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All the arguments against EVs are wrong

noahpinion.blog

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Re: All the arguments against EVs are wrong

#31

Post by ZeroGravitas »

losvedir wrote: post #11
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #6

> Nor are those worries solely the province of cranks and ideologues — Simon Michaux of the Finnish Geological Survey has actually done extensive research On the contrary, Michaux tripped a few of my crank alarms, mention of EROEI being one of them.

What's wrong with EROEI (Energy Return on Energy Invested)? It seems sensible to me without knowing too much about it.

https://bountifulenergy.blogspot.com/2016/06/eroei-is-unimpo...

"ERoEI is unimportant and is being used incorrectly"

> In this article I will show that ERoEI is unimportant by itself. It usually does not matter if ERoEI is increasing or decreasing. ERoEI provides no guidance about which sources of energy we should pursue, nor does it offer any guidance about how much net energy will be available to us in the future. By itself, ERoEI is a useless figure, unless it is lower than 1, which it almost never is. Although different sources of energy (such as coal or solar PV) have different ERoEI ratios, this means nothing important.

More specifically, Michaux seems unaware that renewables have overtaken fossil sources in terms of EROEI so even if you think it's a useful measure, you need to use really out of date sources to calculate that renewables lose on this metric:

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-11-10/eroi-of-re/

and the paper that the above podcast discusses:

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/12/7098/htm

Re: All the arguments against EVs are wrong

#32

Post by LeifCarrotson »

vsskanth wrote: post #10

Yeah, this entire article has a single mention of "charging infrastructure", and even that's a passing reference. This doesn't address all the arguments against an EV. The fact of the matter is, if I don't have a Tesla and rent my apartment, I won't be able to reliably charge this vehicle. Even for someone with a house, long trips face unreliable charging infrastructure. It's gonna take a few more years

Conversely, if I own my home, with an attached garage, and especially if my spouse has a gasoline vehicle we would use for long trips, then charging infrastructure and range over ~80 miles are largely irrelevant to me.

Being a perfect vehicle for 2/3rds of the population is good enough for now.

Re: All the arguments against EVs are wrong

#33

Post by jmclnx »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #4

I get security errors in a couple of browsers, is it just me?: > https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/all-the-arguments-against-evs-... has a security policy called HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS), which means that Firefox Nightly can only connect to it securely. You can’t add an exception to visit this site.

I did not get this on the article, but I do get it every so often. I suspect it is that crappy cloudflare check people are using these days.

Re: All the arguments against EVs are wrong

#34

Post by dukeyukey »

mecsred wrote: post #21
mattlondon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gas as in gas (that you heat your house with), or gas as in petroleum (that you put in your car)? For both in the UK I don't think there were "shortages" where it wasn't available. Both just shoot up in price (like they always do at the merest hint of supply shortages or whalesale cost increases ..)

Why does the UK call gasoline petroleum? Every context I've ever heard it used in, including technical, petroleum is crude oil, which DEFINITELY doesn't go in your car.

We don't - we call it petrol, because it's similar to petroleum but isn't it.

Tbh 'gas' is the weird one, it's a liquid.

Re: All the arguments against EVs are wrong

#35

Post by vmladenov »

jmclnx wrote: post #24

For warm climates in urban areas, I can agree, but here are things never fully covered anywhere: 1. Heat in the winter, this will reduce you range, some just a little, but in places like Minnesota in Feb, a lot. 2. Stuck in traffic. If you are stuck in grid lock, that will cut in range, there have been cases were gridlock could last hours. Granted maybe EV stop power usage in this case. But under very hot or cold wea…

> Stuck in traffic. If you are stuck in grid lock, that will cut in range, there have been cases were gridlock could last hours.

This is just abjectly wrong. The absolutely best use case for an EV is during gridlock. You can run the heater on a (pre-heat pump) Model 3 for something like 2 days in 15F weather, and people have hypermiled it to 600 miles at 20-30mph.

In gridlock you’re not expending any energy to idle the engine, so there’s no “cut” in range besides from the climate system. Far, far better than idling a combustion engine.

Re: All the arguments against EVs are wrong

#37

Post by sebow »

Here's the biggest and most important reason (besides the obvious ones like grids, energy, etc.): most people >cannotIdealists should often take their heads out of their asses and understand most people don't have their privilege, ironically the most privileged ones screech about privilege while ignoring their own. Go ahead and tell developing countries to switch to EV-only, setting them back at least 10 years in terms of industry and economic growth.

Re: All the arguments against EVs are wrong

#38

Post by throw0101b »

jmclnx wrote: post #24

For warm climates in urban areas, I can agree, but here are things never fully covered anywhere: 1. Heat in the winter, this will reduce you range, some just a little, but in places like Minnesota in Feb, a lot. 2. Stuck in traffic. If you are stuck in grid lock, that will cut in range, there have been cases were gridlock could last hours. Granted maybe EV stop power usage in this case. But under very hot or cold wea…

> 1. Heat in the winter, this will reduce you range, some just a little, but in places like Minnesota in Feb, a lot.

Better inform the folks in Norway (75% EV share), Iceland (45%), and Sweden (32%):

* https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/02/electric-vehicles-eur...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_the_Nordic_countrie...

> 2. Stuck in traffic. If you are stuck in grid lock, that will cut in range, there have been cases were gridlock could last hours.

As opposed to being stuck in track in an ICE vehicles?

> To me, better off moving to very good public transportation.

Perfect is the enemy of the good:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_is_the_enemy_of_good

If we're stuck with cars (in the short- or long-term), we might as well try to reduce carbon emissions.

Re: All the arguments against EVs are wrong

#39

Post by justinator »

konschubert wrote: post #36
justinator wrote: post #12

They didn't touch upon tire/rubber particulate pollution being worse for EVs.

Is there any evidence that this is an actual issue? My understanding was that the particulates from tires are pretty big and don’t really go airborne

"There is emerging evidence that tyre wear particles and other particulate matter may contribute to a range of negative health impacts including heart, lung, developmental, reproductive, and cancer outcomes."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/02/230222210553.h...

Re: All the arguments against EVs are wrong

#40

Post by TheLoafOfBread »

funnymony wrote: post #28

Lets say EV cut co2 emissions by factor of 100x for each km traveled. Lets say number of cars in total follows exponential progression, 5% growth per year. It follows that after 100 years due to growth co2 gets back to original level. (Log100/log1.05=94) EVs are required bandaid, but degrowth will come eventually. (Possibly due to climate change supply will decrease and so will consumption)

Sorry, degrowth is a nonsense, unless you want to see millions of people dead due to mass famine thanks to deindustrialization which needs to go hand in hand with degrowth.
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