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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

#271

Post by Mvandenbergh »

zzzcpan wrote: post #128
Mvandenbergh wrote: post #82

Why is the embodied carbon in the manufacture of the car the same in all the energy mix scenarios? Surely quite a lot of electricity is used in manufacturing electric vehicles. Also, solutions that rely on substantially reconfiguring living patterns - moving from driving-required suburbs to walkable communities also have large embodied carbon costs. It's all well and good to say that suburbs are energy inefficient bu…

> solutions that rely on substantially reconfiguring living patterns Surely switching to bikes or electric bikes is not that substantial and immediately eliminates a lot of car related problems.

Sure but there are many houses that are surrounded by just more houses for many, many kilometres with the nearest concentration of offices and other places of work, stores, and transport hubs (if there even are any) very substantial distances away. It's challenging to increase cycling when that is the case.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#272

Post by swagasaurus-rex »

Mirioron wrote: post #224
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…

> His argument distills to: solve it all-at-once, or don’t solve it at all. I disagree. I think the argument that's being made is rather that switching to electric cars isn't enough, but people focus on it so heavily that people feel as though switching to an electric car is saving the planet. The problem here is that it's not enough and due to how hyped up electric cars are there won't be enough will left to tackle…

The bigger problems is industry.

People have plenty of attention for the things they care about. What they don't have is the ability to change much at all about the bigger problems

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#273

Post by usrusr »

zip1234 wrote: post #164
michaelt wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re not mutually exclusive. Well, you can only spend a given dollar once. So if for example the government spends $$$$ to put an EV charging point in every street light, that's $$$$ they didn't spend making busses more appealing.

Except the government does even need to do that. The government could actually make money by leasing spaces/taking a cut of revenue to put chargers and letting private industry install them and manage them.

The reality of many governments however is that they are handing out money to the few people who frequently buy new cars for making those cars fractionally less unsustainable, while those who don't drive get pushed aside by even heavier and wider cars (using current "3" by BMW and Tesla as a comparison sample)

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#274

Post by concert-gilled »

michaelt wrote: post #12
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.

Some of the ideas that are popular with HN readers include: 1. Denser cities, like the centre of Paris or London rather than Los Angeles. 2. Walking, busses, metro systems, and cycle infrastructure for journeys within the city; high speed rail between cities. 3. Carbon taxes that cover the cost of recapturing the carbon. So ships and factories and things can keep operating, they've just got to plant some trees or wha…

1. How do we make existing cities denser?

2. Good where possible. Where cars are better suited, the cars should be electric.

4. Those will be EVs even better.

6. What does this entail?

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#275

Post by theworld572 »

mcny wrote: post #201
theworld572 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what would be EVEN more effective at fighting climate change than not having children? Committing suicide. But people don't want to listen to the harsh truths. They would rather consume their way out of the problem with electric cars, education for third world countries, reforestation, solar power and other false hopes.

> You know what would be EVEN more effective at fighting climate change than not having children? Committing suicide. I'm sorry but I think this crosses the line. I don't want to impose my morality on you but in my opinion me saying "most people should not have children" is not the same as basically telling people to kill themselves. I understand that I am in the minority when I say this I think not conceiving childr…

I'm not equating killing yourself with not having children. Of course they are not the same. I'm simply reflecting irq11's logic back at him: if the only measure by which you judge a solution is how much CO2 emissions are reduced then killing yourself is the best solution.

irq11 does not consider the costs of implementing a world-wide child reduction policy. A combination of solutions including education, birth control, electric cars, reducing flying, solar energy etc. is FAR more realistic than the "no kids, no cars" approach. He complains about harsh reactions but he is the one who started this off from a very antagonistic perspective that everybody is just a mindless consumer while he is the arbiter of harsh truths that people are too weak-minded to admit to.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#276

Post by magduf »

rhinoceraptor wrote: post #219
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly fewer folks are buying into that. The day of the 1970's 25-foot land cruiser are waning. The Ford Focus is now king.

Ford isn't making the Focus, Fiesta or the Taurus for North America anymore. The only passenger vehicles people are buying are pickups, SUVs and crossovers.

That's not quite true. What is true is that the only Fords people in North America were buying were pickups, SUVs, and crossovers, so Ford stopped bothering with cars in North America.

However, there's still people buying cars, but usually they're foreign makes. The American carmakers have spent decades trying to prove to people that they suck at making cars and only put their effort into trucks/SUVs, and American car buyers are finally getting the message.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#278

Post by concert-gilled »

cowsandmilk wrote: post #40
mcot2 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source? Does this hold true for diesel trucks and buses and garbage trucks which are very common in cities?

> Does this hold true for diesel trucks and buses and garbage trucks which are very common in cities? I know from the hybrid buses in Boston that they are a massive reduction in noise for the passengers. When you're at a stop, it is great to not have that engine idling. Electric will only be better in that regard. The garbage trucks though seem to make a shit load of brake noise though. And noise from trash dumping o…

Won't electric trucks use regenerative braking?

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#279

Post by WorldMaker »

Mirioron wrote: post #224
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…

> His argument distills to: solve it all-at-once, or don’t solve it at all. I disagree. I think the argument that's being made is rather that switching to electric cars isn't enough, but people focus on it so heavily that people feel as though switching to an electric car is saving the planet. The problem here is that it's not enough and due to how hyped up electric cars are there won't be enough will left to tackle…

But all of that is built on the false premise that this is solely and directly a individual level consumption-based problem (which the article ends with, and is wrong about). Most carbon problems are industrial or only indirectly affected by an individual's consumption patterns. In terms of individual consumption habits that make a noticeable difference on the scale of climate change:

- Energy saving appliances (LED lights) [Mostly a checkmark; done]

- Vegetarianism / local, sustainable, slow food [Growing trend]

- Electric vehicle [Current fight]

That's mostly it from an average individual's day to day carbon footprint. After that you might argue over things like flight patterns and cruise ship carbon, but those are less day-to-day and more infrequent and start to get into "nice to have" easily interchangeable work/vacation/models.

The article is correct that there are greater systemic issues to solve. Sure, it would be great to bring back more public transportation, (re-)build better more walkable cities, better deal with the environmental externalities of our many industries, etc. But we aren't going to push the scales on those without collective effort, real political policy decisions, and probably regulation and taxes. We aren't going to correct these things on "many people's urge to do something" at an individual level, and focusing on it heavily isn't what's exhausting or will exhaust individuals from bigger problems, focusing on it only being an individual effort crisis is distracting us from dealing with bigger problems.

This isn't a problem solvable from consumption alone and it is well past time we stopped pretending it is. It's a political problem we keep pretending the markets will solve because the markets own the politicians and that's what they want the politicians to tell the people.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#280

Post by concert-gilled »

pjc50 wrote: post #39
imtringued wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time spent producing noise in a given location decreases with speed. The worst thing in terms of noise is not a car passing by every 10 seconds. It's a bus idling for 2 minutes in front of you.

We now have hybrid buses that shut off at idle. Simple and effective noise reduction.

We also have fully electric buses.

https://www.volvobuses.com/en-en/our-offering/buses/e-mobili...

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