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Self driving cars in general are a useless technology demo. Not just TSLA (although more so because of the repeated false claims). It’s a way for the car indus

by xyst 2y ago

Self driving cars in general are a useless technology demo. Not just TSLA (although more so because of the repeated false claims). It’s a way for the car industry to fight against their extinction. In the beginning the argument was: “it’s not the cars killing people, it’s the damn ‘jay walkers’ (term invented by auto industry, btw). Get those people off the road and cram them into the sides of the streets so my fat car can ride freely!11” That campaign worked, to some extent, and now we have a patch work of sidewalks. Then later… Eisenhower (inspired by the ability for the German military to easily mobilize across the country via autobahn) pushed for interstate highways subsidized by the people. Auto industry capitalized on this and this contributed to the invention of the American suburb and slow decay of once walkable urban cores. Cars were a luxury item. Now it’s a necessity, along with a whole laundry list of items for a car owner: - gas - time spent looking for charger, and charging - parking (less space at home for living and instead using space for car) - time spent finding public parking - parking fees - time spent in traffic - car repairs - car maintenance - car insurance - yearly taxes for registration - car sales tax - car depreciation - toll fees for turnpike/regional highway In recent years, people have been realizing how car centric transportation cannot scale (ie, induced demand); and is an environmental disaster. Now the auto industry’s answer is: “oh we have self driving cars!!1 that’s going to fix it. It’s the damn human that can’t drive!! Have aRtIfICiAl iNtElLiGeNcE hold the wheel! As for pollution, electric cars will fix that” (totally ignoring the carbon emissions to transition to an EV, increased brake dust and tire wear pollution, and rolling 10 yr contribution to e-waste in the form of batteries, and a grid that has traditionally relied on non-renewable sources)

gravescale 2y ago
Nothing represents the idea that cars were intended to be absolutely welded to the idea of respectable American society than the "parkway" (it's a park, but you drive on it!). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkway And of course it turns out Robert Moses' fingerprints are on it.
dzhiurgis 2y ago
> It’s a way for the car industry to fight against their extinction. Do you have any evidence car industry is about to extinct? Seems kinda opposite - even with multiple levels of subsidies, public transport is utter failure in most places.
quonn 2y ago
Nonsense. I will only reply to your last paragraph: - EVs need to hardly ever break, so no brake dust and certainly not more than for ICEs. - Tires only wear faster if you accelerate like crazy. - Batteries likely last 20 years and afterwards another 30 years as energy storage devices. And then they can be recycled with 95% of the materials being reused. - And pollution is not the same as CO2 emissions which is what is being addressed.
- ac29 2y ago
  >Batteries likely last 20 years and afterwards another 30 years as energy storage devices. Out of curiosity, do you have a citation for 20 year old EV batteries being able to be repurposed for another 30 years? Assuming they are used for gridscale storage, 30 years could very easily be 10,000 charge-discharge cycles (thats slightly less than one per day). LFP batteries have a much longer lifespan that lithium ion, but in a brief search I cant find any claim that they will last a half century. For example, this article [1] says LFP batteries have a "calendar aging" rate (capacity loss independent of active charge cycling loss) of "ca. 0.2 percentage points of capacity fade per month at 25°C and to ca. 0.5 percentage points per month at 50°C". So, in ideal conditions a battery that is kept in storage would take 20 years to reach half capacity and 40 years to reach zero capacity. Presumably daily charge-discharge cycles would reduce that lifespan significantly. [1] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1149/2.0411609jes https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1149/2.0411609jes
  - quonn 2y ago
    Your numbers are empirically wrong. If they were right my own LFP EV should have now lost 5%, but it hasn‘t. One discharge cycle per day is utterly insane. Nobody does that. How many people drive 350 miles EVERY day for 30 years? 350 miles - that’s about one discharge cycle.
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
> people have been realizing how car centric transportation cannot scale (ie, induced demand) Car centric transportation scales just fine. That’s why most people still prefer it today, at scale. And induced demand isn’t real - it’s just unmet demand. If people want to make more trips, then it makes sense to expand roads to help them do that.
maxerickson 2y ago
In recent years, people have been realizing how car centric transportation cannot scale (ie, induced demand); and is an environmental disaster. In the US, I'm pretty sure a significant majority of people are more or less all in on a car centric lifestyle. That doesn't mean it can't change, but I sure don't think it has meaningfully started to change.

by xyst 2y ago

gravescale 2y ago

Nothing represents the idea that cars were intended to be absolutely welded to the idea of respectable American society than the "parkway" (it's a park, but you drive on it!). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkway And of course it turns out Robert Moses' fingerprints are on it.

dzhiurgis 2y ago

> It’s a way for the car industry to fight against their extinction. Do you have any evidence car industry is about to extinct? Seems kinda opposite - even with multiple levels of subsidies, public transport is utter failure in most places.

quonn 2y ago

Nonsense. I will only reply to your last paragraph: - EVs need to hardly ever break, so no brake dust and certainly not more than for ICEs. - Tires only wear faster if you accelerate like crazy. - Batteries likely last 20 years and afterwards another 30 years as energy storage devices. And then they can be recycled with 95% of the materials being reused. - And pollution is not the same as CO2 emissions which is what is being addressed.

ac29 2y ago
>Batteries likely last 20 years and afterwards another 30 years as energy storage devices. Out of curiosity, do you have a citation for 20 year old EV batteries being able to be repurposed for another 30 years? Assuming they are used for gridscale storage, 30 years could very easily be 10,000 charge-discharge cycles (thats slightly less than one per day). LFP batteries have a much longer lifespan that lithium ion, but in a brief search I cant find any claim that they will last a half century. For example, this article [1] says LFP batteries have a "calendar aging" rate (capacity loss independent of active charge cycling loss) of "ca. 0.2 percentage points of capacity fade per month at 25°C and to ca. 0.5 percentage points per month at 50°C". So, in ideal conditions a battery that is kept in storage would take 20 years to reach half capacity and 40 years to reach zero capacity. Presumably daily charge-discharge cycles would reduce that lifespan significantly. [1] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1149/2.0411609jes https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1149/2.0411609jes
- quonn 2y ago
  Your numbers are empirically wrong. If they were right my own LFP EV should have now lost 5%, but it hasn‘t. One discharge cycle per day is utterly insane. Nobody does that. How many people drive 350 miles EVERY day for 30 years? 350 miles - that’s about one discharge cycle.

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

> people have been realizing how car centric transportation cannot scale (ie, induced demand) Car centric transportation scales just fine. That’s why most people still prefer it today, at scale. And induced demand isn’t real - it’s just unmet demand. If people want to make more trips, then it makes sense to expand roads to help them do that.

maxerickson 2y ago

In recent years, people have been realizing how car centric transportation cannot scale (ie, induced demand); and is an environmental disaster. In the US, I'm pretty sure a significant majority of people are more or less all in on a car centric lifestyle. That doesn't mean it can't change, but I sure don't think it has meaningfully started to change.