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New York City will require Uber and Lyft to go 100 percent electric by 2030
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- TechnicolorByte 4y agoGreat news. Minimizing the amount of street-level pollution will make these walkable cities more pleasant for pedestrians. Reduced noise pollution is another side benefit. Hoping to see a similar effort in SF. Hate walking near NoPa/GGP with all the traffic passing by the Panhandle area.
- freedomben 4y agoyou really think this will make a different? Last time I was in NYC it didn't seem like all that many, and the worst offenders were not likely uber/lyft (such as large construction trucks/equipment, etc).
- asdff 4y agoMost emissions from modern vehicles these days comes from things like tire dust rather than tailpipe. What would be best for local street level pollution would probably be something like a lightweight rickshaw over a multiton EV. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/03/car-tyres-produce-more-particle-pollution-than-exhausts-tests-show https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/03/car-tyre...
- melling 4y agoIs that why the air is so bad in Mexico City and Los Angeles? Remember during Covid when the sky’s turned blue in LA? You’ve got to be careful on the Internet, people sort of just make it up as they go. http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/eh/safety/criteria-air-pollutants.htm http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/eh/safety/criteria-air-poll... But I do agree, more mass transit and fewer cars would be better.
- asdff 4y agoThe air really isn't that bad in LA most days, its improved substantially in recent decades but the meme of LA smog takes longer to die I guess. The geography of the place sometimes forms an inversion layer however, and on those days air quality is worse. Right now in particular, the air is almost perfect (1). It's still a farcry from living near a lot of industrialized agriculture in terms of aqi, or out in the great plains where you have ag then also west coast wildfire smoke tends to blow up and over the rockies and settle down. I can't speak for mexico city but I know they also have a similar inversion layer effect. https://map.purpleair.com/1/mAQI/a10/p604800/cC0#10.12/34.0668/-118.4126 https://map.purpleair.com/1/mAQI/a10/p604800/cC0#10.12/34.06...
- melling 4y agoLooks good right now. LA still vies for the worst air pollution in the country. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution_in_the_United_States#Pollution_level_rankings_2019 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution_in_the_United_... https://www.lung.org/research/sota/city-rankings/most-polluted-cities https://www.lung.org/research/sota/city-rankings/most-pollut...
- asdff 4y agoDepends on where you put the probe in LA honestly. Downwind of the airport or the port are a different story than against the coast where there's almost always a prevailing wind blowing stuff inland. There are also hillside neighborhoods high enough were you can end up above the inversion layer sometimes. You look at some of the top hits of that list you see Bakersfield, Fresno, and Sacramento, all a fraction of the size of LA but they get such bad air from all the agriculture happening in the central valley.
- onemoresoop 4y agoHow about trucks that literally emit black smoke? Plenty of them in NYC
- asdff 4y agoThose of course emit a lot more tailpipe emissions, but they aren't running rideshare either. If you have a consumer gas car with efi and a cat, the tailpipe is probably pretty benign compared to something from the 70s.
- Symbiote 4y agoDo any cities in America ban older vehicles? It's common in European cities. For example in Copenhagen buses and lorries must be at most 8 years old. The fine is €1700. https://urbanaccessregulations.eu/countries-mainmenu-147/denmark-mainmenu-221/kobenhavn-frederiksberg https://urbanaccessregulations.eu/countries-mainmenu-147/den...
- asdff 4y agoNo, but in some cities or states older vehicles must pass smog inspections.
- amalgamated_inc 4y agoWe'll see if there's enough availability of economical EVs by then. Plus the charging infrastructure. Is there currently an EV that would be economical to operate as an Uber/Lyft/taxi? The Prius, very popular with drivers, seems to sell for MSRP $28k, and pretty much all the Ubers I get are 100k miles or more. I don't think there's a modern EV that sells for much below $40k? And certainly there is no used market with lots of reliable 100k mile vehicles yet. For comparison, the last Uber driver I talked to had bought his Prius for $5k or so at 155k miles, and had since put 80k miles on it. The bulk of the ride sharing fleet seems to hover around this level. If EVs ever get that cheap (and I'm not sure they will), I doubt it'll be in 7 years.
- toomuchtodo 4y agoLots of Model 3s and Ys in taxi service already, and the fuel and maintenance savings offset the higher vehicle cost rapidly. Regulation simply encourages the transition along to internalize the pollution externalities. NYC has a payment floor for rideshare drivers, so the revenue should be there to cover the equipment cost. The difficulty level is based on what rideshare companies can get away with paying drivers; if you mandate EVs, you need to also mandate a minimum payment to drivers to cover these costs. Rideshare services can then decide how to balance those costs between charging customers more and their profits. https://insideevs.com/news/580066/tesla-model-y-joins-gravity-fleet-all-electric-nyc-yellow-cabs/ https://insideevs.com/news/580066/tesla-model-y-joins-gravit... https://electrek.co/2021/07/26/revel-fleet-50-tesla-model-y-taxis-new-york-approved/ https://electrek.co/2021/07/26/revel-fleet-50-tesla-model-y-...
- asdff 4y agoThey should regulate based on the vehicles mass versus its fuel type if they want to make a dent on local air pollution. Tire dust alone contributes 2000x the particulate emissions as the tailpipe. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/03/car-tyres-produce-more-particle-pollution-than-exhausts-tests-show https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/03/car-tyre...
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- LatteLazy 4y agoNew York city will quietly drop this requirement some time in the next 6 years.
- prepend 4y agoWhy would this not be required for non-rideshare taxis? That seems odd.
- __derek__ 4y agoIt seems like an awkward rephrasing of an awkwardly-worded statement: > Build on efforts to electrify the city vehicle fleet by requiring the 100,000-plus high-volume for-hire vehicles to do the same — requiring them, with the support of Uber and Lyft, to be zero-emissions by 2030, with no new costs for individual drivers; [1]: https://www.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/063-23/mayor-adams-outlines-working-people-s-agenda-nyc-second-state-the-city-address#/0 https://www.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/063-23/mayor-ad...
- prepend 4y agoHere’s a quote from the city page “Today, we are announcing that Uber and Lyft will be required to have a zero-emissions fleet by 2030” Unless they are purposely being obtuse it seems like they aren’t requiring taxis.
- diebeforei485 4y agoThey should probably also have an entry fee for every vehicle with a tailpipe starting 2030. The pollution (and engine noise!) in NYC is a real quality of life issue.