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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

#321

Post by yellowapple »

localhost wrote: post #261
yellowapple wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real problem, as the author tangentially points out, is our over-reliance on cars to move us around. And the author fails to explain why (in the context of climate change) that's actually a problem. Suburban areas have a disproportionate carbon footprint specifically because of ICE-powered cars being required to go anywhere; if those ICE cars become electric cars, and that electricity comes from solar/wind/nucl…

Another aspect of suburban living that I don't like at all is how it isolates people from each other. I've made the mistake of living in a subdivision with lot sizes > 0.5 acres. Because of the low density, my kids can't have spontaneous interactions with friends that I enjoyed while younger, i.e., walk / cycle to their houses to hang out. Everything becomes scheduled and everything requires a car to shuttle the kids…

Having grown up in a rural area, the openness and freedom/room to play outdoors was - IMO - well worth the inconvenience of things being more spread out (not that this was ever that big of a problem; the main pain point was more the lack of sidewalks and bike lanes, but that's relatively easy to fix).

This was in an area where (IIRC) the mandated minimum lot size was 1 acre, and the vast majority of properties were 5+ (I lived on 8).

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#322

Post by 693471 »

ensiferum wrote: post #85
693471 wrote: post #47

I bought my EV for three reasons: 1. Traditional car maintenance is expensive and sucks 2. I'm betting due to natural disasters in the environment and in the Oval Office we will see fuel prices continue to rise 3. While I don't think it will save the planet by itself, it can certainly save lives. Emissions are dangerous to breathe in and we are willfully ignoring it.

And the energy comes without emissions? :)

The electricity required to refine a gallon of gas is 6kW, so add that into the equation on what I'm not responsible for emitting.

ICE vehicles are doing double duty on emissions but nobody's paying attention.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#323

Post by JeffL »

srfilipek wrote: post #211
JeffL wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just curious, do you have stats on your watts per mile efficiency you can share? How it compares to the EPA estimates?

244 Wh/mi over 17,000 miles in a Model 3 LR. That's really close to the rated 310 miles for the 75 kw battery. The vast majority of my miles are driving 72 mph on the freeway.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#324

Post by yellowapple »

notJim wrote: post #296
yellowapple wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real problem, as the author tangentially points out, is our over-reliance on cars to move us around. And the author fails to explain why (in the context of climate change) that's actually a problem. Suburban areas have a disproportionate carbon footprint specifically because of ICE-powered cars being required to go anywhere; if those ICE cars become electric cars, and that electricity comes from solar/wind/nucl…

> Hell, at that point the suburban areas could actually be net carbon sinks, given there's more room for big carbon-devouring trees in between single-family/duplex/quadruplex homes than there typically is between skyscrapers packed as tightly as possible (as is the norm in even small cities, let alone large ones). This is absurd. If people move away from the suburbs, the trees will still be there, and more if we get…

> Building a suburb generally involves cutting down trees.

Only for cities/suburbs that exist in forested areas. This would exclude most desert and prairie ecosystems (for example).

> Humans living in a smaller area of the planet leaves more room for trees.

Sure, mathematically-speaking, and planet-wide. On a more local scale, though, this is not necessarily the case.

There's also the consideration for relative density of CO₂ sources v. sinks. I don't have any actual data here, so feel free to ignore this, but my hypothesis is that urban areas would have significantly higher CO₂ densities than suburban areas (which would in turn have significantly higher densities than rural areas, and in turn wilderness areas), and this high-density CO₂ would not readily/easily/immediately disperse / would be more difficult for surrounding carbon-sink areas (like wilderness and - I'd argue - potentially suburban areas) to even receive, let alone absorb. You thus end up with big lingering blobs of CO₂, continuously fueled by human occupation, and unable to disperse. Spreading out humans would better spread that CO₂ sequestration load, thus allowing better efficiencies.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#325

Post by ilaksh »

magduf wrote: post #179
ilaksh wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bicycles are great, but there is no reason all cars need to weigh two tons or have room for 5-7 passengers.

Actually, there is: if you get in a collision with a large vehicle in a really tiny one, you're going to die. So you need a larger vehicle that can make a crash survivable. Basically, it's an arms race.

Right but I am replying to the guy who is advocating bicycles.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#326

Post by ilaksh »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #196
magduf wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Ford Focus is still a 3000-pound car these days. Even "economy" cars these days are rather heavy, and you'd be surprised how little those 70s cars weighed. Old Mustangs are positively lightweight. While the land boats are mostly gone, cars in general have gotten larger and especially heavier, even with lightweight technologies and materials used to offset the increase. The way I read it, the OP was talking about…

Just like a bicycle. Which are also booming. And which are also dangerous to ride on the road with any car. The argument I was addressing was, if its really an arms race, then no way we would go from the 4800lb Ford Thunderbird to the 2600lb Ford Focus in a generation. Folks have by and large opted out of the arms race. For better and for worse.

But bicycles offer zero protection in contrast to lightweight cars which at least provide some.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#327

Post by megablast »

agumonkey wrote: post #26
charlesism wrote: post #10

Alot about our system of roads and cars strikes me as crazy. Most of the vehicles on the road have only one person in them, yet weigh as much as an elephant. Nobody drives under the speed limit, which is typically fast enough to result in hundreds of thousands of fatalities every year anyways. Every neighborhood designed primarily for these idiotically heavy vehicles, that occasionally drive over pets and children wh…

The worst part about it IMO is traffic light and stops. In a city, if you can drive around 20mph (25 maybe) uninterrupted, you get in most places very fast, very pleasantly and with fuel savings since you never slow down. Instead of a smooth flow, you get drivers that do: - high accelerations - nervous braking - idle engine running between 30 - 60 seconds (120 max?) Pure waste. Maybe I'm asking for a problem too comp…

The worst part about it is accepting the 40,000 deaths a year just because people are selfish and feel they need a car to get anywhere.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#328

Post by irq11 »

edmundsauto wrote: post #265
irq11 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? I’m not talking about “industrialized nations”. I’m talking about you, personally. If you elect to have one fewer child, you can drive a car everywhere and fly first class for vacation and eat a big steak every week of your life, and you’ll still be greener than your neighbor with the solar panels and the Tesla. Doesn’t matter what birth rates are in the industrialized world.

Another way of saying it is that you believe by not having kids, you can ethically consume the energy that your offspring (and their offspring) would have consumed.

No, not at all. I don’t believe that; the point is that the magnitude of the impact is so dramatically greater that all of this other stuff is rounding error.

Drive a Tesla and put solar panels on your house and eat vegan and shop local at the co-op. Knock yourself out. But the single guy next door with no kids who drives a muscle car and eats big red steaks every day is still doing more for global warming than you are. It’s not even a question.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#329

Post by irq11 »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #177
irq11 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can deny it all you like, but it’s true [1] and you’re just illustrating the point: nobody wants to do the things that actually matter , because those things are painful (not incidentally, #2 is “sell your car”). It’s far easier to mock the people who tell you the truth than it is to make substantial changes. [1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environment...

Or those things will just scare people into doing nothing because it's so overwhelming and hopeless to be so uncompromisingly perfectionist about it. Whereas making a car or a plane trip or a burger or a child x% more expensive will move us in the right direction and even that will be resisted to a crazy degree.

What is so “scary” here? It’s literally the easiest thing you can possibly do. It’s the default option.

“You know how you were gonna have a second kid? Here’s a thought: consider using the time and money you’d spend on that to do something else. Like retire early.”

If we can’t convince people not to do an expensive, time-consuming, painful thing in order to help stop global warming, we really do have problems.

Re: The electric car as a talisman of false hope

#330

Post by AnthonyMouse »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #291
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only if you equate “having fewer children” to “killing yourself”, which is transparently incorrect, not to mention tasteless. It's the same result. You're just choosing it for yourself instead of your parents having chosen for you, which only seems fair -- I know I'd rather be the one to choose for myself. But the point is that the choice, in either case, is not worth the cost when there are better alternatives. If…

Killing a living, breathing person is nowhere near choosing to not make a new one, morally, practically, legally or in any other sense. Edit: choosing not to have children (and I don't think that's a reasonable way to expect people to try and address climate change) is not population reduction. It's population control, if you like. You are making sure that the population doesn't keep increasing. Killing people on the…

> Killing a living, breathing person is nowhere near choosing to not make a new one, morally, practically, legally or in any other sense.

I don't think anybody wants to have the abortion debate right now, so let's not.

> choosing not to have children (and I don't think that's a reasonable way to expect people to try and address climate change) is not population reduction. It's population control, if you like.

The fertility rate is already below the population replacement rate in developed countries, so having fewer children than the current baseline is a (further) population reduction.

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