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The electric car as a talisman of false hope

jussipasanen.com

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Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#111

Post by justin66 »

jacquesm wrote: post #87
Denzel wrote: post #13

His argument distills to: solve it all-at-once, or don’t solve it at all. This is an uninteresting and uninspiring line of thinking that ignores the nature of socially dynamic systems which don’t exist in a world of instantaneous cause-and-effect. His conclusion states that electric cars make a difference, but they don’t make a real difference: “I do think they can slightly reduce unsustainability” but “by switching…

That's a pretty uncharitable reading of TFA. My take-away is this: if we use the electric car as a way to persuade ourselves that our 'way of life' is safe if only we all switched to electric vehicles then we are ignoring the elephant in the room: it is our way of life that is the problem, not how we transport ourselves.

A "way of life" isn't something you flip a switch on, it's a conglomeration of factors which might or might not be made to change. I think that's the parent poster's point.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#112

Post by phtrivier »

bjourne wrote: post #92

The numbers are somewhat contested. See potholer54's well-sourced video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwMPFDqyfrA He cites ghg savings of about 20-30% for a common mix of electricity production sources. Of course, Jussi Pasanen is still completely right. The only solution is to stop driving cars.

Fine. Which rural neighborhood do we nuke first ?

Big cities can definitely phase cars put, and should electrify their public transportations for the people who can't bike.

Some form of "small number of passengers, not short but not long range" trips are going to have to be done ouside of cities, unless you displace people.

If "displacing people to cities" is your advocated policy, or "preventing people from traveling at all", that's a legitimate point to argue, but be prepared for fierce resistance from well meaning people (who're not going to massively vote for you...)

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#113

Post by wffurr »

I made this same point on an article about "where will apartment dwellers and city dwellers with street parking charge their EVs". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20678842

It was a question that was completely missing the forest for the trees. Just like this article is claiming all the EV boosterism is doing.

An EV car is still a car. It's still three tons of steel that goes way too fast and gets used in all manner of inappropriate ways. As an EV owner, you are still part of the problem. Not to mention that you just bought a fantastically expensive vehicle to signal how much you "care" about the environment, but not enough to give up any creature comforts. And how many anti-malaria bednets could you have bought instead if you got a used fuel efficient ICE or, gasp, no car at all?

Much higher impact would be accelerating retrofitting our cities and towns for other modes of transportation: bikes and scooters, massively expanded public transit, and walking.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#114

Post by reitzensteinm »

Nasrudith wrote: post #72
reitzensteinm wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you dump BEVs on a grid that's transitioning towards renewables, you'll delay that transition. It doesn't make sense to account for the emissions as being the average of the grid, because you're delaying shutting down your dirtiest power to deal with the marginal load. BEVs are clearly the future, and offer opportunities for distributed storage and demand dispatch that will help us keep the grid stable even with h…

Doesn't that contradict itself? Increased storage capacity delaying the transition to renewables? When storage at scale is the hard part and electric car batteries can power a house for a few days? Not to mention that the transportation sector is a part of the grid fundamentally. Even if it interferes with one metric it is still better overall which makes the complaint seem like it misses the point.

In the short term, it means you're just keeping fossil fuel power plants online for longer (if you're in the process of transitioning). You stop burning oil in your car though, and it's still a win, though in terms of ROI not an amazing one.

In the long term, once you're generating so much renewable energy that it's causing instability in the grid and you can't pump more in, BEVs are a probably an essential component of handling that.

Certain grids at certain times have already reached this point (the SA battery being a great example of where BEVs could have helped), but most are many years away from it, depending on how the price of solar trends.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#115

Post by srfilipek »

growlist wrote: post #100
NullPrefix wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>brake discs Regenerative braking does not have this problem. Although the tyre problem remain.

Though the extra weight of the regenerative system has to be taken into account.

Tesla's brake pads for the Model 3 are scheduled for replacement after 250,000 miles of use (according to tesla rep. I spoke to).

No, I did not mistype that.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#116

Post by acidburnNSA »

dTal wrote: post #98
acidburnNSA wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Consider using the term "low-carbon energy" in place of "renewable energy". We want to promote the right stuff. Biofuel is considered renewable but is high carbon. Nuclear fusion would be low carbon but not considered renewable. The difference matters hugely for future energy policy.

Biofuel is carbon-neutral because the carbon comes from the atmosphere. It's fine to burn it because its emissions have already been bought and paid for in its creaion. The problem with carbon is digging it up, in an open cycle. Renewable is a more strict term than carbon-neutral, it's true, but all "renewables" are by definition closed-loop and hence carbon-neutral.

This is a common but incorrect assumption. Biofuels are very far from carbon neutral. Renewable is in no way restricted to the desirable.

As an extreme case in point, wood in particular is a horrifying energy source due to health detriment from particulates.

Have a look at some data:

https://partofthething.com/thoughts/wp-content/uploads/ipcc-...

Source: Schlomer S., et.al., 2014: Annex III: Technology-specific cost and performance parameters. In: Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the 5th Assessment Report of the IPCC

https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5...

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#117

Post by PeterStuer »

alexgmcm wrote: post #2

Honestly, I hope electric cars become commonplace just because of the reduction in noise pollution let alone PM and CO2 emissions. Furthermore, I'm not really sure what the author thinks we should do? How can we maintain modern civilisation without factories etc.? Reverting to some primitive state seems neither realistic nor desirable.

Btw: In reference to noise pollution, expect to go batshit crazy once the low speed EV's start making all sorts of crazy sounds. Thank the automotive lobby that at the time keen on embracing a service model, got inspiration from the early mobile phones and wanted a 'ringtones for cars' business added.

https://newatlas.com/eu-ev-acoustic-noise-avas/60022/

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#118

Post by Nasrudith »

Looking at other articles the guy seems to be full in apocalyptic thinking - a few in he has an article on "Collapse" and lifeboat thinking. Those are words are downright toxic meme symptoms referring to paranoid and evil ideologirs respectively. They are like referring to science based medicine as "alleopathic" is a sure sign that they are off the deep ene in alternative medicine.

To explain "collapse" briefly there is even a /r/Collapse convinced of coming doomsdays from various sources from any fear de jure from ebola, economic meltdowns, or global warming.

"Lifeboat ethics" refers to a rehash of Malthusians and Eugenicists arguing helping people who are worse off is actively immoral and rapidly justifies travesties. There is a reason I skip straight to evil when describing them - when in power their actions can have no other end.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#119

Post by sokoloff »

growlist wrote: post #105
sokoloff wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Incentivise retrofitting of electric transmissions to cars with internal combustion engines What would that do to help? Modern transmissions are fairly efficient (basically anything with a lockup torque converter is now very good and any manual or computer controlled manual transmission is excellent in terms of efficiency). I can’t see what an electronic transmission on an ICE engine would do that would possibly pa…

Removal of the ICE in favour of electric I meant, in case I wasn't clear. Massive amounts of power etc. are required to produce the chassis, bodywork etc. - it makes sense to get a lifetime's use out of them rather than throw away the whole thing just because the ICE has gone out of fashion.

Ok. The transmission is a very specific (and overly specific for your intended meaning) assembly, so it was indeed not clear.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#120

Post by PeterStuer »

acd wrote: post #32

Electric batteries gives the most effect in shared transport such as buses and taxis. If I remember correctly it’s 50x more efficient with batteries in such public vehicles. This is due to higher utilization they buses drive all day vs private cars mostly are parked. This we should electrify public transport first for maximum carbon reduction.

Smart Grids touted as 'the future' in the energy distribution sector are counting on all those parked batteries for their network balance.
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