowledge the need for cars in some cases. America’s population centers are definitely large cities where public transportation SHOULD be championed, but there has to be an acknowledgement of the rural population (around 15% in America I believe) where cars are a necessity.
but why should that 15% derail conversations about the vast majority of the rest of the country?
The rural population isn’t the issue, it’s suburbia which is where the majority of the US population lives.
It’s not dense enough for public transportation to be viable and it’s zoned in a way that makes pedestrian traffic a non starter.
Suburbia causes a lot of problems. I understand why it exists - owning a house with a yard is nice. I personally wouldn’t want to give that up to live in an urban environment if I didn’t have to
Good luck convincing people to give up their horses for these new fangled “automobiles.” Did you know this “gasoline” is highly flammable? A horse go go anywhere you can, and doesn’t need a “road.” Who’s going to pay for, build, and maintain these “roads” anyway?
Brought to you by Herman Luddite, Horse Breeder.
First priority is to get rid of cars in general. Try to use bicycles and public transportation. If you don’t need a car to get to work, consider a car share service to replace your private car/private parking space.
EVs probably have around 1/10th the lifetime emissions of a gas car, which is still really significant.
EVs probably have around 1/10th the lifetime emissions of a gas car
Do you have a source for that because that’s radically better than any number I’ve heard. Most analyses I’ve seen have been more like 40-60%.
No source, but I remember hearing that EVs earn back the cost of their manufacturing through their zero emissions within about a year. I extrapolated based on that with the assumption that a car will last about 10 years. I live in Sweden where our electricity is carbon free/ carbon neutral.
What you heard was probably about tail-pipe emissions which are very low compared to ICEs indeed but they only represent a small part of an EV’s lifetime emissions.
In the EU, EVs reduce lifetime emissions by about 30%. Certainly not nothing but not anywhere close to solving our transport emissions problem.
Easier said than done in a lot of American cities and burbs. I’ve tried to go without a car, and it just hasn’t been practical.
I’m on the edge of a denser American metro that actually has a subway, and when I ditched the car for some of my jobs, I added several hours of commute to my day, and it honestly started to wear on me physically.
When I have the money I’ll probably jump over to an EV. It seems like the most reasonable solution for where I live and work.
Yeah, unfortunately transit options depends a ton on where you live. not just which city, but also individual neighborhoods in that city and where your workplace is. Even when you live near rail-based transit, often cities might not bother running proper routes and schedules to make it viable. But we should support public transportation and bike infrastructure efforts when we can.
I’d go broke without a car. I live close to work but shop in the suburbs. The price of groceries at the “bodegas” are shockingly offensive.
consider the cost of the car in those estimates. Cars cost over $10k a year to own and maintain in the US. Local corner stores encourage local business and walkable neighborhoods, whereas supermarket chains depend on government subsidies to exist.
My car does not cost $10k/y. $833/m? I would probably have to spend that much on inflated city prices. Not to mention the crazy inconvenience that public transportation would create when venturing outside the city—like the beach, where I enjoy going frequently.
I’d need to be able to get places in a reasonable amount of time, not waste my day on a slow bus system that takes an hour or more.
I’m not trying to support oil, but we need better options than “take the bus” which aren’t going to happen, sadly.
Edit:
I did the math on the time loss. It would take 4 hours round trip to visit my best friend. We hang out twice per week. Driving takes about 50 minutes round trip.
Also, I stay there until 11 or midnight. The busses don’t run.
It’s the same thing with recycling, companies trying to sell the idea that climate change is a personal failing of every single person even though said companies are responsible for like 90% of carbon emissions.
The problem with EVs is that we already have a better fix for this: public transit. Like trams and trains are both electric and would solve the microplastics caused by tires. Car companies are just pushing EVs to make a profit as always, the percentage of adoption required to effect climate changes isn’t happening in the next several decades so just fix the issue centrally with proper public transit and actually effect climate change before we all die.
It’s the same thing with recycling, companies trying to sell the idea that climate change is a personal failing of every single person even though said companies are responsible for like 90% of carbon emissions.
God I wish this talking point would die.
- Companies emit on the basis of your consumption. This is not arbitrary, emit out of no where.
- Individuals being unwilling to tolerate even minor inconveniences or adjustments to their lifestyle makes systemic change impossible. Government and industry won’t change until collective individuals are willing to deal with it.
- Meat consumption, housing size, housing location, voting patterns, vehicle choice and use, are all individually driven decisions.
How do you propose the consumption would change without alternatives? For example the meat industries is subsidised to hell, why would people stop buying meat if its the effordable option. You will never achieve systematic change with individual action, that has like never worked.
Another example is the requirements for cars is driven by car companies, not individuals. That was lobbied heavily and a lot of cities got redesigned for cars instead of walking.
The often ignored part of this argument is that 50% of the US population at least lives in rural states. I grew up in a town with less than 10k people.
I’m 100% for more public transit, I live in a city and take the train to work. But for most Americans they do not and for the foreseeable future will not have public transit. I’m all for fighting for it, but it will be centuries before that happens.
EVs are NOT a perfect solution. They are a stopgap. But right now with where the planet is we need something now, we can’t wait for centuries.
As for the companies are worse? Yes, they are. That doesn’t mean we should just be complacent. It means we should be demanding they change AND lowering our own emissions. It’s going to take everybody changing their lifestyles. The rich are the worst because few of them cause a huge percentage, but that doesn’t mean the huge chunk of carbon we all put out together is excused either.
I grew up in a small town of less than 6000 people and we had bus lines connecting it to larger cities and a bus line that went around the town as well, I never had to take a car anywhere and you usually didn’t see more than 3 cars at once because everyone either walked or took the bus.
The problem with EVs is that won’t be adopted at a rate to make a difference while building public transit could happen faster so as a stopcap they do nothing currently and probably won’t until it’s too late either while only working as a distraction while public transit could be just be built with the same political will behind it as EVs have.
Getting everyone to switch to EVs is not happening in several decades, for example here in Estonia people mostly buy old used cars because new cars are ungodly expensive EVs even more so, I have seen one EV in 10 years.
You may not believe it but there in Estonia you are lucky for your transit. My town of 15k ripped up their railroad in favor of a 4 lane highway. Americans love their car so much that they’ll hurt themselves.
We also did not have a bus running through town, even the capital city of the state only had about 10 bus lines, all usually less than hourly, even during commutes.
So yes, I’m very pro transit, but people in America are literally centuries behind you folks in infrastructure
Nope, building proper public transit would be better, then you can take a single tram, metro etc to work in 8 minutes.
Find a different job? WFH? Bike? Buying an EV is just buying another car that keeps our already crappy infrastructure in use.
Yes, it probably is the best that you personally can reasonably do, but I think the point is that the responsibility shouldn’t be put on working individuals who cannot really do anything beyond that. It’s very plausible that public transportation that doesn’t suck could be implemented in a few years if there were political will for it. It’s just hard to believe that if you live somewhere that has never in your lifetime had the political will for public transportation that doesn’t suck.
We rape Africa for those metals the in a similar way we’ve been raping the middle east for oil. I guarantee once the US starts mandating EVs and the majority start to transition over there will suddenly be some reason we need to have a vested military presence in Africa, with the possibility of wars centered around countries with these metals that we need.
It’s better for air quality and would do a shitload towards giving us some spare time to process climate change, but they come with their own baggage of bullshit in terms of environmental damage.
#1 - Burning fossil fuels (automobiles, specifically) kills 250,000 Americans a year. It causes a TREMENDOUS amount of pollution that is hugely impactful to health and quality of life
#2 - The only way to make our energy usage sustainable is to centralize production - ie you have to make all automobiles electric to start before the transition of the grid to renewables has a more dramatic effect. BTW, 40% of energy production of the US in 2023 was renewable. So our grid is getting cleaner and cleaner by the day.
#3 - Climate change. It is the most existential threat to our survival in our lifetime, bar none. We should do everything we can to leave the planet better than when we came. And right now we are failing miserably.
FYI, for all the naysayers saying EVs are “as” or “more” polluting than their ICE counterparts, this has long been debunked. Please do not listen to the Russian/Chinese propaganda or the comments of idiots that have no ability to analyze data.
can you please provide sources for your claims?
- A study published in The BMJ states that air pollution from the use of fossil fuels in industry, power generation, and transportation accounts for 5.1 million avoidable deaths a year globally, with 61% of these deaths linked to fossil fuels. The study doesn’t provide a number for the US.
- According to the International Energy Agency, the transition to electric vehicles is an important step in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and combating climate change. In the United States, renewable energy sources accounted for 40% of electricity generation in 2023, up from 17% in 2000.
- The United Nations claim climate change is “the defining issue of our time” and “the greatest challenge to sustainable development”.
You just did. For #1, here is the relevant US data (https://news.mit.edu/2013/study-air-pollution-causes-200000-early-deaths-each-year-in-the-us-0829).
The increase of renewable energy sources from 17% to 40% from 2020-2023 is amazing and mostly due to policies enacted by the current administration. I don’t understand how that isn’t being celebrated and I can’t imagine how that progress will be damaged with the Republican nominee in power.
I like your post, but regarding China, you are dead wrong. They are the country that hast adopted electric cars the most, even more than Norway. There are also lots of videos on youtube of travvelers being surprised about this, seeing lots and lots of car brands that they (and me) never heard of before.
Yes you are correct - China is more about destabilizing Western democracy but their commitment to electrification has been good. Thanks for the clarification!
Right, and to your point, part of that is stymieing focused, direct action and ramping up of industry in the western world. So it makes perfect sense to be a global leader in every part of the EV supply and manufacturing chain while being interested in sowing division elsewhere so there’s no convergence of public interest and policy momentum that grows competitive industries. There’s no contradiction between those two things insofar as they serve China’s interests.
