Electric cars: The equivalent of switching from binge drinking whiskey to binge drinking wine.

Right is possible if economy is local. Left is actual real life because of capitalism needs bigger markets in in small areas for maximing profits.

Sorry, chief. We don't do nuanced thought in this community.

They are a patch, not a solution.

Not really. At all. Like they’re barely even a bandaid.

The issue is a car weighs a couple of tons and it’s being used to move a person who weighs around 100kg.

It’s massively inefficient use of energy.

Even in some fantasy world where the energy used to charge the batteries is all renewable - not even close to reality but let’s pretend - all that lithium and other precious earths are still an environmental disaster.

The answer is mass transit and lower mass vehicles. A lifestyle change is actually required and the thing is it wouldn’t even make people less happy, just that change is so fucking scary for some reason.

Walkable cities are a dream lifestyle and an electric scooter in a walkable city is outstanding. Fuck urban sprawl.

I'd call them less a solution, more an attempt at harm reduction.

And the only things they'll properly resolve are tailpipe emissions and idling noise. At least one of which is of no concern when dealing with the externalities of car traffic.

If you really want to solve the environmental impact of transportation, you minimise the need for transportation. Put homes and workplaces close together, offer mass alternatives for the pairs where you really do need motorised mobility solutions, and minimise the number of situations where it's more convenient to take a car. Ban on-street parking and heavily tax off-street parking. Need to park your car in the city? Hope you can afford to pay an arm and a leg. Oh, you can't? Looks the Park & Ride at the train station two towns over is the nearest alternative. Don't worry though, the trains go six times an hour and a day ticket is, like, four quid max.

Solution to what though? Emissions are reduced but not eliminated: when accounting for greenhouse gases emitted during production, EVs start outperforming traditional cars only after 5+ years of use (depending on the type of car). And other factors like tyre dust and road maintenance (due to EVs' higher weight) or resources needed to replace/recycle old batteries are not even included in that balance.

EVs might still be a net positive when compared with traditional cars, but both pale in comparison to public transport and infrastructure oriented towards bikes and pedestrians.

I don't think they're even a solution. They're just another scam like hydrogen fuel cells were. They exist to keep people from pushing for the real change we actually need... Just like the decade we lost because people bought the hydrogen fuel cell grift last time.

Sure maybe a mega SUV as a daily driver is not right for everyone, but I just can't live without the extra leg room and riot protection!

Emission laws made big trucks easier to produce than small trucks in the US, I miss the days of the short bed pickup. Still like my 98 taco and use it for hauling hay.

The idea that you even need a car for grocery shopping is insane.

I used to have this handcart and it could easily carry enough groceries for 3 people for 1 week. We'd put stuff directly inside at the counter and then empty it in the kitchen, then fold it up for storage. It was maybe 100 euros? And of course you could also use it for picnics or shopping for other things.

For heavy stuff we'd use delivery or a lasttaxi. Basically a taxi for carrying heavier things.

I live in Scandinavia, in one of these walkable cities. Everyone has a car. Why? Because relying on public transport or walking/biking everywhere is not practical. It's just reality.

I think the point is that compared to public transport when transporting a large number of people, they are inefficient.

A reasonable comment in this community? Get out!

I think you missed the meaning of inefficency on this matter...

While it is undeniable that electric cars have a better supply-to-engine energy efficency than combustion cars, you can understand that they are equiparated in the meme as "equally bad" if you think outside of the box labelled "rubber wheels on high friction asphalt transporting usually a single individual".

Compare that with a tram or a train, transporting multiple passengers with the same electric engine but also steel-on-steel friction on the wheels and the difference between an ICE and EV vehicle becomes a mere approximation error; god I can do the math for you if you want, but I bet even a disel bus with a lot of passengers has a better efficency/passenger ratio than an EV.

So 1 electric car = 4 less carbon liquid fuelled cars worth of pollution.

Also I think this is a bit misleading: if I buy an EV this won't magically destroy 4 (where is this number from?) already existing carbon liquid cars, it merely means you avoided adding 1 other ICE car to the total.

When is it efficient to carry several tons of steel with you to pick up eggs and milk?

I mean, Jevon's Paradox works because the increased efficiency leads to decreased costs. It's unclear if that's going to be the case for electric cars because the hardware needed to get to that high efficiency is so expensive, and mostly made cost-effective by government assistance (I.e. eletric cars here in the UK do not pay road tax).

I'm also not sure if lowered costs would massively change the number of drivers (at least in the developed world) in the EU there's one car for every two people. We're not going to see that become 5 cars for every two people just because the efficiency increases, demand is too inelastic.

It does, because the batteries for electric cars have a reliance on rare earth metals.

Lol the downvotes are hilarious. We will not solve climate change with electric cars. Public transit in walkable communities with niche uses for cars and trucks are the only way forward.

On the other hand, EVs typically have regenerative breaking, reducing the wear on brake pads.

Still shit, but partially canceled out.

Ah yes conservatism, the famous side of rational thinking and anti-bias thoughts, such as avoiding the perfect solution bias
Your comment having so many upvotes is disgusting

The thing is you're just not right. EVs serve to save the car, not the world.

It's not like without EVs, so many people would be rushing to areas of greater density and riding public transit, so your message

Correct! Which is why you should fight cars in general, cause then that happens

Don't take it so personally. sure EVs have a role to play but if we're to be serious about tackling climate change and environmental sustainability it's going to require massive infrastructure redevelopment projects, not asking everyone to please swap to rechargeable batteries. It's not about being "right enough" it's about recognizing a non-solution and also on a policy level a blatant scam. All these EV subsides the liberal Biden administration is throwing out are an obvious hand out to the failing American auto industry to try to keep them competitive and desperate ploy to their quickly dwindling supporters for them to look like they're doing anything worthwhile on climate change at all.

Having every American buy a new electric car is just going to make a few auto executives rich as hell and not even reduce overall global emissions because those cheaper ICE cars that can't be sold in America are just going to go to other parts of the world that don't have EV infrastructure but have plenty of already existing gas stations. And there's all the emissions of actually building the damn things. No, they need to put their money where their mouth is and build some fucking trains.

1. Do you realize what comm you're in?
2. If pointing out that EVs aren't a real solution is enough to alienate those "allies" they weren't really allies at all. It's also less about individual choice to move to areas with better transit, and more about pressuring the government to install better transit everywhere instead of just funneling endless money to car manufacturers.

EVs aren't a solution to anything except as a way to trick people into thinking purchasing a car is saving the environment or helping fix society.

If liberals are so shallow that they adopt racism because someone was mean to them online, then I'm glad they're being more honest. The message is that cars, all cars, are something worth fighting against. Electric cars are not a step in the right direction, they're not even a bandaid. They're just something liberals can purchase to make them feel like they're helping something. They're toys.

Honestly I would rather if most liberals outright come out as conservative, because it sounds like they're on the line already. It would be more honest of them.

I think both sides are lacking nuance here. If you shit on people getting electric vehicles or just thinking of getting one because that's not far enough: fuck you. But also, for people that just switched or are thinking of getting one but then see something like this and slam into reverse and say "I'm gonna support ICE cars till the day I die to spite those overly hostile woke liberals": fuck you too.

People should be able to take the information in a more nuanced way, and should stop swinging from extreme to extreme which has led to the current fucked state of politics

This is a lot like this Bors comic https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/8/8/1786532/-Cartoon-You-made-me-become-a-Nazi

Do honest people really migrate to "climate change is fake and queer people are a threat" because someone was mean to them online? Probably not often.

Do you even know what community you’re commenting in

Oh no, some liberals were being mean to me on the internet. Guess I'll just vote against my own interests to spite them...

Personally I think the issue is that you guys have only two parties.

Keep churning that pipeline to fascism.

I shit on liberals mostly because of their notions on 'altruistic capitalism'. As soon as they purchase an EV, they think they're out there saving the world and most don't think critically past that.

I really have to agree that it's posts like this that made me give up on left wing politics, in certainly not right wing but I see no hope for the left until fundermental problems are fixed which I don't believe politics or media is capable of addressing.

Further I am absolutely convinced a large portion of the loudest voices on climate change are so obsessed because they desperately want it to be the big doom that fucks up all the impressive things other people are achieving.

Diesel trains are much more environmentally friendly than EVs. Diesel emissions become less of a problem when one engine carries hundreds of people. And diesel doesn't even pretend to be good for the environment.

In fact, low speed electric cars are quiet enough that they've considered putting speakers in them to alert pedestrians and make the absence of feedback less disconcerting for drivers.

We're so used to ICE cars that they've contemplated making electric cars pretend that they have an ICE.

Depending on the ICE car, a similar EV can actually be more noisy, because of the heavy battery causing more road friction = more noise.

I like my car. Nothing will change that opinion, because nothing beats having a personal vehicle.

I live in Vancouver and our transit agency is seriously considering ripping the trolleybus lines out. Just like how they ripped the streetcars out before the trolleybuses came and then shamelessly told us that it's too expensive to reinstall the tracks so we're just never getting it back. In both cases it was because "it's getting too expensive to maintain" after they deferred maintenance for ages so everything is falling apart and the small problems got compounded into showstoppers from neglect.

Car fires from ICE's are magnitudes more common and cause more damage every year because of this. If you spent half a second to search this you'd find that reports indicate that per 100,000 vehicles sold in their respective powertrains in their lifetime, 25 electric cars catch fire, and 1,530 gas vehicles catch fire. While searching this, something that caught me off guard and surprised me was that hybrids are even higher, 3,475! The more you know.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Why? Cars are more inefficient than nearly every other mode of transport, whether we're talking energy efficiency, space efficiency or cost efficiency. Only air travel is worse. But those modes make up for that in some circumstances by being fast, convenient and flexible.

If you only have the option to drive and it looks like it will never change where you live, then yes, driving electric is better than driving an ICE car. You're not the problem for needing to live your life with the limited options you have access to. However, that does not mean the intrinsic problems with cars disappear the instant they become electric, and this meme is mainly meant to respond to the techbro people who think just because electric cars exist now it makes transit obsolete or it solves literally everything wrong with cars in general, and use that to actively resist public transportation or attempt to turn public opinion against it. I should have added additional context to make that clearer.

People are advocating for denser cities with better public transport, not for you to use the shitty bus in your suburb.

Haven't driven in over a decade, can confirm it's like living a dream

but if you don’t…

...then either you're a farmer or the area you live was built wrong and needs to be fixed.

Well, can't you resettle in a more compact town?

Has doors and seats 😠: ✅

Paved roads disrupt rainwater movement as they physically block water from permeating and also have fast flowing storm drains. They have been shown to significantly reduce groundwater replenishment and increase the speed and volume of run off into rivers and streams, which exacerbates flooding risks.

from all the roads making flooding easier

Ebikes aren't actually overpriced. Unless you buy them from Specialized. All those components are actually just that expensive. I can tell you this for sure because I compared the cost of building my own electric bike and buying a prebuilt one and I ended up going prebuilt.

Our ebike takes about the same amount of time as driving for most of our trips and nearly halves public transit time to some places we go. It was about 2k, and for that price it has been an actual steal. I think we put about 1.5k miles on it in the first year, and cost wise I think it'll break even at about double that.

It doesn't sound like ebikes are overpriced, it sounds like you don't find value in what an ebike does. And that's totally ok, especially if you're advocating for making your community more healthy and doing your best to live that way too.

It is a real shame that ebikes weren't subsidized like electric cars are, that would have changed the equation a lot for folks who are more on the fence and could have started a shift where more people want safer places to use their new bikes.

Edit: just read your reply to the other folks, you get it. I gotta wake up more before I start commenting

Biodiesel to start up & run on fryer oil once it's warmed up

Ebikes are not expensive. At least not the ones I have and see around town.

You can't simply go with the manufacturing emissions, you have to look at the entire life cycle of the vehicles in question.

It heavily depends on the battery technology used in that particular vehicle and the economy of scale. The emissions reduce as the build batches increase

TIL! That sounds awesome.

Can you buy them now or are they still being developed? Got a link? Looks like they're still working on it, I'm not seeing them online.

I think that the solution is automated rail transit. Being in a dedicated place with lower likelihood of encountering people removes nearl every issue that self-driving cars have. Being automated means that 24/7 schedules are possible. If there are enough trains and high enough saturation, need for cars and even taxis is removed.

Yes! And you know what, at that point, given the size of a minimum viable car, we could use some kind of algorithm to match people that are going similar places, and put them together to be more efficient. And I bet we'd find that a lot of the large scale transit patterns are common large parts of the population, so we could even use some kind of segregated, higher speed, more frequent vehicle for that.

While we're at it, we might as well just warehouse some of these vehicles around places where the common cores end and start, and then we would only have to match one end of the trip.

Oh wait, we already have those in operation in China: https://m.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=wvNOTZZeYVs