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
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
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.
They aren’t for anybody in rural areas. You can’t have a train going to every single farm.
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.
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.
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
but why should that 15% derail conversations about the vast majority of the rest of the country?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I have met plenty of people who can phrase a counter-argument without sounding like an asshole.
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.
Buying an electric vehicle does not make the world a better place, but buying and using a gas vehicle makes the world worse by a bigger margin, so if you’re buying a vehicle, an electric vehicle is probably better.
It is the nuclear power vs fossil fuels vs renewables debate all over again. Nuclear is much greener than fossil fuels but comes with its own challenges regarding cost, safety and waste disposal. Renewable energy like solar, wind and hydro are better than nuclear but the point is that nuclear and renewables are not enemies rather they are allies who have to band together to beat fossil fuels.
Public transport is like renewables, the best solution but one which needs time because years of underdevelopment and under-funding means that they are not as developed as they should be.
EVs are like nuclear. Not the perfect solution but have the capability to serve areas and use cases that public transport (renewables) can’t. There are issues like them costing more than the alternatives and that the disposal of waste produced by both is a problem with an unsatisfactory solution.
ICE vehicles are like fossil fuel energy plants. The worst of the worst with regards to their effect on the planet. Their only advantage is that they offer convenience.
So I think we should stop the narrative that EVs(nuclear) are bad because the are not the best solution at hand but rather combine increasing adoption of both EV(nuclear) and public transport (renewables) to combat the true threat that is ICE(fossil fuel energy plants).
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.
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.
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.
