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They're cleaner, no doubt. But are they clean enough that a 1-1 replacement could avert massive ecological destruction à la global warming? No they are not. Th
by jnmandal 4y ago
They're cleaner, no doubt. But are they clean enough that a 1-1 replacement could avert massive ecological destruction à la global warming? No they are not.
They are a bridge towards lowering emissions but they cannot get us to zero or negative emissions. For as long as they are in use cars will simply remain "part of the problem". Acutely, personal vehicles used for quotidian trips are a large part of the contribution towards carbon emissions and can easily be phased out with improved urban and residential design patterns, public/collective transport infrastructure, and low-tech solutions like bikes, draft animals, etc .
- AtlasBarfed 4y agoIMO the BEV is a far more flexible platform for transporation than the ICE. Batteries are still made as cells. Need one for a car? Put 10,000 together. Need one for an e-bike? Put 10-20 together. Need one for a scooter? Put 5-10 together. Cell economics are generally the same. Furthermore, you can make the battery in an ebike or scooter removable and recharge it at work or at a friend's house. No gasoline stink. Or you can make the scooter/blade foldable and haul it in. Again, no gasoline stink. For urban transport, BEV scaling provides the opportunity to affordably enable these energy efficient modes better than stinky dirty two stroke crap. I think what can also happen is that you buy a city car with a 100 mile range, but if you need to go far, you rent an "extension battery", maybe a very energy efficient trailer, or even an ICE range extender. Or maybe it just attaches to the back of the vehicle, or if the battery is swappable, you swap in a rentable long range one. And remember, don't concentrate on current battery economics. Between higher density sodium ion + LFP, sulfur chemistries, solid state, and maybe lithium air batteries, densities will go up by 2-3x in the next ten years. That means less materials, lighter vehicles / battery "rocket equation" for more range from a lighter battery with the same power storage, etc. Zero or negative emissions is perfect being the enemy of bad. BEVs are an enormous opportunity to mitigate massive amounts of emissions AND be a better product that is cheaper for people. There does not exist a practical political path to zero emissions right now, as much as it pains me to say so. What we do need (and there is some political opportunity to do so) is massive funding of BEV transporation at all levels / form factors. There should be a 300-500$ price credit (phasing out 10% per year) for scooters and ebikes to get them prevalent. Make them stupid cheap to adopt. Fund the hell out of battery development. Double down on all the national lab work on batteries (that lithium air paper recently was nice, we should see stuff like that out of every single national lab).
- petre 4y agoFor cars, the charging part is inconvenient and there's still not enough infrastructure. So maybe combine a 20 kW battery with a hydrogen fuel cell rather than use superchargers. All charging stations are busy? Fine, get a refill of H2 and go.
- willio58 4y agoHydrogen is even harder to find than charging infrastructure. It’s not easy to convert a gas station into a hydrogen station. To me the two solutions revolve around simple battery tech. 1. Charging stations like we have now but 100x as many. 2. Battery swap stations a la Nio in China. In their system you buy the car (for pretty cheap) and rent the battery. Makes upfront cost cheaper and batteries need replacing anyway so if you can swap batteries easily you never have to worry about this.
- _hypx 4y agoBattery swapping will utterly explode the amount of raw materials needed. It's going to be hydrogen cars simply because it is the genuinely scalable solution. The exact details don't really matter, so long as raw material usage is greatly reduced. You can have cars fully powered by hydrogen, or some kind of PHEV with a fuel cell range extender. Any variation of the idea will work.
- tfourb 4y agoI regularly use an EV for several weeks/months at a time and I also own an ICE car. The EV is in no way less convenient. While it takes longer to charge "on the road," I (and most people) only rarely do road trips of a length that intermittent charging is necessary. When I do, the extra 20 minutes spent at a charger is no big deal, you just plan accordingly. On the flip side, on most days it would be much more hassle to spend 10 minutes or so refueling my ICE car instead of just driving home, connecting my EV and let it charge overnight. Granted, I have a property that allows the installation of a charger. But so do basically all suburban Americans, many people in cities and around the world. People that live so urban that owning their own charging infrastructure is impractical are probably better served with public transport, anyway.
- throwaway5959 4y agoJust stop it. You’re not going to convince (at least in America) people in the suburbs and rural areas to give up their lifestyle. It’s just not going to happen. People are not going to ride a scooter 15 miles to and from the grocery store in freezing weather.
- georgeplusplus 4y agoEveryone will have to pile into cities so they can ride a scooter to and from the grocery store in freezing weather. They simply will have to adjust or die.
- Fezzik 4y agoWe just have to get better at City Planning in the States. It’s difficult, but not that difficult. Almost all of Western Europe has figured this out (along with health care and education). Dense cities with mixed zoning and good public transit are so much more enjoyable and efficient than the urban hellscapes we create in the USA. I have no delusions we will make any changes, but the changes can be made.
- ztrww 4y agohttps://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Passenger_mobility_statistics#Travel_mode https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... Would imply that Europe hadn’t quite figured it out yet. Sure large urban areas have decent mass transit. Many people still live in smaller towns, villages or suburbs and commute by car everyday. Especially in larger more decentralized countries like Germany. in every country included 60-70% commute by car. Which is barely lower than it is in the US. I think it’s a myth that Western Europe is significantly ahead (and I think it applies, albeit to a lesser degree, to other areas like health and education). The grass is always greener on the other side of the ocean…
- _hypx 4y agoThe ideal solution is always going to be mass transit. But if that isn't possible, then the next best idea would be fuel cell cars. They are also a type of EV and therefore zero emissions, but unlikely battery cars they do not have the massive mining requirements.
- mcv 4y agoThey require hydrogen storage, though, right? Isn't it a problem to store that densely enough to get meaningful range? I do believe it's popular for city buses, though; they can afford to refuel a lot.
- _hypx 4y agoHydrogen storage is just a tank of gas. For most vehicles that will give you plenty of range. Easily >300 miles.
- jnmandal 4y agoThere's no issue with mass transit. It's possible. It's even inevitable. I guess it depends what you mean by mass transit but communal, shared transportation solutions that replace private vehicle ownership. Yeah, that's simple.
- Felminor 4y agoIn theory yes it can. If all energy for making ev comes from renewable.
- felurx 4y agoThat's half-true for the running costs (if you ignore material wear, like tires and stuff). But the manufacture of cars (and stuff in general) and the gathering of materials (read: mining) for that costs a lot of energy and, more importantly, causes a ton of other environmental impact.
- 8fingerlouie 4y ago> But the manufacture of cars (and stuff in general) and the gathering of materials (read: mining) for that costs a lot of energy Is there a reason that a large part of that could not come from renewables ? There is literally nothing that we can do with Gas/Oil that we cannot do with electricity, or by extension by converting that electricity in to solid fuels like hydrogen or Power-2-X. Normally, by the laws of thermodynamics, you cannot extract more energy than you put in a system, but since the energy for renewables is from external sources (mostly derived by the sun/gravity), that means we can severely reduce our CO2 emissions, or even start extracting CO2 from the atmosphere. 1kg of hydrogen has about 36 kWh worth of energy in it, and it requires roughly 50kWh to produce it, which is a bad deal if those 50kWh comes from gas/oil/coal, but if instead they come from excess solar/wind/hydroelectric energy, you're essentially gaining 36 kWh worth of energy that would otherwise be "lost".
- Felminor 4y agoCars need resources one way or the other.
- sieabahlpark 4y ago[dead]
- gruturo 4y ago> But are they clean enough [....] ? No they are not. 1) Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. 2) Accept that people are not going to stop using cars, and work with what you have, unless you have a mysterious power making you able to compel mankind to change their lifestyle, or you are able to invent something they will actually want more than cars.
- felurx 4y agoBut don't let good be the enemy of better either. I think it's important to realize that "People will always use cars" and "We can and should reduce car usage" are not contradictory. We need to both offer and incentivize alternatives, find ways to reduce car dependency, etc and make sure that remaining car usage is as clean as possible. (This applies to both the car usage that we can get rid of in the mid- to long-term but haven't yet and the "residual" car usage that we can't seem to get rid of.)
- jnmandal 4y ago> Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. This is what I meant by "a bridge." I don't think you really understand the point of my comment. > unless you have a mysterious power making you able to compel mankind to change their lifestyle I know you are being facetious but I ironically, yes there is a mysterious power that compels mankind to change their lifestyle. That's how we got here; it's not like the enclosure and industrialization was a grassroots effort or an accidental happenstance. Its called the industrial revolution for a reason. The truth is it was directed by a privileged minority with a lot of power. It was not done democratically. It certainly wasn't privileged consumers saying, "hey I want to give up generational farming of inherited land to live in an urban slum and work in textile mill". Their hands were forced by policy and in some cases violence. Societies are reticent and often reactionary. When that reluctance endangers the progress of the governing interests (capital here for all intents and purposes) suddenly "mysterious power"s become less fun to talk about. But hey you don't have to listen to me; it also doesn't matter what we think anyways because like I'm saying its not like there is much personal choice in this shift -- unless youre in the really upper echelons, I guess then you can do whatever you want.
- nivenkos 4y agoThe real issue is that Americans are too rich and pampered. If you reduce disposable income massively in line with the rest of the world, then they won't be able to afford private vehicles and the change will come naturally.
- naveen99 4y agoIncome is also a measure of value / productivity. So reducing income is reducing value and productivity. Rest of the world will not benefit from reduced us value.
- jnmandal 4y agoYeah, this is the crux of it. Many responders here seem to believe they have a choice in the matter, or perhaps more acutely that their limited choiceset is the only factor in what happens. People seem to have forgotten that government, trade, and economic policies enabled the status quo and it will be used (we can actually see it already is) to modify it. It's pretty hard to justify whining about your pampered lifestyle when the next folks can't even afford to eat. Forgetting for a second food and agriculture (the biggest problem in carbon pollution that no one likes to talk about), it's no secret that the up front cost of an EV is higher, even with subsidies. It shouldn't be hard to imagine the logical continuation of that concept, extended through to supply chains from chips all the way to raw minerals.
- ihatepython 4y ago> They're cleaner, no doubt. But are they clean enough that a 1-1 replacement could avert massive ecological destruction à la global warming? No they are not. This is the main reason why I sold my Tesla and went back to my horse and buggy.
- iampivot 4y agoIt will help us getting to a place where we don't pump up stuff from below ground which ultimately ends up as CO2 in the atmosphere. If we stopped pumping oil out of the ground, we would have left other CO2 sources which are from cyclical sources, and which we can deal with other ways.
- thegrim22 4y agoYou could provide even rough numbers to back up your claims. For example, personal cars being a "large part" of carbon emissions. A single container ship outputs more emissions than tens of millions of cars. What percentage of carbon emissions are actually associated with cars compared to the other behemoth polluters in the world?
- MinorTom 4y ago[dead]