4 ms·

There's plenty of people, myself included, who don't have a car but would otherwise probably get one if effortless car services on-demand like Uber didn't exist

by avar 9y ago

There's plenty of people, myself included, who don't have a car but would otherwise probably get one if effortless car services on-demand like Uber didn't exist. You need to take that into account. According to some estimates I've seen just constructing a car is equivalent to 3-4 years of carbon footprint of driving it[1][2]. You might say "buy used!". I would, but over the entire economy it would add up to the same amount, the net demand for new cars would increase. 1. https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-typical-passenger-vehicle-0 https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-t... 2. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/2010/sep/23/carbon-footprint-new-car https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/20...

danans 9y ago
That EPA link says nothing about the embodied carbon footprint of manufacturing vehicles. The Guardian article is very deceptive: "... the emissions from the manufacture of a top-of-the-range Land Rover Discovery ... may be as much as four times higher than the tailpipe emissions of a Citroen C1." Did you see the trick they pulled there? They took carbon emissions from manufacture of a large vehicle (Land Rover Discovery), and divided it by the tailpipe emissions of a very efficient small vehicle (Citroen C1) in order to concoct a large-sounding, but ultimately meaningless comparison "4 times higher". You may as well compare the manufacturing emissions of the Land Rover to the tailpipe emissions of a cow. But even assuming your point about manufacturing emissions, while you don't buy a new vehicle yourself because of your use of ride services, the cars used for ride services will be replaced more often, because they are more heavily utilized, and hence will have to be replaced more often.
- avar 9y ago
  On second look, yes that Guardian source is pretty shitty. I couldn't find some authoritative source for the CO^2 emissions required to produce a new car. My point was that you had to consider it. > cars used for ride services will be replaced > more often. It's not meaningful to consider how often they're replaced, but what mileage they tend to get if we're going to look at how the CO^2 cost of producing the car is amortized over its lifetime. According to EPA statistics a typical car gets used for 100-200K miles[1], for taxis that number seems to be easily 2x or 3x larger[2]. So for the same amount of moving people from A to B taxis are mor CO^2 efficient. Of course there are all sorts of secondary effects you're not taking into account. Once people don't own a car because they have something like Uber available to them, they're more likely to use a bike or public transport for a trip they'd otherwise take by car. Just compare somewhere like NYC to LA in terms of how much CO^2 a typical person emits while going about their day. I don't know what the exact numbers are, but this is a lot more complex than what you're making it out to be. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_longevity#Statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_longevity#Statistics 2. https://www.quora.com/How-many-miles-does-a-NYC-taxi-do-in-its-life-as-a-taxi https://www.quora.com/How-many-miles-does-a-NYC-taxi-do-in-i...

by avar 9y ago

danans 9y ago

That EPA link says nothing about the embodied carbon footprint of manufacturing vehicles. The Guardian article is very deceptive: "... the emissions from the manufacture of a top-of-the-range Land Rover Discovery ... may be as much as four times higher than the tailpipe emissions of a Citroen C1." Did you see the trick they pulled there? They took carbon emissions from manufacture of a large vehicle (Land Rover Discovery), and divided it by the tailpipe emissions of a very efficient small vehicle (Citroen C1) in order to concoct a large-sounding, but ultimately meaningless comparison "4 times higher". You may as well compare the manufacturing emissions of the Land Rover to the tailpipe emissions of a cow. But even assuming your point about manufacturing emissions, while you don't buy a new vehicle yourself because of your use of ride services, the cars used for ride services will be replaced more often, because they are more heavily utilized, and hence will have to be replaced more often.

avar 9y ago
On second look, yes that Guardian source is pretty shitty. I couldn't find some authoritative source for the CO^2 emissions required to produce a new car. My point was that you had to consider it. > cars used for ride services will be replaced > more often. It's not meaningful to consider how often they're replaced, but what mileage they tend to get if we're going to look at how the CO^2 cost of producing the car is amortized over its lifetime. According to EPA statistics a typical car gets used for 100-200K miles[1], for taxis that number seems to be easily 2x or 3x larger[2]. So for the same amount of moving people from A to B taxis are mor CO^2 efficient. Of course there are all sorts of secondary effects you're not taking into account. Once people don't own a car because they have something like Uber available to them, they're more likely to use a bike or public transport for a trip they'd otherwise take by car. Just compare somewhere like NYC to LA in terms of how much CO^2 a typical person emits while going about their day. I don't know what the exact numbers are, but this is a lot more complex than what you're making it out to be. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_longevity#Statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_longevity#Statistics 2. https://www.quora.com/How-many-miles-does-a-NYC-taxi-do-in-its-life-as-a-taxi https://www.quora.com/How-many-miles-does-a-NYC-taxi-do-in-i...