Or just be me, WFH and never leave the house
If only employers cared. It has been nice, now my employer is rolling out a arbitrary but mandatory 4 days return to office policy. In like 8 years of employment I never needed to be there that much. Whatever, 100% remote job market looks decent for me, hopefully find a better place soon.
I mean, you still need to leave the house for groceries and other stuff
Most of the criticisms that come from the right are solvable problems, such as lack of chargers, electricity coming from dirty sources, or lithium mining. We pretty much know how to solve all those at this point. Just a matter of doing it.
Criticisms that come from the left tend to be more fundamental. Things like car-based cities being too spread out, infrastructure costs spiraling out of control, or having the average person operate a 2 ton vehicle at speeds over 60mph and expecting this to be safe. None of those are specific to EVs, and are only solvable by looking at different transportation options.
But solving problems costs money! We need to be transferring those dollars to our wealthy donors, not spending them on public improvements!
People don’t want to change the status quo or inconvenience themselves slightly in any way for the greater good. People want a magic drop in replacement that magically “fixes/solves” the environmental crisis and allows life to continue on as is. (So they don’t have to take “yucky” public transit)
What really needs to be known though is life has to somewhat drastically change so we can make the world a healthier place for generations to come in the future.
You’re being downvoted because you’re right. I’ve had people argue that EVs still aren’t a good alternative because they may require a bit more effort every once in a while. Like, charging for 30 minutes at a charger on a long road trip vs just gassing up. Other than that they are pretty much a drop in alternative and people still balk at them.
Then trying to get them to use public transit instead? Doesn’t even matter if it’s more convenient, they’re stuck in their ways and will refuse to change ever.
Get out of your ruts people. Just because “this is the way things are” doesn’t mean it’s the best way. Ffs the amount of midwesterners who come to my city to visit and think we’re being “unsafe” by using the train, just get out of your mindsets.
get out of your ruts
But thinking critically is hard and I’m lazy!
So what’s the solution for people like me that live 10 miles from the closest shop, 15 miles from the kids schools and 10 miles to the closest train station and we have no bus services that serve the village?
Well either you could move to a different location if you want to, convince your community and local politicians to build better infrastructure, or realize that you are a minority, an edge case that usually is not adressed in these talks because a few people in remote locations using a car doesn’t hurt if we could get rid of car dependency in densely populated areas where the vast majority of humans live.
On bike those distance are fine. Ebikes exist also. Either way I’d rather life and society adjusted itself to a slower commute than the danger and depression of car based transportation infrastructure. I used to ride my hike one hour to get groceries and an hour back. Those who are disabled can ride the bus and train. A lot of changes need to be made. Infrastructure and people need to change. I’d rather have a car free safe road for walking and riding my bike. We will all live longer to just from exercise and safer travel in general.
Getting two kids 15 miles on a bike will be fun. So would getting a weeks shopping home on one.
People need cars. It’s a fact of life.
I’m convinced a lot of the fuck car people are people in their 20s with no kids who live in the city where they can heavily rely on good public transport and not have a need to travel too far.
I totally get the sentiment but it’s just not practical for a lot of us. To get people away from cars the local authority would need to practically fill the roads with small extremely regular buses that go all over the place. You’d never wait more than a couple of minutes outside your house for a bus to arrive to go somewhere.
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In some cities, e.g. Vienna, public transport already beats cars. For playing your own music I have some mid/low-range noise cancelling and can watch movies
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I tell people yes do get an EV for your next car. But also use this chance to really think about if you need the car at all. Or does every adult in the household need a car each. Our city is trash for everyone having to own a car.
Best is to run your car to the ground. Then get an EV if you must own a car.
If I could guarantee that my job is remote forever, or have it written in my contract, I would sell my car.
Do you have access to food, stores, etc using public transport? How do you go about buying stuff and bringing it back home?
I live a short bike ride away from the shops. I have some side bags for the ebike I built so lugging groceries isn’t too much of an issue.
The biggest shift is learning you wouldn’t shop the same way you do with a car. With a car you go to a big supermarket and load up a trolley. Spend over a hundred for a week’s worth and drive home. With a bike you kinda just buy as needed for the next couple days. You do more trips throughout the week which is kinda nice too. Forces you to get out of the house more. Benefit I realised when doing this was vegetables were less likely to just die out in the fridge since I bought as needed. Which meant I spent a little less overall.
Unfortunately mass transit that works for everyone is the enemy of vehicle manufacturers.
And the rich. They need to differentiate themselves somehow from the poor
Optional first class for higher price could be used for this.
That’s a good idea
I’m entertained by the fact that everyone gets hung up on how EVs are still not totally green because the electricity comes from coal fired plants or that there’s still manufacturing emissions and stuff…
It’s like, yeah, but compared to an ICE car, which has all the same problems (environmental cost of manufacturing the vehicle, mining and refining the fuel, transporting it, etc) but EVs don’t actively pollute nearly as much during use, and they speak as if these are of equal environmental cost, and they’re not. Additionally, ICE vehicles need a lot more oil to operate that needs to be changed and disposed of every few thousand miles.
It’s like doing less harm isn’t valuable to the people arguing against it, but then again, those are probably the same people who drive their V8 truck to get groceries.
Plus there are plenty of people, like myself, who live in areas where the electricity comes from mostly renewable sources.
Me too. I’m pretty well surrounded by nuclear and hydro-electric here in southern Ontario.
Also, charging from the electrical grid means EV’s immediately get future improvements in CO2 usage when the grid improves its mix of power sources.
I remember saying it about 10 years ago:
You can see the culture shock in how progress works across different countries:
Japan, let’s build a shockingly fast and quiet train! USA, here’s an electric car that drives itself.
I don’t understand how hydrogen didn’t win the race. Transports and explodes just like gasoline. Make car go fast. Doesn’t degrade like lithium. Can be “mined” by throwing electricity at water during times of excess generation by renewables. When you burn it, it turns into water. Has none of the national security concerns of distribution of lithium mining and production in other countries.
Hydrogen currently doesn’t produce, store or transport well. This means it is not as economical as gasoline.
Not really a fan of lithium batts either. We’re going to end up with some environmental problems down the line but its the most economically viable tech we have at present if we’re intending on living the way we currently live.
Hydrogen for cars is a nonsense. It is so inefficient. Unless you are making it from oil, which why the oil companies are pushing it, you lose loads of energy making it. Then it has to storages and transported, which is hard. Then the car use of it is inefficient too.
So ignoring the oil industries’ “blue hydrogen”, and looking only at “green hydrogen”, you are looking at about 22% of the energy generated ending up pushing the car forward! With an EV it is about 73%. So hydrogen car are over 3 times more expensive to run.
Plus you can just plug in an EV anywhere. With an EV, if need be, you can charge, slowly, off a normal home socket. Of course, normally, you fit faster charging at home.
Hydrogen cars is lie pushed by big oil.
To be fair, i think it may have some use for fleet vehicles like taxis and long range buses because these are applications where being able to refill in minutes at a fuel depo you already run actually matters as compared to the stress you would put on a large battery fast charging day in day out. I also believe that Japan has a nuclear plant that is being built with the capacity to efficacy generate hydrogen directly. That being said, for personal vehicles I can’t really see the market of people who need that fast of a refil being large enough to reach the economies of scale necessary to be practical.
Afaik it has a higher energy density than common batteries, so it could be useful in things like aviation where this is the main concern and you can build special infrastructure to support it.
The frustrating thing is that a car running on hydrogen works really well, has a pretty long range and can be refueled quickly, so it looks like a good alternative. It’s only when you ask how that hydrogen was made and how it arrived at the refueling station that things start to fall appart.
What about hydrogen fuel cells? They got 79% efficiency and can replace batteries of EVs right?
Yes, but turning electricity into hydrogen doesn’t have 100% efficiency, during transport, storage and filling the car with hydrogen you lose some of it and only then you get to the fuel cell, which isn’t very efficient in itself. And then you lose a bit more (although very little) in the electric motor. All this amounts to the 22% of the guy above (didn’t check the number btw, but it sounds plausible)
and can replace batteries of EVs right?
Toyota bet on this and it didn’t go anywhere in the US. They’re pivoting to battery EVs.
Even countries that invested heavily in hydrogen are pulling back - like Denmark eliminating all hydrogen stations. https://energywatch.com/EnergyNews/Renewables/article16432608.ece
EVs are basically cars, but more expensive.
It would be great if our public transit system in the US was funded enough to actually be useful for more than just occasional, highly specific trips.
That argument will be thrown at every god damn step we make towards a better planet. It’s not valid.
Electric cars will not save the planet. Electric cars will save the car industry.
But they’re a whole lot better for the planet than gas cars. And cars won’t go away till we make alternatives. Which we should do as quickly as possible, but will still take a while.
It’s not good enough. Cars are a bigger problem than their immediately obvious issues like pollution.
Cars are simply not a good method of individual transportation, regardless of what energy they consume. Theyre just too big.
The problem is that the real way to cut down on emissions would be to accept that not every good can be available at any time and that’s a bitter pill to swallow.
We have tuna caught in South America, hauled to Thailand for canning and hauled back to the US to be sold. Turns more profit than local catches because the megacorporations can save a couple bucks on worker salaries. And that is just an example, it’s not just the food industry, hauling shit to hell and back and back to hell and back is common practice.
Doesn’t even have to be unavailable at times. They could can it in north America if they wanted to. Outsourcing jobs (read: exploiting foreign countries and their workers) should be heavily taxed if not banned in most industries
You mean exploiting, right? :)
We also don’t have enough lithium to replace every car with an electric.
On some level it has to be public transit and better infrastructure or ecofascism.
No one wants the former so they’ll take the latter.
Not true. There is more than enough lithium in the world for every person to have an EV. This is not even accounting for new battery chemistries like sodium ion that don’t use lithium.
I still want more public transport though. Trains are remarkably easy to electrify and don’t need batteries.
I’m pretty sure you’re wrong even if we count the stuff that would take millions of tons of ore mined per kilo of lithium.
What numbers are you basing this on?
“The U.S. Geological Survey produced a reserves estimate of lithium in early 2015, concluding that the world has enough known reserves for about 365 years of current global production of about 37,000 tons per year”
“With known lithium “resources” at 39.5 million tons, we get about 50 years of supply with 100 Gigafactories”
There is a lot more lithium in the world, particularly in solution in the ocean, that is not currently listed in resource estimates. As lithium demands increase, more of these sources will be utilised.
that’s from 2015 and relies on some assumptions that im sure were reasonable back then but would raise eyebrows now.
we don’t need to extrapolate the amount of lithium in a tesla battery anymore, it’s 60 or so kilograms, not the 10 the article uses for its calculation.
i like reserves a heck of a lot better than resources for this calculation, but even using resources i come up with a disconcerting 4.4kg lithium available for each persons ev battery. not nearly enough.
my own source here says typical EV batteries have only 8kg lithium in them (see the spoiler for the flaw in their use of a particular nature article that definitely wasn’t making its calculation to represent an ideal universal median ev), but even then there’s not enough to give everyone an ev.
but wait, it gets worse! we use lithium in a bunch of other stuff, and even if everyone on earth could get by with half a battery and didn’t need to haul a load, go offroad or anything that would require a bigger battery, they’d still want lithium batteries in their phones, tablets, computers, power tools, flashlights, vapes, game controllers, standard size rechargeables of all kinds and you know, all the stuff we use lithium for that isn’t storing charge (and there’s a lot!).
it’s not all the way worse yet! resources is great if we’re trying to maximize for evs, but awful if we’re trying to save the planet in any way. who out here is trying to frack (in terms of extracting a “tight” resource, not the process itself) more?
if we use the more conservative reserves figure it gets positively grim: just one and a half kilos of lithium for each person on earth! so if we don’t wanna tear up every scrap of the planet to make batteries only a little over the current number of cars on earth (1.474B) could be accommodated and even then that’s using the “typical” mass of lithium in each vehicle!
hold on, i can make it grimmer: producing enough evs for everyone on earth would need 6.6 billion more rolling chassis to put all those batteries in. so four times the productive capacity for cars that we have now. that’s not gonna be easy on the environment!
so id say we can’t put every person on earth in an ev. if we’re getting out of this its gonna be with reduced consumption, not an increase!
the math!
- 39.5Mt World Lithium Resources
- 13.5Mt World Lithium Reserves
- 60 Kg (138lb) lithium in a tesla battery
- 8 Kg (18lb) lithium in a more “typical” ev battery
- 1.474 Billion cars in the world
- 8.1 Billion people on earth
- 5.1 Billion adults on earth
39.5Mt/1.474B = a little under 53lbs per existing car. so we can’t even replace all the worlds existing cars with tesla batteries, let alone produce enough cars for all the people on earth. but what if all the cars were using what was categorized in Nature as a more typical EV battery?
39.5Mt/8.1B = 9.75lb lithium per person on earth. so we can’t give everyone a more typical EV battery (and we better have 100% perfect recycling!), but a lot of those are too young to drive, so what about just adults?
39.5Mt/5.1B = 15.4lb lithium per adult age 20 or up on earth. so we can’t even give the earths adults a “more typical” EV battery!
i’m just gonna show work for the reserves calculations without editorializing:
13.5Mt/1.474 = 18.3lb
13.5Mt/8.1B = 3.33lb
13.5Mt/5.1B = 5.3lb
It’s worth diving into the nature article that my source bases their claims of 8kg on. they look at the existing evs and calculate the amount from that. existing evs are almost universally small and light whereas replacing all the cars on earth with evs would require a decent portion of evs that can go off road and carry loads and have awful coefficients of friction that would use bigger and more lithium intensive batteries.
You might be right on this one. I’m not able to find a source to dispute that.
In other news, some Chinese car manufacturers are releasing cars with sodium ion batteries late this year / early next year. Lithium might not be a bottleneck for EV production.
I still agree with your initial point. More public transport is needed.
Didn’t meant to make it seem like an internet nerd debunking post. Sorry about that if the tone is off.
But yeah that’s what I meant by our choice of public transit (I don’t wanna say degrowth because of the goose chasing meme “who are we degrowing, who are we degrowing, motherfucker!”) or ecofascism.
Unfortunately no one wants to have public transit and no one’s making billions in profits off public transit so we’re gonna get ecofascism one way or another.
Yeah but everyone “needs” an e bike nowadays, which compared to regular bikes is another step back.
If it makes the difference between someone using a bike and not using a bike, it’s still a step forward.
In a way, yea sure. I have a gut feeling that those battery’s will become the next big issue once gasoline has a way lower market share.
eBikes allow older folks and disabled folks to get out.
You guys are truly insufferable. You hate on cars, but then hate on people who rely on eBikes.
I guess we should stop making electronic wheelchairs, too. Quadriplegics should just sit and die.
Nah you’re looking for a fight just to feel good, foolish person.
I never said anything about old folks, ya weirdo. But since you’re so adamant i actually have a disability but i’m not taking no for an answer from life.
I want to do good by our planet to the best of my ability even if it means i have a little more pain. It’s not like the pain will ever stop existing so i might as well do the right thing.
Heck an e bike would actually make my commute longer, there is no sense in getting one for myself.
I never hated on cars either, you just made that shit up like the rest that’s coming out of your mouth. If you want a car, go get it. If you need a car, go get it. If you don’t need one, GO GET IT. I don’t give a fuck.
I just know like everyone else that battery’s are also fucking bad. Same as gas, same as using up all of earths resources etc etc.
You’re ignorant if you think everyone’s disability is the same.
I had a double lung transplant. My lungs were so bad, I couldn’t even walk to the bathroom. An e-bike allowed me to get out and be independent.
But I guess since your pain was tolerable you think all disabled people can pedal a bike? Ignorant.
Public transport is awesome…
It just doesnt always go where everyone needs to go
Bikes are great right until you have to do large grocery shopping or get to a place far away.
I cant do without a car where i live.
You live in a place designed around cars, that’s the problem. Society worked fine without cars for a good long while. We could have adopted trains, bikes, and buses without the car and things would be going swimmingly. The idea is to fix our bad town planning so that it’s reasonable to get to any destination using any mode if transportation.
You live in a place designed around cars, that’s the problem.
Exactly. Then Europeans downvote people who say they need a car, because their country/city/state/whatever has terrible planning or public transit.
Not my fault I need a car. Stop blaming me. I didn’t design the city. I didn’t plan where the public transit will go.
Do you really think I love paying $1200+ per year for insurance, $120+ per week for fuel, and $20,000-80,000 for a new vehicle when mine borks itself?
Nobody is blaming the American people. It’s the car corporations that bought and dismantled light rail and train systems and lobbied the government to build cities around the car.
And now the American people are so brainwashed into thinking owning a car is freedom and public transit is “socialism” that they will fight tooth and nail against anything that is against their “freedom” to be forced to own and pay for a car.
I partially agree but you forget that every country = its people and people can either not give a crap or start complaining. Politics are same everywhere, they want to secure their position, so they will follow those who are heard. Otherwise they will follow their own interests.
It’s not as easy as people complaining, though. What are people going to do? Move to a city in 2500KM away in the next province over, because that province has slightly better infrastructure?
No, they’ll complain, nothing will be done, and they’ll stay where they are because they have friends, family, and a job here.
I understand that it’s easier to do in a lot of European countries, but I can literally drive for over 25 straight hours, and still be in my province in Canada. It’s nearly impossible to do any kind of proper public transit, and it’s not feasible to move over it.
Canada really stifled its non-car mobility when it basically cut all intercity rail service after WWII though, especially for the interior and west coast. We used to have a pretty good train network for getting between nearby cities like Calgary and Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver, Kelowna and Vancouver, and even Victoria and Nanimo. We don’t even have a proper Vancouver to Abbotsford commuter rail despite them being right next to each other. There were obviously even longer routes like Toronto to Vancouver but that can’t really compete with planes so no real surprise they went (I don’t count that one Via Rail tourist service as a proper Vancouver-Toronto line). Pretty much the only remaining part of Canada with decent intercity rail is on the Toronto Ottawa Montreal corridor, and it does get decent ridership because of it.
Also, within many Canadian metro areas, which if you live in one you’ll most likely stay inside of it for the vast majority of your daily travels, you could actually reasonably live without a car depending on where exactly you live and what you have to do. I for one live in the Vancouver area and don’t own a car. I take the bus and metro almost everywhere, and on the rare occasion I need to go somewhere that’s straight up without public transit access I just take an Uber or something. I think the fact that many of the largest Canadian cities are investing now more than ever in building more public transit, and those projects are more often than not praised by residents with high ridership to back it up is a sign that there is a high demand for non-car travel at least within urban areas. And even for smaller towns, the infrastructure is already there for good bus services like most small towns in Europe have, and if we want to go beyond that and upgrade particularly high demand routes, streetcars and tram-trains are also tried and true options for lower density urban areas. Canada even had plenty of streetcars before we decided to rip them up.
I get that this doesn’t really help people in rural or remote Canada but if we can work to reduce the need for cars in a city, where the majority of people live, that’s still a win and sets a precedent for future transit expansion into lower density areas. Non-car dependency isn’t an all or nothing deal for the entire country.
Obviously there are many challenges to Canadians finding car free alternatives. If you’re in a situation where you do need to own a car, then you need to own a car, and you shouldn’t feel bad for that. But I think that simply saying that there is no other way in Canada or that we’re just hopeless and doomed to car dependency forever due to our population density is missing a lot.
I will also recommend the YouTube channel RMTransit for really good Canadian public transit content.
Man I was gonna type something about how it’s because your city is designed around car centric infrastructure and density and cargo bikes and shit but honestly there ain’t no way I’m gonna say anything to you that hasn’t already been said.
I think there’s this misconception that the US is basically NYC or dirt-road farmland, and the reality is that there’s a lot of in-between. I live <20 minutes from the closest mall by car, yet even transportation or food delivery apps (e.g. uber, uber eats) essentially don’t serve my area, so forget public transportation.
Tis the problem of car centric sprawl no?
It can depend. Sometimes sprawl is car-centric because it’s heavily developed with no alternative, but sometimes there’a a lot of undeveloped land in between things.
Bikes also aren’t great for snow, heavy rain, or extreme temperatures.
Bikes are better than cars in snow, however. A fat bike’s tires ‘float’ across the surface of the snow, like snowshoes, and can handle any snow depth. Regular mountain bikes and commuter bikes with knobby tires handle a few inches of snow quite well, because the knobs capture snow between them, and snow sticks to snow. Cars, on the other hand, need a vast expenditure of effort to plow the snow off the road surface, so they don’t slide around in a few inches of snow, or get stuck in deeper snow.
And then there’s the salt, which destroys the cars…
There’s no bad weather, only bad clothing
Imagine if all the posting just to shit on biking and public transit just rode a bike or something instead of sucking on a tailpipe for dear fucking life.
Blocking anybody who has to argue in bad faith, I have better things to do with my time then listen to your disengenuous bullshit.
Imagine if people understood that not everyone lives where they can ride a bike or take public transit.
Stop blaming people for being born into a country that essentially requires cars.
Imagine if people who said “We CaNt JuSt TeAr DoWn CaR iNfRaStRuCtUrE fOr TrAnSiT” understood that’s EXACTLY what we did for cars. 🤷
Stop worshipping your tailpipe and crack a book sometime.
You’re ignorant.
Ah, the argument of the uninformed with no leg to stand on. Imagine if you put half the energy you put into fighting advocates of alternative transportation into literally anything useful. 🤷
Enjoy your blind worship of big oil.
My blind worship because I live where public transit isn’t good, and I’m not biking 45km one way to the store?
Again, you’re ignorant. You’re fighting nothing. Grow up.
I don’t know about you guys, but I’m giving up on public transport and going for a driving license.
Reasons include constantly late buses and trains, constant errors in signal systems and track systems, people talking loudly on phones or playing games on full volume, completely packed trains so people have to stand within centimeters of eachother.
Just got sick of all of it and realized I had enough.
It’s like with everything - trying to make maximum profits means quality goes to the bottom. I rather pay for fuel and cars and have my own car then deal with that shit anymore. I want to be happy, not sad.
