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I live in a major city and the air would be better if everyone drove EVs, especially the trucks. Another major win is that renewables once installed (even if th

I live in a major city and the air would be better if everyone drove EVs, especially the trucks. Another major win is that renewables once installed (even if the materials are acquired from China) are energy produced locally which is a national security win. Above that, I don't agree that EVs are reducing carbon by an order of magnitude given the way batteries are manufactured and the current mix of electricity generation. If you have a home charger and can have a second gas car for trips in rural areas (if you need that) then a pure EV can work. But a 100% transition to all EVs is unrealistic. It doesn't have to be all or nothing, and it becomes yet another wedge issue in American society that is going to cause a lot of social strife.

Yujf 3y ago
The air quality is what I mostly look forward to. I bike 10km 1 way on my commute and it would be so much more enjoyable if the air quality was better.
- adolph 3y ago
  Recently I’ve been thinking about how municipal air quality would be improved if stoves, furnaces, ICE and other adiabatic processes used stored sources of oxygen instead of the nitrogen rich atmosphere. Essentially turn everything into a rocket. Of course there are some other tradeoffs about stored vs atmospheric oxygen.
  - thmsths 3y ago
    I wonder if we couldn't use an oxygen concentrator as a first stage instead of relying on stored oxygen. This would obviously increase the cost of the appliance (probably by a significant amount) but it would be safer and less disruptive (no need for a new distribution mechanism and you can just upgrade existing appliances).
delichon 3y ago
> Another major win is that renewables once installed (even if the materials are acquired from China) are energy produced locally which is a national security win. Much less so as the US has become the world's leading oil producing country, with spectacular growth in the last 15 years. https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-products/where-our-oil-comes-from.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc... Meanwhile China has a large lead in the production of photovoltaics, requiring the "once installed" qualifier. https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/solar-pv-manufacturing-capacity-and-production-by-country-and-region-2021-2027 https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/solar-pv-manu...

Yujf 3y ago

The air quality is what I mostly look forward to. I bike 10km 1 way on my commute and it would be so much more enjoyable if the air quality was better.

adolph 3y ago
Recently I’ve been thinking about how municipal air quality would be improved if stoves, furnaces, ICE and other adiabatic processes used stored sources of oxygen instead of the nitrogen rich atmosphere. Essentially turn everything into a rocket. Of course there are some other tradeoffs about stored vs atmospheric oxygen.
- thmsths 3y ago
  I wonder if we couldn't use an oxygen concentrator as a first stage instead of relying on stored oxygen. This would obviously increase the cost of the appliance (probably by a significant amount) but it would be safer and less disruptive (no need for a new distribution mechanism and you can just upgrade existing appliances).

delichon 3y ago

> Another major win is that renewables once installed (even if the materials are acquired from China) are energy produced locally which is a national security win. Much less so as the US has become the world's leading oil producing country, with spectacular growth in the last 15 years. https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-products/where-our-oil-comes-from.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc... Meanwhile China has a large lead in the production of photovoltaics, requiring the "once installed" qualifier. https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/solar-pv-manufacturing-capacity-and-production-by-country-and-region-2021-2027 https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/solar-pv-manu...