YouTube’s Loaded With EV Disinformation
When it comes to articles on a website like CleanTechnica, there are two kinds of articles. First, there are the ... [continued]
YouTube’s Loaded With EV Disinformation::When it comes to articles on a website like CleanTechnica, there are two kinds of articles. First, there are the ... [continued]
YouTube’s loaded with disinformation about everything. Especially egregious are the awful ads YouTube runs about scammy health cures and devices.
Which is why we need downvote buttons by default for those videos. People say it's unnecessary, but you at least have to let the upvotes go to zero if there are that many downvotes.
"Use this eye mask to protect you from 5g while you sleep" yes, such a thing existed, and it was removed from amazon for putting out harmful radiation.
And don't forget that mr Beast is gifting all his subscribers 100$ if you just send a pic of your social security card
To be fair EVs only solve the tail pipe emission problem of cars and not like the 50 others. It's would be much better to focus on public transit and pedestrian and bike infrastructure, that solves more issues and is accessible to everyone.
They solve tailpipe emissions AND all the emissions associated with mining, refining and transporting the fuel - which is enormous and usually left out of the calculations. Public transportation / walkable infrastructure is god-tier but lots of people live away from dense neighbourhoods. Ev's are not a golden bullet solution to climate change but they're pretty good and neither is anything else. It makes sense to attack the issue from as many angles as possible instead of getting all tunnel-vision about one particular solution.
AND all the emissions associated with mining, refining and transporting the fuel
Except it's nowhere near that simple. Manufacturing and shipping batteries is hardly a clean process. And the impact of the fuel is dependent upon the method used to generate the electricity, and both in the US and globally fossil fuels are still used widely for that.
Plus a lot of the pollution and carbon generation is virtually identical for personal vehicles regardless of how it's powered. You still have tires that wear, tons of plastics and fluids (even EV's need lubrication), and of course all of the metals involved. Then of course there is road infrastructure: thousands upon thousands of miles of asphalt and concrete separating neighborhoods and habitats. Acres upon acres of impermeable pavement soaking up heat and occupying valuable space that could be used for something more productive.
EV's are better than ICE options because they at least will get greener as the electrical grid does, but still have the same fundamental issues that all personal vehicles do. You could add in bil-diesel and hydrogen cars too. It's saving pennies when things like better public transportation and more walkable cities saves pounds.
all the emissions associated with mining, refining and transporting the fuel
Not trying to be pedantic..... But, EVs have the same essential issue, their batteries require the same mining, refining, and transportation process as any other powered vehicle. And if your electricity isn't sourced from renewables, you're just kicking the problem down the road.
To be fair EVs only solve the tail pipe emission problem
Gotta start somewhere. At least I can say that I'm part of the solution and that I am not one of the negative nellies who don't do squat because they cannot find the ONE solution that solves everything.
gotta start somewhere
Then start with vastly increasing the amount of bicycle Infrastructure so that people can safely use their bike to go to schools, work, home, buy groceries. Give subsidies to buy bikes for even less money than they cost anyway, increase taxes on shit cars like pick tricks that nobody needs in a city setting
Invest heavily in public transportation. Make busses actually useful, start making an actual rail infrastructure in the US instead of... Whatever that turtle crap is you have now.
Same for walking, which would require overhauling urbanisation laws, granted, but still, that would also make your cities actually nice to live in.
If you think that all is an impossibly expensive job then please be reminded that gasoline is heavily subsidized and bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure costs pennies on the dollar compared to car infrastructure.
Biggest issue is stopping the oil and car manufacturer lobbyists who will all stop all of this. Why have nice cities that make big money and recover your environment if thateans that a couple of rich guys will get less rich?
Believe it or not but the "ONE solution that solves everything" is already here. It's right in the comment you responded to. Not only does public transport and bike infrastructure cut massively down on CO2 it also helps with mental health as we aren't constantly 10+ miles away from each other but we also aren't getting constantly frustrated with driving or isolated. And not to mention with having everyone closer together wel also have room for car guys to hoon about in race tracks. And because ideally the only people driving would be car guys they'd be quite the minority and the emissions from that would be minimal anyway. There's almost 0 downsides to walkable cities. Even car guys have something to gain from this. Well finally get to the point that we can focus on the CO2 dumps that are airplanes.
It's would be much better to focus on public transit and pedestrian and bike infrastructure, that solves more issues and is accessible to everyone.
Or both...?
Yeah this sort of either or mentality and that “perfect is the enemy of good” is an absurd argument.
Make things better if even a little and iterate. At least you’re moving in the right direction.
infrastructure and public transit solve the same issue but infinitely better while EVs are accessible only for people with enough disposable income and are comparably very bad at helping with climate change so I'd rather focus on a more accessible solution that helps more.
In my country people buy used cars pretty much always because of cost and used EVs aren't really a thing I have seen. There also aren't many charging stations and local power is mostly produced from oil shale so EVs do squat to help with anything. Public transit on the other hand is easy to advocate for because it's widely used and most people prefer the tram over car in my city already which is like the best form of transportation over short distances.
They also introduce their own share of issues like increased road wear due to weight and environmental costs from the mining of rare metals like cobalt and lithium.
With the fact that vehicle size is generally trending towards larger, at least stateside; we're looking at a situation where those shiny electric pick up trucks that need a battery that's four to eight times larger than a compacts or sedans battery are going to require further scaling of rare metal mining and are going to result in vehicles that blow way past the weight of anything our roads were designed to handle. Public transit is just far more sustainable. Trains can be hooked directly to a grid so no ridiculously heavy battery, buses carry the same number of people on a road that it would take... Let's be generous... 30 cars, so even if they were using a cell larger than a pick up truck, their wear would be far lower than the 30 or so cars they could replace.
Of course the issue with America is we've got bigger fish to fry like boys who kiss boys and people who want to fuck without having kids.
In terms of mining they kinda shifts it around, because gasoline cars also use rare metals (although smaller volumes). Weight depends, the batteries certainly need to be larger (currently) but motors are smaller and you ditch a lot of mechanics.
But public transit is definitely better overall
The damage to roads from added weight is absolutely tiny, practically negligible. Even pickup trucks barely cause any damage. Semis do exponentially more damage.
youtube's loaded with EV disinformation...
In other news, sky's still blue.
Twitter isn't blue anymore. It's black like Elon Musk's heart.
Ugh, so metal
That's like the nicest thing anyone said about him
I am against cars getting more like everyday electronic gadgets. Why do you need a selfie camera inside it? Also who attends zoom calls in it? Evs are notorious for doing so. Not to mention all the privacy concerns over the data these smartcars collect.
At an EV car showroom the other day, one of the big main focus function of the car that the salesman tried to pitch was "you can browse Amazon or do shopping online on the infotainment system". Also, you have to pay for a subscription to "unlock " the top speed and torque.
This is not the USA, so maybe it's just a thing in my country.
Was it BMW because they're awful for that kind of thing. But then again you deserve it for buying a BMW don't you.
Not that this really has anything to do with electric cars the same thing could be pulled off with ICE vehicles. I don't actually mind my car having cameras and microphones but if my car is going to have cameras I want all the data stored locally unless I choose to upload it to some online location.
Tesla has a game system on its huge touchscreen panel. At least you have to be parked to use it, but that's still fucking stupid.
I don't like or understand it therefore it is stupid.
My wife played some Fallout Shelter while we were in the carwash one time. I played some arcade game while in the waiting with my daugher while the wife was inside the store getting some groceries. It's pretty neat. And when we go on a roadtrip next summer it might be nice to play a game of chess while charging.
EV marketing is also full of misinformation, like net zero.
But they are planting trees!!!1!
I hate that grotesque faces are a clickbait technique.
That and the feigned look of surprise youtubers use, mouth open eyes wide with titles like "mr beast reaction compilation"
Only on EV? It's hard to find reliable informacion between 99% influencer crap and bullshit. YT is good for music and some movies which someone had uploaded, little else.
There's plenty of good quality content on YouTube but you actually have to subscribe to the good stuff. If you would like exclusively on the recommended videos you'll watch utter crap
I know that you need to subscribe reliable info channels, which I have done. Naturally there is good content on YT, but this, among the amount of content there is... how much? 1%-2%, maybe 3%? Trusted source is something else
The problem is that those nuggets of content are near impossible to find on today's YouTube unless you had found them before all the ai bloat channels using ai to crank out videos of nothing.
YouTube used to be good for music until they put 2 ads before AND after EVERY VIDEO!
I know this comes off as "old man yelling at clouds" but there used to be a time when there were NO ads on YouTube. You could make an entire playlist of songs without having to hear a single ad.
Novadays not even a Playlist, without YT paused it after some pieces or in the middle of those, which also need an extension to skip this, apart of another extension to avoid the clickbaits in most of the videos. As least, YT only with a good adblocker + the uFrame script + YT Nonstop or similar (depends on the store) + Clickbait Remover, as basics, or otherwise and better frontends (before Google kills these all) Piped, Invidious, PokeTube, or desktop, apps like MotionBox Video Browser (the best, but shitty UI), FreeTube or at least SMplayer. YT lacks a really alternative, the only I know which in ammount of content can it be in the future is Odysee, PeerTube is nice but the ammount of content...mhe. Only for music I use this one sometimes, there genres for every taste and mood 24/7 nonstop https://www.internet-radio.com , well in the browser or also with downloadable m3u files in any mediaplayer.
Fuck google seriously. The fact that these videos are not deleted and they don't detect all these obviously fake comments tells a lot.
Has anybody else noticed that youtube is porting comments from related videos? I'm seeing the exact verbatim comment jumping from vid to vid in the same category per the algorithm, with fresh vote counts. It's very obvious youtube is stuffing the comments with old material just to generate more views. Kind of pathetic really. Terrible user experience.
Not surprising considering it's the biggest shilling platform currently available. Low price of entry and easy way to reach masses combined with plenty of people with large following and questionable morals... you can push pretty much any idea and agenda. But good thing they don't allow swearing. That's just too much.
Lol, you just described every open content platform out there. This is not a YouTube-specific problem. You can't personally control what's uploaded on these sites, but you can choose if and how you interact with it.
YouTube does control what people upload... however they have a specific fetish on what is punished and what allowed.
Any idiot with a camera can put videos on YT so I'm not surprised. There's misinformation about literally everything on there or any other platform that doesn't restrict who can post. When the hell did news become nothing more than stating the obvious?
Don’t even need a camera
Just like Toyoda likes it. Him and his lemmings were parroting how bad sales were for their garbage EVs.
Some of the criticism is perfectly valid, frankly. I'm hyped for EVs but there's a lot of work to be done before they're really competitive. Glossing over glaring issues isn't doing anyone any favors.
Aging wheels did a great video on the charging station problem. He drove a Polaris and a Tesla on the same route and demonstrated really well how unreliable charging stations are, unless you have a Tesla. This guy loves electric cars and has been reluctant to actually recommend any.
That problem is going to be addressed as American manufacturers adopt Tesla as a standard, but that won't happen for two model years at least.
And in the long run, they won't address climate change in any meaningful way either. We've just exchanged one resource disaster for another, and there's far less rare earth minerals than there is oil. And we'll still need oil. The only way we're doing that is by massively overhauling every city and going away from any individualized transportation larger than a bike.
Honestly it's the other way around. Most of the downsides are vastly overstated in my experience, and people don't really grasp how nice it is to never visit a gas station and always have a full tank to start the day, until they are living it. If you have the ability to charge at home and aren't making 1000 mile trips very often, there is basically no reason to not have an EV.
The ability to charge at home is a big hurdle for most people, basically if you live in an apartment that's something you can't do.
I mostly agree with you, but there is barrier to entry cost.
I dunno man, the 5 minutes a week at a gas station doesn't really seem like that much of an inconvenience. Especially if you live in a state that taxes EVs more than gas cars, my home state taxes EVs so heavily that it's more expensive, even with fuel costs considered.
Winter and summer conditions are also an issue where I live, temps from very cold to very hot, sometimes within the same week, and the fact that most of the people who live around me who can afford an EV, are in fact taking routine road trips. Often to go camping where EV support is pretty minimal. Meaning at minimum, 1 car cannot be an EV.
Like, I get it. I've been trying to convince my wife to let me buy a sprinter van EV. Because you can't get a decent pick up truck EV for a reasonable price. And even if you could you're locked in to one of those giant 4 door monstrosities with a minimum sized bed.
We're not even going to talk about the horrifying lack of an affordable station wagon EV, at least in the US (Peugeot's got one coming in Europe at least), honestly that's the biggest crime here.
If you have the ability to charge at home and aren’t making 1000 mile trips very often, there is basically no reason to not have an EV.
Well, except for reasons not to have any car at all, of course.
Was the cost benefit worth it? How much more did you pay for the EV? Did you do it to reduce your carbon footprint and if so have you evaluated how dirty your local grid is (the remote combustion fallacy of EVs)?
I think the bigger issue with EVs (at least in the USA) is that there's a huge gap between what EV's actually are and what EV industry players are claiming EV's are and can be. It makes EV conversations divisive and ripe for misinformation.
This idea that batteries should ever be used in trucking and heavy machinery (before massive boosts to battery capacity and sustainability/recycling) is a total crock of shit. The idea that you're doing the environment or yourself a favor by buying an electrified SUV or truck is a crock of shit. Buying a vehicle with 250mi+ of range using today's battery tech is bad for the environment.
Small to medium sized commuter vehicles and delivery vans/fleet vehicles with < 50kWh batteries are prime EV candidates. EV buyers need to charge at home and drivers need to change their behavior, not chase 300 miles of range at the expense of the environment.
Everything else is better off with a hybrid engine for the very distant foreseeable future.
Instead, buyers are unloading perfectly good ICE vehicles for EV's with 100kWh+ batteries and companies like Tesla are destroying the credibility of the EV industry with their stupid stunts and ridiculous EV semi claims. Others are making a bad problem worse by ratcheting up the consumerism and disposability of vehicles in the EV space by building premium vehicles that are inevitable purchased as a second or third car, completely negating any environmental benefit of the vehicle.
These buyers and industry players are making EV's easy targets for an anti-EV crowd which wants to undermine the truly green and sustainable aspects of an automotive technology shift.
Pretty much all of the arguments against EVs from the right are solvable. There are arguments against them that are also unique from the left, but I've seen too many leftists adopt some of the bullshit arguments from the right.
Charging does need to improve. Believe me, I drove a Mini EV from Madison to Chicago once, and it was a nightmare to find two working stations along the way. But this is solvable with time. At least, it is when you're presenting it honestly, and not "haha EVs suck ROOOOLLL COOAAAALLLL!"
They're a huge facet to fixing climate change. Mining issues are not part of climate change. Burning petroleum is.
The problems with lithium mining do exist (and in ways that are less hypocritical for the left to point out than the right), but it's also not permanent. There's an interesting string technique that, assuming it can be scaled up, can use far less land and open up more reserves (that being the amount of lithium that can be economically mined, which people often mistake for the amount of lithium actually there). Even if it doesn't, oceanic methods of extraction are being ramped up already, and there's more lithium available there then we'd have a use for.
All that's even assuming we stay on lithium batteries, or that we won't reduce the amount of lithium per kwh.
Now, there's another set of arguments--the kind conservatives would never touch--which get into how cars are bad for society regardless of what they run on. They take up tons of space just sitting there, they enable urban sprawl, they hit pedestrians and animals, and are all around an inefficient way to move your moist meat flesh around. These are why I did an e-bike conversion recently and am looking to heavily reduce my car reliance.
But we're stuck with them to a certain extent. There are decisions literally set in concrete about where people live and where they work. Even with the most radical government imaginable, we could not rip our cities up and lay new concrete without releasing so much CO2 that we might as well drive ICE cars for an additional decade.
Getting rid of cars is not on the table, at least not in any reasonable timeframe. That said, what can we do to get American cities from <5% bike commuters to 25%? That alone would be massive.
Now, there’s another set of arguments–the kind conservatives would never touch–which get into how cars are bad for society regardless of what they run on. They take up tons of space just sitting there, they enable urban sprawl, they hit pedestrians and animals, and are all around an inefficient way to move your moist meat flesh around. These are way I did an e-bike conversion recently and am looking to heavily reduce my car reliance.
As far as I'm concerned, this is the only valid argument against electric cars (and combustion ones, of course) -- but boy, is it a doozy!
Something I don't think is really talked about in tandem but should be is the "tech" side of things. There's a massive race to go as proprietary as possible none of this crap is easily serviceable by people. The tech that they put in most of these cars is cheap garbage. I don't want some tablet with what is probably a fork of Android controlling my vehicle. First I know support for it is going to go out the window and I don't want to have to think about software security for my damn car.
Then you have these companies that are putting features that are in the car behind subscriptions because the car can now support subscription model. I don't want always online DRM for the DLC for my goddamn car.
Unlike oil, rare earth minerals can be recycled to a degree. What is today your car battery may end up in 10+ years as someone's house battery, or a power bank or other low-load energy store. The raw materials can eventually be recovered to an extent as well.
A resource disaster is inevitable either way as nobody wants to give up the convenience that we have become accustomed to. Encouraging affluent economies to adopt EVs is pure damage limitation at this point, our biosphere is already fucked from over a century of waste emissions, the least we can do is try and find solutions that don't involve burning fossilized plant matter for every car journey.
Newsflash — Tesla is opening its stations to all EVs. Guess that solves the “unless you have a Tesla” problem.