6 ms·

> EVs have higher torque but that doesn’t matter unless to drive like a mad-man Its not torque that matters. Its simply friction and normal force. And that's d

> EVs have higher torque but that doesn’t matter unless to drive like a mad-man Its not torque that matters. Its simply friction and normal force. And that's directly caused by weight. Tire Wear is something like (weight^4), so small increases in weight will have huge increases to wear-and-tear. --------- I think the real issue is that 3000lbs to 4500lbs, while a significant increase in tire wear, is still small compared to the big 5000lb to 8000lb vehicles that people use in practice. I'm sure a 4500lb EV is bad, but I'd expect a 6000 lb SUV or Truck to be worse (and a 8000lb electric-SUV to be the absolute worst). But beyond just consumer cars are semi-trucks, which almost certainly are the top tire-wear vehicles on the roads. I'd expect almost all of the plastic from "tire wear" to come from a semi-truck (again, weight to the power of 4), given their grossly increased weight. > walking, biking and public transportation Semi-trucks are replaced by trains. Not by walking and biking. I mean, I want more walkable paths and all. But this _particular_ problem is solved with freight trains. Last-mile is difficult. Do we want 100-people in a neighborhood driving 100x cars to a store? Or would we rather have 1x large truck deliver a (heavier) package to 100x different people? We're screwed in both cases, and rail can't save us. But trains don't use rubber and trains wheels / rails are made from steel. I'm sure some particles fly off as iron (or iron-oxide/rust), but surely much less than rubber given how much stronger steel wheels / steel tracks are.

undersuit 3y ago
>Do we want 100-people in a neighborhood driving 100x cars to a store? Or would we rather have 1x large truck deliver a (heavier) package to 100x different people? Why can't the majority of the people walk to a store and the rest can be serviced by a smaller truck?
- beedeebeedee 3y ago
  > Why can't the majority of the people walk to a store and the rest can be serviced by a smaller truck? Single-use zoning. Most people in the US live in areas where you can't walk to a store.
  - doubled112 3y ago
    The nearest store is a 45 minute walk (one way) from my townhouse. I'm not in the US, but Canada. Driving drops that to 8 minutes. The sprawl is real and I just don't always have 1.5 hours to dedicate to grabbing bread.
    - mzmzmzm 3y ago
      This kind of gets at the root of the problem. Take away cars, and the whole North American built environment is just not worth as much as the pyramid scheme of real estate we have in place of social safety nets.
    - ryukafalz 3y ago
      > The nearest store is a 45 minute walk (one way) from my townhouse. I'm not in the US, but Canada. Driving drops that to 8 minutes. Assuming an average adult walking speed of 3 mph, I'm guessing that's somewhere in the ballpark of 2.25 miles? So something like 11 minutes at an average cycling speed of 12 mph, yeah? The distances here don't feel insurmountable.
      - doubled112 3y ago
        It isn't the distance that is insurmountable by bike, no. Alone it would be fine, I know what I'm doing. If I add my children to the mix, it is a little sketchy due to what I'd consider tricky spots. There are no sidewalks, no bike lanes, no curbs, a squeeze over a bridge where two cars won't fit around the corner simultaneously, and a couple of roundabouts that drivers just don't understand (one normal, one mini). I can't quite trust them to do the right things. The drivers or my children in this instance.
        ryukafalz 3y ago
        Sure, I don't doubt that the infrastructure is terrible for cycling. It is where I live in the US too. But I think it's worth calling out that the distances involved often are well-suited for cycling, even if the streets today aren't. Where the distances are okay but the streets aren't, safer streets can make cycling feasible. Where the distances are too far for cycling, you need both safer streets and a shift in land use to get people out of their cars. Both are doable in the long term, but the former is much more tractable in the short- and medium-term.
- dataflow 3y ago
  How far do you think people should be willing to walk to a store?
  - undersuit 3y ago
    People should walk as far as they are willing to walk.
    - CableNinja 3y ago
      As i mentioned in my other post. Thats not far for most people. More than 1/4 mile and people will not hesitate to get the car
      - swores 3y ago
        I'm sure there are many people for whom that is true, but there are also many people who would laugh at the idea of driving two miles instead of walking, or laugh at the idea of driving six miles instead of cycling (even with a bag or two of shopping). I think a lot of the difference between people comes down to their childhood - what they learned as default behaviour. Though obviously people can change as they grow up too, either personality wise or having health/physical reasons they either can't walk far or can't drive at all. But my point is that just because some people feel that 3 minutes is the maximum time for walking before a car should be used instead it doesn't mean that short distance is an immutable fact, and many people could get used to walking slightly further distances and discover that no only is it not the end of the world, but it's even a good way to stay or become a bit fitter and healthier!
      - Animatronio 3y ago
        I was just thinking - why don't they make electrified coin-operated shopping carts that you can take home and return when you're done with them? That would greatly extend the carrying capacity of a single person and maybe make car trips redundant.
        desas 3y ago
- jayd16 3y ago
  I wouldn't mind walking to the store now and then but usually I make fewer trips for more than I could carry.
  - undersuit 3y ago
    So you're going to drive a multi-ton vehicle instead of bringing a folding cart?
    - lazide 3y ago
      When it’s easier and (value of time) cheaper, why not?
      - undersuit 3y ago
        You seem to have different issues than the person I'm replying to. Maybe your situation is different. If you nearest grocery store is 45 minutes away by walking maybe your situation requires a different solution than someone who has expressed interest to walk but stated that they might buy too many groceries to walk that home.
        lazide 3y ago
        Nope. A car is convenient (the comment I was replying too) in both situations! Weird, eh?
        undersuit 3y ago
        I find it convenient to walk to my grocery store. It's inconvenient to have too many groceries regardless of my conveyance home.
        lazide 3y ago
        Too many groceries to conveniently carry by hand in one go != too many. For some of us, anyway.
- dragontamer 3y ago
  My overall point is that the "last mile" we're just screwed unless we fundamentally redesign our neighborhoods and shape of our cities. Its pretty damn obvious that as the USA is laid out right now, we don't have any good last-mile solutions outside of 100x different people driving to the same store and picking up what they want. And its not like houses are going to pick themselves up and move to a store, and given zoning laws no one is going to move a store into a neighborhood either. (People won't like the crime that comes with it). So whatever, that's that. I don't see this issue changing. But I do think that the truck/rail situation can change. Fewer people are in the decision-making process for train vs truck, and factories can be designed (and/or redesigned) to fit trains. I'd assume that its easier to convince one or two factory owners to switch from truck-based to train-based logistics... rather than convincing 100x homehowners to vote at the next HOA meeting to start a city-campaign legal change to change the local zoning laws and possibly lower everyone's housing values by increasing crime in the neighborhood during this rise in shoplifting going on right now...
  - bobthepanda 3y ago
    IIRC there is a push in some areas to switch to e-bikes; while they carry less, you also don’t need a CDL to ride a bicycle and there is a chronic shortage of CDL drivers.
    - nerdponx 3y ago
      There's no shortage of anything except training and wages/benefits. At some point, companies are going to have to bite the bullet and start training their own employees. The horror!
      - bobthepanda 3y ago
        There is a legitimate lack, partially because the federal guidelines for holding a CDL rule out anyone who uses marijuana.
        nerdponx 3y ago
- CableNinja 3y ago
  Housing density, and radius of "walkable" to the average human. I live in a neighborhood full of small apartments, single level duplexes, and single family homes. What stores are walkable? The liquor store, and gas station, and if i really feel like it, dominos and 7-11, both of which are at least 1/4 mile one way. Most others in this area, dont get those even. Past that its about a mile one way to the actual grocery store. And then after all the shopping, i have to walk back, now with 50+lbs of groceries. Honestly, all this we need more walkable cities stuff, i get it, yes, you should be able to get places by walking, but really, its just not even feasible most times if youre going to be buying something. Im not gonna walk home from best buy 4+ miles away heaving a huge TV on my back, no one will. We invented transportation that didnt involve humans using their legs because we are slow, and easily over encumbered when carrying things. Theres a reason we saw an explosion of carriages way back. Its easier to haul more, and much faster, than if a person, or even many people at once, were to do it. Housing density is a huge factor in a lot of this, but having swaths of tall purely apartment buildings is also not the answer. People want single family homes and other styles for many reasons. They wont be going away anytime soon. And even if they did, the only answer is very mixed use zoning. One of my favorite examples, in downtown Denver, there is a tall apartment building, stacked on top of a large chain grocery store, it includes parking for the store, and spots for the building, under the building too. This is what i would consider peak use, and what people complain about walkable cities really need to focus on. Having a city you can walk anywhere is great, but you need to be able to get to the societal needs without having to walk far. Of course the grocery store also serves for a large part of that neighborhood, and distance to the store is a variable, but this mainly serves multiple buildings in a small area. The big problem is all the space we waste dedicating to parking. It might be more expensive, but you can gain a lot more use if you force parking lots to have shops above/below them, and that reclaimed flat land can then be used for the mixed use building. Parking is also not going away, like i said, we invented carriages for a reason. Howwwweeeeevvvveeerrr all of this comes with a number of caveats, like the ridiculous price to lease a storefront, build the building, etc, and of course its just a feedback loop that gets worse as we waste more space, space becomes premium. All of this is to sum up my point, walkability is variable by person, and changes greatly depending on if youre going to have to be carrying things, and theres never going to be good "walkable" cities, short of nuking a city and starting over, you wont make it vastly better, especially with the politicians and government we have now.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
ZeroGravitas 3y ago
The report they cite has a litte icon of a train in their solutions infographic section, page 89: https://www.systemiq.earth/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/BreakingThePlasticWave_MainReport.pdf https://www.systemiq.earth/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Breaki...
neon_electro 3y ago
My Bolt EV has a curb weight of 3624lbs; there are examples of vehicles that could have dramatically lower impact, but it's frustrating that GM doesn't seem inclined to keep cars like this in production. (Yes, they're hinting at producing the Bolt EV in the future, it's unfortunate that they can't just keep producing the current Bolt until then)
Stinky_Lisa 3y ago
Last mile can be resolved with drones and bikes. I wouldnt even be opposed to consider going back to horses.
- swores 3y ago
  Are horses actually environmentally friendly? I know that having a pet dog can be one of, if not the most, un-environmentally friendly things a person can do due to the amount they eat, so I could imagine horses having the same problem and not being as good as electric cars yet alone electric bikes, but I don't know anything about horses so maybe they're very efficient eaters? I do know that back before cars, places like NYC had many tens of thousands of horses working in the streets, leading to huge amounts of horse shit everywhere (so much so that even though it does have industrial uses, it's value was practically zero), plus something like half a dozen horses dying on the streets every day and being left to putrefy - so some logistical improvements compared to last time needed at the very least, though 120 years ago people weren't caring much about the fuel efficiency comparisons.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - aksss 3y ago
    Yep, horses are massively expensive to own. Aside from required caloric intake, think living space, waste disposal, pests, specialized care (farrier), vet bills, tack, grooming. Ugh.
  - dragontamer 3y ago
    Horses are far more inefficient at carrying than cars. That's why we switched to cars so quickly. This caused a cascading set of improvement. Horses needed *literally* tons of horse-bread to function well. And those *literal* tons of horse-bread turned into *literal* tons of horse-poop. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-horse-bread https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-horse-bread > According to some estimates, medieval horses consumed about 20 pounds of food per day. Note: a "day" of travel was ~30 miles back then. It gets worse: you need horse-bread (and the waste / horse-poop) to _move_ horse bread into the cities, where all the horses were. Alternatively, consider that one-gallon of gasoline (~6 lbs) would also travel 30 miles today, but also carry far more load. What, our typical car is like 200 horsepower today? So one gallon of gasoline is roughly the strength of a 200-horse carriage?. Its an absurd comparison point. We're realistically looking at 1-gallon of gasoline (and its associated waste product) vs something like 4000-lbs (ie: 2 tons) of horse bread (and its associated waste product/2-tons of horse poop). ------------ Gasoline, for all of its faults, largely turns into CO2. Which escapes into the atmosphere and floats away. But imagine that for every gallon of gasoline you used today you created 20lbs of horse-poop somewhere instead. Horse poop is something you'd need to scrub out of the streets every night, and it would infect the local rivers each time it rained. The idea of horses being more environmentally friendly is a laughable myth. They're incredibly dirty creatures, and the poop problem alone would cause a significant rise in infections above-and-beyond anything this microplastics problem has caused, I promise.
downWidOutaFite 3y ago
I was in the market for a small electric city car and found out that we're not allowed to have small cars in the US. Europe and Asia have really nice small city cars under 2,000lbs but none of them are available here. I believe the smallest car sold in the US is the Mini Cooper around 3,000lbs. I actually ended up with a souped up street legal golf cart and it's worked out well for my purposes of picking up kids and groceries within a 5 mile radius, though I'm in the Bay Area where the weather is not too extreme most of the year. I'm not sure why this market is neglected.
- dragontamer 3y ago
  Doesn't really matter in any case. The bulk of the problem is 5000lb+ vehicles. F150, SUVs like Suburbans, etc. etc. I'm not even sure if people are using these big vehicles to carry their families around, its probably just single-person drivers in most cases. I'm not even sure how to approach the weight problem. We have plenty of cars in the 3000lb or 4000lb range but more-and-more people are pushing 5000lb+.
  - redwall_hp 3y ago
    A tax during annual registration based on axle weight to the fourth power times the number of miles driven since the last odometer reading. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law There are some horrible states without annual inspections, but they should be federally punished until they comply. If we could force every state to have a drinking age of 21, using access to highway funding, then there's no reason the same thing couldn't be done for vehicular taxation. It would increase state tax revenue anyway...
- enragedcacti 3y ago
  The Mitsubishi Mirage is available in the US and comes in at just ~2100lbs, but it really ends up just serving the purpose of showing how huge of a gap there is in the American market. The fact that Mitsubishi can make a 4-door, 40mpg, 2100lbs car that passes US regs on a shoestring sale price shows that other mfgs could but just don't have the incentive to. You have the cancelled Chevy Spark at 2246lbs, the 2-seater Miata at 2,341lbs, and then the next lightest is a Versa with +500lbs on the Mirage.
highwaylights 3y ago
Or people just get their groceries delivered. Way more convenient, not expensive anymore (I get unlimited deliveries for a fairly paltry annual fee), and saves on journeys as the truck just loads up on lots of people’s deliveries all at once. It also scales better - if more people are having groceries delivered then each trucks stops become more closely clustered (unless the computers involved are just doing a poor job).
- galangalalgol 3y ago
  As the tire wear varies with the square of the weight we are comparing: 100x(car weight + grocery weight)^2 Vs (Truck weight + 100x grocery weight)^2 I couldn't find an empty weight for a box truck that could carry that much but assuming 10klbs total, and that grocery weight is negligible to the car, it looks like thebtruck is slightly better. It doesn't seem like a clear win.
  - dragontamer 3y ago
    > (car weight + grocery weight)^2 That's ^4 actually. Friction / Normal Force / Damage to roads is to the Fourth power law. Yeah, the 100x lighter cars might actually be better in practice. That's what makes this last-mile problem so problematic. We're already (possibly) at the local optimum.
ok_computer 3y ago
Honest question how does shear force proportional to torque not factor in? Coefficient of friction is shear over normal. Mechanical properties are a function of temperature and quick startups assuredly contribute to wear. An extreme example is drag racing. Cars are highway driving in steady state cruising for more miles and time but in the US around town driving has stop lights.
- djhedges 3y ago
  Even at steady state cruising the the tires are flexing and stretching with each revolution. Tires are round but a driveway is flat. If you look at the contact patch of the tire it flattens a bit to confirm to the driveway's shape. Now visualize with each revolution that flatten part of the tire is cycling around the wheel. At a microscopic level there's a lot edges in the road surface that we don't fully appreciate which also contributes to tire wear. http://insideracingtechnology.com/tirebkexerpt1.htm http://insideracingtechnology.com/tirebkexerpt1.htm

undersuit 3y ago

>Do we want 100-people in a neighborhood driving 100x cars to a store? Or would we rather have 1x large truck deliver a (heavier) package to 100x different people? Why can't the majority of the people walk to a store and the rest can be serviced by a smaller truck?

beedeebeedee 3y ago
> Why can't the majority of the people walk to a store and the rest can be serviced by a smaller truck? Single-use zoning. Most people in the US live in areas where you can't walk to a store.
- doubled112 3y ago
  The nearest store is a 45 minute walk (one way) from my townhouse. I'm not in the US, but Canada. Driving drops that to 8 minutes. The sprawl is real and I just don't always have 1.5 hours to dedicate to grabbing bread.
  - mzmzmzm 3y ago
    This kind of gets at the root of the problem. Take away cars, and the whole North American built environment is just not worth as much as the pyramid scheme of real estate we have in place of social safety nets.
  - ryukafalz 3y ago
    > The nearest store is a 45 minute walk (one way) from my townhouse. I'm not in the US, but Canada. Driving drops that to 8 minutes. Assuming an average adult walking speed of 3 mph, I'm guessing that's somewhere in the ballpark of 2.25 miles? So something like 11 minutes at an average cycling speed of 12 mph, yeah? The distances here don't feel insurmountable.
    - doubled112 3y ago
      It isn't the distance that is insurmountable by bike, no. Alone it would be fine, I know what I'm doing. If I add my children to the mix, it is a little sketchy due to what I'd consider tricky spots. There are no sidewalks, no bike lanes, no curbs, a squeeze over a bridge where two cars won't fit around the corner simultaneously, and a couple of roundabouts that drivers just don't understand (one normal, one mini). I can't quite trust them to do the right things. The drivers or my children in this instance.
      - ryukafalz 3y ago
        Sure, I don't doubt that the infrastructure is terrible for cycling. It is where I live in the US too. But I think it's worth calling out that the distances involved often are well-suited for cycling, even if the streets today aren't. Where the distances are okay but the streets aren't, safer streets can make cycling feasible. Where the distances are too far for cycling, you need both safer streets and a shift in land use to get people out of their cars. Both are doable in the long term, but the former is much more tractable in the short- and medium-term.
dataflow 3y ago
How far do you think people should be willing to walk to a store?
- undersuit 3y ago
  People should walk as far as they are willing to walk.
  - CableNinja 3y ago
    As i mentioned in my other post. Thats not far for most people. More than 1/4 mile and people will not hesitate to get the car
    - swores 3y ago
      I'm sure there are many people for whom that is true, but there are also many people who would laugh at the idea of driving two miles instead of walking, or laugh at the idea of driving six miles instead of cycling (even with a bag or two of shopping). I think a lot of the difference between people comes down to their childhood - what they learned as default behaviour. Though obviously people can change as they grow up too, either personality wise or having health/physical reasons they either can't walk far or can't drive at all. But my point is that just because some people feel that 3 minutes is the maximum time for walking before a car should be used instead it doesn't mean that short distance is an immutable fact, and many people could get used to walking slightly further distances and discover that no only is it not the end of the world, but it's even a good way to stay or become a bit fitter and healthier!
    - Animatronio 3y ago
      I was just thinking - why don't they make electrified coin-operated shopping carts that you can take home and return when you're done with them? That would greatly extend the carrying capacity of a single person and maybe make car trips redundant.
      - desas 3y ago
jayd16 3y ago
I wouldn't mind walking to the store now and then but usually I make fewer trips for more than I could carry.
- undersuit 3y ago
  So you're going to drive a multi-ton vehicle instead of bringing a folding cart?
  - lazide 3y ago
    When it’s easier and (value of time) cheaper, why not?
    - undersuit 3y ago
      You seem to have different issues than the person I'm replying to. Maybe your situation is different. If you nearest grocery store is 45 minutes away by walking maybe your situation requires a different solution than someone who has expressed interest to walk but stated that they might buy too many groceries to walk that home.
      - lazide 3y ago
        Nope. A car is convenient (the comment I was replying too) in both situations! Weird, eh?
        undersuit 3y ago
        I find it convenient to walk to my grocery store. It's inconvenient to have too many groceries regardless of my conveyance home.
        lazide 3y ago
        Too many groceries to conveniently carry by hand in one go != too many. For some of us, anyway.
dragontamer 3y ago
My overall point is that the "last mile" we're just screwed unless we fundamentally redesign our neighborhoods and shape of our cities. Its pretty damn obvious that as the USA is laid out right now, we don't have any good last-mile solutions outside of 100x different people driving to the same store and picking up what they want. And its not like houses are going to pick themselves up and move to a store, and given zoning laws no one is going to move a store into a neighborhood either. (People won't like the crime that comes with it). So whatever, that's that. I don't see this issue changing. But I do think that the truck/rail situation can change. Fewer people are in the decision-making process for train vs truck, and factories can be designed (and/or redesigned) to fit trains. I'd assume that its easier to convince one or two factory owners to switch from truck-based to train-based logistics... rather than convincing 100x homehowners to vote at the next HOA meeting to start a city-campaign legal change to change the local zoning laws and possibly lower everyone's housing values by increasing crime in the neighborhood during this rise in shoplifting going on right now...
- bobthepanda 3y ago
  IIRC there is a push in some areas to switch to e-bikes; while they carry less, you also don’t need a CDL to ride a bicycle and there is a chronic shortage of CDL drivers.
  - nerdponx 3y ago
    There's no shortage of anything except training and wages/benefits. At some point, companies are going to have to bite the bullet and start training their own employees. The horror!
    - bobthepanda 3y ago
      There is a legitimate lack, partially because the federal guidelines for holding a CDL rule out anyone who uses marijuana.
      - nerdponx 3y ago
CableNinja 3y ago
Housing density, and radius of "walkable" to the average human. I live in a neighborhood full of small apartments, single level duplexes, and single family homes. What stores are walkable? The liquor store, and gas station, and if i really feel like it, dominos and 7-11, both of which are at least 1/4 mile one way. Most others in this area, dont get those even. Past that its about a mile one way to the actual grocery store. And then after all the shopping, i have to walk back, now with 50+lbs of groceries. Honestly, all this we need more walkable cities stuff, i get it, yes, you should be able to get places by walking, but really, its just not even feasible most times if youre going to be buying something. Im not gonna walk home from best buy 4+ miles away heaving a huge TV on my back, no one will. We invented transportation that didnt involve humans using their legs because we are slow, and easily over encumbered when carrying things. Theres a reason we saw an explosion of carriages way back. Its easier to haul more, and much faster, than if a person, or even many people at once, were to do it. Housing density is a huge factor in a lot of this, but having swaths of tall purely apartment buildings is also not the answer. People want single family homes and other styles for many reasons. They wont be going away anytime soon. And even if they did, the only answer is very mixed use zoning. One of my favorite examples, in downtown Denver, there is a tall apartment building, stacked on top of a large chain grocery store, it includes parking for the store, and spots for the building, under the building too. This is what i would consider peak use, and what people complain about walkable cities really need to focus on. Having a city you can walk anywhere is great, but you need to be able to get to the societal needs without having to walk far. Of course the grocery store also serves for a large part of that neighborhood, and distance to the store is a variable, but this mainly serves multiple buildings in a small area. The big problem is all the space we waste dedicating to parking. It might be more expensive, but you can gain a lot more use if you force parking lots to have shops above/below them, and that reclaimed flat land can then be used for the mixed use building. Parking is also not going away, like i said, we invented carriages for a reason. Howwwweeeeevvvveeerrr all of this comes with a number of caveats, like the ridiculous price to lease a storefront, build the building, etc, and of course its just a feedback loop that gets worse as we waste more space, space becomes premium. All of this is to sum up my point, walkability is variable by person, and changes greatly depending on if youre going to have to be carrying things, and theres never going to be good "walkable" cities, short of nuking a city and starting over, you wont make it vastly better, especially with the politicians and government we have now.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

ZeroGravitas 3y ago

The report they cite has a litte icon of a train in their solutions infographic section, page 89: https://www.systemiq.earth/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/BreakingThePlasticWave_MainReport.pdf https://www.systemiq.earth/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Breaki...

neon_electro 3y ago

My Bolt EV has a curb weight of 3624lbs; there are examples of vehicles that could have dramatically lower impact, but it's frustrating that GM doesn't seem inclined to keep cars like this in production. (Yes, they're hinting at producing the Bolt EV in the future, it's unfortunate that they can't just keep producing the current Bolt until then)

Stinky_Lisa 3y ago

Last mile can be resolved with drones and bikes. I wouldnt even be opposed to consider going back to horses.

swores 3y ago
Are horses actually environmentally friendly? I know that having a pet dog can be one of, if not the most, un-environmentally friendly things a person can do due to the amount they eat, so I could imagine horses having the same problem and not being as good as electric cars yet alone electric bikes, but I don't know anything about horses so maybe they're very efficient eaters? I do know that back before cars, places like NYC had many tens of thousands of horses working in the streets, leading to huge amounts of horse shit everywhere (so much so that even though it does have industrial uses, it's value was practically zero), plus something like half a dozen horses dying on the streets every day and being left to putrefy - so some logistical improvements compared to last time needed at the very least, though 120 years ago people weren't caring much about the fuel efficiency comparisons.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- aksss 3y ago
  Yep, horses are massively expensive to own. Aside from required caloric intake, think living space, waste disposal, pests, specialized care (farrier), vet bills, tack, grooming. Ugh.
- dragontamer 3y ago
  Horses are far more inefficient at carrying than cars. That's why we switched to cars so quickly. This caused a cascading set of improvement. Horses needed *literally* tons of horse-bread to function well. And those *literal* tons of horse-bread turned into *literal* tons of horse-poop. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-horse-bread https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-horse-bread > According to some estimates, medieval horses consumed about 20 pounds of food per day. Note: a "day" of travel was ~30 miles back then. It gets worse: you need horse-bread (and the waste / horse-poop) to _move_ horse bread into the cities, where all the horses were. Alternatively, consider that one-gallon of gasoline (~6 lbs) would also travel 30 miles today, but also carry far more load. What, our typical car is like 200 horsepower today? So one gallon of gasoline is roughly the strength of a 200-horse carriage?. Its an absurd comparison point. We're realistically looking at 1-gallon of gasoline (and its associated waste product) vs something like 4000-lbs (ie: 2 tons) of horse bread (and its associated waste product/2-tons of horse poop). ------------ Gasoline, for all of its faults, largely turns into CO2. Which escapes into the atmosphere and floats away. But imagine that for every gallon of gasoline you used today you created 20lbs of horse-poop somewhere instead. Horse poop is something you'd need to scrub out of the streets every night, and it would infect the local rivers each time it rained. The idea of horses being more environmentally friendly is a laughable myth. They're incredibly dirty creatures, and the poop problem alone would cause a significant rise in infections above-and-beyond anything this microplastics problem has caused, I promise.

downWidOutaFite 3y ago

I was in the market for a small electric city car and found out that we're not allowed to have small cars in the US. Europe and Asia have really nice small city cars under 2,000lbs but none of them are available here. I believe the smallest car sold in the US is the Mini Cooper around 3,000lbs. I actually ended up with a souped up street legal golf cart and it's worked out well for my purposes of picking up kids and groceries within a 5 mile radius, though I'm in the Bay Area where the weather is not too extreme most of the year. I'm not sure why this market is neglected.

dragontamer 3y ago
Doesn't really matter in any case. The bulk of the problem is 5000lb+ vehicles. F150, SUVs like Suburbans, etc. etc. I'm not even sure if people are using these big vehicles to carry their families around, its probably just single-person drivers in most cases. I'm not even sure how to approach the weight problem. We have plenty of cars in the 3000lb or 4000lb range but more-and-more people are pushing 5000lb+.
- redwall_hp 3y ago
  A tax during annual registration based on axle weight to the fourth power times the number of miles driven since the last odometer reading. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law There are some horrible states without annual inspections, but they should be federally punished until they comply. If we could force every state to have a drinking age of 21, using access to highway funding, then there's no reason the same thing couldn't be done for vehicular taxation. It would increase state tax revenue anyway...
enragedcacti 3y ago
The Mitsubishi Mirage is available in the US and comes in at just ~2100lbs, but it really ends up just serving the purpose of showing how huge of a gap there is in the American market. The fact that Mitsubishi can make a 4-door, 40mpg, 2100lbs car that passes US regs on a shoestring sale price shows that other mfgs could but just don't have the incentive to. You have the cancelled Chevy Spark at 2246lbs, the 2-seater Miata at 2,341lbs, and then the next lightest is a Versa with +500lbs on the Mirage.

highwaylights 3y ago

Or people just get their groceries delivered. Way more convenient, not expensive anymore (I get unlimited deliveries for a fairly paltry annual fee), and saves on journeys as the truck just loads up on lots of people’s deliveries all at once. It also scales better - if more people are having groceries delivered then each trucks stops become more closely clustered (unless the computers involved are just doing a poor job).

galangalalgol 3y ago
As the tire wear varies with the square of the weight we are comparing: 100x(car weight + grocery weight)^2 Vs (Truck weight + 100x grocery weight)^2 I couldn't find an empty weight for a box truck that could carry that much but assuming 10klbs total, and that grocery weight is negligible to the car, it looks like thebtruck is slightly better. It doesn't seem like a clear win.
- dragontamer 3y ago
  > (car weight + grocery weight)^2 That's ^4 actually. Friction / Normal Force / Damage to roads is to the Fourth power law. Yeah, the 100x lighter cars might actually be better in practice. That's what makes this last-mile problem so problematic. We're already (possibly) at the local optimum.

ok_computer 3y ago

Honest question how does shear force proportional to torque not factor in? Coefficient of friction is shear over normal. Mechanical properties are a function of temperature and quick startups assuredly contribute to wear. An extreme example is drag racing. Cars are highway driving in steady state cruising for more miles and time but in the US around town driving has stop lights.

djhedges 3y ago
Even at steady state cruising the the tires are flexing and stretching with each revolution. Tires are round but a driveway is flat. If you look at the contact patch of the tire it flattens a bit to confirm to the driveway's shape. Now visualize with each revolution that flatten part of the tire is cycling around the wheel. At a microscopic level there's a lot edges in the road surface that we don't fully appreciate which also contributes to tire wear. http://insideracingtechnology.com/tirebkexerpt1.htm http://insideracingtechnology.com/tirebkexerpt1.htm