281–290 of 635 posts
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Every car already has a way to track its own mileage without requiring GPS
Not all states require periodic inspections. Who will be checking those odometers? Is it the honor system or are we requiring a third party inspection?
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The Ford F150 is the best selling car in the US by a long-shot and it's a gas guzzler. Given that, I don't think consumers care a lot about how much they pay in taxes when deciding on a vehicle to purchase. I don't think this'd have the incentive that you're suggesting it would unless something else is done, such as increasing the tax overall.
The most popular F150s are significantly less gas guzzling than my 2005 sedan that I replaced with an F150. Not to mention that my F150 is more capable in winter conditions (major importance in Michigan) and more capable for the DIY stuff I do (I actually do regularly get lumber, plywood, drywall and other things that only fit in the 8ft bed that I actually bought). All while using less gas... Efficiency has gone up…
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Are you sure about the tradeoff bit? If my memory doesn't fail me, there was an article on HN recently that covered how EVs are environmentally more friendly, but health wise worse exactly because they generate more tire particles.
I'd be interested to see it, that's not an obvious conclusion to me. The health difference of an EV is a percentage increase in tire particles but a complete absence of tailpipe emissions. I would not expect tire particles to be the more significant factor, especially when the impacts of microplastics are so unknown. Tailpipe emissions are a significant problem ( https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/a…
> "Tires release 100 times the amount of volatile organic compounds as a modern tailpipe, says an analyst."
> "Moreover, tire emissions from electric vehicles are 20 percent higher than those from fossil-fuel vehicles. EVs weigh more and have greater torque, which wears out tires faster."
I'm not sure how all of this works out in the grand scheme of things, or how accurate those claims are, but I think those are issues that surely deserve more looking into.
[0] https://e360.yale.edu/features/tire-pollution-toxic-chemical...
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That's why so many people are cautious about "EVs to save us all", to put it mildly. We are so focused on climate change and greenhouse gases that we do not see a lot of other issues and may exacerbate some of them in the process of decarbonisation.
Agreed. Even solar + wind - when the buzz started it was all rainbows and butterflies because we found a silver bullet to energy! There is no such thing as free lunch. If you start absorbing massive amounts of solar, you will have some effect on the environment that we have absolutely no clue about. Same with interfering with wind patterns and ocean currents, which would happen with energy generation at true humanity…
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The positive externalities are even more enormous, which is a problem for environmentalists.
>The positive externalities are even more enormous What do cars specifically positively provide? NOT including the positives that exists due to constructing infrastructure around that mode of transportation (artificial issues).
I worked on a phd for 4 years looking into this problem indirectly and for a decade at Ohio State they have had working solutions to the tire dust issue but it is IMPOSSIBLE to get funding. A Billion dollar industry and NO ONE cares about cleaning it up if it means increasing costs by 5% or more. It has been WELL KNOWN for 50 years! We are basically aerosolizing carbon in MASSIVE amounts right where we live and work.…
Natural rubber currently has the property of being mostly inside trees not being ground up into a fine powder - but there's no obvious reason at scale it would be any better except in terms of "slightly less wear over time".
Is it's chemistry fundamentally different?
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That's why so many people are cautious about "EVs to save us all", to put it mildly. We are so focused on climate change and greenhouse gases that we do not see a lot of other issues and may exacerbate some of them in the process of decarbonisation.
Agreed. Even solar + wind - when the buzz started it was all rainbows and butterflies because we found a silver bullet to energy! There is no such thing as free lunch. If you start absorbing massive amounts of solar, you will have some effect on the environment that we have absolutely no clue about. Same with interfering with wind patterns and ocean currents, which would happen with energy generation at true humanity…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Ford F150 is the best selling car in the US by a long-shot and it's a gas guzzler. Given that, I don't think consumers care a lot about how much they pay in taxes when deciding on a vehicle to purchase. I don't think this'd have the incentive that you're suggesting it would unless something else is done, such as increasing the tax overall.
The most popular F150s are significantly less gas guzzling than my 2005 sedan that I replaced with an F150. Not to mention that my F150 is more capable in winter conditions (major importance in Michigan) and more capable for the DIY stuff I do (I actually do regularly get lumber, plywood, drywall and other things that only fit in the 8ft bed that I actually bought). All while using less gas... Efficiency has gone up…
Has anyone here ever lived near a freeway or even moderately busy road? I made the mistake of renting next to the freeway. Noise was perfectly tolerable, but I could not use my back porch, because after just a few weeks, everything had a fine coating of black dust. I could not keep my windows open in the summer. I was certainly breathing this vile shit the entire time I lived there. This doesn't surprise me in the le…
It’s probably mostly soot from the exhaust. I’m few blocks away to railroad (caltrain) and the windows facing the tracks have same black residue
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EV bikes sure. price and weight of good EV bike dropped for last 5 years.
I don't know where you live but everything is too far apart in American suburbs. How you would fix that without tearing it all down? And it's totally impractical for transporting a family around. Road tripping. Visiting far away family. Day at the lake or beach. Going camping. How do you convince people to give all of that up and just be content with whatever is 15min away.
The USA subsidizes the suburbs to an absurd degree, pushing most of the costs into the future and making city dwellers pay more than their share for the rest.
Living in a relatively large house in the suburbs should in principle cost several times more than living in a flat in the city, because it requires vastly more infrastructure and the amortized cost of services is much higher. But our broken economic system has flipped this around and made suburbs extremely artificially cheap, while making most of the building practices that make denser walkable neighborhoods possible illegal under building codes and local ordinances.