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?
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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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