101–110 of 635 posts
- 90% of emissions come from off road vehicles (agriculture, mining, etc), not in road vehicles.
- Most of the electricity for EV charging stations is not green.
EVs are a way to shift blame for pollution to the public so that corporations can continue doing business as usual. Want to fix pollution? blame yourself while I continue to make money.
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Batteries are still heavy. For instance, the VW id.3 (small-ish EV) has a curb weight 250-450kg (550-1,000lbs) more than my wife's gasoline VW Passat, a quite spacious estate wagon.
I doubt an ID3 weighs only half a ton. Probably at least three times that?
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>Do we want 100-people in a neighborhood driving 100x cars to a store? Or would we rather have 1x large truck deliver a (heavier) package to 100x different people? Why can't the majority of the people walk to a store and the rest can be serviced by a smaller truck?
My overall point is that the "last mile" we're just screwed unless we fundamentally redesign our neighborhoods and shape of our cities. Its pretty damn obvious that as the USA is laid out right now, we don't have any good last-mile solutions outside of 100x different people driving to the same store and picking up what they want. And its not like houses are going to pick themselves up and move to a store, and given z…
It’s great to bring this problem up. But the focus on EVs is a distraction. > EVs tend to shed around 20 percent more from their tires due to their higher weight and high torque compared to traditional internal combustion engine-powered vehicles. It’s covered in this panel discussion on Fully Charged: https://youtu.be/LeHakmL6eEc?si=ebBAn8RSDhmmLfHI Fleet operators don’t see any significant difference in tire wear. E…
Exactly. Designing transit systems around cars was a colossal mistake. Now that the data are clear, it's time to rebuild. Over the next few decades, we need to tear down existing car infrastructure and replace it with walking/biking/transit. A side benefit (aside from the particulate pollution, energy waste, noise pollution, high death toll, increased inter-destination distance, decreased QOL) is that it'll be like a…
Yes, cars are expensive. We can afford cars today. No one wants to get poorer and go back to walking.
Years of creating artificial reefs from old tires are catching up. I wonder how sharp those people are? Next we should find about how those giant ships that blow their exhaust under water and kill all life.
People probably don't even realize that most tires are synthetic rubber and thus are also bad for the ocean.
Is there a program to map the locations of old synthetic tire reefs, and what is a suitable replacement for reef reconstruction and regrowth?
Typical hackernews to have threads full of well meaning but ultimately misguided people saying ah we have some technological solution for this. The solution to this problem and every other problem caused by driving is not driving . Period. Not driving doesn't require any new technology, it just requires getting serious about alternatives to driving. (safe, separated bike ways, ebike and micromobility subsidies, rail,…
The reason zoning in the US requires developments to take cars into account, is that people in the US want cars. And if someone builds a new residential or commercial development that doesn't recognize this reality, it creates problems for everyone as people have nowhere to put the cars that they definitely want to use.
Yes, there are some people who live in cities and are happy to have the entirety of their life limited to the region they can walk to, or the places where government-organized mass transportation can deliver them like cattle. But those people are the vast minority. Everyone else wants a car.
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So you're going to drive a multi-ton vehicle instead of bringing a folding cart?
Yes, because we're a wealthy and productive society and the fruits of human progress in the past 300 years have allowed us to build a civilization where nearly everyone can afford to use a multi-ton machine of nearly incomprehensible complexity and sophistication to carry them around, instead of pushing a cart like a peasant 5,000 years ago did.
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> Why can't the majority of the people walk to a store and the rest can be serviced by a smaller truck? Single-use zoning. Most people in the US live in areas where you can't walk to a store.
The nearest store is a 45 minute walk (one way) from my townhouse. I'm not in the US, but Canada. Driving drops that to 8 minutes. The sprawl is real and I just don't always have 1.5 hours to dedicate to grabbing bread.
Assuming an average adult walking speed of 3 mph, I'm guessing that's somewhere in the ballpark of 2.25 miles? So something like 11 minutes at an average cycling speed of 12 mph, yeah? The distances here don't feel insurmountable.
It’s great to bring this problem up. But the focus on EVs is a distraction. > EVs tend to shed around 20 percent more from their tires due to their higher weight and high torque compared to traditional internal combustion engine-powered vehicles. It’s covered in this panel discussion on Fully Charged: https://youtu.be/LeHakmL6eEc?si=ebBAn8RSDhmmLfHI Fleet operators don’t see any significant difference in tire wear. E…
> What we need to focus on is infrastructure for walking, biking and public transportation And busses, light rail, intercity trains. But America associates one-car-per-person with all kinds of twisted politics and self-esteem anxiety. We need a psyops program to wean people off cars, and it will take a decade or more. Just look at the anger in any HN thread that is critical of cars, it runs deep.
America offers various lifestyles, from big cities like NYC, Boston, etc where a car is a liability, to near suburbs that are well served by transit (eg, NYC tri-state area) where you probably need a car but your daily commute doesn't involve it, to more spread-out and rural living where car is absolutely necessary.
This speaks to a trade-off between density and car-dependence. People across the globe face similar trade-offs (eg: 50% of Dutch persons own a car, 86% of French households do...)
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Yes, because we're a wealthy and productive society and the fruits of human progress in the past 300 years have allowed us to build a civilization where nearly everyone can afford to use a multi-ton machine of nearly incomprehensible complexity and sophistication to carry them around, instead of pushing a cart like a peasant 5,000 years ago did.
Yes we can afford this now. In the context of "Tire Dust Makes Up the Majority of Ocean Microplastics" how long can we afford this? Just like dumping Freon, and CO2 into the atmosphere have long term consequences that require our society to change, how long can we go aerosolizing rubber?
The fanatic anti-car people will actually reduce the chances of meaningful regulation being passed here - as they won't be able to resist trying to use this opportunity to actually make cars more expensive and less accessible to people, and reduce overall car use, etc.
Thus, reasonable people who are not fanatically opposed to cars will be suspicious of whether the proposed regulation is really needed, or just an excuse to achieve socio-political goals that can't be achieved directly.
This is exactly the same dynamic that affects other issues, e.g. gun control. The extremists will block reasonable progress.