The electric car as a talisman of false hope • Hacker News Board

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#281

Post by Forge36 » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 5:37 PM UTC

bdamm wrote: post #247

Forge36 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interesting thing about electric cars is that many of them sorry scheduled charging (my charging station also supports remote configuration of when I can charge). If my electric provider was willing (and able) to control when I could charge my car, they could use the the batteries to level out peaks in production to a degree. Off peak charging already exists today, however there aren't enough electric cars to mak…

Much easier would be for the utility to transmit the current price of power and have the car or charger charge the car when the price is below a certain threshold. The problem is that the best time to charge a car is immediately after it has been used, so it is ready to go the next time. Who wants a half dead car sitting around?

That feels like a different implementation of the same idea.

Me? I charge my car when I come home from work. Provided it's charged by morning I don't car when in that time it's charging

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#282

Post by Forge36 » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 5:38 PM UTC

saghm wrote: post #257

jdofaz wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some cars have a lot of capacity, so in some cases that is like saying who wants a car with only half a tank of gas?

Unfortunately, until there's more infrastructure supporting electric cars, it's much easier to refill your car with gas if it runs low while you're out than recharge it.

That's why I like having a hybrid. My daily commute is entirely electric

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#283

Post by Faark » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 5:38 PM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #231

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The really irritating thing about the 'solve it all at once' argument is that electric cars, in a very real way, are the keystone that lets the entire arch support itself. Renewable energy sources are already the cheapest ways of generating electricity at certain times , the trouble is that those aren't always when the electricity is needed. Energy storage makes investment in renewables much more profitable. The prob…

The author talks about a lot more than the cost of energy to power the car. For one, there is the cost in energy of building and maintaining the roads.

The author is kinda talking about civilization. And no, expecting humans to give up much on that front won't save the planet.

We have to improve on a lot of fronts and the attention argument is one of the better ones... finding better ways to achieve the same is worthy pursuit. Sailing across the ocean to save on emissions worthy action for some young female climate activist, but certainly not something many of us would be willing to do.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#284

Post by Forge36 » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 5:39 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #267

saghm wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, until there's more infrastructure supporting electric cars, it's much easier to refill your car with gas if it runs low while you're out than recharge it.

The dominant share of vehicle miles are commuting to work. If you work 9-5 and there is a charging port at work, you plug into it when you get there and you're charging during daylight hours. Meanwhile the average commute is 16 miles each way against cars that now have a ~300 mile range, which is plenty of slack for the odd evening use while still not needing to charge outside of work on anything but rare occasions.

I wish I had a charging station at work. My commute is short enough I don't need it fortunately

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#285

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 5:39 PM UTC

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…

I read the article's message as follows: electric cars are still cars and cars are always going to be bad for the planet, so stop driving any cars, including electric cars.

So he's not trying to argue for a total solution or no solution. He's arguing that the proposed solution is actually part of the problem, and that it is not a solution because it is part of the problem, not because it is a partial solution.

You, and others in this thread, are saying that electric cars are a small step towards a solution to climate change, even though it is not a complete solution. However, any solution to climate change, partial or complete, needs a reduction to our greenhouse gas emissions and electric cars do not achieve such a reduction (to CO₂ specifically).

That's because having only a few people buy electric cars does not reduce CO₂ emissions given that everyone else keeps buying more and more normal, dirty cars; and having everyone buy electric cars does not reduce CO₂ because then we have enough electric cars that we are still emitting more than we can afford to.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#286

Post by WorldMaker » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 5:43 PM UTC

bdamm wrote: post #247

Forge36 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interesting thing about electric cars is that many of them sorry scheduled charging (my charging station also supports remote configuration of when I can charge). If my electric provider was willing (and able) to control when I could charge my car, they could use the the batteries to level out peaks in production to a degree. Off peak charging already exists today, however there aren't enough electric cars to mak…

Much easier would be for the utility to transmit the current price of power and have the car or charger charge the car when the price is below a certain threshold. The problem is that the best time to charge a car is immediately after it has been used, so it is ready to go the next time. Who wants a half dead car sitting around?

"Smart Grid" utilities can even "borrow" electricity from a sitting car's battery when demand/price is high and "repay it with interest" when demand/price is low. Some CCS chargers and car models already support this idea, but it may be a while to see it in practice.

You generally don't need a full charged car at all times of the day: if you and your car both know you'll be at work for the next 8 hours and most likely you only need the 20 miles to get home, and a couple after work errands (plus some range floor for emergencies), there's plenty of leeway in how and when it charges.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#287

Post by agumonkey » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 5:49 PM UTC

JeffL wrote: post #162

agumonkey wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

true, but I'd bet a 100$ that people accelerating too fast do speed too long and brake too much..

I gun the shit out of my Tesla at a green light, but look far ahead and slowly ease to a stop using regen braking only. Regen braking and one pedal driving is a nice incentive to not waste energy with brakes, and as EV's become more popular, I bet driving habits will become more efficient generally across the board.

you know I was talking about ICE. Electric motors are a lot simpler so wild change in momentum is probably free and as you say you have regen braking..

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#288

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 5:50 PM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #132

theworld572 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So whats the alternative? Do nothing at all? If you have $100k left to pay on your mortgage, and somebody offers you $5k towards the mortgage are you going to tell them they're offering you a "false hope because you'd still have $95k left to pay"? EDIT: This is also known as the "nirvana fallacy": because the solution is not perfect - that means it is worthless. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy

No, the alternative is to figure out how to change the very fundamental levers of the system in a way that enables change on a scale that matters. The individual consumption lens is going to accomplish nothing. If you could move an entire country from being car dependent to being largely car free, by pushing rapid urbanisation and transit and you put 20 car drivers onto a train or a bus, then we're starting to talk a…

>> Or if we eliminate meat consumption altogether rather than promising people magic lab meat every five years, that would have an effect.

With this I don't agree. People need meat for a healthy diet. Completely eliminating meat is just as fantastical as magical lab meat and indeed requires some magical unicorn technological solution (like giving everyone B12 supplements or whatnot).

Reducing meat consumption, of course is another matter. However, we are going to have to live with at least some greenhous gas emissions and the ones from the animals we farm for their meat are the ones we will be forced to keep until last.

Because, ultimately, we need to eat meat, but we don't need to drive cars, fly in planes, have each our personal communications device, etc etc.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#289

Post by WorldMaker » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 5:52 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #267

saghm wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, until there's more infrastructure supporting electric cars, it's much easier to refill your car with gas if it runs low while you're out than recharge it.

The dominant share of vehicle miles are commuting to work. If you work 9-5 and there is a charging port at work, you plug into it when you get there and you're charging during daylight hours. Meanwhile the average commute is 16 miles each way against cars that now have a ~300 mile range, which is plenty of slack for the odd evening use while still not needing to charge outside of work on anything but rare occasions.

In the 300 mile range you start to get near the point where the average (mean and median, maybe not mode) commuter can charge once a week on an average work week at a fast charger at the local grocery store for merely an hour or two and still not worry about range. Work charging and home charging are nice to have slow and steady options that make EVs easier than gas, but it's about to the point where if you treat it like "gas" with a once a week fill-up that is increasingly an option if you relax your worries about "range" to the point that gas users are currently relaxed about in keeping their tanks full.

(Range anxiety for ICE will eventually make a huge comeback. Electricity is everywhere, imagine driving a car where you couldn't just plug in anywhere the electric grid is and had to go to "stations" of a scarce mostly single-purpose resource for power. Haha.)

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#290

Post by WorldMaker » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 5:56 PM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #233

theworld572 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, while you sit there waiting for the perfect solution (which is completely unrealistic) people actively working on real solutions. > spending billions on something that gets you from 100 to 99.9 you're wasting time and energy that you don't have. Of course those numbers are just made up but they are also very far from reality. Solutions to climate change have actually been ranked in terms of total cost and total a…

> So, while you sit there waiting for the perfect solution (which is completely unrealistic) people actively working on real solutions. The author acknowledges electric cars are a modest improvement. And who is working on the better solution?

Better question is who can work on the better solution?

The article claims it is a problem of consumption, but yet also it's a systemic problem. You can't fix systemic problems from consumption choices, and blaming individual consumers for systemic problems misses the point entirely of: a) who is to blame, and b) who could fix it.