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Electric Vehicles Won’t Save Us. Why EV’s Are False Prophets in The

26 points by tonyedgecombe 5y ago

sinuhe69 5y ago
In short: EVs are better than combustion engine cars but will not solve the climate change problem. Nobody expects that, actually! But surely it will help.
kolinko 5y ago
tl;dr; car transport is 15% of emissions, we need to cut down at least 55%. So switching to fully electric gets us a quarter way there, but we need other solutions as well
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
  > car transport is 15% of emissions How is this quantified? From my lay-person’s perspective, “emissions” is a vague term that covers everything from VOC in housepaint to methane in cow farts.
  - icegreentea2 5y ago
    It's from here: https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-... and https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis... Emission is intended to be broad here to capture as much impact as possible. It should be expressed in CO2 equivalent.
pornel 5y ago
Indeed, cars are inefficient for moving people[1], but we're already decades late for fixing the climate crisis. We can't wait for a perfect solution. Fixing urban sprawl is much harder and more disruptive than upgrading cars. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Corridor_Capacity.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Corridor...
atoav 5y ago
One big thing that is rarely addressed is the question whether the existing electrical infrastracture is capable of actually carrying the currents needed to e.g. charge the EVs for a whole block of houses. This power demand is not insignificant and would in many cases means existing (burried) wires have to be switched out, tranformers have to be upgraded, etc. EVs work perfectly fine if one individual decides this is the way they want to do things, but when everybody does it just doing ballpark calculations reveal that we would be biting more than we can chew. Unless we go for different ways of charging (e.g. swapping out batteries, dedicated facilities for charging in combination with self driving cars, etc).
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  This is brought up all the time and has been thoroughly addressed. Why are you pretending otherwise? Not only cars but everything that burns fossil fuels (industrial and domestic heating being two big ones) will need to be electrified. What misleading news sources are you following to think that no-one has planned for this?
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
I agree with almost everything this says, but it still annoys me. I'm assuming he had to put in the stuff about EVs to hook people in, but it's entirely irrelevant to his point. > Even if every car on the road were electric, these forces would remain, and perhaps get worse. This is the bit I disagree with. Every car becoming electric would massively improve the quality of life in built up environments, across a wide range of pollutions (noise, brake dust, sulphur as well as carbon). So "thing x is good but it won't save us" is basically true about everything, almost certainly it applies to all his ideas listed here too.
curation 5y ago
Nothing, in fact will 'save us'. Given our tight ideological grip, all we can do is reframe our failed order with new schemes.
BoxOfRain 5y ago
I think a big problem that keeps cars king is just how crap public transport is. If I want to get the bus from where I live, it’s less frequent than once an hour, is usually 30-40 minutes late (if it bothers to turn up at all) and when it does eventually turn up, the card machine is broken and there’s a fourth-generation product of petrol huffing on the seat behind who thinks a bus a good place to use his bluetooth speaker on full blast. I’ll then spend an hour and a half going six miles because the bus companies don’t really cooperate properly so the routes are often torturous. It’s expensive too, but not as eye-wateringly expensive as the train I have to go well out of my way to get on (by taxi, bike, or car because going there by bus is virtually guaranteed to make you miss the train). These trains are often cancelled without warning ten minutes after they’re supposed to have shown up for an excuse chosen apparently at random from a litany of failure that generally amounts to “the network is crap but don’t worry, the subsidy is being spent on some franchise executive’s salary instead of some government bureaucrat’s salary so it’s way better than the old service!”. Outside of London, a lot of British public transport is utterly unfit for purpose. They’ve only just got rid of the “temporary” solution dating to the early 80s of putting train wheels on surplus British Leyland buses and pretending they’re trains in some parts of the country. Why would anyone with the means to afford a car bother with this absolutely piss-poor display of failed public services given the choice?
- creamytaco 5y ago
  If you think that's bad, you haven't been to the US. Public transport is at least an order of magnitude worse here, with all the issues you mentioned and then some, such as contracting a wide variety of crippling diseases like drug-resistant Tuberculosis and MRSA and getting maimed / killed by folks with serious mental illness.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  "failed public services"? Are we talking about the systems that were all privatized to make them more "efficient"? Not in London of course, the one area you say is actually vaguely working, and is run as some kind of centrally planned, joined up transport system. So its not "failed public services" is it, its "intentionally sabotaged for ideological reasons private services that are currently being re-nationalized in many cases because it was such an unmitigated disaster and now have to recover from decades of intentional neglect and underfunding". But as you say, why would anyone with enough money care about having an efficent, effective transport sytem for the country. It's not like the economy relies on it as a basic piece of infrastructure to move workers and products around in addition to general improvements in quality of life of citizens.
whazor 5y ago
I follow Cycling Professor on Twitter @fietsprofessor and also became radicalized against cars. Cars take up too much space, are dangerous, and are inefficient. I believe electric cars will reduce the cost of car ownership and result in even more cars parked everywhere. When you lived your entire life surrounded by cars, it is initially hard to see anything wrong. But now everywhere I look I see wasted space and dangerous situations.

26 points by tonyedgecombe 5y ago

In short: EVs are better than combustion engine cars but will not solve the climate change problem. Nobody expects that, actually! But surely it will help.

kolinko 5y ago

tl;dr; car transport is 15% of emissions, we need to cut down at least 55%. So switching to fully electric gets us a quarter way there, but we need other solutions as well

DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
> car transport is 15% of emissions How is this quantified? From my lay-person’s perspective, “emissions” is a vague term that covers everything from VOC in housepaint to methane in cow farts.
- icegreentea2 5y ago
  It's from here: https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-... and https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis... Emission is intended to be broad here to capture as much impact as possible. It should be expressed in CO2 equivalent.

pornel 5y ago

Indeed, cars are inefficient for moving people[1], but we're already decades late for fixing the climate crisis. We can't wait for a perfect solution. Fixing urban sprawl is much harder and more disruptive than upgrading cars. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Corridor_Capacity.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Corridor...

atoav 5y ago

One big thing that is rarely addressed is the question whether the existing electrical infrastracture is capable of actually carrying the currents needed to e.g. charge the EVs for a whole block of houses. This power demand is not insignificant and would in many cases means existing (burried) wires have to be switched out, tranformers have to be upgraded, etc. EVs work perfectly fine if one individual decides this is the way they want to do things, but when everybody does it just doing ballpark calculations reveal that we would be biting more than we can chew. Unless we go for different ways of charging (e.g. swapping out batteries, dedicated facilities for charging in combination with self driving cars, etc).

ZeroGravitas 5y ago
This is brought up all the time and has been thoroughly addressed. Why are you pretending otherwise? Not only cars but everything that burns fossil fuels (industrial and domestic heating being two big ones) will need to be electrified. What misleading news sources are you following to think that no-one has planned for this?

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

I agree with almost everything this says, but it still annoys me. I'm assuming he had to put in the stuff about EVs to hook people in, but it's entirely irrelevant to his point. > Even if every car on the road were electric, these forces would remain, and perhaps get worse. This is the bit I disagree with. Every car becoming electric would massively improve the quality of life in built up environments, across a wide range of pollutions (noise, brake dust, sulphur as well as carbon). So "thing x is good but it won't save us" is basically true about everything, almost certainly it applies to all his ideas listed here too.

curation 5y ago

Nothing, in fact will 'save us'. Given our tight ideological grip, all we can do is reframe our failed order with new schemes.

BoxOfRain 5y ago

I think a big problem that keeps cars king is just how crap public transport is. If I want to get the bus from where I live, it’s less frequent than once an hour, is usually 30-40 minutes late (if it bothers to turn up at all) and when it does eventually turn up, the card machine is broken and there’s a fourth-generation product of petrol huffing on the seat behind who thinks a bus a good place to use his bluetooth speaker on full blast. I’ll then spend an hour and a half going six miles because the bus companies don’t really cooperate properly so the routes are often torturous. It’s expensive too, but not as eye-wateringly expensive as the train I have to go well out of my way to get on (by taxi, bike, or car because going there by bus is virtually guaranteed to make you miss the train). These trains are often cancelled without warning ten minutes after they’re supposed to have shown up for an excuse chosen apparently at random from a litany of failure that generally amounts to “the network is crap but don’t worry, the subsidy is being spent on some franchise executive’s salary instead of some government bureaucrat’s salary so it’s way better than the old service!”. Outside of London, a lot of British public transport is utterly unfit for purpose. They’ve only just got rid of the “temporary” solution dating to the early 80s of putting train wheels on surplus British Leyland buses and pretending they’re trains in some parts of the country. Why would anyone with the means to afford a car bother with this absolutely piss-poor display of failed public services given the choice?

creamytaco 5y ago
If you think that's bad, you haven't been to the US. Public transport is at least an order of magnitude worse here, with all the issues you mentioned and then some, such as contracting a wide variety of crippling diseases like drug-resistant Tuberculosis and MRSA and getting maimed / killed by folks with serious mental illness.
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
"failed public services"? Are we talking about the systems that were all privatized to make them more "efficient"? Not in London of course, the one area you say is actually vaguely working, and is run as some kind of centrally planned, joined up transport system. So its not "failed public services" is it, its "intentionally sabotaged for ideological reasons private services that are currently being re-nationalized in many cases because it was such an unmitigated disaster and now have to recover from decades of intentional neglect and underfunding". But as you say, why would anyone with enough money care about having an efficent, effective transport sytem for the country. It's not like the economy relies on it as a basic piece of infrastructure to move workers and products around in addition to general improvements in quality of life of citizens.

whazor 5y ago

I follow Cycling Professor on Twitter @fietsprofessor and also became radicalized against cars. Cars take up too much space, are dangerous, and are inefficient. I believe electric cars will reduce the cost of car ownership and result in even more cars parked everywhere. When you lived your entire life surrounded by cars, it is initially hard to see anything wrong. But now everywhere I look I see wasted space and dangerous situations.