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280M e-bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars

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Re: 280M e-bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars

#181

Post by paddy_m »

camgunz wrote: post #95
hackernewds wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

walking 10km? in most US cities that is neither viable nor safe anymore

Well that's the point I think. In practically all of the US you can't even take a sidewalk where you want to go. It gets even worse if you want things like walk signals or to avoid huge intersections, or even mass transit at all.

Not only that, our built environment is uninviting to walk in because it's built for cars. When have you ever walked by a parking lot and said "Oh my god, that parking lot was amazing, I want to spend time around it"? Yet we require by law parking lots to be built everywhere in America. We have legally compelled property owners to build something ugly.

Thanksgiving is coming up. Black Friday is the busiest shopping day of the year. Drive around, notice how on the busiest shopping day of the year, most commercial parking lots still aren't full.

Re: 280M e-bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars

#182

Post by rychco »

k_dumez wrote: post #17

"In the United States, a staggering 60% of all car trips cover less than 10km." Being lucky enough to live in a walkable city (NYC) this is insane to me. The world is so car-brained.

I was recently in Europe & came back to the United States with a renewed sense of hatred for cars, single-family zoning, & our awful public transport. Cars especially continue to steal our space, time, health, sense of community, & money.

In Bern (Switzerland), for example, there's trams/streetcars for short trips in the most populated parts of the city; there's (ice? electric?) motorbuses for trips around the rest of the city; and trains/rolling stock for trips to other cities/countries in Europe. All of these methods are timely, clean, & affordable. The sense of freedom this provides is so incredibly liberating. The sense of community from all these shared spaces wonderful, and also entirely absent from the average North American lifestyle. The quality of life is genuinely incomparable.

Re: 280M e-bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars

#183

Post by estebank »

tfrutuoso wrote: post #172
camgunz wrote: post #83

I've said it before and I'll say it again: building the future around cars of any kind is completely unsustainable. We cannot reproduce the rates of rich world car ownership in the developing world without mass catastrophe (raw materials/labor needed for construction and maintenance, raw materials/labor/space needed for roads and parking lots, literal tons of waste--batteries, tires, steel, plastic, foam--, energy ne…

That's very elitist. Not everyone lives in large cities with whole mass transit systems or works the usual 9-5. Even in large urban areas it's tricky to get around past a certain time. I remember working unexpected shifts and later staring at closed metro stations, having to walk in the rain to get home. No thanks. Also, some people like cars. Deal with it, i'm not ditching for an e-bike or whatever. An electric moto…

You've identified a problem: public transport in some places sucks. But then veered away from the obvious solution: invest in it to make it not suck.

Re: 280M e-bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars

#184

Post by bobbylarrybobby »

tfrutuoso wrote: post #172
camgunz wrote: post #83

I've said it before and I'll say it again: building the future around cars of any kind is completely unsustainable. We cannot reproduce the rates of rich world car ownership in the developing world without mass catastrophe (raw materials/labor needed for construction and maintenance, raw materials/labor/space needed for roads and parking lots, literal tons of waste--batteries, tires, steel, plastic, foam--, energy ne…

That's very elitist. Not everyone lives in large cities with whole mass transit systems or works the usual 9-5. Even in large urban areas it's tricky to get around past a certain time. I remember working unexpected shifts and later staring at closed metro stations, having to walk in the rain to get home. No thanks. Also, some people like cars. Deal with it, i'm not ditching for an e-bike or whatever. An electric moto…

The $20k car is not elitist but the $2k ebike is? Interesting.

Re: 280M e-bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars

#185

Post by cornholio »

camgunz wrote: post #83

I've said it before and I'll say it again: building the future around cars of any kind is completely unsustainable. We cannot reproduce the rates of rich world car ownership in the developing world without mass catastrophe (raw materials/labor needed for construction and maintenance, raw materials/labor/space needed for roads and parking lots, literal tons of waste--batteries, tires, steel, plastic, foam--, energy ne…

There is a little something that's missing from the analysis above: what people actually want. And what many people want, across many cultures once they reach a certain level of wealth, is the suburban home: low density living in isolated housing units set in a park like environment with ample greenery. Just look at almost any billionaire's mansion and you will see this pattern which becomes an aspiration for the middle class. Most people, given enough wealth, desire and choose the McMansion.

This choice, replicated across millions of families, has massive implications: urban sprawl and low density make transit unworkable, shops need large catchment areas that can't no longer be reached on foot or bike, and it all devolves into car dependency. These communities will need point to point transport for the foreseeable future.

So you either double down and hand-wave reality away "no, we'll just build high density housing along transit corridors", or you accept that people won't magically do what you think is right, and find real solutions. Electrifying cars is the low effort solution, but we could imagine making point to point transport more like public transit, for example, a Boring company Loop- type system where pods exit the tunnels and complete the last mile on the street level, of where self-driving taxis get you to a multi-modal terminal where you can catch a traditional train for the city center.

Re: 280M e-bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars

#186

Post by kibwen »

nurple wrote: post #106
kibwen wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The damage is so deep that it feels irreversible at this point, like the US will be doomed to cars and traffic forever. There's lots of energy to change things, but you need to find the right city. It will still take 50 years to even approach the level of Amsterdam, but here in Boston I live car-free and the bike infrastructure is getting better every year. Right now the problem is density: solving the car problem…

Or perhaps it means building less-dense light commercial? I'm not a big fan of the perspective that our only solution to the current housing issues are to package humans in quarters whose main selling point over chicken coops is that your feces don't fall on the heads of your downstairs neighbors.

This is needlessly hyperbolic. You don't need to cram humans into a SimCity arcology to achieve sustainable levels of density. Hell, you don't even need skyscrapers, which are foolishly inefficient in any case. 3- to 6-story mixed-use development is all it takes (when I say "build housing" I'm only referring to the most pressing crisis, not suggesting that housing should be zoned separately).

Re: 280M e-bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars

#188

Post by DoneWithAllThat »

estebank wrote: post #179
thegrim22 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when 20 years ago if anybody had doubts with the way things were heading we were told "there's no war on cars you conspiracy theorist, nobody's going to come for your cars you conspiracy theorist"? After 20 years they've made enough progress shaping the narrative that they no longer need to lie and hide their agenda they can just put it in the open.

The thing that continues to happen is that people living in rural towns think that cities changing their mobility priorities to decenter cars is a personal affront. People asking to properly account for the negative externalities of car ownership can be construed as a war on cars through taxation, or as a removal of a subsidy. The only difference is framing.

The thing that continues to happen is urban residents with limited understanding of the world outside their bubble think a future without cars is anything but a laughably naive fantasy driven by an entirely imaginary utopian ideal.

Re: 280M e-bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars

#189

Post by shortcake27 »

PopAlongKid wrote: post #123
hurryer wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you care if they don't wear helmets?

Because if they suffer a serious injury they are going to drain hospital resources from people who did not cause their own disease/injury, possibly become a permanent disabled person on the public dole, and in general raise the cost of health care.

It’s not quite that simple. Helmets are deterrents - Melbourne is a fantastic example where cycling is less common than it should be and public bike schemes keep failing specifically because of the requirement to wear a helmet. Companies like Lime try to solve this by attaching a helmet to the scooter. 90% of the time the helmet is missing. Yeah I could spend 30 minutes walking to every scooter in the area trying to find one I can ride legally, or I can just get an Uber.

When people are deterred, they take less eco friendly forms of transport, and are less active. This has negative health consequences, although difficult to measure and compare. But it’s not black and white.

The entirety of Europe gets by perfectly fine with public healthcare and no helmets. So I don’t buy the argument that this is truly a problem for healthcare.

Re: 280M e-bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars

#190

Post by kfarr »

jjcoffman wrote: post #119

Something I’ve thought a lot about is why don’t we have more support around golf cart and golf cart adjacent vehicles? They are fairly cheap compared to a car, can be BEV, drive around on most city streets, fractions of the weight and danger to pedestrians etc. I know it doesn’t work in a lot of areas due to weather etc, but it seems like an obvious stop-gap solution. It is also kind of “cool” to drive around in a go…

I agree and love the electrek dude and his Chinese import mini truck, but automobile companies are trying to make money. Selling a plastic molded macho truck for 90k fully loaded is a high ticket item with relatively good margins compared to low cost mini cars. The incentive tends towards gigantic tanks, not a joke, it fulfills fragile human ego and makes a bunch of money.

Here’s the link I refer to above, it’s a great read and shows that the tech and demand is there but the regulatory environment in US and profit motive means it’s a huge uphill battle. https://electrek.co/2023/11/14/two-years-after-buying-a-2000...

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