Meanwhile in Australia:
It didn’t suck as a solution when it was implemented. The buses function like small diesel trains; they don’t have to deal with traffic, and can travel faster because they kinda lock in to the rails. It didn’t need as much land as a freeway or cost as much as a dedicated train line because you could just retrofit old buses. Plus the advantage of being able to run a standard bus route at each end of the line, no need for connecting services.
Pretty much. This is the O-Bahn in Adelaide. More info (and the original picture I shamelessly ganked) here: Wikipedia link
Battery fires are also less common than gasoline fires. But batteries are expensive, so overhead lines are still a good idea
Shhh they’ve been fed their propaganda by Fox news and they want to clutch it as hard as they can.
God forbid they ever see what Europe or the rest of the world is doing while the US is being left behind. We might as well be pulled by horse and buggy still compared to how easy it is to get around Europe
Europe or the rest of the world is doing Are you talking about public transit or Germany banning gas and diesel cars EU wide all while also getting rid of the best source of electricity, essentially making individual vehicle transportation for common folk a thing of the past?
People need to learn the difference between „Doesn’t catch fire“ and „Doesn’t burn AS EASY AS gasoline“.
The problem with battery fires is that most batteries are made out of lithium which reacts with pretty much everything and is extremely difficult to put out.
In addition obtaining the rare earth metals for these batteries ecologically is a real challenge and it will only get worse the more we use.
I’m not saying we should abandon electric cars but we should know the benefits and drawbacks of each option before making a decision.
What the actual fuck⁈ “Batteries can catch on fire.” Sure, whatever could go wrong with a 1000l tank of FUCKING GASOLINE.
AAAaaaaHHhh I hate people!
No it’s not. It’s harder to catch fire than gasoline.
It still catches fire easily.
You can toss a lit match into a puddle of diesel and the match will go out. Diesel burns, but since it doesn’t evaporate as fast as gasoline, you don’t have those flammable gases hanging in the air. A trail of diesel that’s being burned at one end will not spread, unlike gasoline.
Gasoline doesn’t burn that easily, either. Cars with gas tanks don’t burst into flames while sitting powered off in a garage. Even when they get wrecked they don’t usually burst into flames.
On the other hand, gasoline is slowly causing the world to burst into flames…
Gasoline and diesel can be extinguished relatively easily. Extinguishing an EV means throwing it into a tub of water for a day or two
Gasoline vehicles also don’t tend to catch fire spontaneously while parked. That risk exists with every unattended lithium-ion battery undergoing recharging. People technically shouldn’t be plugging their phones in at night and then going to sleep, but everyone does it anyway.
Doesn’t matter much for phones, but when talking EV charging… Night electricity tends to be cheaper when it’s not solar energy season.
Going with the “batteries catch on fire argument” is stupid. “Batteries are heavy and expensive” is probably more compelling. But yeah, wires are better solution for things going in fixed routes.
Yup batteries are not the way. By the time the batteries need to be replaced you might have helped slightly but probably not. Batteries is a illusion to going green right now. Just another product that has a demand and an easy market for it.
What would be a better alternative if you exclude the use of fossil fuels?
The ammount of water required to put out a normal car is infinitely less than the amount required to put out a battery fire.
Not to mention the extra weight, nor the retention loss per recharge meaning we need to change batteries every 2-4 years polluting a lot more, we ain’t even talking about the energy loss when doing the conversion to electric and then again to mechanical.
The electric transport is the way to go in the future, but firts it needs to have a solid foundation, and nuclear is the way to go at least in this moment. Otherwise we are only making things worse.
Edit for those wondering about the battery degradation: https://www.geotab.com/blog/ev-battery-health/
Just remember that “good” solutions are still preferred over “bad” solutions, and there are never any “perfect” solutions. I see too many people think electric cars are terrible because of what they’ve been told, like the batteries. For me, it’s like “Yeah, but they’re still better than ICE vehicles”. They’ll get better, they’re definitely not perfect, but they are just better
and nuclear is the way to go at least in this moment.
Nuclear is about to go away, looking at the statitics.
we need to change batteries every 2-4 years
Wait, what‽ No. We don’t need to change batteries every 2-4 years. That’s what you do with TV remote controls and temperature sensors, not electric car batteries, LOL!
Electric car batteries are made to last at least 7 years (from a warranty standpoint) but in reality it’s more like 10. Not only that but they’re not single, gigantic objects. They’re made of lots of “cells” so if one of them is going bad you can replace just that one bad cell.
Anecdote: The batteries in my Prius lasted 15 years before I had to replace one of the cells. Then a year later I had to replace another one. A year after that I sold it so I have no idea how the batteries are doing right now but I’m sure another cell would probably need to be replaced by now 19 years in service).
I’d also like to point out that the latest electric car batteries are vastly superior to the ones in my Prius.
YOu can’t really stop a lithium ion battery fire, all you can do is keep it from catching other things on fire around it, you pretty much just have to let it burn out.
Wait this isn’t a thing in the west?
In my city in Spain I remember them from when I was a child. They were removed during the early 2000s. But ten years ago, last time I visited, they still had some in Seville.
