Electric Vehicles (Cars, Planes, and Ships)

I did say "at low speeds". Most of the noise of cars going past my window isn't engine noise, and it's not like this is a particularly fast road. Yeah, if you're trundling around or in congestion, they'll be quiet, but it doesn't need to be that fast to be audible. Then there are the eternal cases of major highways going right through built-up areas.

Anyway, wasn't meaning to say EV's are bad, just wanted to point out that reduced carbon emissions don't mean they're environmentally friendly as a whole. They just address the near-term obvious problem.

Did you know that India has more people than the US and Europe combined? Come on, at least give per capita statistics.

Outside of parts of Africa and India, over half the population of any given country does live in an urban area. In most countries, that's a far higher percentage. It's a reasonable thing to focus on.

Edited by RainehDaze on Apr 14th 2024 at 2:36:57 PM

Per capita statistics are not useful when discussing macro issues like net carbon emissions.

We could convert the US and Europe entirely to 100% sustainable transportation solutions and pat ourselves on our backs for cleverness, but there would still be many other nations out there driving their oil-mobiles around.

Getting rid of cars globally is a pipe dream, utterly impractical for any near- or medium-term solution. It can be attempted at limited scale in specific regions, sure. Go for it. To make the entire world sustainable, we need comprehensive solutions, not ideological ones.

There are something like 2 billion passenger vehicles in service today. You can't turn them off overnight.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 14th 2024 at 9:39:48 AM

And comprehensive solutions require acknowledging that electric cars are still cars and therefore, in the long run, something we really need to minimise the need for and usage of. Tyres are a terrible thing.

Then, yes, push for better public transportation where practical to reduce the number of tires needed on the road and, I guess, become a material scientist to find and push for more ecologically sustainable alternatives to tire rubber and plastics? I don't think anyone was against those.

I just don't see us all moving back to the days where we rode horses everywhere.

Ah yes, the good old days when channels had to be cut in the middle of roads so all the feces could be drained away.

People have been researching better tire materials for decades. It's a trickier problem than one might think. And it's not like buses, trucks, and other public transport vehicles don't need them either.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 14th 2024 at 9:56:56 AM

EV is the diet soda of climate change measures.

It's better than nothing, but there are other things we should be doing too.

Instead, we cut the holes in the side of the road so that the puddles pool over there when things get blocked instead. Progress!

Yeah, they still have tires, but it's a fairly obvious thing that road space usage has a direct correlation with number of tires.

Edited by RainehDaze on Apr 14th 2024 at 2:58:27 PM

Trains and trams don’t use ties, so public transport suitable for town size and above do avoid the tire problem.

There’s also just urban design, 15 minute neighbourhoods would save a ton of journey.

Again, (almost) nobody who is promoting the transition to electric vehicles thinks that we shouldn't also invest in mass transit and other forms of efficient urban transportation. These are not mutually exclusive options.

There are two billion passenger vehicles in operation today. I don't care how fast and hard we push "15 minute cities" or whatever. Those cars aren't going away any time soon. Thus, making them electric is a necessary part of the overall solution.

Pushing for a specific vision of how transportation should look is not as important as getting rid of all the gasoline engines. This is a practical problem, not an ideological one. Making it ideological will only slow down the rate of change.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 14th 2024 at 10:19:21 AM

Yeah, but if someone's going to ask a question like "Do they emit less carbon", it would be lazy to not point out that whilst they're environmentally better, they're still a far, far way from good.

Oh, we also didn't mention the impact of actually getting the materials, but I can't remember the specific carbon impact of rare earth metal mining.

This is neither a practical problem nor an ideological one, it's a discussion thread. >_>

Edited by RainehDaze on Apr 14th 2024 at 3:21:55 PM

Like I said, diet soda.

Those studies have been performed, but it is weird how many people pushing that narrative ignore the fact that we're doing far more environmental damage pumping out all the oil and natural gas from the ground.

It's worth noting that battery materials are highly recyclable, so we should be able to arrive at a point where the need to mine them dramatically drops as end-of-life batteries become the primary inputs to new ones. We won't ever stop having to dig more up, but the rate can be cut substantially.

ETA: Remember, cars are only one consumer of batteries. To become truly sustainable, we need massive quantities for grid energy storage. That business may become larger than even the automobile one.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 14th 2024 at 10:43:27 AM

Seems a bit of an odd pivot to what-about India and why we focus regularly on the US on this site considering:

1. This is a predominantly American site and the cars we're talking about are from American manufacturers or for American consumers, so we would be focusing primarily on the US.

2. The US is one of the greatest economic powers in the world, so any changes in economic policy or consumption has a major knock-on effect on less developed countries, either by the way we buy or the way we sell.

3. The US is still a major emitter of GH Gs.

And depending on how much you trust the accuracy of Statista (I would rather have the actual source, but I'm also not registering with them just to get at their citations), they stated that emissions by transportation is about 5 times higher in the US than India, in 2018. Wish I knew their source as well as a more recent recordings. Wikipedia still puts us ahead of India in overall emissions, despite the population disparity.

And unless you are either proposing population reduction or a drastic reduction in living standards, per capita emissions will be a part of the conversation. If a population of 10 creates 1 pound of trash per person and another person in another building creates 5 pounds, and you need to reduce your trash total trash to 8 pounds, you still need to look at the one guy making 5, even though the guys making 10 still will need to be considered at a macro level, based on requirements.

Either way, electric personal vehicles will not herald the green future we want, it's at best a salve. Electrifying everyone's cars I would argue is about as impractical politically and economically as proposing denser housing with increasing public transportation spending, but at least the second solution would do a lot more. Increased electrified buses, trams, railways and increasing investment to induce demand for 15-minute cities or commuter rails would better serve us, without getting into this silly strawman of having us go back to the horse and carriage as well as be less of a strain on our grid system since electric public transportation is less power consuming than charging a bunch of personal vehicles.

Various parties, including Tesla (PDF), have outlined proposals to make most economic sectors 100% sustainable across the globe using electrification, without getting rid of cars. (It doesn't address agriculture, because that's outside its scope.) Now, obviously Tesla has a bias in favor of its own products, but the proposal itself is fairly straightforward and sensible, giving a total capital investment of around $10 trillion.

While that may seem like a big number, it's less by a third than the expected fossil fuel investment over a similar time period. It covers everything from cars to mass transit to industrial processes, including upgrading electrical grids to handle the loads and replacing all power generation with wind and solar (and indeed nuclear), plus localized hydro, geothermal, etc.

I don't know if anyone has come up with solid numbers for transforming all of our automobile infrastructure into mass transit, ripping out all the suburbs and replacing them with higher-density housing, transforming cities into walkable, mixed-use environments, etc., but I have to imagine it'll be higher by at least an order of magnitude, never mind the political challenges.

What I do know is that, while I have no option to take the bus to work from my suburban, single-family home, I can buy an EV tomorrow and cut my transportation emissions substantially. So that is what I am going to do, without the slightest apology. (Well, not tomorrow. In a few months.)

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 14th 2024 at 11:16:58 AM

As far as I'm concerned, I *do* live where I can walk and take public transportation for my daily needs, and I gave up my car when I moved here. It's great. I like being able to walk places, I find more spread out suburbs dull. I never liked driving anyway. (Yes, I know, ironic of me checking in on this particular thread) But I do recognize that's not the case for a lot of people, and we have to work with what we've got to make progress.

The unfortunate thing is that our economic system promotes car usage, even for people who don't want cars. Where I live, there is no public transportation of worth and my job would require 2 hours of public transport just to get within 20 minutes of biking, compared to a 20 minute drive. Luckily for me, everything else I need is within walking distance, so other than work, my driving is greatly diminished, even if it's still potentially 20 minutes one way to get what I need and I have to plan out what I want to get so I don't overload myself traveling home. We promote large cost inefficient suburbs as the ideal American life, all public transportation is removed, and zoning spreads economic necessities away from residential areas. And those who don't want it have to fight the people with moneyed interests that keep the system in place. The electric personal vehicle isn't going to save the planet, it's a greenwash promotion of the car industry. Not everyone wants to live in cities, but not everyone wants to drive a car and are willing to deal with more dense housing as their personal compromise, but the people don't want to live in cities (and the people who support that style of living) gets more political attention than the people who wish to never have to drive a car again. And it's also a privileged solution, since you're likely not getting enough economic penetration of the lower class to buy another car, especially if they're in a location without charging stations. Increased public transportation would help reduce inequities between economic classes.

First, please use paragraphs.

Second, I don't see any practical suggestions for how to accomplish your goals. How are you going to get 2 billion cars off of the roads in the next twenty to forty years? Without that, you're just reciting slogans.

The transformation of infrastructure to support electrified transport can be accomplished by industry with only modest governmental support. There is no political will to enact the sweeping lifestyle changes discussed above, and so all that such a hardline approach would accomplish is to block practical changes.

Your declared enemy is the political status quo, and while I admit that it ain't great, good luck transforming it in time to save civilization from climate change.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 14th 2024 at 11:56:29 AM

Electric cars will help with climate change, and local pollution from combustion, but it's important to remember that that's it. Long term, they're not environmentally friendly and don't really help with most of the costs associated with cars—hell, even reducing accidents with self driving and climate change still leaves most of the costs in place. And will potentially act as another money transfer from the lower class upwards if things get handled wrong.

That isn't to say we shouldn't electrify everything wherever possible, just that they're not good, only less bad.

I think cars are very popular because they make people feel more autonomous. I can't see public transportation ever largely replacing cars. Unless there is a breakthrough in materials technology, we may just have to live with them.

There is a risk that electrification gets viewed as the end-state of environmental change on transportation. It’s a key step along the way to having sustainable transportation systems, but it’s a step, not the finish line.

You can feel autonomous with good public transport, there are many cities where public transport season tickets give much more autonomy than a car does.

Edited by Silasw on Apr 14th 2024 at 5:06:43 PM

I live in a city with very good public transportation. Honestly it feels a lot easier to get around here compared to cities in America. I doubt I'll ever need a car here.

The idea that cars grant people freedom and autonomy comes from car commercials beginning in the 1950s. It's a scam really. Most cities were much more walkable and pedestrian friendly before they built giant highways thru the middle of them. Quieter too.

Sorry, the idea that transportation autonomy is an invention of the 1950s is just silly. It was just as prevalent when horses were the main means of getting around.

Now, we can indeed discuss the dismantling of trains that occurred in the early 20th century in the US. That was a tragic historical mistake. But we now have 70 to 100 years of infrastructure built around cars, and that can't be reversed overnight. It certainly can't be reversed quickly enough to make a dent in climate change, even if we had the political will to achieve it.

So while some people work towards that goal, we need an intermediate one that works with the stuff we have now, and that's EVs.

Edit: Sorry, one more thing. If noise pollution is a major concern in cities, then electrification should be everyone's first priority there, since most city driving is at low enough speeds that engine noise is the dominant component. Suburban life, too, especially when some dipshit decides it would be fun to disable their muffler and zoom around at 3 AM.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 14th 2024 at 1:20:30 PM

I'm talking perceptions, not facts. A car goes where you direct it. It's a large machine directly under your control. That's a powerful psychological lure.

Look, I'll be completely frank: I'm not a gearhead. I couldn't care less about driving my own car. I'll be very happy when I can order an autonomous vehicle to pick me up at my house and drive me to the store or to work. What I'm not prepared to do is uproot myself from my current community and move into the city. My job is here, my friends are here, my lifestyle is here.

We can't overlook these elements. Persuading individuals to change their behavior is much easier when the new thing fits easily into their existing lives. If you think people resist the idea of transitioning to electric vehicles, just wait until you tell them they have to give up their cars completely.

Was looking at a study earlier and, for cars, road noise is dominant over 55km/h, or about 35mph. So, where stationary traffic is concerned, yes. And maybe residential areas depending on speed limits.

But it's a surprisingly low speed for the engine to not be the main factor–remember, the issue with noise pollution isn't specifically short-term peaks, it's the long term background noise level that has health impacts.