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I feel like I'm missing something fundamental about the whole EV thing. 1. Produce/transport a bunch of electric vehicles, producing massive emissions 2. ???

I feel like I'm missing something fundamental about the whole EV thing. 1. Produce/transport a bunch of electric vehicles, producing massive emissions 2. ??? 3. Somehow billions of tonnes of carbon get removed from the atmosphere I fail to see how EVs do anything to actually do something about the problem i.e. REMOVE CO2 from the atmosphere.

howtousethetime 4y ago
The idea, as I understand it, is that: A. Before the 2038 date the article suggests we must move to EV by, many/most cars will need to be replaced. So, the suggestion isn't necessarily to throw away good cars, as much as to replace them with an EV when they are replaced. B. Currently the electricity used to charge your EV may not be emission free, but someday it might be. Whereas gasoline will never be emission free. And if everyone has EV's already, then the benefit of cleaning the grid becomes greater and easier to justify to a decisionmaker. So while EVs wont solve the problem, it maybe could be said that the problem cannot be solved without first switching to EVs.
kristopolous 4y ago
It's a giant decrease in aggregate emissions. Some people say we should go all in on mass transit. Alright cool. Suburbia doesn't work then. We're going to have to massively build our way out of this any way you slice it. EVs are an incremental improvement and that's how all goals are reached. Some people argue "What if you have a coal plant from the 1830s and that's powering the EV and we compare it with some sleek next gen hybrid" and we're all supposed to pretend that's not just some classic bullshit artist play. The stupidity gives me a headache. Why are we entertaining such transparent lies as if they're being given in good faith?
- sillywalk 4y ago
  The point I'm trying to make (or get) is that EVs (or solar panels/wind turbines) don't actually do anything to actually fix the root problem - too much CO2 in the atmosphere. All of the emissions required to produce them in fact make the problem worse. Even if the world ICE vehicle fleet was magically converted to EVs powered by carbon-free fusion power tomorrow, I fail to see how this will actually lower the CO2 from 414ppm.
  - kristopolous 4y ago
    We are always limited to the best solutions we have on hand. Since there's more than one person in the world, we can work on even better solutions while transitioning to the best ones we have, simultaneously. What's presented by saying EVs aren't the final solution is the classic perfect being the enemy of the good dilemma weaponized to encourage waiting, stalling, and inaction. The actual material world impact of this type of policy is just delay delay delay as we sow in seeds of uncertainty to putz around without actually doing something. This has literally been the oil playbook for decades. It's the same thing. It manifests in many ways. For instance there is a leftist tech skeptic movement against electric vehicles that in practice is just reactionary conservatism. They use the classic Ralph Nader play to falsely claim that EVs catch fire more than ICE vehicles, focus on the egregious labor issues at EV plants and other classic tropes while simultaneously proffering some imaginary solution of getting rid of single family homes, suburbia and radically transform how people live overnight into a marvelous network of high speed rail by I assume, an actual magic wand. This is the same tactic tobacco companies used: "4 out of 5 doctors (who smoke) prefer brand X". Just like this statement ignores that most doctors don't smoke, the sensationalization of Tesla ignores all of the problems of the rest of the industry or that there's many fine offerings of electric vehicles from other vendors. It's a wildly misinformed caricature. In practice it produces the same stalling outcome - delaying the transition even more. On the WSJ conservative end there's articles where someone rents say a $180,000 Lucid Air, drives like a maniac, goes to the most expensive charging options and then compares the vehicle with a used Toyota Prius to demonstrate how much more expensive electric vehicles supposedly are. Learn to recognize the bullshit. It's important and the consequences are big this time.
  - Tiktaalik 4y ago
    Limiting ever more CO2 from going into the atmosphere is an important related thing to do alongside of the other (much much harder!) problem of removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    That’s a technically correct but IMO too narrow view of the problem. Reframe the problem as “how much atmospheric CO2 will be present in 2050?” and 2023 EVs do have promise to reduce that.
gulikoza 4y ago
They don't. What they do is centralize CO2 production which can be then mitigated on a larger scale (switching power production to nuclear/solar/wind, CO2 capture from industrial processes...). They also clean-up living spaces and allow pollution (that which is necessary) to be outside of the cities. This alone would probably save millions of lives...
SECProto 4y ago
> 1. Produce/transport a bunch of electric vehicles, producing massive emissions 2. ??? 3. Somehow billions of tonnes of carbon get removed from the atmosphere I'll revise that to be more accurate: 1. Produce/transport a bunch of electric vehicles, producing moderately more emissions than the production of equivalent gasoline vehicles would have 2. These electric vehicles release dramatically less carbon emissions per kilometer, even if the power source is itself fossil fueled 3. Billions of tonnes of carbon that would have been emitted with the status quo are not. > I fail to see how EVs do anything to actually do something about the problem i.e. REMOVE CO2 from the atmosphere. EVs aren't going to remove carbon from the atmosphere (and I've never heard anyone say that they will?). They simply reduce the ongoing increase of emissions from the transportation sector. They are one small piece of the climate change puzzle. The carbon in the atmosphere can't even begin to decrease if we are continually increasing the amount we add to it.
imtringued 4y ago
They are more energy efficient than ICE cars. An ICE car produces a lot of waste heat in the process of trying to move its wheels. That heat serves no purpose other than warming the cab. This reduces CO2 emissions. Removing CO2 from the atmosphere isn't cost effective without heavy government subsidies. You need somewhere between 300€ to 600€ per ton to capture CO2 with mature tech and 100€ per ton assuming some sort of breakthrough. How are you going to pay for this? Are you going to introduce 300€ CO2 taxes? That would kill many industries and they would move abroad so the first thing that needs to be done is to reduce emissions because that costs less than 300€ per ton. A VW golf driven for 150k km produces 30 tons of CO2 which would cost 9000€ to capture just to break even. If you want to get rid of 3 tons of CO2 for every car then let's round it up to 10k€. There are plenty of EVs in the 30k€ price range that you can buy today and there are other benefits that make EVs appealing like lower energy costs, less maintenance and so on. So you have this product on the market that doesn't need much government support anymore and is well accepted in the market and then you got this mega project that can only be started by the government with massive taxation that makes everything more expensive.

howtousethetime 4y ago

The idea, as I understand it, is that: A. Before the 2038 date the article suggests we must move to EV by, many/most cars will need to be replaced. So, the suggestion isn't necessarily to throw away good cars, as much as to replace them with an EV when they are replaced. B. Currently the electricity used to charge your EV may not be emission free, but someday it might be. Whereas gasoline will never be emission free. And if everyone has EV's already, then the benefit of cleaning the grid becomes greater and easier to justify to a decisionmaker. So while EVs wont solve the problem, it maybe could be said that the problem cannot be solved without first switching to EVs.

kristopolous 4y ago

It's a giant decrease in aggregate emissions. Some people say we should go all in on mass transit. Alright cool. Suburbia doesn't work then. We're going to have to massively build our way out of this any way you slice it. EVs are an incremental improvement and that's how all goals are reached. Some people argue "What if you have a coal plant from the 1830s and that's powering the EV and we compare it with some sleek next gen hybrid" and we're all supposed to pretend that's not just some classic bullshit artist play. The stupidity gives me a headache. Why are we entertaining such transparent lies as if they're being given in good faith?

sillywalk 4y ago
The point I'm trying to make (or get) is that EVs (or solar panels/wind turbines) don't actually do anything to actually fix the root problem - too much CO2 in the atmosphere. All of the emissions required to produce them in fact make the problem worse. Even if the world ICE vehicle fleet was magically converted to EVs powered by carbon-free fusion power tomorrow, I fail to see how this will actually lower the CO2 from 414ppm.
- kristopolous 4y ago
  We are always limited to the best solutions we have on hand. Since there's more than one person in the world, we can work on even better solutions while transitioning to the best ones we have, simultaneously. What's presented by saying EVs aren't the final solution is the classic perfect being the enemy of the good dilemma weaponized to encourage waiting, stalling, and inaction. The actual material world impact of this type of policy is just delay delay delay as we sow in seeds of uncertainty to putz around without actually doing something. This has literally been the oil playbook for decades. It's the same thing. It manifests in many ways. For instance there is a leftist tech skeptic movement against electric vehicles that in practice is just reactionary conservatism. They use the classic Ralph Nader play to falsely claim that EVs catch fire more than ICE vehicles, focus on the egregious labor issues at EV plants and other classic tropes while simultaneously proffering some imaginary solution of getting rid of single family homes, suburbia and radically transform how people live overnight into a marvelous network of high speed rail by I assume, an actual magic wand. This is the same tactic tobacco companies used: "4 out of 5 doctors (who smoke) prefer brand X". Just like this statement ignores that most doctors don't smoke, the sensationalization of Tesla ignores all of the problems of the rest of the industry or that there's many fine offerings of electric vehicles from other vendors. It's a wildly misinformed caricature. In practice it produces the same stalling outcome - delaying the transition even more. On the WSJ conservative end there's articles where someone rents say a $180,000 Lucid Air, drives like a maniac, goes to the most expensive charging options and then compares the vehicle with a used Toyota Prius to demonstrate how much more expensive electric vehicles supposedly are. Learn to recognize the bullshit. It's important and the consequences are big this time.
- Tiktaalik 4y ago
  Limiting ever more CO2 from going into the atmosphere is an important related thing to do alongside of the other (much much harder!) problem of removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  That’s a technically correct but IMO too narrow view of the problem. Reframe the problem as “how much atmospheric CO2 will be present in 2050?” and 2023 EVs do have promise to reduce that.

gulikoza 4y ago

They don't. What they do is centralize CO2 production which can be then mitigated on a larger scale (switching power production to nuclear/solar/wind, CO2 capture from industrial processes...). They also clean-up living spaces and allow pollution (that which is necessary) to be outside of the cities. This alone would probably save millions of lives...

SECProto 4y ago

> 1. Produce/transport a bunch of electric vehicles, producing massive emissions 2. ??? 3. Somehow billions of tonnes of carbon get removed from the atmosphere I'll revise that to be more accurate: 1. Produce/transport a bunch of electric vehicles, producing moderately more emissions than the production of equivalent gasoline vehicles would have 2. These electric vehicles release dramatically less carbon emissions per kilometer, even if the power source is itself fossil fueled 3. Billions of tonnes of carbon that would have been emitted with the status quo are not. > I fail to see how EVs do anything to actually do something about the problem i.e. REMOVE CO2 from the atmosphere. EVs aren't going to remove carbon from the atmosphere (and I've never heard anyone say that they will?). They simply reduce the ongoing increase of emissions from the transportation sector. They are one small piece of the climate change puzzle. The carbon in the atmosphere can't even begin to decrease if we are continually increasing the amount we add to it.

imtringued 4y ago

They are more energy efficient than ICE cars. An ICE car produces a lot of waste heat in the process of trying to move its wheels. That heat serves no purpose other than warming the cab. This reduces CO2 emissions. Removing CO2 from the atmosphere isn't cost effective without heavy government subsidies. You need somewhere between 300€ to 600€ per ton to capture CO2 with mature tech and 100€ per ton assuming some sort of breakthrough. How are you going to pay for this? Are you going to introduce 300€ CO2 taxes? That would kill many industries and they would move abroad so the first thing that needs to be done is to reduce emissions because that costs less than 300€ per ton. A VW golf driven for 150k km produces 30 tons of CO2 which would cost 9000€ to capture just to break even. If you want to get rid of 3 tons of CO2 for every car then let's round it up to 10k€. There are plenty of EVs in the 30k€ price range that you can buy today and there are other benefits that make EVs appealing like lower energy costs, less maintenance and so on. So you have this product on the market that doesn't need much government support anymore and is well accepted in the market and then you got this mega project that can only be started by the government with massive taxation that makes everything more expensive.