7 ms·

make smaller cars getting more people on electric scooters would do a lot of good too, if there was safe infrastructure to ride without getting hit by an overs

by riffic 4y ago

make smaller cars getting more people on electric scooters would do a lot of good too, if there was safe infrastructure to ride without getting hit by an oversized pickup. The city of Paris is doing the right thing here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2020/10/20/paris-mayor-anne-hidalgo-to-make-good-on-pledge-to-remove-half-of-citys-car-parking-spaces/amp/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2020/10/20/paris-ma...

ARandomerDude 4y ago
The problem with these solutions is they always ignore one major detail: families. It's pretty hard to pack your kids and groceries into a tiny car or on a scooter. Encouraging tiny cars for the masses may also encourage a Japan-style demographic time-bomb.
- m4rtink 4y ago
  Families cant travel by train/bus/tram ?
- theGnuMe 4y ago
  That's a leap!
- dpkirchner 4y ago
  The solutions don't need to address every use case or family size -- smaller vehicles could work very well for commuters, that's enough to make a dent in emissions.
  - sublinear 4y ago
    What happens when the bigger family vehicle inevitably crashes into people on their scooters? Just trading one problem for another.
    - adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
      build better infrastructure. cars hitting bikes/scooters/pedestrians happens because you don't have good separation. Better bike lanes and road design do a lot to reduce accidents (see the Netherlands for examples on how to do this).
      - riffic 4y ago
        Bollards bring a smile to my face every time I see them.
        Kon-Peki 4y ago
        Yeah, but if you put bollards everywhere then emergency vehicles have to park in the street, where Teslas can run into them.
        sublinear 4y ago
        "Your floor is now clean!"
- riffic 4y ago
  read A Pattern Language. families can get by when we stop doing development around anti-patterns that have the inconvenient external cost of burning up the planet.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- rqtwteye 4y ago
  "Encouraging tiny cars for the masses may also encourage a Japan-style demographic time-bomb." This needs some explaining.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    I've known people from whom the "have a 3rd kid, or stop at 2?" question probably was tipped over to "stop at 2" by the cost and hassle of having to buy a bigger car to comfortably & safely fit 3 car seats, on top of all the other painfully-high expenses of having a kid. And I've repeatedly heard needing to get a minivan or largish SUV mentioned in conversations about whether to have more than 3 kids, as a downside to going higher. I'd absolutely believe that car-dependence has played some measurable role in suppressing birthrates, by causing step increases in transportation costs at certain counts of kids. 1 or 2 is no problem with almost any car, but 3 means at least a large sedan, and 4-5 means a van or SUV. More than 5 and you're looking at a fullsize van or a minivan with dual bench seats or something.
    - SECProto 4y ago
      One thing I loved living in Japan was availability of minivans that were actually small. The Toyota Sienta (note: not sienna) had 7 seats while being built on the Vitz (Yaris) platform. 3 feet shorter than a north american minivan, a foot narrower, and an engine roughly half the displacement (but still could go highway speeds without issue). I would happily upgrade from a small hatchback to one of those.
      - yamtaddle 4y ago
        Yeah, such cars are hard to find in the US and I'd hesitate to buy one, personally, given the ever-increasing size and weight of the average car on the road, mostly from trucks and SUVs. I don't want to pack my family into a car with little crumple-room and low weight, on American highways. Cracking this chicken-egg will require forcing huge-ass vehicle ownership down first, and good luck with that in the US. :-(
- local_crmdgeon 4y ago
  I use public transit, a bike, and I haul my family in a GMC Sierra. Most of the time, bikes are better. Sometimes, I use the truck. We shouldn't require use of the truck, which we do in 95% of the urban areas of this country. I'd rather just put my kid on a bike like they do in NL.
- kizunajp 4y ago
  Tying small cars to demographic might be a bit of a stretch. Small cars are an effect of the demographics and environment, not the other way round.
maherbeg 4y ago
I'm a huge fan of the 15 minute city. It's a bit hard to retrofit that into existing sprawling cities. One avenue I'm excited about in places like Austin is building dense mixed use development areas like https://brodieoaksredevelopment.com/ https://brodieoaksredevelopment.com/ which turns a massive strip mall into a much denser area as a destination. This then makes it feasible to build public transit between these areas and start building things up along those transit lines.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  US cities are so absurdly overbuilt that it's actually much easier to add bike lines, protected intersections and bus lanes.
SECProto 4y ago
> The city of Paris is doing the right thing here Note that your source is very outdated. Paris just opted to ban electric rental scooters effective September. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/parisians-vote-ban-e-scooters-french-capital-2023-04-02/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/parisians-vote-ban-e-sc...
- walthamstow 4y ago
  Only rentals though, private ones are still fine I think. When someone personally owns an object, it's far less likely to be found laying across a public footpath or at the bottom of a canal.
rqtwteye 4y ago
A lot of commuting could be done on e-bikes. They are fantastic.
bryanlarsen 4y ago
These regulations should result in a lot of smaller cars. The easiest way for a manufacturer to get the fleet average down is to build and incentivize the sale of small EV's, because they will bring the fleet average down a lot more than a Hummer EV which has a horrible MPGe. Assuming of course they are successful in closing the truck loophole. They claim to be trying to close it, but time will tell.
- QuarterReptile 4y ago
  Do they need to sell the efficient vehicles, or just offer them?
jwcooper 4y ago
Small cars already exist. The Chevy Bolt, Nissan Leaf, Tesla Model 3 are small EVs for USA standards. VW Golf, Mini Cooper, Mazda 3, Kia Rio are more examples of smaller cars. They're just not as popular as SUVs and trucks in the USA. People want big cars, so companies manufacture big cars too. Electric scooters would work for 5 months of the year where I live (and we have and use them when we can).
SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
>make smaller cars I am an automotive EE that was on before 2008… there is no much irony in your post that hurt feelings by Californians be damned I’m going to explain it to you. Thank Obama for large cars. When he came in and you saw the “all cars will have xx MPG by 2025” or whatever year seemed like a lifetime away, the car mfgs said ”ok, but unless you reinvent the stoichiometric ratios of gasoline, this can’t be done”. And they were right. There are some truths to ICE vehicles that until we have drastically different tires, and roads, and aluminum or composites are way cheaper (the latter not recyclable at all btw), some of these climate change proposals and dreams are just PR bullshit for the people that want to see it. Now… what happened next was the car manufacturers explained, they came to a compromise. Between CARB and CAFE and NITSA and etc, the administration agreed that they would judge on footprint of vehicle. Actual quote from one of these closed doors discussions: ”If you are going to grade us on footprint, we’re going to give you footprint”. A single car going down the road today in CAFE eyes, is not one car. It might be 1.3 cars, because its footprint is 1.3x a 2008 comparable vehicle. It’s not just footprint though! It’s drivetrain, weight, exemptions, regulation workarounds, class. Chrysler, erm Fiat, erm Stellanis sell Jeep Wranglers 2dr electrics, so they can sell more diesel trucks. Among 20 other examples. I don’t know the future with what is about to happen here. But I FUCKING PROMISE YOU this isn’t what it seems and the Biden Admin knows it already. If I had to guess, I would expect the mfgs to push a lot of basically disposable EVs that will last 50k miles and have batteries destined for landfills to make up for the vehicles they want to sell. Recycling lithium is not currently cheaper than mining new, and I do not expect that to change soon. If you ask me, I would rather a steel car that lasts 300k be made over vehicles that won’t make it to 100k and are just trashed. But… I don’t get a say. EDIT: As a nearly non-sequitur anecdote, I did cause a guy recently to have an ideological breakdown. He is a city planner complaining that a 9’x20’ parking space is killing him, and cars are only getting larger. I explained in detail the history and he had a lot of trouble coming to terms with it. He thought “his side” could do bo wrong.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  It's nonsense that batteries die after 100k and also totally wrong that they end up in landfills. Car batteries have high reuse value for letting lots of us cases. Recycling is irrelevant because the amount of batteries going offline is a tiny pitence compared to what is produced knew. There are actually not enough batteries for all the companies wanting to do recycling. Eventually recycling will make sense but it will be quite a while from now. You assertion that all EV fail after 50k is disproved by ever analysis on repair cost. But you are right lobbying and bad choices led to larger cars. However the solution was to force those under the same law and only allow very targeted exception with special licences.

by riffic 4y ago

ARandomerDude 4y ago

The problem with these solutions is they always ignore one major detail: families. It's pretty hard to pack your kids and groceries into a tiny car or on a scooter. Encouraging tiny cars for the masses may also encourage a Japan-style demographic time-bomb.

m4rtink 4y ago
Families cant travel by train/bus/tram ?
theGnuMe 4y ago
That's a leap!
dpkirchner 4y ago
The solutions don't need to address every use case or family size -- smaller vehicles could work very well for commuters, that's enough to make a dent in emissions.
- sublinear 4y ago
  What happens when the bigger family vehicle inevitably crashes into people on their scooters? Just trading one problem for another.
  - adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
    build better infrastructure. cars hitting bikes/scooters/pedestrians happens because you don't have good separation. Better bike lanes and road design do a lot to reduce accidents (see the Netherlands for examples on how to do this).
    - riffic 4y ago
      Bollards bring a smile to my face every time I see them.
      - Kon-Peki 4y ago
        Yeah, but if you put bollards everywhere then emergency vehicles have to park in the street, where Teslas can run into them.
        sublinear 4y ago
        "Your floor is now clean!"
riffic 4y ago
read A Pattern Language. families can get by when we stop doing development around anti-patterns that have the inconvenient external cost of burning up the planet.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
rqtwteye 4y ago
"Encouraging tiny cars for the masses may also encourage a Japan-style demographic time-bomb." This needs some explaining.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  I've known people from whom the "have a 3rd kid, or stop at 2?" question probably was tipped over to "stop at 2" by the cost and hassle of having to buy a bigger car to comfortably & safely fit 3 car seats, on top of all the other painfully-high expenses of having a kid. And I've repeatedly heard needing to get a minivan or largish SUV mentioned in conversations about whether to have more than 3 kids, as a downside to going higher. I'd absolutely believe that car-dependence has played some measurable role in suppressing birthrates, by causing step increases in transportation costs at certain counts of kids. 1 or 2 is no problem with almost any car, but 3 means at least a large sedan, and 4-5 means a van or SUV. More than 5 and you're looking at a fullsize van or a minivan with dual bench seats or something.
  - SECProto 4y ago
    One thing I loved living in Japan was availability of minivans that were actually small. The Toyota Sienta (note: not sienna) had 7 seats while being built on the Vitz (Yaris) platform. 3 feet shorter than a north american minivan, a foot narrower, and an engine roughly half the displacement (but still could go highway speeds without issue). I would happily upgrade from a small hatchback to one of those.
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      Yeah, such cars are hard to find in the US and I'd hesitate to buy one, personally, given the ever-increasing size and weight of the average car on the road, mostly from trucks and SUVs. I don't want to pack my family into a car with little crumple-room and low weight, on American highways. Cracking this chicken-egg will require forcing huge-ass vehicle ownership down first, and good luck with that in the US. :-(
local_crmdgeon 4y ago
I use public transit, a bike, and I haul my family in a GMC Sierra. Most of the time, bikes are better. Sometimes, I use the truck. We shouldn't require use of the truck, which we do in 95% of the urban areas of this country. I'd rather just put my kid on a bike like they do in NL.
kizunajp 4y ago
Tying small cars to demographic might be a bit of a stretch. Small cars are an effect of the demographics and environment, not the other way round.

maherbeg 4y ago

I'm a huge fan of the 15 minute city. It's a bit hard to retrofit that into existing sprawling cities. One avenue I'm excited about in places like Austin is building dense mixed use development areas like https://brodieoaksredevelopment.com/ https://brodieoaksredevelopment.com/ which turns a massive strip mall into a much denser area as a destination. This then makes it feasible to build public transit between these areas and start building things up along those transit lines.

panick21_ 4y ago
US cities are so absurdly overbuilt that it's actually much easier to add bike lines, protected intersections and bus lanes.

SECProto 4y ago

> The city of Paris is doing the right thing here Note that your source is very outdated. Paris just opted to ban electric rental scooters effective September. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/parisians-vote-ban-e-scooters-french-capital-2023-04-02/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/parisians-vote-ban-e-sc...

walthamstow 4y ago
Only rentals though, private ones are still fine I think. When someone personally owns an object, it's far less likely to be found laying across a public footpath or at the bottom of a canal.

rqtwteye 4y ago

A lot of commuting could be done on e-bikes. They are fantastic.

bryanlarsen 4y ago

These regulations should result in a lot of smaller cars. The easiest way for a manufacturer to get the fleet average down is to build and incentivize the sale of small EV's, because they will bring the fleet average down a lot more than a Hummer EV which has a horrible MPGe. Assuming of course they are successful in closing the truck loophole. They claim to be trying to close it, but time will tell.

QuarterReptile 4y ago
Do they need to sell the efficient vehicles, or just offer them?

jwcooper 4y ago

Small cars already exist. The Chevy Bolt, Nissan Leaf, Tesla Model 3 are small EVs for USA standards. VW Golf, Mini Cooper, Mazda 3, Kia Rio are more examples of smaller cars. They're just not as popular as SUVs and trucks in the USA. People want big cars, so companies manufacture big cars too. Electric scooters would work for 5 months of the year where I live (and we have and use them when we can).

SV_BubbleTime 4y ago

>make smaller cars I am an automotive EE that was on before 2008… there is no much irony in your post that hurt feelings by Californians be damned I’m going to explain it to you. Thank Obama for large cars. When he came in and you saw the “all cars will have xx MPG by 2025” or whatever year seemed like a lifetime away, the car mfgs said ”ok, but unless you reinvent the stoichiometric ratios of gasoline, this can’t be done”. And they were right. There are some truths to ICE vehicles that until we have drastically different tires, and roads, and aluminum or composites are way cheaper (the latter not recyclable at all btw), some of these climate change proposals and dreams are just PR bullshit for the people that want to see it. Now… what happened next was the car manufacturers explained, they came to a compromise. Between CARB and CAFE and NITSA and etc, the administration agreed that they would judge on footprint of vehicle. Actual quote from one of these closed doors discussions: ”If you are going to grade us on footprint, we’re going to give you footprint”. A single car going down the road today in CAFE eyes, is not one car. It might be 1.3 cars, because its footprint is 1.3x a 2008 comparable vehicle. It’s not just footprint though! It’s drivetrain, weight, exemptions, regulation workarounds, class. Chrysler, erm Fiat, erm Stellanis sell Jeep Wranglers 2dr electrics, so they can sell more diesel trucks. Among 20 other examples. I don’t know the future with what is about to happen here. But I FUCKING PROMISE YOU this isn’t what it seems and the Biden Admin knows it already. If I had to guess, I would expect the mfgs to push a lot of basically disposable EVs that will last 50k miles and have batteries destined for landfills to make up for the vehicles they want to sell. Recycling lithium is not currently cheaper than mining new, and I do not expect that to change soon. If you ask me, I would rather a steel car that lasts 300k be made over vehicles that won’t make it to 100k and are just trashed. But… I don’t get a say. EDIT: As a nearly non-sequitur anecdote, I did cause a guy recently to have an ideological breakdown. He is a city planner complaining that a 9’x20’ parking space is killing him, and cars are only getting larger. I explained in detail the history and he had a lot of trouble coming to terms with it. He thought “his side” could do bo wrong.

panick21_ 4y ago
It's nonsense that batteries die after 100k and also totally wrong that they end up in landfills. Car batteries have high reuse value for letting lots of us cases. Recycling is irrelevant because the amount of batteries going offline is a tiny pitence compared to what is produced knew. There are actually not enough batteries for all the companies wanting to do recycling. Eventually recycling will make sense but it will be quite a while from now. You assertion that all EV fail after 50k is disproved by ever analysis on repair cost. But you are right lobbying and bad choices led to larger cars. However the solution was to force those under the same law and only allow very targeted exception with special licences.