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Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study

keck.usc.edu

381–390 of 661 posts

Re: Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study

#381

i moved to beijing in 2015.. and i have to buy a air purifier, prepare masks for winter. pepople talks about air polutions so much, it feels like we are struggle, not living a life. i remember one day, it was so bad, i have to wear gas mask to go outisde, i know it's rare, and people are staring, but yes, its that hard. it's 2026 now, you barely see bad days in Beijing, most people wear mask only for the flu, not for…

Factories were one source, but in-home coal furnaces were a gigantic pollutant source in aggregate. I read articles about villagers banned from this who couldn't afford cleaner heat sources. Is that still the case?

That’s true. I remember during start of Covid lockdown we had a curfew for a few weeks yet the pollution was at 250-300. Mostly because of home heating.

It’s well known at this point, it’s always polluted in the winter yet summers are “fine”.

Re: Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study

#382
post #356

I want and EV but I don't have a charger and I cant have a charger since I live in an apartment.

If you park in the street, and there are public chargers in a 1-km radius around your apartment, you can probably make it by "topping-up" every two or three days on a public charger. Unless you spend upwards of 40% of your battery daily, you'll be good. If you own a parking spot in your apartment complex, and depending on your jurisdiction, you can install your own charger.

You can even charge once a week or even less, depends on the usage.

You also don't have a gas station inside your apartment. Depending on which car you get, you could go charge it to charging station. I'm not saying this is instant process.

Re: Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study

#383

I want the future to focus more on the brakes and tire dust, and the increase in cancers and other problems by people who live near busy roads or highways experience. Nobody studies this, and combustion or battery, everyone is affected by it. Even playgrounds are filled with shredded tires, which borders on biohazard.

I want the future to focus on things that actually solve the massive problems that come from mass use of automobiles: I want bike paths and trains. Yes, so boring compared to EVs I know! And so cheap! And no catchy names like "gigafactory" for making cities bikable, or turning parking lots into children's playgrounds.

Re: Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study

#384
post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happy to be shown where I can learn more about this different rate of change and trend which sets our current climate change apart from the rest of Earth's history.

It seems like you won't have any trouble finding that yourself if you really wanted to. This "I'm just asking questions" mode you're in can be considered a type of trolling called "sealioning". More details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning

More bad faith interpretations.

Here is at least something tangible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surface_temperature#Glo...

On this page can be found the following graphic https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ca/EP...

On that graphic -- under the heading 'Ice cores (from 800,000 years before present)' in case the link gets truncated -- one can observe regular peaks in temperature that took place before the current one. I'm happy to be explained what caused them, as it could not have been human industrial activity.

That's it. I'm open to dialogue but won't entertain any more lazy dismissals and unfair characterization.

Re: Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study

#385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the fleet of EV's age, I'm sure we'll see equivalents... "The high voltage wires were just dragging on the street sparking, presumably with all the safety features disabled" "They were driving with a 10 gallon coolant tank on the roof, presumably because the coolant loop had a big leak and needed continuous topping up".

You're not allowed to drive cars like that in a functional society. When you go for your compulsory car checkup it wouldn't pass the required safety standards.

What is allowed and what actually happens are two very different things, my friend.

In the neighbourhood I live, there's a guy who visits someone here several times per week. His headlights are broken, the tires are worn smooth, the exhaust is loud beyond all reason. Given the general state of the vehicle, I don't have high hopes for the brakes.

I reported it to the police. I'm really not the type of person to do that, but this is worse than anything I've seen. Of course nothing happened. I didn't even get a reply. They don't give a shit. Some day that guy is going to rear-end my car and break my neck because his brake lines finally gave out.

Also, the compulsory car inspections only work for honest people. People with illegal mods will put back the stock parts for the inspection, and switch them back after. I'm not gonna say the inspections are worthless, but it does make a lot of money for the state and the private actors who run the inspection centres.

EDIT to add: They made a law recently that the inspector has to take a photo of the car inside the inspection centre, because there was so much fraud happening with vehicles just being "inspected" on paper.

Re: Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study

#386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not allowed to drive cars like that in a functional society. When you go for your compulsory car checkup it wouldn't pass the required safety standards.

while I agree, there's many places where the compulsory car checkup is tied to your relationship with the mechanic. I don't think my parents ever had a "valid" car but the certificate always was. It never felt wrong (although I think it is) but more like mutual aid or service.

There’s also the fact that nearly 1/4 US states require no emissions or safety checks whatsoever [1]. So everything is valid by default and realistically the only thing stopping you from driving a literal rust bucket, with tailpipe dragging, poor combustion, or modified emissions filtering (like modifying your truck so you can roll coal down Main Street) is it a cop feels like pulling you over for it

[1]: https://goodcar.com/car-ownership/vehicle-inspections-by-sta...

Re: Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study

#387

No surprises. No matter how we look at it, EVs are much friendlier and safer to the environment. Some people argue the source of electricty can be contested against because that involves fossil fuel burning again, but in today's world we are rapidly moving away from it and towards nuclear/hydel/wind methods for generating power. I hope ICE cars completely become a thing of the past in the next couple of decades to co…

That's framing the topic completely out of the issue with global impacts of humanity on ecosystemic sustainability, including biodiversity. Less commut and more collective transportation is going to be far more significant in term of global impact, whatever the engine type.

Decent public transport makes all the difference. Luckily we have good transport here in the Netherlands and I haven't needed a car in 10 years. Also, the trains here have been running 100% on renewable energy since 2017.

Re: Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study

#388
post #28

No surprises. No matter how we look at it, EVs are much friendlier and safer to the environment. Some people argue the source of electricty can be contested against because that involves fossil fuel burning again, but in today's world we are rapidly moving away from it and towards nuclear/hydel/wind methods for generating power. I hope ICE cars completely become a thing of the past in the next couple of decades to co…

The number of ICE cars I get stuck behind from time to time that just REEK is amazing. I’m in a decently well off area too. Some putting off soot clouds, white smoke, nothing visible but clearly not doing complete combustion. Sometimes I wonder if half the cylinders are even working. I’ve heard one car like that is the equivalent of a surprisingly large number of modern ICE cars is in good shape. I love EVs. I’ve had…

I could see a single "bad" ICE car being the equivalent of 100 "good" ICE cars. Even the VW emissions scandal (where the cars were still functioning as designed, just not as well as they should) had instances where pollutants were 35x higher than they should be. So I could see an emissions deleted diesel (of which there are many, i.e. catalytic converter and DPF removed) could easily have more than 100x the usual emissions of noxious substances. Maybe even more! Especially if (as is often the case) the DPF was removed because something is faulty on the engine and was overwhelming the capacity of the DPF in the first place.

You can smell these cars from halfway up the road sometimes, when they're 100 metres ahead.

Re: Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study

#389
post #376
post #256

The real scandal isn’t just battery degradation… it’s that manufacturers have zero incentive to solve it. Your car becoming worthless after a decade suits them down to the ground. Battery swapping changes the game entirely. Imagine a national network of exchange stations (co-located with existing petrol infrastructure, you can use the overhead canopy for solar). Standard pack sizes scaled by vehicle class: compact ca…

Battery swapping is a dead technology, it is simply not economical. It is too expensive, much harder to scale and incompatible with cell-to-chassis designs. Industry barely managed to agree on a charging connector! Meanwhile, battery longevity is essentially a solved problem. Manufacturers do have an incentive to improve it due to customer demand, and modern NMC chemistry, cooling and BMS have improved significantly…

believe it when I see it.

no car you can buy with this longevity tech, no phone either- same issue.

Re: Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study

#390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the fleet of EV's age, I'm sure we'll see equivalents... "The high voltage wires were just dragging on the street sparking, presumably with all the safety features disabled" "They were driving with a 10 gallon coolant tank on the roof, presumably because the coolant loop had a big leak and needed continuous topping up".

You're not allowed to drive cars like that in a functional society. When you go for your compulsory car checkup it wouldn't pass the required safety standards.

What I think is missing today is a way to challenge someone else's car. A few independent reports should force an early checkup, and if passed soon after the accusation, the accusers should get their own just to have something at stake.
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