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?
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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
Actually, this conversation is implicitly exclusively about metropolitan areas.
I think some people don’t get that, because it’s never spelled out. (Some know it, but try to argue in bad faith or derail the conversation anyway)
Commuter trains are also an intermediate solution.
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.
My work is near by a train stop, but there’s very little way for be to get there. There isn’t a bus or walkway, so I’d need to Uber or bike. The other issue is that it would make my one hour commute about two hours, which is infeasible for me currently.
They aren’t for anybody in rural areas. You can’t have a train going to every single farm.
Nobody is talking about those people. Stay on topic.
I agree, but just to clarify a minor point: small rural towns are actually some of the most walkable and bikable because they were built before cars. If you’re staying within a rural town, you don’t need a car.
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.
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?
Because the ‘founders’ made the Senate and house to be anti urban
It shouldn’t. There should be acknowledgement of the exceptions.
So no one should ever be able to have a conversation without patting you on the head for being a special boy at the end of every sentence?
More like no one should be demonizing those who do need cars.
Well it’s a good thing no one is doing that then, isn’t it? Why does everyone feel the need to make up problems to whine about?
For crying out loud I live in a small town and need a car. Do you think I don’t deserve access to decent public transportation?
Not what I said, but go ahead and make your absurd conclusions. Just for the record, I’m 100% for public transportation, EVs, renewable energy, and getting off the fossil fuel tit.
If we’re ever going to pull people along the path to that future, we have to accept and acknowledge the exceptions. Not all the time, but don’t ignore it like most articles I’ve read on the topic. I believe division occurs when people feel they are being ignored.
Honestly, I’m part of that 15%, and I feel more excluded by people pretending we can’t have mass transit just because my neighbors like big trucks than I am by people in cities not bringing me and my concerns up every time cars are mention.
Rural communities got along just fine before the invention of the automobile. In fact, most of the people who have ever lived have been rural people without cars. The idea that we can’t have small walkable towns connected to decent mass transit is just incredibly stupid, and it pisses me off when everybody just assumes it’s unsolvable, moreso when it’s people who actually live here and should know better.
They never acknowledge the need for cars in some cases.
That’s just not true. The movement is about boosting alternative transport. It’s not about eradicating cars.
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.
reform zoning at the state level and put in protected bike lanes literally everywhere. also kind a lot of people can do a little biking. I can so some trips by bike in by inner ring suburban area
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.
There is enough money to fund both EVs and public transit. No need to cut money from one to give to the other. We should take this money from the funding for military or religious purposes.
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.
I don’t think we are focusing completely on EVs, they’re just a very hot topic for some reason. There’s plenty of high speed rail projects, pedestrianisation and other non car related innovations coming through
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.
Your right, not sure why I was so pissy. Sorry mang.
Hey, thanks for the follow-up. I figured it was just the result of a bad day. Hope all is well!
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.
This is a good way to put it. If you’re in the market and need a car, ICE you are knowingly hurting the planet a lot. Buying an EV you’re at least not making the planet worse.
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).
Nuclear power is alright if you disregard it turning two cities into wastelands for a century.
#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.
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.
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.
Thanks!
EVs are good for the environment overall but you are not going to fix climate changing by buying more things.
Most of the criticism towards EVs comes from the idea that buying the shiny new thing is a net positive when it’s actually less harmful than buying a traditional car.
Tldr: if you are going to buy a car, buy an EV, but don’t just buy a new car just to switch to EV if you don’t need it.
Another point is that cars, car infrastructure, and car oriented development is one of the single most wasteful ways to use land. Building smarter cities with alternative transit systems, mixed use areas, and actually using all 3 dimensions like many newer cities in China could protect so much habitat from needlessly being destroyed. There’s hardly any truly wild land left on the east coast, it’s hard to tell what things used to look like now that practically everything is covered in suburbs and strip malls.
I fully agree, cars are just not needed most of the time.
Yeah that’s what people being annoyed at the push towards EVs seem to always misunderstand, too. It’s not about immediately throwing all your current stuff away. It’s the same with heat-pumps for heating: Should you immediately throw away your gas furnace you installed 2 years ago? Of course not. Should you get a heat pump if you need to replace your heating anyways? Hell yeah!
The criticisms are also that companies use slavery to acquire the materials to make EVs. And they don’t work well in the cold (see current cold snap in Canada), the lifetime of the batteries aren’t great, and we still need to destroy huge swaths of land to create cars, park/store cars, and drive cars.
EVs are only going to save the car industry. To fix it requires a redesign of cities (see Strongtowns, not justbikes, city beautiful, etc.).
Wasn’t there just recently a study that found that contrary to what was predicted, the lifetime of the batteries is actually exceeding even manufacturer expectations? As in, they’re losing capacity less than estimated?
Maybe, it sounds familiar. But if past trends are any indication, once enough of the market is dominated by EVs, there will be a lot more money to be made by lowering quality to a bare minimum.
And the infrastructure argument still stands in that case.
That’s only because the US and other first world countries have shied away from mining rare earth elements because it is traditionally a very dirty and polluting industry. So poor and developing countries did it their way… with slavery and incredibly ecologically damaging techniques.
New techniques are being developed in the US that solve those problems. It originally wasn’t worth the effort because we had plenty of lithium to make 18V drill batteries. Since BEVs have proven to be capable and desireable over the last decade, critical material supplies just didn’t keep up and those new techniques were just a twinkle in the eye of some smart people.
If you’d like to learn more about how we can completely avoid the slavery and pollution problems related to getting lithium, take a look at the Salton Sea enhanced geothermal projects. I am personally going to invest a portion of my life savings in that company if given the opportunity.
They haven’t shied away, it is just more profitable to mine outside your borders using slave labour. The fact of it is, with planned obsolescence being the best way to ensure a steady demand of a product, and the environmental destruction required to support the manufacturing and use of EVs, they still are not a solution. They are a market solution which means it is profitable, and a lateral move at best, and a back step at worst.
If EVs help the environment that is secondary.
https://miningwatch.ca/publications/2023/9/6/contemporary-forms-slavery-and-canadian-mining-industry
EVs are only going to save the car industry. To fix it requires a redesign of cities (see Strongtowns, not justbikes, city beautiful, etc.).
Nail on the head! EVs fix one problem, but the biggest problem is the idea of the personal vehicle. Most people shouldn’t have a personal vehicle, especially for people who live in medium cities or larger. There should be a sort of car share instead.
I like to think of it as “better than”.
They’re not perfect, but they’re better than what people might do instead.
I could swap my older car for a second hand EV, which would be an environmental improvement.
The current car does 50-ish MPG, about 1.5 miles per KWH. An electric would do 4+miles per KWH, which going in reverse is 100+MPG.A bigger improvement might come from me getting the bus/train/bike everywhere, which is where the fuck cars argument comes from.
But I am disorganised, a bit lazy, and I don’t want to shepherd 4 people onto the train, paying £150 to go 100 miles.So for me, slightly better is better than no improvement at all.
The energy used can be green, depending on what the national grid is up to that day. But it’s always more green than burning dinosaurs.
And the reduction in brake dust is always a nice plus.which going in reverse is 100+MPG.
Holy cow, why don’t people drive in reverse all the time?
/s
Because you have to go forward before you can go backward.
/s
What kind of 80s shitbox are you driving that gets 50 MPG? Are you using Imperial gallons or driving a hybrid?
I’ll have you know it’s a noughties shitbox. 999cc engine, 4 seats, and can just about fit 2.4m lengths of wood in if I’m careful.
And yes, imperial gallons (I had to do some maths, as the figures for MPG>M/KWh use american customary)
Sounds like the heydey of the Geo Metro, which got astonishing MPG for its time.
EVs are much better for the environment than ICE vehicles. Mass transportation is much better still.
Even looking only at the healthcare costs of the exhaust-induced unhealth, you see massive economic benefit.
It’s the old star-topology vs decentralized-mesh-topology question…
It is much more efficient to have 1 giant windmill, rather-than a zillion little ones.
It is much more efficient to have electric-trams than the number of cars required to move the same number of people.
As for electric-cars vs internal-combustion-engine-cars, the relocation-of-cost from always buying gasoline, to just plugging-in at night, is something that many people have openly adored.
The Engineering Explained yt channel bluntly stated that if you’re in the city, it’s a no-brainer.
Rurally, or in the arctic, you can be screwed, however.
I’ve no idea what the equation is for how much exhaust per mile-driven is produced, between
- star-topology fuel-burning electric-grid powered cars
- mesh/distributed-topology of the same number of I.C.E. cars
but it wouldn’t surprise me if it is significantly more efficient, just due to getting the maintenance up to industrial standards.
( sloppy maintenance costs, and some companies push sloppy maintenance, not changing oil frequently enough, e.g. in order to produce engine-wear, forcing required-replacement.
Some yt mechanics call-out this practice. )
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In case you missed it, co2 is causing global warming, which has the ability to extinct mankind in the future. EV don’t produce any co2. Some idiots will talk about indirect emissions, but the point is moot. You don’t remove indirect emissions by removing EV, you remove them by cleaning power grid and logistic lines.
EV are a necessity on a short term basis. Developing public transports and alternative to cars are also a necessity.
There are a TON of issues with EVs as a first line approach to emissions. Manufacturing emissions is a big one, admittedly that one will come down as infrastructure gets up to date with what we have already for vehicle manufacturing.
A much more important factor, however, is the fact that the individual’s contribution to emissions is negligible. It doesn’t really matter what we, as private citizens, do when corporations or billionaires produce so much carbon emissions. When Taylor Swift’s JET ALONE produces more carbon annually than 1000 individuals driving their car daily, it doesn’t matter one iota what kind of vehicle the average joe drives.
We need infrastructure, and we need governance. Pointing the finger at regular guys and saying you’re the problem because you drive a combustion engine is folly at best.
When Taylor Swift’s JET ALONE produces more carbon annually than 1000 individuals driving their car daily, it doesn’t matter one iota what kind of vehicle the average joe drives.
Amazingly, you’re missing your own point. If it’s not about individuals, well, even Taylor Swifts jet by itself is a rounding error when considered in the context of global emissions.
But more importantly, it seems like you are contradicting yourself in a pretty fundamental way. You are perfectly comfortable taking Taylor Swift’s emissions and holding her responsible for those due to her belonging to a class, namely folding her into membership of “corporations/billionaires”. So Taylor, insofar as she represents the collective actions of that class, gets moral responsibility.
But individual consumers are also contributing significant emissions when conceived of as a class, which is a way of conceptualizing individual actions that, by your own Taylor Swift example, you are perfectly comfortable doing.
It doesn’t mean it’s the only thing we should strive to change, but it definitely is one of them, because the global collective emissions of people using internal combustion engines is in fact a significant input into CO2 levels, and we can reason about these things at those scales if we choose to.
I pointed out in another post that yes, please, do what you can as an individual. That means, when your car reaches its natural end, then yeah, go for an EV. The point I’m aiming for though is that if each and every person switched to EVs overnight, it’s not going to have the impact we need it to to arrest the carbon emissions problems we have.
We have megacorps that don’t have a reason to limit their production. We have countries seemingly actively working to make shit worse. EVs aren’t a magic bullet, they’re not something that we need to be quite so aggressively pursuing when there are other very real things that we can do to make an actual impact.
We need to shit down billionaires planes indeed. But we also need to remove all cars that produce co2. Their emissions are significant. It means we won’t survive if we don’t remove them.
The problem you’re touching is the one of whom will pay the price of the transition. And indeed it’d be better if rich people were paying.
I’m sorry, did you just handwave away indirect emissions? You do understand that the vast majority of our energy production still dumps large amounts of CO2 in the air?
What we need instead of EVs is well designed walkable cities with mixed use buildings where one no longer NEEDS a car.
If all you need for 95% of your travel is your legs or a bike, most people will actually just opt out of owning an expensive vehicle that they no longer need.
What we need is good a public transportation system in the form of busses for middle range and trains for long range transportation.
EVs is little more than a patch to keep the status quo on horribly designed cities.
In the Netherlands I could go everywhere (and did go everywhere) walking, or by bike. I sometimes used a train for longer distances but in the end I didn’t need a car for anything.
You do realize how long and how much money it would take to actually redesign and construct our cities to be bike/walkable? We should definitely start but it will not be done in time. We NEED EVs in the mean time. Even then it only works for cities and the majority of America is spread too far for it to work. I’m not riding my bike 20 miles to and from work when it’s -20 outside.
EVs are less than a drop in the bucket. Yes, please, for the love of God develop them and adopt them as much as possible, but the reality is that the carbon emissions problem is one where our impact as private citizens is as close to nil as it can be.
is one where our impact as private citizens is as close to nil as it can be
Individual choices aggregate into large scale consequences, and individual choices do matter at scale.
No, they didn’t and you pretty much just said the exact same thing they did with more words.
No product is good for the environment.
But an EV is a hell of a lot better than an ICE.
Here’s what the Union of Concerned Scientists has to say about electric vehicles. In short, they’re a win.
https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/electric-vehicles-are-cleaner
They’re better than ICE cars so provide a path for improvement on the existing installed base for transportation whilst not requiring people to significantly change their habits or large public investment.
However they’re not the environmentally best solution for transportation in urban and even sub-urban settings: walking, cycling and public transportation (depending on distance) are vastly superior realistic solutions from an environmental point of view in those areas (they’re seldom very realistic in the countryside, hence why I’m being very explicity about it being for urban and sub-urban areas).
However making cities and, worse, suburbia, appropriate for those better alternatives requires public investment (and we’re in the late ultra-capitalist max-tax-evasion neoliberal era, so it’s very much “screw collecting taxes and spending that public money for the public good”), time and even changes in housing density in many places (US-style suburbia is pretty shit at the population density and travel distance levels for realistic commuting by bicycle or public transport).
So Electric Cars are a pragmatic environmental improvement in such areas (and pretty much the only realistic solution outside them) and one where the economic elites don’t have to pay taxes like everybody else since unlike for public transportation the cost of upgrading is entirelly born by consumers.
other than limiting exhaust, or is that it?
Gee, when you say it like that, it makes extinction-level events sound not so bad! It is That Bad, so that would be the most direct answer.
The important thing to note is that even though some electricity is generated from fossil fuels, EVs eliminate the path-dependency that ties transportation to fossil fuels.
Yes. Shifts power source to the grid. Grid can use different sources for energy production.
EV power trains are much more simple to maintain, and will last longer once we stop anchoring them with disposable components and features. I’m looking forward to the EV “Corolla” with hand crank windows.
Shifts power source to the grid. Grid can use different sources for energy production.
Such an excellent point, which I hadn’t seen mentioned before. It means we can have more control over those sources. Thank you.
with hand crank windows
I want hand crank windows back anyway. Faster and more reliable. So frustrating when the “auto complete” aspect of modern car windows means I cannot easily get the window half way closed or only a crack open. But I must be in the minority on that.
So frustrating when the “auto complete” aspect of modern car windows means I cannot easily get the window half way closed or only a crack open. But I must be in the minority on that.
I love driving with all the windows open about 1/4 or 1/2 open when the weather is nice, and that has included cars I owned and various rentals over the years. All of the cars I have owned or rented for the last couple of decades require pushing hard enough to have a kind of ‘click’ feeling before it does the automatically all the way open or closed thing. I’m sure some car maker has a setup that makes it easy to trigger the fully open/closed accidentally though.
Does it not work manually if you only push it slightly on your car?
