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"EVs will/will not create more pollution than they eliminate." I'm just skeptical about the heavy push for passenger EVs: while they're a small fraction of the

"EVs will/will not create more pollution than they eliminate." I'm just skeptical about the heavy push for passenger EVs: while they're a small fraction of the carbon emissions pie in the world, they manage to be what we spend the most time talking about. It just seems like getting new cars has the added benefit of us buying shiny new stuff without concentrating on the heavy lifting. (Or disrupting industries that would lower gdp)

_hypx 4y ago
[flagged]
- barbazoo 4y ago
  > EDIT: People don’t like to hear the truth. Do you have a source to back up your claim that that's the truth?
  - _hypx 4y ago
    A bunch of people immediately downvoted within a few minutes of posting that. I guess I struck a nerve.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  I do not like the typical conservative line of "there isn't one size that fits everywhere, which is why the [government one size larger than we can control with money and connections] should not create mandates" However, having moved from Philadelphia to rural New Mexico 4 years ago, I have to admit that I can see the point. E-bikes and mass transit are not effective solutions for the rural west. Doesn't mean they are not great ideas, but you're not going to solve transportation in the rural west with that sort of thing. In metro areas though, absolutely.
  - _hypx 4y ago
    Most EV sales happen in urban centers, not rural areas. Not to mention that battery cars doesn't really solve the problem for rural areas too, due to limited range, less charging infrastructure and much higher cost.
    - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
      Right it's a form of harm reduction. Transit and eBikes are undoubtedly the more energy efficient alternative. But the infrastructure improvements American cities need to make them safe and useful options are expensive and most American cities have incredible amounts of bureaucracy replete with veto opportunities for any changes to the built environment. If EVs can affect the built environment first while the harder work of changing urban land-use and building new infrastructure begin in earnest, we can drive down fossil fuel dependency. Or we can accept the American status quo of driving gasoline cars everywhere even in urban 3 mi. radii. Closing CAFE Standard loopholes would also be a great form of harm reduction.
      - _hypx 4y ago
        Harm reduction would be driving less, not spend tens of thousands on a new car.
        Karrot_Kream 4y ago
        Yes infrastructure changes are all about driving less. Traffic calming, dedicated bus and rail ROW, higher FARs for denser environments, raised crosswalks, dedicated bike ROW, etc. Unless you know a better way to get Americans to start driving less then infrastructure, zoning, and traffic calming is all we know. It's what worked in Europe and Asia at least. The current American built environment designs for and around the car in almost every way. Low-income Americans that can afford cars will choose a car over any other mode in most American cities because of this. Changing that is hard work and there's an increasing number of advocates for these changes, but auto companies can churn out cars faster than these laws and the subsequent construction can finish. In the meantime, I encourage you to get involved in your local city planning meetings and advocate for infrastructure to decrease VMT. It's all we can do.
  - anon84873628 4y ago
    Yeah, there's nothing about transport in the rural west that is worth solving. The point is that we should be investing in places where GHG can be reduced the most, and passenger vehicles ain't it.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
  While I'm all for mass transit, and I loved living in areas like NYC and Boston where taking the subway/T was very convenient (despite their current problems/underinvestment) I just don't see how you get from "A" to "B" in Western cities that are so car centric - that is, how you build out mass transit systems that make any more than a teeny dent in overall commuter behavior. Look at Dallas. The DART light rail system first went live in 1996, and it actually has a good number of lines and a fair amount of city coverage. Still, looking at data from 2021, around 76% of workers still drove to work alone, and another 10% carpooled. So "not in a car" options only accounted for 14% of total commutes. And this was after a quarter century and billions and billions spent, it still only made a tiny dent in overall commute volumes. I don't know how you change this.
  - _hypx 4y ago
    We’re spending many hundreds of billions of dollars on new cars and charging infrastructure. This could easily be redirected to mass transit.
    - dublinben 4y ago
      Activists have been trying for decades to shift US cities away from car dependency towards more sustainable alternatives, and they have very little to show for it. It is politically impossible to shift this funding to non-car transportation overnight. Like it or not, EVs are a necessary part of the solution. We no longer have time to build enough subways and bike lanes to make cars go away entirely.
  - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
    It differs per area but the Urban Village strategy is popular. You take commerical areas with high usage and you zone them to allow higher FAR (Floor-Area Ratio) and to go taller for mixed use purposes. This adds a residential base in walking distance to the commercial center. Separately you add pedestrian and cyclist treatments to these centers and try to plug the village into a greater bus or light rail network. You also need to waive or significantly relax any minimum parking requirements, grandfathering in existing parking but allowing pedestrian and cyclist treatments to take precedence. Take a look at Arizona's Cul-de-sac for a residential version of this approach.
- CraigJPerry 4y ago
  > a large portion Would it not be a small portion? This is a VERY expensive way to get on that podium. There are far cheaper and even “higher value virtues” to signal. For example, a person might choose to tell you at every opportunity how they don’t have a car at all never mind an EV and prefer bicycles or public transport. Such a person may actively elevate their scorn for the EV subclass of vehicles because of mining actions necessary for their manufacture. I’d say that’s more likely a source of virtue signalling - you only need to give up convenience (do-able for someone who invests their identity in a “virtuous” cause). Purchasing an ev generally requires you to be attracting enough dollars each month first. I think i see a different type of person in larger numbers buying pure EVs - status symbol seekers. Rightly or wrongly in many societies there’s a view that the number of dollars you can cause to flow in your direction signals how good or useful a person you are. A marketing associate buying a big status symbol EV that’s out of reach of a carpenter is an effective statement of how much better that person is than someone else, in their mind. And yet, the carpenter is plainly the better contributor to life at a 1st order pass anyway.
  - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
    > I think i see a different type of person in larger numbers buying pure EVs - status symbol seekers. Most people buying EVs right now simply like the driving experience. Right or wrong, having all that acceleration at your foot is nice, and one pedal driving is also cool. There isn't much status to it, since Teslas are a dime a dozen these days. The driving experience of an EV is simply 10X better than an ICE. Environmentally speaking, EVs are slightly better because they don't pollute as much, and don't need refined oil products to run, but they still cause congestion, even more so since they are more fun to drive (I didn't drive my gas powered car as much as my new EV, which is probably an environmental step back).
    - CraigJPerry 4y ago
      >> Right or wrong, having all that acceleration Right, definitely right. Acceleration trumps speed for fun always. There’s definitely a ton of reasons people buy EVs. I’m just offering what i think is a more realistic dumb reason than the virtue signalling the GP proposed
thrroowwawaaayy 4y ago
Transportation accounts for over one third of CO2 emissions in the U.S., and decarbonization of electricity generation, which is another third, is already well underway. It makes perfect sense why we talk a lot about decarbonization of transportation in the United States.
Karrot_Kream 4y ago
Transportation accounts for a third of American CO2 generation and is the largest non-industrial source of American GHG emissions. We need to make dents here through every manner possible, including electrifying the existing modeshare, while promoting much more energy efficient modeshares like cycling and transit.
- seydor 4y ago
  Passenger car emissions are ~8% of total CO2. Trucks etc are easier to greenify, replace with trains etc.
  - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
    Passenger cars are 33% of transport-related GHGs, the single largest category for transportation-related GHGs. Transportation-related GHGs is the largest category of GHGs in the whole pie for the US and comprises 27% of US GHGs. 33% of 27% is 8.9%. Light-duty trucks are 17.2% of transportation-related GHGs, so 4.6% of overall US GHGs. The US already has a heavily used freight-rail network. [1]: https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-... [2]: https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPDF.cgi?Dockey=P10153PC.pdf https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPDF.cgi?Dockey=P10153PC.pdf
  - dymk 4y ago
    Electric trucks are in the works too
rr808 4y ago
Exactly its especially crazy to see the huge SUV EVs. Instead of driving less, using public transport and bicycles, you can just swap to an EV.
- dymk 4y ago
  It’s not crazy, it makes perfect sense given the reality most Americans live in. You see EV replacements for existing SUVs rather than people using public transit because… there is not good public transit for most Americans. People can’t wait for their government build public infra - they need to be able to get to the grocery store today.
  - rr808 4y ago
    No it is exactly the point. Most towns and cities have bus lines even if they dont have trains. People should move to apartments and give up their suburban mc mansion. The fastest growing areas are AZ, TX, FL, the new suburbs there are vast and car centric its enabled by cheap gas and cheap cars. People just prefer that because they can.
    - reducesuffering 4y ago
      It's not simply because "they can," but that the towns and cities get built so that things are distributed and not served comparably by bus lines. For example, in my median-density medium-sized city, by USA standards, my grocery store is 16 minutes away by bus, but 5 minutes by car. A coffee shop I'd go to is 29 minutes by bus and 6 minutes by car. Things are much worse for where >60% of Americans live too...
      - rr808 4y ago
        Sure, I'm sure you can move to an apartment that is more central, cheaper and more efficient to heat as well. People would rather not do that.
kentlyons 4y ago
In a previous life, I learned that the fleet of all Toyota vehicles out there produced 320.5 million tons of CO2 in 2019. See line 11 of table I on pg 37. https://global.toyota/pages/global_toyota/sustainability/report/er/er20_en.pdf https://global.toyota/pages/global_toyota/sustainability/rep... Basically the vast majority of CO2 Toyota produces are from cars on the road.
JoshTko 4y ago
EVs -> no emissions in transport, 27% of US emissions. EVs drive lower battery cost and capacity needed for renewable energy adoption - 17% of total installed and 60%+ of new power generation capacity. Your skepticism is impeding the single most impactful factor in mitigating climate change.

_hypx 4y ago

[flagged]

barbazoo 4y ago
> EDIT: People don’t like to hear the truth. Do you have a source to back up your claim that that's the truth?
- _hypx 4y ago
  A bunch of people immediately downvoted within a few minutes of posting that. I guess I struck a nerve.
PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
I do not like the typical conservative line of "there isn't one size that fits everywhere, which is why the [government one size larger than we can control with money and connections] should not create mandates" However, having moved from Philadelphia to rural New Mexico 4 years ago, I have to admit that I can see the point. E-bikes and mass transit are not effective solutions for the rural west. Doesn't mean they are not great ideas, but you're not going to solve transportation in the rural west with that sort of thing. In metro areas though, absolutely.
- _hypx 4y ago
  Most EV sales happen in urban centers, not rural areas. Not to mention that battery cars doesn't really solve the problem for rural areas too, due to limited range, less charging infrastructure and much higher cost.
  - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
    Right it's a form of harm reduction. Transit and eBikes are undoubtedly the more energy efficient alternative. But the infrastructure improvements American cities need to make them safe and useful options are expensive and most American cities have incredible amounts of bureaucracy replete with veto opportunities for any changes to the built environment. If EVs can affect the built environment first while the harder work of changing urban land-use and building new infrastructure begin in earnest, we can drive down fossil fuel dependency. Or we can accept the American status quo of driving gasoline cars everywhere even in urban 3 mi. radii. Closing CAFE Standard loopholes would also be a great form of harm reduction.
    - _hypx 4y ago
      Harm reduction would be driving less, not spend tens of thousands on a new car.
      - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
        Yes infrastructure changes are all about driving less. Traffic calming, dedicated bus and rail ROW, higher FARs for denser environments, raised crosswalks, dedicated bike ROW, etc. Unless you know a better way to get Americans to start driving less then infrastructure, zoning, and traffic calming is all we know. It's what worked in Europe and Asia at least. The current American built environment designs for and around the car in almost every way. Low-income Americans that can afford cars will choose a car over any other mode in most American cities because of this. Changing that is hard work and there's an increasing number of advocates for these changes, but auto companies can churn out cars faster than these laws and the subsequent construction can finish. In the meantime, I encourage you to get involved in your local city planning meetings and advocate for infrastructure to decrease VMT. It's all we can do.
- anon84873628 4y ago
  Yeah, there's nothing about transport in the rural west that is worth solving. The point is that we should be investing in places where GHG can be reduced the most, and passenger vehicles ain't it.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
While I'm all for mass transit, and I loved living in areas like NYC and Boston where taking the subway/T was very convenient (despite their current problems/underinvestment) I just don't see how you get from "A" to "B" in Western cities that are so car centric - that is, how you build out mass transit systems that make any more than a teeny dent in overall commuter behavior. Look at Dallas. The DART light rail system first went live in 1996, and it actually has a good number of lines and a fair amount of city coverage. Still, looking at data from 2021, around 76% of workers still drove to work alone, and another 10% carpooled. So "not in a car" options only accounted for 14% of total commutes. And this was after a quarter century and billions and billions spent, it still only made a tiny dent in overall commute volumes. I don't know how you change this.
- _hypx 4y ago
  We’re spending many hundreds of billions of dollars on new cars and charging infrastructure. This could easily be redirected to mass transit.
  - dublinben 4y ago
    Activists have been trying for decades to shift US cities away from car dependency towards more sustainable alternatives, and they have very little to show for it. It is politically impossible to shift this funding to non-car transportation overnight. Like it or not, EVs are a necessary part of the solution. We no longer have time to build enough subways and bike lanes to make cars go away entirely.
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  It differs per area but the Urban Village strategy is popular. You take commerical areas with high usage and you zone them to allow higher FAR (Floor-Area Ratio) and to go taller for mixed use purposes. This adds a residential base in walking distance to the commercial center. Separately you add pedestrian and cyclist treatments to these centers and try to plug the village into a greater bus or light rail network. You also need to waive or significantly relax any minimum parking requirements, grandfathering in existing parking but allowing pedestrian and cyclist treatments to take precedence. Take a look at Arizona's Cul-de-sac for a residential version of this approach.
CraigJPerry 4y ago
> a large portion Would it not be a small portion? This is a VERY expensive way to get on that podium. There are far cheaper and even “higher value virtues” to signal. For example, a person might choose to tell you at every opportunity how they don’t have a car at all never mind an EV and prefer bicycles or public transport. Such a person may actively elevate their scorn for the EV subclass of vehicles because of mining actions necessary for their manufacture. I’d say that’s more likely a source of virtue signalling - you only need to give up convenience (do-able for someone who invests their identity in a “virtuous” cause). Purchasing an ev generally requires you to be attracting enough dollars each month first. I think i see a different type of person in larger numbers buying pure EVs - status symbol seekers. Rightly or wrongly in many societies there’s a view that the number of dollars you can cause to flow in your direction signals how good or useful a person you are. A marketing associate buying a big status symbol EV that’s out of reach of a carpenter is an effective statement of how much better that person is than someone else, in their mind. And yet, the carpenter is plainly the better contributor to life at a 1st order pass anyway.
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  > I think i see a different type of person in larger numbers buying pure EVs - status symbol seekers. Most people buying EVs right now simply like the driving experience. Right or wrong, having all that acceleration at your foot is nice, and one pedal driving is also cool. There isn't much status to it, since Teslas are a dime a dozen these days. The driving experience of an EV is simply 10X better than an ICE. Environmentally speaking, EVs are slightly better because they don't pollute as much, and don't need refined oil products to run, but they still cause congestion, even more so since they are more fun to drive (I didn't drive my gas powered car as much as my new EV, which is probably an environmental step back).
  - CraigJPerry 4y ago
    >> Right or wrong, having all that acceleration Right, definitely right. Acceleration trumps speed for fun always. There’s definitely a ton of reasons people buy EVs. I’m just offering what i think is a more realistic dumb reason than the virtue signalling the GP proposed

thrroowwawaaayy 4y ago

Transportation accounts for over one third of CO2 emissions in the U.S., and decarbonization of electricity generation, which is another third, is already well underway. It makes perfect sense why we talk a lot about decarbonization of transportation in the United States.

Karrot_Kream 4y ago

Transportation accounts for a third of American CO2 generation and is the largest non-industrial source of American GHG emissions. We need to make dents here through every manner possible, including electrifying the existing modeshare, while promoting much more energy efficient modeshares like cycling and transit.

seydor 4y ago
Passenger car emissions are ~8% of total CO2. Trucks etc are easier to greenify, replace with trains etc.
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  Passenger cars are 33% of transport-related GHGs, the single largest category for transportation-related GHGs. Transportation-related GHGs is the largest category of GHGs in the whole pie for the US and comprises 27% of US GHGs. 33% of 27% is 8.9%. Light-duty trucks are 17.2% of transportation-related GHGs, so 4.6% of overall US GHGs. The US already has a heavily used freight-rail network. [1]: https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-... [2]: https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPDF.cgi?Dockey=P10153PC.pdf https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPDF.cgi?Dockey=P10153PC.pdf
- dymk 4y ago
  Electric trucks are in the works too

rr808 4y ago

Exactly its especially crazy to see the huge SUV EVs. Instead of driving less, using public transport and bicycles, you can just swap to an EV.

dymk 4y ago
It’s not crazy, it makes perfect sense given the reality most Americans live in. You see EV replacements for existing SUVs rather than people using public transit because… there is not good public transit for most Americans. People can’t wait for their government build public infra - they need to be able to get to the grocery store today.
- rr808 4y ago
  No it is exactly the point. Most towns and cities have bus lines even if they dont have trains. People should move to apartments and give up their suburban mc mansion. The fastest growing areas are AZ, TX, FL, the new suburbs there are vast and car centric its enabled by cheap gas and cheap cars. People just prefer that because they can.
  - reducesuffering 4y ago
    It's not simply because "they can," but that the towns and cities get built so that things are distributed and not served comparably by bus lines. For example, in my median-density medium-sized city, by USA standards, my grocery store is 16 minutes away by bus, but 5 minutes by car. A coffee shop I'd go to is 29 minutes by bus and 6 minutes by car. Things are much worse for where >60% of Americans live too...
    - rr808 4y ago
      Sure, I'm sure you can move to an apartment that is more central, cheaper and more efficient to heat as well. People would rather not do that.

kentlyons 4y ago

In a previous life, I learned that the fleet of all Toyota vehicles out there produced 320.5 million tons of CO2 in 2019. See line 11 of table I on pg 37. https://global.toyota/pages/global_toyota/sustainability/report/er/er20_en.pdf https://global.toyota/pages/global_toyota/sustainability/rep... Basically the vast majority of CO2 Toyota produces are from cars on the road.

JoshTko 4y ago

EVs -> no emissions in transport, 27% of US emissions. EVs drive lower battery cost and capacity needed for renewable energy adoption - 17% of total installed and 60%+ of new power generation capacity. Your skepticism is impeding the single most impactful factor in mitigating climate change.