6 ms·

Electric cars produce twice as much CO₂ as trains, says rail group data

33 points by vinni2 3y ago

rapidaneurism 3y ago
Every time I used a train in the UK on a weekend I had to ride in a diesel bus for part of the journey. I doubt if that is less co2 emitting than driving my electric car.
kkfx 3y ago
My home is connected to the rest of the world by roads, at maximum I can travel by air (but having no chopper, STOL or human-capable drone I can't take that route) so well... If someone can made ANY actual road link available by rails... Oh, BTW my BEV can also run on not much hard ground, a thing trains can't do. We have roads because so far they are the best balance between flexibility and available tech, we can't make rails everywhere and we can't makes them flexible enough to be used by many different transports. The future will be air, when we will been able technologically to lift enough weight and move at an affordable enough costs. That's is. Rails today are the best on-ground means of transport for goods, for mass transports but can't reach "the last mile". Boats are another very nice means of transport BUT we do not have water everywhere so similar to rails have a scalability issue.
BizarroLand 3y ago
Where is the train that is reachable from my house that will take me to work in the same 15-25 minutes driving takes without making me wait in the cold or rain. Solve that and I'll only drive for pleasure.
MattGaiser 3y ago
> Average fuel costs would be roughly £50 for a small petrol car to travel the 400 miles, and significantly less again for an electric car, even after recent energy price rises. This isn't a fair comparison though. You need to insure the driver/car. You need to purchase the car. You need to pay to store the car when not in use. You are using up part of the car on the journey, which companies full well understand as they depreciate the car.
qzervaas 3y ago
"Using a diesel or petrol car produced nine times more carbon than going by train. The figure was four times more polluting than a train if driving a plug-in hybrid electric car, or almost two-and-a-half times more if using a battery electric car."
mjevans 3y ago
OK, fine. How much CO2 would a train take if they laid rail down every suburban street and stopped at every house and took even longer than a bus? This is not comparing apples and oranges and ignores all the existing sunk costs. Promote trains when we (in the US) build a rail system as well run as Japan's.
- phartenfeller 3y ago
  Do you expect a perfectly built out rail system to just spawn? No of course you need to start somewhere and articles like these are one argument to do so.
  - protocolture 3y ago
    Shitty argument when they arent as capable as electric cars.
    - defrost 3y ago
      Poor response in the context of reducing CO2 emissions as a goal.
    - nicoburns 3y ago
      They're more capable in some ways. They can go a lot faster than cars, and they allow passengers to engage in a much wider range of activities while riding one.
      - rickydroll 3y ago
        It's possible for a train to go faster than cars but it's not guaranteed. for example, one of the most heavily traveled corridors is Boston to New York City travel times are: Driving: 3 hours: 51 minutes (plus pee breaks) Amtrak: 3 hours 55 minutes Boston to DC you have much better tracks on the NYC to DC segment driving: 8 hours (plus pee breaks) Amtrak: 6 hours 45 minutes as for a wider range of activities, only if you don't get motion sick. When I'm on a train, my only activity is staring out the window (and taking pee breaks)
s7r 3y ago
When people "trade-in" a gas car for an EV, those gas cars are usually re-sold to peripheral countries with less regulations, where they continue running on dirtier fuel [1]. The emissions of the gas car continue, plus the embodied emissions of buying a new gas car and the ongoing emissions from the fossil fuel sources of electric charging. Vehicles that weigh 4,000 pounds, primarily designed to move 250 pounds of people, are inefficient by design — there will never be enough materials or energy on Earth to change that. This will continue showing itself in pollution and other externalities, such as the significant microplastic pollution that comes from car tires [2], and the fact that EVs — which wear through tires faster — are making rubber one of the leading sources of Amazon deforestation [3.] Of course, if you want to see solutions — they are buried all around us in North America, and exist all around us in many other parts of the world [4]. Feel free to contact me if you are interested in realizing solutions together, or just want to learn more. Contact in profile. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/21/africa/west-africa-benin-used-cars-climate-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/21/africa/west-africa-benin-used... [2] https://www.thedrive.com/news/tire-dust-makes-up-the-majority-of-ocean-microplastics-study-finds https://www.thedrive.com/news/tire-dust-makes-up-the-majorit... [3] https://e360.yale.edu/features/rubber-plantations-deforestation-tires-electric-vehicles https://e360.yale.edu/features/rubber-plantations-deforestat... [4] https://docs.google.com/document/d/19QpVabRn0RexxN1GYFbDojXrCSa2cmcx_TSdq6IFp8U/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/19QpVabRn0RexxN1GYFbDojXr...
- bigfont 3y ago
  Nice initiative. Particularly for civilians doing daily activities, biking and walking seem like the best forms of transportation. They enhance personal happiness, increase community connections, make streets safer, and promote beautiful surroundings.
  - s7r 3y ago
    Thank you for the kind words! I would agree — and I think there are some more fundamental approaches, like housing density paired with in-fill of retail and shops, that can make that more accessible from the ground up. Literally!
phartenfeller 3y ago
Kind of unsurprising that steel on steel transfers energy better into forward momentum. I am curious how the footprint is for subways in big cities. Full trains, cost efficiency and ease of use should be way better there.
renewiltord 3y ago
Yeah, that's true, but underground rail is $4b/mi in San Francisco and a used Tesla Model 3 is $27k so you could get 5.4 used Teslas per San Francisco resident for the cost of one mile of rail. It's a cost issue.
- panick21_ 3y ago
  That's just an terrible comparison. Tesla aren't gravity less chickens hover in a vacuum. For Tesla to run you need roads, you need charging infrastructure, you need energy infrastructure and so on and so on. Not to mention that if you actually bought that many 'used' Model 3s the price would go up. Not to mention the huge amount of people who currently do not have a car, who all of a sudden would make the bad traffic (and everything associated with that) worse. And guess what, the 'rail' would be 100x cheaper if some of the cars were moved of the road, and the rail was moved on that right of way. How about you do a cost comparison where the rail gets the existing right of way, and all those Tesla have to go into a tunnel. The way you phrase your whole proposition is already incredibly loaded. The cost are so high literally because the San Francisco people who propose this stuff are bunch of Tesla driving asshats who don't undrestand the first thing about public transport. They make projects incredibly expensive because (a) they don't give a shit about the plebs who have to use it and (b) the bigger the project the better the politics of handing out money to people. By any estimation, for a society as a whole having an efficient public transport system is by far a win. Everybody who has actually done any real analysis of the 'lets buy everybody a car' 'solution' will come to the conclusion that its incredibly dumb. Its just something far right wing people bring up to continue to prevent actual progress.
- lambdasquirrel 3y ago
  I think that's an American problem though. The fact that our electric cars have to be so big is another thing. We're just not winning on cost and feasibility. Besides that, I did pretty fine with just an e-bike, in the last year that I lived in the Bay Area.
- smitop 3y ago
  Your math is wrong - it's $4B ÷ 815k residents ÷ $27k = 0.18 used Tesla Model 3s per resident. (you accidentally used 27k as both the price and the population)
darth_avocado 3y ago
In other words, water is wet. Cars by design are less efficient when it comes to long distance travel. But trains cannot and will not be able to solve the "last mile problem" or even the "last 5 miles" problem when the cities are just massive urban sprawls. EVs are still better than regular cars and we can have them coexist with better planned cities and public transportation.
- dghlsakjg 3y ago
  Light rail, streetcars, pantograph buses and smart urban design can solve the rest of those problems. Toronto and Vancouver have used these solutions to solve these problems in relatively sprawling North American cities.
alentred 3y ago
The issue will those CO2 estimations is always the same: what is counted it, and what is not. For example, are the CO2 emissions related to the maintenance of the railroad counted in? On the other hand, are the CO2 emissions related to the production of the imported parts of the electric cars are also counted in? And so on. And the reason I propose this question is because the argument sounds like green-washing. For example, where I live it is often much cheaper to travel *by air* than by a train even on relatively short distances (<1000km). So if the final cost is correlated at least a bit with the CO2 emissions, which kind of makes sense in a general case (does it?), there is a problem with the CO2 emissions estimate there. What I am saying is that the problem with CO2 emissions is real, but it is being abused (green washing, etc.) in the absence of a commonly accepted and well understood way of estimating them. And the worst thing about it is that it makes the entire topic more ambiguous for everyone, stirs the speculations (people even denying that the problem exists) and makes it harder to focus on working solutions.
- snek_case 3y ago
  We should work to convert every process that uses energy to green energy. Then the issue becomes moot. Make everything electric, make all electricity production renewable (or nuclear). For things that can't easily run off of batteries like intercontinental flights, use electricity to produce methane or ethanol, and accept that this is a lossy process, price it accordingly. AFAIK, one of the things that produces the most CO2, and that we're not doing very much about (or even discussing) just yet, is the production of concrete.
  - logtempo 3y ago
    thing is, you can't beat oil energy density. And its logistic. going 100% electric is really something big, maybe too big. A good exemple is synthetic fuel: in Germany, they have really hard issues on biomass collect which is needed for "green fuel". As of today, synthesis come from coal. And we're talking about Germany,not France. France, who would need to triple its production of electricity to replace its oil consumption from cars. and I did not talked about the cropland needed for "biogas" and ethanol fuel. concrete, steel, agro-industry too...the list is long.
bell-cot 3y ago
My impression is that Britain's rail industry has some major problems with poor management, high cost, and low quality of service, which it might better spend its time addressing... Or if you want "X times better!" bragging rights - compared the microplastics released per passenger-mile by rail, vs. any sort of modern automobile.
Brian_K_White 3y ago
Cars and trains do two different jobs. Irrelevant comparison.
- dheera 3y ago
  Yeah exactly, a private car being only 2X the emissions of public transportation is actually pretty good. Electricity can eventually be 100% clean anyway. Gasoline will never be clean.
superkuh 3y ago
Cars and trains serve complementary needs. They do not function as replacements for each other as is implicit in this comparison. Trains tend to go to places of high population density. Their stops are at places where many other people want to go all the time. And their schedule to go to these places is not in the traveler's control. Cars go pretty much everywhere (or to a close enough point) and do it on your whim. But they are not fun to use in high population density areas (parking, traffic, etc).
- panick21_ 3y ago
  > Trains tend to go to places of high population density. Trains go to lots of places with low population density actually. Its only America brain that somehow believes that trains are only something for city with millions. I lived in a village with a few 1000 people and there were regular trains in multiple direction, and it wasn't on a major express line between major cities or anything. That train line then goes on to connect villages with even fewer people. > Cars go pretty much everywhere (or to a close enough point) and do it on your whim. Sure if somebody built a road there. And if there are gas stations/charging. And if there is no traffic. And if you both can drive and are allowed to drive. And so on and so on. True freedom is not having to pay basically anything for 8 month (at most a small part of your taxes), then spur of the moment being able to say 'you know what, I want to go to the other side of the country cross a river and go up a mountain' then getting up and within 5 minutes being on public transport efficiently traveling to that location. And this freedom is provided to you if you are 15 or 85. If you are blind. If you have were unable to perform your driving exams.
stavros 3y ago
Whenever I see this kind of syllogism, I think it's fossil fuel propaganda. "Cars using electricity made by emitting CO2 cause CO2 to be emitted". Yeah, but that's not the car's fault, is it. If you don't like your energy source, change your energy source. Don't give me this "washing machines emit more CO2 than handwashing" crap.
ojbyrne 3y ago
It seems like this comparison is car vs “train passenger.” Put 3 people in the car and they’re ahead.
- cameldrv 3y ago
  Yeah and if those cars are self-driving, it's fairly easy to have an Uber type service that puts together shared rides on the fly. Such a service would: 1. Cost less 2. Be faster 3. More convenient 4. Door to door I think trains are finished except maybe some very high speed routes.
fvdessen 3y ago
I honestly thought it would be way worse. Trains are not as fast or practical for the average trip, so if they're only twice as efficient it's not good for trains, especially since cars efficiency is likely to improve better than trains
tmnvix 3y ago
The other great thing about rail is it takes up much less space, and where it does exist it generally doesn't create an impermeable layer above the underlying soil. I was wondering about this last night. Fungi make up a large amount of soil mass and sequester a lot of CO2. If we cover a large area in concrete, do we lose this benefit by essentially killing the fungi beneath?
jaimex2 3y ago
And trains produce 100x more Co2 than a motorbike says motorbike group
- timbit42 3y ago
  My Toyota Prius uses less fuel per mile than my 500cc Kawasaki Vulcan.
gyudin 3y ago
It’s all great when you don't count in that China and US combined are responsible for 45% of ALL emissions in the world. There is an old dark joke in Russia. “ - Dad, vodka has risen in price, you will drink less?! - No, son, you will eat less.”
- gyudin 3y ago
  And it’s kinda funny as both China and USA aren’t really cutting emissions to fight climate change, but push all other countries to do all the legwork. Whe news outlets argue what are worse cows or goats farts, electric cars or electric trains and so on. Just pure hypocrisy tbh.
  - ImJamal 3y ago
    For CO2, the US has been cutting despite an increase in population. It isn't as much some countries but it is still declining.
bigfont 3y ago
Good. If we want cleaner air and quieter cities, we have several alternatives to gasoline cars. I imagine a graph of CO₂ production goes a bit like this: Walk - Bike - Train ------ Electric Car ------------ Gasoline Car ------------------------------ On the one hand, it seems silly to debate electric cars versus trains while we have gasoline cars on the streets. On the other hand, I like that we focus our news on the low emitters, so gasoline cars drop out of popular culture. To change a paradigm, it helps to speak with assurance from the new one. (Edits: formatting, pith)
- tzs 3y ago
  The article seems to be looking at marginal CO2 production, so that's what I'll look at. To be precise, let's consider this situation: you want to go from your present position at point A to some other point B. There's a nice road from A to B, which is suitable for walking, biking, and driving. There's also a train track beside the road with stations at A and B. You already own and regularly use a bike, an ICE car, and an EV. The question then is if you take a trip from A to B, which choice from {walk, bike, train, ICE, EV} will result in the lowest change in total atmospheric CO2 from the time you leave A to the time you arrive in B? Let's first just look at walking vs biking. Perhaps surprisingly you will actually produce more CO2 walking. Here's a site [1] with some example calculations. Their example is a trip of 3.2 km, with a walking speed of 4.8 km/hr and a biking speed of 12.8 km/hr. Walking would take 40 minutes and burn 167 kCal, but just being at rest for 40 minutes would burn 56 kCal so we should count walking as costing 111 kCal. Biking would be 15 minutes and burn 70 kCal, but just being at rest for 15 minutes would burn 21 kCal so we should biking as costing 49 kCal. We produce about 0.7 kg of CO2 per 2000 kCal, so that gives 0.03885 kg CO2 for walking and 0.01715 kg CO2 for biking. But wait...should any of that actually be included? The C in the CO2 we exhale comes from the C in the food we eat. For plants we eat they get it from atmospheric CO2. For animals we eat they get it from the food they eat, and so on with it also ultimately coming from plants that get it from CO2 in the atmosphere. That's just contributing to fluctuations in atmospheric CO2 levels, not to an increase over time in CO2 levels. The question asked above probably should have not been about the lowest change in total atmospheric CO2 over the time of the trip but about the lowest change in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere that had not recently been in the atmosphere before the trip. How to count the train is also unclear. The most straightforward way would be to figure the energy the train has to expend for the trip and divide it by the number of passengers, then attribute to each passenger the CO2 from producing that energy. But the train is still going to make that trip regardless of whether or not you decide to take it. One could argue that for this comparison we should be looking at how much additional energy the train uses if you are on it compared to if you are not. That's going to be very small, and the corresponding CO2 is going to be very small even if the train gets it energy from fossil fuels. You can get a situation where if you have a dirty activity and a clean activity you only actually come out ahead if enough people switch to the clean activity so that the dirty activity can end. This is something to watch out for. It can lead to cases where the rational behavior is to advocate for the discontinuation of something on environmental grounds but to personally continue to do/use that thing until regulation or economics make it stop. Some people mistake that for hypocrisy but it is not. If the train is an electric train and it has a clean source of electricity it might be down near walking and biking. Similar for the EV. If it has a clean electricity source, it too might be down there near walking and biking. If we are including exhaled CO2 it could actually be lower if it has 100% green electricity because your kCal burn rate in the car should be the same as your at rest burn rate. The ICE car is going to be way up there. In summary I think then it would be bike and walk very low or even zero, ICE car very high, EV anywhere between walk/bike and maybe 80% of ICE car depending on its electric source, and train somewhere between EV and walk/bike again depending on electric source (assuming EV train). [1] https://www.globe.gov/explore-science/scientists-blog/archived-posts/sciblog/index.html_p=186.html https://www.globe.gov/explore-science/scientists-blog/archiv...
wcoenen 3y ago
The article talks about a "detailed analysis by rail industry", but doesn't link to or even mentions the title of the report. Which analysis are they talking about exactly?
cbhl 3y ago
If I recall correctly, when everything ran on petrol and diesel, it was said that a single-occupancy car emitted 5x as much CO2 as riding a packed ("efficient") train. That this ratio has dropped from 5x to 2x says to me that electric cars have gotten a lot more efficient (more aerodynamic designs, which helps increase range).
gerdesj 3y ago
The article "explains" why EVs are better than trains. When you are going to spin something, do the job properly. Ideally, journos don't look like prats, regurgitating the usual nonsense. Headline: EVs produce twice as much CO2 as trains. It all comes down to definitions. Do we include the cost of rail/road construction? That's rather complicated. My EV ... ... oh who gives a shit. Lazy journalism, lazy readership, lazy pin on HN, lazy readership. Rince, repeat.
DueDilligence 3y ago
[dead]
JoeAltmaier 3y ago
Per what? Per passenger mile? In the US, the rails have approximately 0.000% of the transportation sector. Good luck with that.
djaouen 3y ago
Yes, but they are still an improvement over the current situation!
ortusdux 3y ago
Honestly, that is amazing. Trains are ludicrously efficient. If I was within a factor of 10 of them but I could offer end to end transport anywhere I would shout it from the rooftops.
MrSkelter 3y ago
A lot of commenters seem to be Americans working from the idea trains are diesel. The majority of British trains are fully electric. This the argument is moot. Yes it’s much more efficient to move 1,000 people with one big engine than to break them into pairs and use 500 smaller engines.

33 points by vinni2 3y ago

Every time I used a train in the UK on a weekend I had to ride in a diesel bus for part of the journey. I doubt if that is less co2 emitting than driving my electric car.

kkfx 3y ago

My home is connected to the rest of the world by roads, at maximum I can travel by air (but having no chopper, STOL or human-capable drone I can't take that route) so well... If someone can made ANY actual road link available by rails... Oh, BTW my BEV can also run on not much hard ground, a thing trains can't do. We have roads because so far they are the best balance between flexibility and available tech, we can't make rails everywhere and we can't makes them flexible enough to be used by many different transports. The future will be air, when we will been able technologically to lift enough weight and move at an affordable enough costs. That's is. Rails today are the best on-ground means of transport for goods, for mass transports but can't reach "the last mile". Boats are another very nice means of transport BUT we do not have water everywhere so similar to rails have a scalability issue.

BizarroLand 3y ago

Where is the train that is reachable from my house that will take me to work in the same 15-25 minutes driving takes without making me wait in the cold or rain. Solve that and I'll only drive for pleasure.

MattGaiser 3y ago

> Average fuel costs would be roughly £50 for a small petrol car to travel the 400 miles, and significantly less again for an electric car, even after recent energy price rises. This isn't a fair comparison though. You need to insure the driver/car. You need to purchase the car. You need to pay to store the car when not in use. You are using up part of the car on the journey, which companies full well understand as they depreciate the car.

qzervaas 3y ago

"Using a diesel or petrol car produced nine times more carbon than going by train. The figure was four times more polluting than a train if driving a plug-in hybrid electric car, or almost two-and-a-half times more if using a battery electric car."

mjevans 3y ago

OK, fine. How much CO2 would a train take if they laid rail down every suburban street and stopped at every house and took even longer than a bus? This is not comparing apples and oranges and ignores all the existing sunk costs. Promote trains when we (in the US) build a rail system as well run as Japan's.

phartenfeller 3y ago
Do you expect a perfectly built out rail system to just spawn? No of course you need to start somewhere and articles like these are one argument to do so.
- protocolture 3y ago
  Shitty argument when they arent as capable as electric cars.
  - defrost 3y ago
    Poor response in the context of reducing CO2 emissions as a goal.
  - nicoburns 3y ago
    They're more capable in some ways. They can go a lot faster than cars, and they allow passengers to engage in a much wider range of activities while riding one.
    - rickydroll 3y ago
      It's possible for a train to go faster than cars but it's not guaranteed. for example, one of the most heavily traveled corridors is Boston to New York City travel times are: Driving: 3 hours: 51 minutes (plus pee breaks) Amtrak: 3 hours 55 minutes Boston to DC you have much better tracks on the NYC to DC segment driving: 8 hours (plus pee breaks) Amtrak: 6 hours 45 minutes as for a wider range of activities, only if you don't get motion sick. When I'm on a train, my only activity is staring out the window (and taking pee breaks)

s7r 3y ago

When people "trade-in" a gas car for an EV, those gas cars are usually re-sold to peripheral countries with less regulations, where they continue running on dirtier fuel [1]. The emissions of the gas car continue, plus the embodied emissions of buying a new gas car and the ongoing emissions from the fossil fuel sources of electric charging. Vehicles that weigh 4,000 pounds, primarily designed to move 250 pounds of people, are inefficient by design — there will never be enough materials or energy on Earth to change that. This will continue showing itself in pollution and other externalities, such as the significant microplastic pollution that comes from car tires [2], and the fact that EVs — which wear through tires faster — are making rubber one of the leading sources of Amazon deforestation [3.] Of course, if you want to see solutions — they are buried all around us in North America, and exist all around us in many other parts of the world [4]. Feel free to contact me if you are interested in realizing solutions together, or just want to learn more. Contact in profile. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/21/africa/west-africa-benin-used-cars-climate-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/21/africa/west-africa-benin-used... [2] https://www.thedrive.com/news/tire-dust-makes-up-the-majority-of-ocean-microplastics-study-finds https://www.thedrive.com/news/tire-dust-makes-up-the-majorit... [3] https://e360.yale.edu/features/rubber-plantations-deforestation-tires-electric-vehicles https://e360.yale.edu/features/rubber-plantations-deforestat... [4] https://docs.google.com/document/d/19QpVabRn0RexxN1GYFbDojXrCSa2cmcx_TSdq6IFp8U/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/19QpVabRn0RexxN1GYFbDojXr...

bigfont 3y ago
Nice initiative. Particularly for civilians doing daily activities, biking and walking seem like the best forms of transportation. They enhance personal happiness, increase community connections, make streets safer, and promote beautiful surroundings.
- s7r 3y ago
  Thank you for the kind words! I would agree — and I think there are some more fundamental approaches, like housing density paired with in-fill of retail and shops, that can make that more accessible from the ground up. Literally!

phartenfeller 3y ago

Kind of unsurprising that steel on steel transfers energy better into forward momentum. I am curious how the footprint is for subways in big cities. Full trains, cost efficiency and ease of use should be way better there.

renewiltord 3y ago

Yeah, that's true, but underground rail is $4b/mi in San Francisco and a used Tesla Model 3 is $27k so you could get 5.4 used Teslas per San Francisco resident for the cost of one mile of rail. It's a cost issue.

panick21_ 3y ago
That's just an terrible comparison. Tesla aren't gravity less chickens hover in a vacuum. For Tesla to run you need roads, you need charging infrastructure, you need energy infrastructure and so on and so on. Not to mention that if you actually bought that many 'used' Model 3s the price would go up. Not to mention the huge amount of people who currently do not have a car, who all of a sudden would make the bad traffic (and everything associated with that) worse. And guess what, the 'rail' would be 100x cheaper if some of the cars were moved of the road, and the rail was moved on that right of way. How about you do a cost comparison where the rail gets the existing right of way, and all those Tesla have to go into a tunnel. The way you phrase your whole proposition is already incredibly loaded. The cost are so high literally because the San Francisco people who propose this stuff are bunch of Tesla driving asshats who don't undrestand the first thing about public transport. They make projects incredibly expensive because (a) they don't give a shit about the plebs who have to use it and (b) the bigger the project the better the politics of handing out money to people. By any estimation, for a society as a whole having an efficient public transport system is by far a win. Everybody who has actually done any real analysis of the 'lets buy everybody a car' 'solution' will come to the conclusion that its incredibly dumb. Its just something far right wing people bring up to continue to prevent actual progress.
lambdasquirrel 3y ago
I think that's an American problem though. The fact that our electric cars have to be so big is another thing. We're just not winning on cost and feasibility. Besides that, I did pretty fine with just an e-bike, in the last year that I lived in the Bay Area.
smitop 3y ago
Your math is wrong - it's $4B ÷ 815k residents ÷ $27k = 0.18 used Tesla Model 3s per resident. (you accidentally used 27k as both the price and the population)

darth_avocado 3y ago

In other words, water is wet. Cars by design are less efficient when it comes to long distance travel. But trains cannot and will not be able to solve the "last mile problem" or even the "last 5 miles" problem when the cities are just massive urban sprawls. EVs are still better than regular cars and we can have them coexist with better planned cities and public transportation.

dghlsakjg 3y ago
Light rail, streetcars, pantograph buses and smart urban design can solve the rest of those problems. Toronto and Vancouver have used these solutions to solve these problems in relatively sprawling North American cities.

alentred 3y ago

The issue will those CO2 estimations is always the same: what is counted it, and what is not. For example, are the CO2 emissions related to the maintenance of the railroad counted in? On the other hand, are the CO2 emissions related to the production of the imported parts of the electric cars are also counted in? And so on. And the reason I propose this question is because the argument sounds like green-washing. For example, where I live it is often much cheaper to travel *by air* than by a train even on relatively short distances (<1000km). So if the final cost is correlated at least a bit with the CO2 emissions, which kind of makes sense in a general case (does it?), there is a problem with the CO2 emissions estimate there. What I am saying is that the problem with CO2 emissions is real, but it is being abused (green washing, etc.) in the absence of a commonly accepted and well understood way of estimating them. And the worst thing about it is that it makes the entire topic more ambiguous for everyone, stirs the speculations (people even denying that the problem exists) and makes it harder to focus on working solutions.

snek_case 3y ago
We should work to convert every process that uses energy to green energy. Then the issue becomes moot. Make everything electric, make all electricity production renewable (or nuclear). For things that can't easily run off of batteries like intercontinental flights, use electricity to produce methane or ethanol, and accept that this is a lossy process, price it accordingly. AFAIK, one of the things that produces the most CO2, and that we're not doing very much about (or even discussing) just yet, is the production of concrete.
- logtempo 3y ago
  thing is, you can't beat oil energy density. And its logistic. going 100% electric is really something big, maybe too big. A good exemple is synthetic fuel: in Germany, they have really hard issues on biomass collect which is needed for "green fuel". As of today, synthesis come from coal. And we're talking about Germany,not France. France, who would need to triple its production of electricity to replace its oil consumption from cars. and I did not talked about the cropland needed for "biogas" and ethanol fuel. concrete, steel, agro-industry too...the list is long.

bell-cot 3y ago

My impression is that Britain's rail industry has some major problems with poor management, high cost, and low quality of service, which it might better spend its time addressing... Or if you want "X times better!" bragging rights - compared the microplastics released per passenger-mile by rail, vs. any sort of modern automobile.

Brian_K_White 3y ago

Cars and trains do two different jobs. Irrelevant comparison.

dheera 3y ago
Yeah exactly, a private car being only 2X the emissions of public transportation is actually pretty good. Electricity can eventually be 100% clean anyway. Gasoline will never be clean.

superkuh 3y ago

Cars and trains serve complementary needs. They do not function as replacements for each other as is implicit in this comparison. Trains tend to go to places of high population density. Their stops are at places where many other people want to go all the time. And their schedule to go to these places is not in the traveler's control. Cars go pretty much everywhere (or to a close enough point) and do it on your whim. But they are not fun to use in high population density areas (parking, traffic, etc).

panick21_ 3y ago
> Trains tend to go to places of high population density. Trains go to lots of places with low population density actually. Its only America brain that somehow believes that trains are only something for city with millions. I lived in a village with a few 1000 people and there were regular trains in multiple direction, and it wasn't on a major express line between major cities or anything. That train line then goes on to connect villages with even fewer people. > Cars go pretty much everywhere (or to a close enough point) and do it on your whim. Sure if somebody built a road there. And if there are gas stations/charging. And if there is no traffic. And if you both can drive and are allowed to drive. And so on and so on. True freedom is not having to pay basically anything for 8 month (at most a small part of your taxes), then spur of the moment being able to say 'you know what, I want to go to the other side of the country cross a river and go up a mountain' then getting up and within 5 minutes being on public transport efficiently traveling to that location. And this freedom is provided to you if you are 15 or 85. If you are blind. If you have were unable to perform your driving exams.

stavros 3y ago

Whenever I see this kind of syllogism, I think it's fossil fuel propaganda. "Cars using electricity made by emitting CO2 cause CO2 to be emitted". Yeah, but that's not the car's fault, is it. If you don't like your energy source, change your energy source. Don't give me this "washing machines emit more CO2 than handwashing" crap.

ojbyrne 3y ago

It seems like this comparison is car vs “train passenger.” Put 3 people in the car and they’re ahead.

cameldrv 3y ago
Yeah and if those cars are self-driving, it's fairly easy to have an Uber type service that puts together shared rides on the fly. Such a service would: 1. Cost less 2. Be faster 3. More convenient 4. Door to door I think trains are finished except maybe some very high speed routes.

fvdessen 3y ago

I honestly thought it would be way worse. Trains are not as fast or practical for the average trip, so if they're only twice as efficient it's not good for trains, especially since cars efficiency is likely to improve better than trains

tmnvix 3y ago

The other great thing about rail is it takes up much less space, and where it does exist it generally doesn't create an impermeable layer above the underlying soil. I was wondering about this last night. Fungi make up a large amount of soil mass and sequester a lot of CO2. If we cover a large area in concrete, do we lose this benefit by essentially killing the fungi beneath?

jaimex2 3y ago

And trains produce 100x more Co2 than a motorbike says motorbike group

timbit42 3y ago
My Toyota Prius uses less fuel per mile than my 500cc Kawasaki Vulcan.

gyudin 3y ago

It’s all great when you don't count in that China and US combined are responsible for 45% of ALL emissions in the world. There is an old dark joke in Russia. “ - Dad, vodka has risen in price, you will drink less?! - No, son, you will eat less.”

gyudin 3y ago
And it’s kinda funny as both China and USA aren’t really cutting emissions to fight climate change, but push all other countries to do all the legwork. Whe news outlets argue what are worse cows or goats farts, electric cars or electric trains and so on. Just pure hypocrisy tbh.
- ImJamal 3y ago
  For CO2, the US has been cutting despite an increase in population. It isn't as much some countries but it is still declining.

bigfont 3y ago

Good. If we want cleaner air and quieter cities, we have several alternatives to gasoline cars. I imagine a graph of CO₂ production goes a bit like this: Walk - Bike - Train ------ Electric Car ------------ Gasoline Car ------------------------------ On the one hand, it seems silly to debate electric cars versus trains while we have gasoline cars on the streets. On the other hand, I like that we focus our news on the low emitters, so gasoline cars drop out of popular culture. To change a paradigm, it helps to speak with assurance from the new one. (Edits: formatting, pith)

tzs 3y ago
The article seems to be looking at marginal CO2 production, so that's what I'll look at. To be precise, let's consider this situation: you want to go from your present position at point A to some other point B. There's a nice road from A to B, which is suitable for walking, biking, and driving. There's also a train track beside the road with stations at A and B. You already own and regularly use a bike, an ICE car, and an EV. The question then is if you take a trip from A to B, which choice from {walk, bike, train, ICE, EV} will result in the lowest change in total atmospheric CO2 from the time you leave A to the time you arrive in B? Let's first just look at walking vs biking. Perhaps surprisingly you will actually produce more CO2 walking. Here's a site [1] with some example calculations. Their example is a trip of 3.2 km, with a walking speed of 4.8 km/hr and a biking speed of 12.8 km/hr. Walking would take 40 minutes and burn 167 kCal, but just being at rest for 40 minutes would burn 56 kCal so we should count walking as costing 111 kCal. Biking would be 15 minutes and burn 70 kCal, but just being at rest for 15 minutes would burn 21 kCal so we should biking as costing 49 kCal. We produce about 0.7 kg of CO2 per 2000 kCal, so that gives 0.03885 kg CO2 for walking and 0.01715 kg CO2 for biking. But wait...should any of that actually be included? The C in the CO2 we exhale comes from the C in the food we eat. For plants we eat they get it from atmospheric CO2. For animals we eat they get it from the food they eat, and so on with it also ultimately coming from plants that get it from CO2 in the atmosphere. That's just contributing to fluctuations in atmospheric CO2 levels, not to an increase over time in CO2 levels. The question asked above probably should have not been about the lowest change in total atmospheric CO2 over the time of the trip but about the lowest change in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere that had not recently been in the atmosphere before the trip. How to count the train is also unclear. The most straightforward way would be to figure the energy the train has to expend for the trip and divide it by the number of passengers, then attribute to each passenger the CO2 from producing that energy. But the train is still going to make that trip regardless of whether or not you decide to take it. One could argue that for this comparison we should be looking at how much additional energy the train uses if you are on it compared to if you are not. That's going to be very small, and the corresponding CO2 is going to be very small even if the train gets it energy from fossil fuels. You can get a situation where if you have a dirty activity and a clean activity you only actually come out ahead if enough people switch to the clean activity so that the dirty activity can end. This is something to watch out for. It can lead to cases where the rational behavior is to advocate for the discontinuation of something on environmental grounds but to personally continue to do/use that thing until regulation or economics make it stop. Some people mistake that for hypocrisy but it is not. If the train is an electric train and it has a clean source of electricity it might be down near walking and biking. Similar for the EV. If it has a clean electricity source, it too might be down there near walking and biking. If we are including exhaled CO2 it could actually be lower if it has 100% green electricity because your kCal burn rate in the car should be the same as your at rest burn rate. The ICE car is going to be way up there. In summary I think then it would be bike and walk very low or even zero, ICE car very high, EV anywhere between walk/bike and maybe 80% of ICE car depending on its electric source, and train somewhere between EV and walk/bike again depending on electric source (assuming EV train). [1] https://www.globe.gov/explore-science/scientists-blog/archived-posts/sciblog/index.html_p=186.html https://www.globe.gov/explore-science/scientists-blog/archiv...

wcoenen 3y ago

The article talks about a "detailed analysis by rail industry", but doesn't link to or even mentions the title of the report. Which analysis are they talking about exactly?

cbhl 3y ago

If I recall correctly, when everything ran on petrol and diesel, it was said that a single-occupancy car emitted 5x as much CO2 as riding a packed ("efficient") train. That this ratio has dropped from 5x to 2x says to me that electric cars have gotten a lot more efficient (more aerodynamic designs, which helps increase range).

gerdesj 3y ago

The article "explains" why EVs are better than trains. When you are going to spin something, do the job properly. Ideally, journos don't look like prats, regurgitating the usual nonsense. Headline: EVs produce twice as much CO2 as trains. It all comes down to definitions. Do we include the cost of rail/road construction? That's rather complicated. My EV ... ... oh who gives a shit. Lazy journalism, lazy readership, lazy pin on HN, lazy readership. Rince, repeat.

DueDilligence 3y ago

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JoeAltmaier 3y ago

Per what? Per passenger mile? In the US, the rails have approximately 0.000% of the transportation sector. Good luck with that.

djaouen 3y ago

Yes, but they are still an improvement over the current situation!

ortusdux 3y ago

Honestly, that is amazing. Trains are ludicrously efficient. If I was within a factor of 10 of them but I could offer end to end transport anywhere I would shout it from the rooftops.

MrSkelter 3y ago

A lot of commenters seem to be Americans working from the idea trains are diesel. The majority of British trains are fully electric. This the argument is moot. Yes it’s much more efficient to move 1,000 people with one big engine than to break them into pairs and use 500 smaller engines.