8 ms·

Better headline: "EVs are decarbonizing transport, but we have more work to do. Here's what we should do next." From the article: > This is not to imply in an

Better headline: "EVs are decarbonizing transport, but we have more work to do. Here's what we should do next." From the article: > This is not to imply in any way that electric vehicles are worthless. Analysis by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) argues that EVs are the quickest means to decarbonize motorized transport. The headline feels like someone crafted it for maximum clickbait. The perpetual doomsday framing of everything, including the climate wins, only makes people tune out of the conversation.

acdha 4y ago
I think this concern has to be balanced against the billions of dollars promoting the status quo. A lot of people want to believe that all we need to do is buy electric cars, and there are multiple industries pushing that since it’s good for business while politicians like not having to tell people that lifestyle changes are necessary.
- CraigJPerry 4y ago
  >> A lot of people want to believe that all we need to do is buy electric cars The people i hear most vehemently arguing for ev adoption are quick to share a laundry list of all the other things we should be doing. I haven’t run across the EV-and-we’re-done brigade. I’m not dismissing that they exist but I haven’t met them.
  - KennyBlanken 4y ago
    Literally every time I see anything about "green transportation" from federal, state, or local government and non-profits the talk starts with and ends with electric vehicles. The feds talk some talk about alternative transit, and some cities are leaning heavily into alternate transit...but at my county and local level there's basically zero interest in public transit, walking, or biking infrastructure.
    - BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
      Advocating for walkable cities and being anti-automobile is all the rage nowadays, but that doesn’t translate well to real world action. As much as we want to, and should, redesign cities, that is a monumental undertaking that will necessarily require several decades worth of effort and billions of dollars. Switching to electric vehicles, meanwhile, does not require eminent domain and does not ask citizens to change their mobility standards. It is also something local governments don’t have to pay for.
      - paulryanrogers 4y ago
        > ...does not ask citizens to change their mobility standards. My how far we have come from "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."
        sokoloff 4y ago
        That challenge was to find ways to contribute in your own sphere. Converting one car to an EV (and accepting the resulting compromises) is more realistically in that spirit than something like “knock down your house and build a mid-rise on your lot” would be.
        paulryanrogers 4y ago
        Collective action and sacrifice will be necessary to change density. Still that doesn't prevent us from adapting to more sustainable transportation modes, both collectively and personally. I was addressing the fear that governments have of disrupting current mobility 'standards'.
- ajross 4y ago
  > A lot of people want to believe that all we need to do is buy electric cars, and there are multiple industries pushing that Um... who? I think it's rather the opposite: I see a "lot of people" in "multiple industries" making strawman arguments like this. Essentially, it's a deflection from "EVs are better than cars" (a clear truth that can't reasonably be argued with) to "EV proponents don't have all the answers either" (a winnable argument that feels like it's related even though it isn't). Buy the EV. Also move closer to the urban core, WFH, and otherwise reduce your dependence on the suburban road networks. But buy the EV if you need a car.
  - mellosouls 4y ago
    Even leaving aside your dubious claim about what can and cannot be argued with, your conclusion about what choices people should make is pie in the sky for a significant part of even the developed world. Economic and logistic reasons mean that carbon fuel cars are still the best transport option for most (?) people outside of urban centres and well-paid jobs.
    - ajross 4y ago
      This seems like a dodge? You said lots of people were saying something, I asked for a cite.
      - mellosouls 4y ago
        I'm not the poster you are referring to.
    - b112 4y ago
      Upvoted, as I see you were downsmashed because you spoke of realities, not "where we want to be". What you say is true. I find "everyone EV now!" proponents, often just use handwavy platitudes when given "I can't" info. For example, for many, many people ... range is a vital, and sadly an electric EV preventive thing. When told this, EV absolutists often blather on about why a person is wrong, and do so while ignoring that person's reality. The same is valid for cost. If you are poor, and can barely afford a truck for work, telling someone to spend 2x or 3x for a EV variant is exceptionally unfeeling, unrealistic, and elitist. What we need to do, is be open to solutions to help people switch. One is H2, which has multiple cars with extensive range on the road, yet EV absolutists will start going on about green or not h2. While at the same time ignoring that all excess power in the US, currently comes from fossil fuel! Until the last fossil fuel shuts down, that is excess kept running by EV needs. But you see, the goal is not where the battery charge, or h2 comes from, it is where it can come from! We can 100% make green h2, just as we can eventually fully purge fossil fuels from our electric grid. And it takes decades to move cars and transport from fossil to alternative options. We are doing it in parallel. So that one day, when we are free of fossil use, all our cars will already be fossil free! Including poor people driving 20 year old cars!
- dheera 4y ago
  What I really don't understand is why don't Shell, Exxon, Chevron and their ilk get into the EV game and start setting up DC fast chargers at all of their gas stations? They profit, and EV range anxiety becomes a thing of the past by having chargers literally everywhere.
  - pharmakom 4y ago
    Low profit. Accelerates decline of the cash cow.
    - imtringued 4y ago
      But the gas station cash cow is often the overpriced kiosk and not the gasoline.
      - pharmakom 4y ago
        Gas stations are usually franchised and the gas companies make good profit from that arrangement. The problem with supporting electric, is that most EV users don’t visit gas stations at all - they charge at home overnight.
  - CharlesW 4y ago
    I'm guessing for the same reason innovation rarely happens within companies that are printing money by maintaining the status quo. The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen is a good book on this, and the iPhone is another good example that had to come from outside the telecom industry. Plus, there's an impedance mismatch between EV charging times and the retail store model, in that retail stores want customers in and out ASAP.
  - SECProto 4y ago
    > What I really don't understand is why don't Shell, Exxon, Chevron and their ilk get into the EV game and start setting up DC fast chargers at all of their gas stations? At least in Canada, there has definitely been a push in this direction. Both Petro-Can[1] and Irving[2] have set up fast charging networks at their stations. Many of the Tesla Superchargers in Canada[3] are also located at various gas stations and truck stops (that specifically benefit from more restaurant customers when they use the charger). [1] https://www.petro-canada.ca/en/personal/fuel/canadas-electric-highway https://www.petro-canada.ca/en/personal/fuel/canadas-electri... [2] https://www.irvingoil.com/en-US/on-the-road/electric-vehicle-charging https://www.irvingoil.com/en-US/on-the-road/electric-vehicle... [3] https://www.tesla.com/findus https://www.tesla.com/findus
aqme28 4y ago
I don’t fully agree. It argues that beyond the EV conversion, we also have to switch to cycling and public transit for transport.
sfpotter 4y ago
Maybe instead of criticizing the way in which the article was written you could comment on some if its actual contents. I feel like people on HN get incredibly hung up on minor things like the title of an article and can't move past that. Climate change is a big deal and HN is full of smart people. It would be nice if we could use it as a venue for discussion about interesting topics instead of whinging about things that annoy us.
- belval 4y ago
  I guess you haven't been here long. It's a staple of HN to be pedantic and obsess on details, that being said it's also how sometimes you end up with very interesting threads on tangential topics.
- wffurr 4y ago
  The presentation of the topic is as relevant as the facts at hand.
labrador 4y ago
> The headline feels like someone crafted it for maximum clickbait It's written as a bait to people who have bought into the oil industry propaganda that EV's aren't a solution. "Where do you think the electricity comes from? Coal, gas and oil fueled power plants, that's where." If I had a dollar for every time I've heard this I could afford a Tesla.
- dheera 4y ago
  Yeah I've heard this way too much too. Why are humans so bad at second-order thinking and understanding that it's possible and, barring politics, straightforward to change where electricity comes from but it's not really possible to change where gasoline comes from?
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    130 million adults in the US have low literacy skills, meaning that more than half (54%) of Americans between the ages of 16 and 74 read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level, according to a piece published in 2022 by APM Research Lab. https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x-adult-literacy https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x-adult-literacy My note: critical thinking is not as prevalent as one might think, and there are also folks at various levels of gov and corp acting maliciously about the topic (fossil fuel consumption, climate change) due to entrenched interests. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
    - fbdab103 4y ago
      That the article did not make a bigger reference to immigrants makes me suspect. What are the percentages for native English speakers vs ESL? The states with the largest rates of Level 1 are all in the southwest where I expect there to be larger numbers of native-Spanish speakers.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
andrepd 4y ago
Individual automobiles have 100 problems. EVs solve 1 of them (tailpipe emissions), leaving the other 99. Yes, I guess it's better than nothing, but... Meanwhile old boring things like trains, trams (frequent, comfortable, extensive), proper bike lanes, do more for climate change and general quality of life than replacing a petrol SUV with an electric SUV.
PheonixPharts 4y ago
> including the climate wins EVs aren't a climate win. It's just more consumption which ultimately means more energy which means more oil. Aside from that the issue has nothing to do with where the oil is consumed, but how much. The only way to stop climate change is to prevent oil from being extracted. We're currently in the process of escalating a war to extract more so I'm not optimistic about this. If EVs had an impact on US oil consumption you would expect that consumption to drop right? But 2022 was nearly a record year for US oil consumption [0]: > 20.40 million bpd in 2022 and 20.75 million bpd in 2023. That compares with a record 20.80 million bpd in 2005 EVs are just a way to keep you consuming while feeling okay about. It's not a climate win in the slightest. 0. https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-crude-output-petroleum-demand-rise-2022-eia-2022-09-07/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-crude-output-petroleum...
- codeulike 4y ago
  If EVs had an impact on US oil consumption you would expect that consumption to drop right? Not yet, no. Barely expect it to make a dent yet. Straw man. It's not a climate win in the slightest. Why not? Why not in the slightest? You're saying its not even a teeny weeny little sliver of a climate win? We have to get away from fossil fueled transportation. Having transportation that can/can potentially be renewably powered has to be a step forward. What you're saying just seems like 'let the perfect be the enemy of the good' Please explain.
  - PheonixPharts 4y ago
    > Straw man. Sorry but anything other than reduction in global fossil fuel consumption is that strawman. That is the only thing that matters. If everything we do is "green" and we still burn more oil than the year before that's all that matters.
    - paulryanrogers 4y ago
      In absolute terms more oil may be consumed, yet the cause could be growth elsewhere. Said another way EVs may have made that same growth less oil intense than the alternative.

acdha 4y ago

I think this concern has to be balanced against the billions of dollars promoting the status quo. A lot of people want to believe that all we need to do is buy electric cars, and there are multiple industries pushing that since it’s good for business while politicians like not having to tell people that lifestyle changes are necessary.

CraigJPerry 4y ago
>> A lot of people want to believe that all we need to do is buy electric cars The people i hear most vehemently arguing for ev adoption are quick to share a laundry list of all the other things we should be doing. I haven’t run across the EV-and-we’re-done brigade. I’m not dismissing that they exist but I haven’t met them.
- KennyBlanken 4y ago
  Literally every time I see anything about "green transportation" from federal, state, or local government and non-profits the talk starts with and ends with electric vehicles. The feds talk some talk about alternative transit, and some cities are leaning heavily into alternate transit...but at my county and local level there's basically zero interest in public transit, walking, or biking infrastructure.
  - BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
    Advocating for walkable cities and being anti-automobile is all the rage nowadays, but that doesn’t translate well to real world action. As much as we want to, and should, redesign cities, that is a monumental undertaking that will necessarily require several decades worth of effort and billions of dollars. Switching to electric vehicles, meanwhile, does not require eminent domain and does not ask citizens to change their mobility standards. It is also something local governments don’t have to pay for.
    - paulryanrogers 4y ago
      > ...does not ask citizens to change their mobility standards. My how far we have come from "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."
      - sokoloff 4y ago
        That challenge was to find ways to contribute in your own sphere. Converting one car to an EV (and accepting the resulting compromises) is more realistically in that spirit than something like “knock down your house and build a mid-rise on your lot” would be.
        paulryanrogers 4y ago
        Collective action and sacrifice will be necessary to change density. Still that doesn't prevent us from adapting to more sustainable transportation modes, both collectively and personally. I was addressing the fear that governments have of disrupting current mobility 'standards'.
ajross 4y ago
> A lot of people want to believe that all we need to do is buy electric cars, and there are multiple industries pushing that Um... who? I think it's rather the opposite: I see a "lot of people" in "multiple industries" making strawman arguments like this. Essentially, it's a deflection from "EVs are better than cars" (a clear truth that can't reasonably be argued with) to "EV proponents don't have all the answers either" (a winnable argument that feels like it's related even though it isn't). Buy the EV. Also move closer to the urban core, WFH, and otherwise reduce your dependence on the suburban road networks. But buy the EV if you need a car.
- mellosouls 4y ago
  Even leaving aside your dubious claim about what can and cannot be argued with, your conclusion about what choices people should make is pie in the sky for a significant part of even the developed world. Economic and logistic reasons mean that carbon fuel cars are still the best transport option for most (?) people outside of urban centres and well-paid jobs.
  - ajross 4y ago
    This seems like a dodge? You said lots of people were saying something, I asked for a cite.
    - mellosouls 4y ago
      I'm not the poster you are referring to.
  - b112 4y ago
    Upvoted, as I see you were downsmashed because you spoke of realities, not "where we want to be". What you say is true. I find "everyone EV now!" proponents, often just use handwavy platitudes when given "I can't" info. For example, for many, many people ... range is a vital, and sadly an electric EV preventive thing. When told this, EV absolutists often blather on about why a person is wrong, and do so while ignoring that person's reality. The same is valid for cost. If you are poor, and can barely afford a truck for work, telling someone to spend 2x or 3x for a EV variant is exceptionally unfeeling, unrealistic, and elitist. What we need to do, is be open to solutions to help people switch. One is H2, which has multiple cars with extensive range on the road, yet EV absolutists will start going on about green or not h2. While at the same time ignoring that all excess power in the US, currently comes from fossil fuel! Until the last fossil fuel shuts down, that is excess kept running by EV needs. But you see, the goal is not where the battery charge, or h2 comes from, it is where it can come from! We can 100% make green h2, just as we can eventually fully purge fossil fuels from our electric grid. And it takes decades to move cars and transport from fossil to alternative options. We are doing it in parallel. So that one day, when we are free of fossil use, all our cars will already be fossil free! Including poor people driving 20 year old cars!
dheera 4y ago
What I really don't understand is why don't Shell, Exxon, Chevron and their ilk get into the EV game and start setting up DC fast chargers at all of their gas stations? They profit, and EV range anxiety becomes a thing of the past by having chargers literally everywhere.
- pharmakom 4y ago
  Low profit. Accelerates decline of the cash cow.
  - imtringued 4y ago
    But the gas station cash cow is often the overpriced kiosk and not the gasoline.
    - pharmakom 4y ago
      Gas stations are usually franchised and the gas companies make good profit from that arrangement. The problem with supporting electric, is that most EV users don’t visit gas stations at all - they charge at home overnight.
- CharlesW 4y ago
  I'm guessing for the same reason innovation rarely happens within companies that are printing money by maintaining the status quo. The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen is a good book on this, and the iPhone is another good example that had to come from outside the telecom industry. Plus, there's an impedance mismatch between EV charging times and the retail store model, in that retail stores want customers in and out ASAP.
- SECProto 4y ago
  > What I really don't understand is why don't Shell, Exxon, Chevron and their ilk get into the EV game and start setting up DC fast chargers at all of their gas stations? At least in Canada, there has definitely been a push in this direction. Both Petro-Can[1] and Irving[2] have set up fast charging networks at their stations. Many of the Tesla Superchargers in Canada[3] are also located at various gas stations and truck stops (that specifically benefit from more restaurant customers when they use the charger). [1] https://www.petro-canada.ca/en/personal/fuel/canadas-electric-highway https://www.petro-canada.ca/en/personal/fuel/canadas-electri... [2] https://www.irvingoil.com/en-US/on-the-road/electric-vehicle-charging https://www.irvingoil.com/en-US/on-the-road/electric-vehicle... [3] https://www.tesla.com/findus https://www.tesla.com/findus

aqme28 4y ago

I don’t fully agree. It argues that beyond the EV conversion, we also have to switch to cycling and public transit for transport.

sfpotter 4y ago

Maybe instead of criticizing the way in which the article was written you could comment on some if its actual contents. I feel like people on HN get incredibly hung up on minor things like the title of an article and can't move past that. Climate change is a big deal and HN is full of smart people. It would be nice if we could use it as a venue for discussion about interesting topics instead of whinging about things that annoy us.

belval 4y ago
I guess you haven't been here long. It's a staple of HN to be pedantic and obsess on details, that being said it's also how sometimes you end up with very interesting threads on tangential topics.
wffurr 4y ago
The presentation of the topic is as relevant as the facts at hand.

labrador 4y ago

> The headline feels like someone crafted it for maximum clickbait It's written as a bait to people who have bought into the oil industry propaganda that EV's aren't a solution. "Where do you think the electricity comes from? Coal, gas and oil fueled power plants, that's where." If I had a dollar for every time I've heard this I could afford a Tesla.

dheera 4y ago
Yeah I've heard this way too much too. Why are humans so bad at second-order thinking and understanding that it's possible and, barring politics, straightforward to change where electricity comes from but it's not really possible to change where gasoline comes from?
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  130 million adults in the US have low literacy skills, meaning that more than half (54%) of Americans between the ages of 16 and 74 read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level, according to a piece published in 2022 by APM Research Lab. https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x-adult-literacy https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x-adult-literacy My note: critical thinking is not as prevalent as one might think, and there are also folks at various levels of gov and corp acting maliciously about the topic (fossil fuel consumption, climate change) due to entrenched interests. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
  - fbdab103 4y ago
    That the article did not make a bigger reference to immigrants makes me suspect. What are the percentages for native English speakers vs ESL? The states with the largest rates of Level 1 are all in the southwest where I expect there to be larger numbers of native-Spanish speakers.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]

andrepd 4y ago

Individual automobiles have 100 problems. EVs solve 1 of them (tailpipe emissions), leaving the other 99. Yes, I guess it's better than nothing, but... Meanwhile old boring things like trains, trams (frequent, comfortable, extensive), proper bike lanes, do more for climate change and general quality of life than replacing a petrol SUV with an electric SUV.

PheonixPharts 4y ago

> including the climate wins EVs aren't a climate win. It's just more consumption which ultimately means more energy which means more oil. Aside from that the issue has nothing to do with where the oil is consumed, but how much. The only way to stop climate change is to prevent oil from being extracted. We're currently in the process of escalating a war to extract more so I'm not optimistic about this. If EVs had an impact on US oil consumption you would expect that consumption to drop right? But 2022 was nearly a record year for US oil consumption [0]: > 20.40 million bpd in 2022 and 20.75 million bpd in 2023. That compares with a record 20.80 million bpd in 2005 EVs are just a way to keep you consuming while feeling okay about. It's not a climate win in the slightest. 0. https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-crude-output-petroleum-demand-rise-2022-eia-2022-09-07/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-crude-output-petroleum...

codeulike 4y ago
If EVs had an impact on US oil consumption you would expect that consumption to drop right? Not yet, no. Barely expect it to make a dent yet. Straw man. It's not a climate win in the slightest. Why not? Why not in the slightest? You're saying its not even a teeny weeny little sliver of a climate win? We have to get away from fossil fueled transportation. Having transportation that can/can potentially be renewably powered has to be a step forward. What you're saying just seems like 'let the perfect be the enemy of the good' Please explain.
- PheonixPharts 4y ago
  > Straw man. Sorry but anything other than reduction in global fossil fuel consumption is that strawman. That is the only thing that matters. If everything we do is "green" and we still burn more oil than the year before that's all that matters.
  - paulryanrogers 4y ago
    In absolute terms more oil may be consumed, yet the cause could be growth elsewhere. Said another way EVs may have made that same growth less oil intense than the alternative.