Remember kids, if you’re not solving climate change entirely in one single step, there’s no point in trying.
Seriously, what a brain dead argument lol
Plus, ev’s keep the pollution out of the cities and places we tend to live in.
Yeah! It keeps it in India and Madagascar, fuck those guys.
What’s the matter with you? Who stole your lunch money?
Didn’t realize I needed an /s
TYL
I think it’s under the premise of, of you have a functional car. It you got rid of that and bought an electric, you aren’t helping anything.
There’s a lot wrong with this video as most videos on EVs from 2016. The data is sources for electricity production is actually over a decade old now (Sep 2013) and it rationalizes that the electric cars will break down before the grid ever moves towards greener sources. This is a very silly notion considering solar is straining the grid with too much power at times, times where EVs could charge. They can also charge over night encouraging nuclear power to be more financially feasible as nuclear relies on a base load as they don’t like to turn off.
They’re not a silver bullet and in some cases like the Hummer EV they are worse than an old car but if you have to drive a lot it is completely less carbon intensive than an ICE for most EVs.
Here’s a still pretty old but more nuanced video: https://piped.video/watch?v=6RhtiPefVzM
The greenest car is a train car.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/MQLbakWESkw?si=IGV7CRjQslRSI-er
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Every car on the road being converted to electric with magic wouldn’t fix climate change. If you didn’t also get trucks and SUVs it may not even move the needle Personal car use is not a major cause of climate change. It just doesn’t matter compared to industrial and commercial emissions.
Of course it won’t fix climate change in one go, but doing so would remove a major fossil fuel dependency for your average Joe and make them much more likely to vote against fossil fuels.
Put another way, how many people driving gas cars would vote in favor of heavy taxes on fossil fuel use?
Now, how many would vote that way if they personally didn’t have any dependencies on fossil fuels?
Also, highway vehicles account for 1.5 billion tons of GHGs being emitted each year, that’s 11% of the global yearly GHG emissions, so yeah, it definetely would “move the needle”. In the US specifically it’s as much as 20% of our nations emissions.
And yeah I already know the next argument “bUt YoUr JuSt UsInG fOsSiL fUeLs To ChArGe It” - except you’re not necessarily, in my area (part of CA), you can choose to have 100% of your electricity provided by renewable sources for a small monthly premium ($18/month). Additionally in CA, all new homes are being built with solar power, which further increases your ability to charge without fossil fuels.
And in the areas that isn’t true, it’s at least getting groundwork laid down to make it true. An electric car can be powered by renewable energy, a fossil fuel car must be powered by fossil fuels.
There are a lot of steps to solving climate change beyond “buy an electric car”, and you’re right that industrial and commercial pollution accounts for the majority, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be pushing on all fronts.
We’ve already waited way too long to act, we can’t afford as a species to say “well, I’m not going to change my car until the industrial polluters get their shit together”, we have to push in Every possible direction, all at the same time to make progress, and electric cars overtaking fossil fuel cars is a big part of that.
There’s a lot of work to be done globally until electric cars are 100% green, both in terms of power infrastructure and the processes to create them, but there’s no way forward with gas cars, so we need to start moving over as a society now, phasing out the production of gas cars with electric
This is the exact kind of fucking bullshit that i hate.
Of course it won’t fix climate change in one go
Be honest: It won’t fix it at all. It won’t significantly impact climate change. It won’t insignificantly impact climate change.
so yeah, it definetely would “move the needle”
First of all: emissions are not the target. Climate change is the target. Even if all human related greenhouse gas emissions ceased tomorrow we would still be facing catastrophic climate change and then an effectively indefinite period (on a human scale) before things settled down again. We cannot not-pollute our way out of this mess.
Let me reiterate: We can no longer change the outcome by reducing carbon dioxide emissions, and consumer car usage is a small slice of overall carbon dioxide emissions. Of course, we could make it worse. So how much do consumer cars contribute to making it worse?
I don’t know if your figure of billions of tons is worldwide or not, the worldwide number i found here is about 3 billion metric tons. (It dropped for 2020! Yay we did it!) In contrast, Wikipedia (who I believe are taking their numbers from the IPCC) lists about 35 billion tons (about 32 billion metric tons) of co2 from fossil fuel burning, with total greenhouse gas emissions of about 50 billion tons (about 45 billion metric).
Then there’s also reduction in the Earth’s ability to extract co2 due to land use (chopping down forests). This is difficult to model because it’s not a direct emission but it is undeniably a result of human activity that unbalances the Earth’s climate. That Wikipedia article earlier says that total emissions from 1870 to 2017 were about 1.5 trillion tons from fossil fuels and 660 billion tons from land use change which works out to be about 31% of the total. Note that this is total and cumulative so again: Ceasing all emissions would not change this number. No longer cutting down forests (etc) would not change this number a single gram.
Then there are other factors that are making climate change worse but they’re not that important in comparison. I’m going to ignore them because i am not a scientist and i’m not writing a scientific paper here.
I am going to be harsh, however. If you take that 3 billion number and you divide it into the 32 billion number you get about 10%, as you say.
That’s not correct if you want to make a difference for climate change.
If you take that 3 billion number and you divide it into the 1.5 trillion tons number you get about 0.2%.
So to answer the question above: how much worse do consumer cars make climate change? Well, they worsen the situation with carbon dioxide by about 0.2% per year, coming from about 10% of our overall emissions, and carbon dioxide is only one of the factors contributing to climate change. So overall? Not much.
And yeah I already know the next argument “bUt YoUr JuSt UsInG fOsSiL fUeLs To ChArGe It”…
That is not my argument.
…except you’re not necessarily, in my area (part of CA), you can choose to have 100% of your electricity provided by renewable sources for a small monthly premium ($18/month).
Oh my god, of course you couldn’t help it. The smug liberal (derogatory) virtue signalling had to come out. Jesus fucking Christ.
You understand, right, that if you pay $18 and go from a 50/50 split of fossil fuel and renewable energy (about where CA is) and your neighbor does not what ends up happening is you go 0% fossil fuel and your neighbor goes to 100% fossil fuel and nothing changes, right?
Like, you’re paying $18 not to change anything, you’re paying $18 so you can go on the internet and complain about how everyone else isn’t fixing climate change like you are.
The corporate response to climate change has been to try to convince everyone to take shorter showers, switch to an electric car, and install solar panels. That is, for individual people to do things (that don’t matter) and for corporations to continue doing things (that do matter, negatively). You unironically listed two of the three elements of a fucking climate change denial meme.
Also current renewable energy isn’t actually that great. I guess this is the right time for my pitch for nuclear power.
If you want to actually have an impact (in the “stop making things worse” direction not the “fix climate change” direction) then let me suggest nuclear power. Nuclear power is great. It’s a proven technology. Even nuclear power at its worst is still better than coal, even if you ignore the greenhouse gas emissions difference. I’d argue nuclear power is better than modern renewables too but this post is long enough so i won’t.
Right now, coal fired power plants account for 20% of fossil fuel emissions and are the single largest source of emissions. and… well… let me direct quote:
Notably, just 5% of the world’s power plants account for almost three-quarters of carbon emissions from electricity generation, based on an inventory of more than 29,000 fossil-fuel power plants across 221 countries.
Putting it a different way, almost 15% of all fossil fuel emissions come from 5% of the world’s power plants.
So it’s great that California is doing better than average, but if you want to make a difference in emissions you don’t try to change every single car on the planet over to electric, which is a tremendous task to undertake. You kill that 5% of power plants and replace them with nuclear. (Or okay if it really makes you feel better i’d be on board with renewables too but nuclear is still the better and more practical solution.)
There are a lot of steps to solving climate change beyond “buy an electric car”, and you’re right that industrial and commercial pollution accounts for the majority, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be pushing on all fronts.
If you want to make a difference right now, probably the best thing you can possibly do is advocate against coal power plants. It’s both easier to do than replacing all cars and it would have a bigger impact.
In 2035, 12 years from now, Europe plans to mandate all new cars to be electric. Europe is not responsible for the majority of passenger vehicle emissions. Most countries do not have plans that are anywhere near as ambitious. The US is only aiming at 50%, and that 50% of vehicles that get switched over won’t be the ones emitting the most greenhouse gases. (Hybrids being switched to full electrics have little impact when Ford F150s are the most popular vehicle in America.)
Meanwhile, that 5% of power plants is still out there. Industrial and agricultural emissions are still out there. Land use changes are still out there. The vast majority of everything that brought us to this point is still out there, untouched. And when will you get your 100% electric cars worldwide? In 2045? 2060? How deep underwater will Miami and New York City be by the time that happens? How many people will die in the meantime? How much further will the ecosystems of the world be destabilized?
This isn’t about “pushing on all fronts”. This is about moralizing at individual people about their personal decisions, which did not cause this problem and cannot fix it. Paying $18 to California power companies isn’t about improving the world it’s about making you, personally, feel better. Like you’ve “done your part”. Meanwhile, the planet is burning. In the coming years, it will burn more and more.
Capitalism wants to pretend that everyone acting individually can solve problems but capitalism created this problem and it cannot and will not solve it.
So what do you suggest that can actually be done, besides removed about it on Lemmy?
You talk a lot about moralizing without actually making a difference, but that’s exactly what you’re doing in your comment.
So hit us with it - what should we be doing instead? Other than removed about it on Lemmy, I mean?
So what do you suggest that can actually be done, besides removed about it on Lemmy?
I somehow fucking knew this was coming, Everyone has the same response regardless of what you say.
I suggested targeting the most heavily polluting power plants for conversion to clean energy. This suggestion is:
- Practical from a cost standpoint
- Could be accomplished with current technology
- Easier to implement politically than “make all cars electric”
- Would have a bigger impact on the environment than “make all cars electric”.
You: “Well if you don’t have any ideas…”
I know my comment was long but you aren’t really arguing with me, you’re arguing with the shadows that live inside your head. This was true of your previous post, too. See:
And yeah I already know the next argument “bUt YoUr JuSt UsInG fOsSiL fUeLs To ChArGe It”…
(Which is still not and never has been my argument.)
For the record it’s my belief that we could currently not only halt but fully reverse climate change (though it would take maybe 100 years) at our current technological level. I believe it’s possible. However, i do not know of any way to do it that does not require major change to the political and economic systems of the West (the ones that brought us to this point, in other words: Capitalism). Back in the '70s it would have been way easier to address this but now we’re on hard mode.
You talk a lot about moralizing without actually making a difference, but that’s exactly what you’re doing in your comment.
I’m critiquing a moralizing argument, it’s somewhat inevitable that my critique will also adopt the form of a moral argument. Unless you want me to argue that all morals, all ideas of “good” and “bad”, are phantasms that are propagated by the powerful as a form of social control or something. Which i also could do, but it seems a little abstract given the current conversation.
Even granting you that point there’s still a difference:
My arguments are concerned about outcomes, about material conditions in people’s lives, they include the concept of collective and corporate action.
Your arguments are superficial, concerned about appearances, do not acknowledge the context or history of how we came to where we are, and are primarily concerned with individual actions that wealthy Westerners can take without regard to the practicality of implementation across the rest of the world.
I’m going to throw out one more thing:
Even if cars were the biggest source of carbon dioxide, going to all electric cars is not the best solution. Building electric cars still has a significant environmental impact, including greenhouse gas emissions. Better still would be mass transit. Trains and buses are more environmentally friendly still and would allow us to make other changes to society that would further reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Of course, that option is not favored by our capitalist overlords…
There’s this concept under socialism called “development” where you make small steps towards your desired outcome. Naturally, capitalists hate this which is why they spend so much money pushing for all-or-nothing “solutions” and encouraging people to quit when it doesn’t work. Whatever it takes to make sure that people don’t fundamentally challenge their illegitimate rule as they burn the planet for profit.
Socialism: development? Yeah, I created that.
Right after it invented planning.
Electric cars don’t solve every problem with private vehicle ownership but they’re certainly a step in the right direction. Most EVs average an equivalent of more than 100mpg versus most ICEs, which are around 30-40. You can also power an EV with renewable resources. This isn’t possible with ICEs (yes, I know you can power certain diesels with biofuel, but it’s horribly inefficient).
“Buying a new car is worse than keeping an old one” is an incredibly situational phrase that has a million exceptions for so many people.
Buying a new car is worse than keeping an old one
Also, what do you think happens to your car when you replace it with an electric car? Do most people just drive their old cars into the ocean when they upgrade?
“Buying a new car is worse than keeping an old one” is an incredibly situational phrase that has a million exceptions for so many people.
Yeah, but this still holds a lot of water. More often than not people buy a new car to have a new car or even worse they buy one specificcally because they are misguidedly trying to lessen their carbon footprint.
More often than not people buy a new car […] trying to lessen their carbon footprint.
This seems very hard to believe.
Try looking it up. That might help
Just because I wanted to be sure I am not being mistaken for some reason I just googled a couple different search terms for motivations to buy a new car.
None of the results is even close to confirming your ludicrous quote from above.
So again I am baffled by how confidently wrong you keep on posting here.
huge unsupported assumption with no basis but your anal tugging.
Not sure why you are having trouble finding support or what anal tugging even is, but looking at Americans at least. They get a new car. On average every 6 to 8 years. A decently maintained car will easily last 11-14 years. If you are finding a better explanation that genralizes than what I described to explain this gap I’d love to hear it
Most people buy used cars. So those cars are already 11 to 14 years old. Inform yourself.
But by selling there old car more people can affort to buy a newer cars and fade out old cars wich overall is going to decrease carbon emissions because newer cars are on average more fuel efficent.
But yes Consuming less is still important
People aren’t just buying new cars for fun in a recession. The point is people will need to buy a new car at some point. Either because they now need their own car or their old one isn’t viable. At that point, choosing an electric car is a step in the right direction. That’s why this post is stupid, it’s acting like buying an electric car is just a frivolous purchase and not acknowledgeding that when someone needs to buy a car there is a choice to be made.
I went through every phase of loving, hating and tolerating electric cars. Afaik, the process of making one is not the most environmentally friendly. Lithium mining is incredibly horrible for the environment. On top of that. In an area where the primary energy production is through coal, electric cars are generally worse than gas because of the energy production (and loss) charging electric vehicles.
With that being said. Electric cars can offset their carbon cost, assuming they exist within an area with mixed energy production (non-renewable and renewable), and owners take good care of their vehicles. In those scenarios 2-3 years will be enough to offset the cost.
This is often repeated and very damaging misinformation. An EV powered purely by coal is significantly better for the environment than an ICE car over its lifetime. This is because coal fired power plants are more efficient than internal combustion engines due to economies of scale, even after taking into account transmission losses.
Oh today I learned, TBH my information was probably out of date. But this is good to know. Definitely a step in the right direction even if more diversified public transportation options are better
Most coal has shifted to natural gas in the US.
It’s more so outdated parroting than deliberate misinformation. A lot of the times I see people trying to back this one up, it’s with Hawkins et al.'s Comparative environmental life cycle assessment of conventional and electric vehicles paper. A 2012 study that analyzes emissions based on manufacturing and energy production capabilities of the time doesn’t hold up well over a decade later.
You would think that would be obvious, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Lithium mining is incredibly horrible for the environment.
Guess what else is incredibly horrible for the environment? Oil extraction. In fact, oil extraction is arguably worse for the environment.
Let’s put this tired talking point to rest, forever. It’s more than likely been invented by the special interest groups for oil.
My frustration comes from the fact that hybrids exist and are not used nearly as enough as they should (all cars should have been mandated as hybrids a decade ago) and this would reduce the downsides of electric car production.
I’m not defending ICEs here, I just think the overall environmental credentials of electric cars at this point in time isn’t as good as hybrids.
I fully expect this to change in the future but I’ve got entire fleets of vehicles which are less than 5 years old being replaced by electric and that makes no sense.
Also cars generally are just a terrible solution to mass transport. We already have the most environmentally friendly option known to man. Bicycles and trains.
Edit: for further information on hybrid vs electric see this analysis:
Yes, which is why I’m downvoting you.
I’m huge into going green, going mass transit, and everything else, however, most people cannot fit into one worldview, which is why this is more nuanced than your meme suggests.
As an example The Midwest in the states does not have mass transit, so they have to drive. So trains and bikes are out. Hybrid still uses gas, and for the vast majority of them they will be on the freeway, so a hybrid is basically the same as an ICE car anyway, so yeah, I’ll push them into getting EVs if what they’re doing is commuting. However than it gets more nuanced to “is this for roadtrips”, because then maybe hybrid is better.
Which is why again I say it’s a person-to-person basis. For you maybe a hybrid is the only option, but saying EVs are wrong for everyone is a very naive approach.
Yeah. America isn’t the world.
Plenty of countries have functioning public transport.
America is not the exception, you can survive without cars.
They say, as I know people in the midwest who commute 1.5 hours each way to the city for their job and then turn around and drive home. I have a friend who lives in a town of no shit, 400 people.
There’s no bus that goes there. It’s 30 miles from the nearest “city” of 15,000, and he works another 20 miles past that.
You can survive without cars
Sure, they’ll just not eat, not work, and not do anything. Dude I’m all for urbanization and adding mass transit, but you’re going to be hard pressed to add rail routes or even bus routes to not just that one town of 400, but all the other thousands of tiny towns. Hell even the town of 15,000 doesn’t have a rail route. Hell even the state capital is missing a rail route. Let alone commuter options.
I’m not saying America is an exception, I’m saying you’re naive for thinking your one opinion will work for everyone, and that the problem is more nuanced then you understand.
That’s why I brought up Cali HSR. It’s been over a decade of planning and building that, and that’s connecting two of the largest cities in the country, and you’re just casually saying “Just build it everywhere”. Like yes we want that too, but the realities of building that would be centuries of work.
Only the wealthy, tiny almost pointless to consider ones. Poor Countries and large Countries have no such infrastructure.
China has tons of it.
So does Russia.
Japan isn’t “small” (it’s the length of California) and has tons of it.
The EU is pretty big and all interconnects.
Size isn’t the issue. It certainly hasn’t prevented us from paving half our country.
China is unmovable by vehicle at all such that their failure of a mass transit system is trying busses on stilts.
Japan is tiny. I mean very tiny minuscule area of land.
Most of EU has no such thing. You are assuming it EU is Germany, France, and Belgium. PS, all the actual Countries (which EU isn’t one) in the EU are tiny.
Size is a factor in cost and that is the real reason most Countries have no such thing as viable mass transit for the majority of their citizens. Paving sold cars and cars made corporations lots of money. Mass transit does the opposite and is thus objected to by same corpos.China has a working HSR system connecting all their major cities. The fact that their population scale is so massive means they also try weird shit to get what they can.
Japan is very narrow but it’s also very long. The actual amount of miles a train much cover from one end to the other is very large.
Yes the EU is not one country (though it is a polity). That should make it harder, not easier to cover it with rail, and yet there’s rail lines connecting all the major cities crossing national borders. Does the “size” counter reset once you cross a line on the map?
It’s not the size, it’s the political organization. You even hint at this when describing how we paved America: the political and economic configuration was aligned to make it happen despite the massive cost. The USA was crisscrossed by passenger rail and street cars, and still is for cargo. We just took a different path later, but it doesn’t actually have to be that way.
My issue with typical hybrids is that they got all the complexity of an ICE powertrain, in addition to all the complexity of an EV powertrain, plus the complexity of merging the two.
Slightly less efficient, but I think I’m more in support of EVs with gas range extenders. Maybe it’s just a question of semantics. But more than that (if we’re gonna keep cars) we need to invest in charging infrastructure. Idk why it sucks so bad, and why gas stations aren’t installing charging stations.
It’s a fair assumption that adding extra systems to the car makes it overall less reliable, but it’s not necessarily true. Electric motors, compared to IC engines, are extremely simple and reliable. The servicing guidelines for the electric drivetrain in my hybrid is essentially “replace the battery if it stops holding enough charge”, there is no schedule for any routine maintenance of those components. Adding the hybrid system also reduces the wear and tear on the conventional drivetrain and brakes. Hybrids can do regenerative braking, which means that (for my vehicle at least) most of the braking down to maybe 10mph is done by regen, which functionally has no wear and tear. The electric motors also assist the ICE at the times where peak wear and stress occur, reducing the load and stress on the motor, and extending it’s lifespan. By adding the hybrid system, the overall reliability and lifespan of the vehicle is increased rather than decreased.
My issue isn’t with adding electric to a gas car. My issue is adding gas to an electric car.
The ICE drive train adds a TON of complexity to an EV. If you’re gonna add ICE to an EV I think that it makes more sense to have a little range-extender generator, which is simple and cheap (because it only needs to run at a single RPM and constant load) which you can just run to add a bit more charge to your battery on long road trips.
But ideally we’d just have better charging infrastructure.
What a weird take. If you add electric to a gas car, then yeah-maybeish.
But adding “hybrid” to an electric car sure will make it need waay more maintenance etc. that’s just no discussion there.
We will never consumer our way of of a problem capitalism created. And public transit is nearly always a better solution to spending on car infrastructure.
… but… If you’re gonna buy a new car anyway, they have the potential to cause less climate impact (although they’re still environmentally devastating in other ways). As power generation becomes cleaner, so too do the cars. ICE cars are already about as environmentally friendly as they’re gonna get, but EVs still have a lot of potential improvement (both in emissions and in things like material mining).
Although the tire microplastics is gonna get worse.
They already do cause less of an impact than ICE powered cars. Anyone can Google the information that shows that even though battery production is unclean, fossil fuel production over the life of a car is worse.
If the EV last for more than about 5 years, it was worth it.
5 Years… This is part of the problem… What happens to this car after 5 years, it gets “recycled”. The metal does and the rest goes into a landfill to gas off. Micro plastics are just part of it, the gasses are a major polluter too. The reason you can own and keep your old car is that they were built to last, our current disposable society is the problem. Electric cars are dirty! Let go dig massive hole in the desert, lets separate the wanted materials out with lovely chemicals, then we can throw it all away. So clean… Right to repair, build to last, and strong public transport is the way to go.
Phew! My electric car made it five years, right to the theoretical break even point with a gas car. What will I do now? Keep driving it? No, I have a better idea. Drive it off of a cliff and go buy a new one. Yep, I love throwing money away for no reason.
That is not what I said, but good job taking care of you toy car.
No one is recycling still-working cars after only 5 years. Unless you’re talking about insurance deciding to salvage a vehicle after a wreck, which is a different story. Even those don’t always get destroyed, some are parted out and some are probably shipped overseas to get a second life.
New cars are cheaply made, with parts that sold in modules (parts attached to other parts) and are by far more expensive then their older counterparts. They also have been engineered to be a pain for mechanics to work on, they are no longer built to last or be repair friendly. Many parts are engineered with fasteners that break when you remove them, not making them friendly to being parted out. As for EV’s they are a dirty bandaid to a dirty problem, the batteries alone are, made with rare earth metals lithium, manganese and cobalt. These are all pulled out of the earth using chemicals to separate the materials, these mining areas may never fully recover the impact is huge. We still do not have the technology to recycle them, they just like plastics are not fully recyclable. We could build an affordable, repair friendly car that would be a great trade in for Dads old beater, but that wouldn’t get you into a New Ford Crapbox Deluxe.
…except not, how rich are you that buying a new car every 5yr is viable?! I need longer than “about 5yr!”
I know that’s not what you meant but it made me chuckle.
I don’t understand it either, but still, there is a very active used car market these days. It’s not like those 5 year old cars are getting thrown in the dump.
But like you said, it’s not what the original poster meant. That’s just the cutoff for when it is less environmentally harmful than an ICE car.
Some people are also forced by their job to lease a new car every 4 years.
It so bad that I cant even lease a 400km old car from 2022 … No I had to have a new one and if I dont want a car I need to find i different job.
Shit’s fucking dumb.
Jeez, buncha moneybags around here that don’t like a joke, huh?
What job forces people to lease new cars? Sounds like the job should be providing them if it’s gonna be like that, like they do with cell phones they require you to use as “work phones.”
It is like that, it isnt so much a personal issue as I can run the car as much as I want.
Its more of a “we want to be good for the environment… But everyone needs a new car. And its mandatory”
A well worded nuanced take on Lemmy? Where am I?
Yeah but by the time some of that potential is realised, your brand new EV is now a few years old and almost worthless cos the batteries are next to useless.
Modern EV batteries last for over a decade and still retain most of their original capacity even after a few hundred thousand miles.
As an example: My vehicles electric battery is warrantied for 10 years or 150,000 mi. Even with that being said, I have seen models of my car used well into the 300-400,000 mi range.
And while I’m not an expert on the matter, it is my understanding that there are recycling plants for electric vehicle batteries. Which I would imagine would reduce the environmental cost of electric vehicles.
Not to mention the research being done on different battery chemistries that are less environmentally hazardous, last longer, are more energy dense, and so on.
This is a terrible arguement. It has the premise that all ice are going to be scrapped at once and we will just make a bazillion electric cars. It’s a phase out thing.
Also quieter cars and no tailpipe emissions are fantastic.
Well. Bought my new electric car. What am I going to do with my old gas one? Trade it in and get money? Nah. Pay to get it scrapped? I’m such a genius.
Guys, cars don’t last forever, but when you own a car that doesn’t burn dead organisms, get ready to almost never change your oil because it doesn’t collect soot and for engines and cars to last much longer because they don’t generate grimy grease and heat and exhaust, all of which are terrible for mechanical parts.
Pre-emptive caveat: I am fully in favor of electric cars, and will happily switch if I can ever afford to do so.
Yes, most of the parts that are going to wear out on IC cars are motor and transmission parts, and those are complicated and time consuming to fix. In many cases it’s not practical for the end-user to do so anymore. Electric cars OTOH are more likely to have electronics issues, and the batteries are ridiculously expensive to replace when the capacity is reduced below a useful level.So you’re still going to end up with similar maintenance costs over the lifetime of the vehicle, but they’re more likely to be concentrated at one or two irregular points in time rather than small bits of preventive maintenance done at regular intervals.
Small anecdote: I bought a new Cheverolet Bolt about two years ago.
A couple of months after I bought it there was a recall on the batteries, they had to replace all of them in the car.
They were out of stock for quite a while (I assume because of supply chain issues)
They finally replaced them a couple of months ago.
I choose to see that as a 2 years extension on my bettery life,lucky me!
Part it out and scrap it for cash.
Double overly reductionist takes with no positive contribution. Congrats! This is crap.
Guess I’ll keep pouring lead additive into my '65 Galaxie, then. Woo! 10 miles per gallon!
If you can, use public transport and ride a bike.
If you can’t, using the same private vehicle for a long time, while not ideal, is acceptable.
Buying a brand new electric car to replace a relatively new ICE is not a great solution.
Buying a brand new electric car to replace a relatively new ICE is not a great solution.
That is absolutely sound.
However and if the cartoon said that, it would be fine
Reality is very few People can afford to replace their car every few Years.
I stand by what I said.
We should have less private transport regardless of if it’s electric or ICE.
Arguably action on climate change warrants a significant reduction in car use generally to stop our extinction.
I’m in London. I cycle to work and use the tube network and bus network whenever I can. I also have a private car which I use for trips where public transport or my bike is impractical. It’s a 2016 model, I expect that it may need replacing in 5 years time. If I took the cartoon at face value, I might think it makes no difference from a climate chang perspective whether I choose petrol or electric - and this is clearly wrong.
If I took the cartoon at face value, I might think it makes no difference from a climate chang perspective whether I choose petrol or electric - and this is clearly wrong.
That’s ok, OP will just block you for making a valid point that doesn’t align with whatever is written on the inside of his colon.
It really depends on the new model of car you choose to replace your outgoing one.
This was the website that I have been thinking of:
https://www.carboncounter.com/#!/explore
You can see some electric cars are far worse than a hybrid as an example.
you can also see that there are only a few hybrid vehicles a bit better than bev, and bev are overall ‘better’ in this diagram?
in fact - if you filter by vehicle class you see that bev are always ‘better’ in their respective class than hybrid or ice. you can’t compare a bev suv with a midsize hybrid.
Do you also see the amount of carbon to the left? That isnt total. Its per mile. You cannot even read the diagram and then you claim switching to evs is bad…
The problem for us country fuckers is that cars take a beating. Then you run into a lack of parts to keep a good car that’s just old going in good trim. My car is a 2007, and I’m already running into trouble with some parts. Well, that and the fact that I let my dad drive it, and he seems to attract idiot drivers that want to hit him, so even new parts won’t always fit, which is double frustrating.
And it isn’t like we have reliable public transport as an alternative. We do have a bus line, if you don’t mind taking two hours just to get to a grocery store, standing around in southern humidity and heat, and then walking a quarter mile from the stop to the store. Which, if you’re also disabled, good luck on that last part along a crappy road with a nasty ditch. Don’t even try that in a wheelchair lol. My buddy, spider, had to get his scooter hauled out of that ditch when he tried to save gas money by using the bus.
But, yeah, the whole idea of cars as disposable to a degree has gotta stop. They’re tools, not ego extensions.
Bikes count as private transport. You wanna take those away too?
No I don’t.
In that context private transport meant cars.
That would require OP being capable of nuance.
Indeed.
Public transport takes 3.5 hours for my daily commute each way. Personal vehicle is 45 minutes.
A bike is going to get you killed in numerous parts of the Country. Here the massive pick ups that have never hauled more than a sack of groceries take sharing the road with bicycles as a very personal insult.
Depends upon the old one, (huge difference between 12-18 MPG and an EV), and what is done with the it after doesn’t it?
I suspect you swallowed a lot of Corpo propaganda to believe the issue is the common individual’s actions.
https://theconversation.com/the-carbon-footprint-was-co-opted-by-fossil-fuel-companies-to-shift-climate-blame-heres-how-it-can-serve-us-again-183566
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-mobils-messaging-shifted-blame-for-warming-to-consumers/
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220504-why-the-wrong-people-are-blamed-for-climate-change
just a few to get your deprogramming started.No doubt your logic is based on the carbon footprint of two cars - the old ice and the new BEV.
Where that logic falls down is the old ICE becomes a more affordable efficient used car that can replace an older ICE that it blowing blue smoke. Further, new BEV become used BEV in a few years. Used BEV are becoming quite affordable and cost effective. They are also far outlasting their projected battery life.
Finally, demand for BEV increases R&D on more efficient storage technologies that are cheaper and have a smaller environmental footprint.
Yes, more and better public transport should be a thing. But the US is just too big - and in many cases too empty - for ubiquitous public transport to be cost or environmentally efficient.
I disagree strongly about the US not being suitable for public transport.
There are large cities that could introduce effective metro services and that would be a vast improvement.
Rural areas can remain ICE/BEV.
Show me one State, just a single one, where the majority of Cities have functional mass transit across the entire City which does not take five or six times what a personal vehicle going straight there takes. I’ll wait.
The fact that the implementation of public transport is poor is not a criticism of public transport.
No it is an explanation of why the suggestion that it was an option is untenable. Which of course is why at no point did I criticize it.
After the pandemic you want me to share a big box with a load of strangers? Nope.
In the US everything is rural. Did you ever see a map of it?
If you can’t, using the same private vehicle for a long time, while not ideal, is acceptable.
The typical breakeven point for an ev (when carbon emissions saved overtake emissions produced by its production) is around 30k kilometers. That’s excluding potential downstream emissions saved by the old ice being sold second hand. I don’t think even very wealthy people are getting rid of their cars so soon.
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My brother in christ are you dense? No. Parking the 65 Galaxy and buying a new ev is most definitely better than driving it. 10 miles to the gallon is horrendous.
laughs in bicycle
The bicycle is one of humans greatest achievements.
Certified best transport in the world!! Combining it with public bikes and busses/trams/trains allows me to go anywhere I want to.
It isn’t.
But staying on fossil fuels is even worse. And by a lot.
Well it’s a two start program.
- All of the citizens buy an electric vehicle
- The government produces clean energy
So it shifts the responsibility onto the government.
where are you from that your government produces your electricity?
I mean I lot of countries have national owned power generation, it’s certainly upto the government what gets built where.
Economical retrofit kits for legacy vehicles would help reduce manufacturing pollution & reduce vehicle emissions, if carbine free electricity production is increased.
The problem is it’s fundamentally changing the source of energy in a car. Even if you ripped out the motor and replaced it with an electric motor and battery Bank there would still be a whole fundamental sleuth of systems that would be missing inside the car. I think I better solution might be to look into converting cars to hydrogen instead.
Also feel free to ignore anything I just said I’m not no automotive engineer, just a nerd who used to tinker with cars when he was younger 😅
Hydrogen is not an energy source, it is a means of energy storage, and a pretty bad one at that.
Also, it’s primarily made using methane steam reformation, which releases co2.
If you want to go that route I think you should look more towards bikes and less towards cars.
Yeah, that’s the real problem. I wish hydrogen helped. Fuel cells and hydrogen are another way to store and release electricity, like batteries. Switching a car from gas to battery is a tricky proposition. Since they require more components to achieve the same result, delivering electricity to an electric motor, fuel cells would compound that problem.
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My electric car was manufactured ONCE. It’s powered by 99% green power (hydroelectric). It burns no gas/diesel, requires no oil changes. I intend on keeping it for 15+ years (my last vehicle got to 16 years before the electrical system fried).
It is better by literally every measure short of walking everywhere.
Hey how about bike man
How do i bike 30 miles each way? Even ignoring infrastructure needs and how bad most road surfaces are and how biking is death on a highway…
Yeah but they’re way more fun to drive
In countries that generate almost all of their electricity from renewables, they are better tbh. Although more environmentally damaging to produce.
The problem is more like that cars that use fossil fuels have a very much lower efficiency rate than electric cars. So theoretical if you use the same amount of FF for the energy production and use that for electric cars it would be more efficient. But that shouldnt be the solution.
The used market is going to be full of gas cars for a longtime. Look there of you need gas otherwise go electric if you can.
