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First top three post are how much this does not matter. That is a losing mindset. China is doing great. Europe and the USA should catch up buy investing in loc

First top three post are how much this does not matter. That is a losing mindset. China is doing great. Europe and the USA should catch up buy investing in local technology, educating engineers, and passing regulations to curve climate change. We have the know how and the money to do it, we need to overcome the legacy car manufacturers pulling us all down.

lm28469 2y ago
It truly doesn't matter though. Electric cars are here to save the auto industry, they won't help much for climate change. They simply perpetuate the mindset that we can waste insane amount of energy to displace our lazy asses and our insane amount of useless gadgets. Nobody with half a brain cares about who's going to "win" this "race", there is nothing to win. Where are the "dumb" < $10k EVs ? Where are the world wide standards for chargers/batteries/interfaces ? Why do we have 50 companies working on solving the same problems in the US/EU ? All of this is so inefficient and so unimaginative, we basically keep everything the same, except the cars are bigger, more expensive, create more particulate pollution (huge tires, higher torque), will last decades less (who's going to fix a gen 1 tesla in 2040 ?), anything other than a fender bender = written off (https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/scratched-ev-battery-your-insurer-may-have-junk-whole-car-2023-03-20/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/scratc...). Let's not even mention the absolutely insane amount of mining we'll need to do to replace 1.4 billion ICE cars with EVs (plot twist, mining isn't very eco friendly)
- cbeach 2y ago
  Every time I see a fossil fuel car sitting outside my son’s nursery, engine idling, spewing out huge amounts of poisonous fumes (23 shipping containers worth every five minutes), I’m thankful that we’re transitioning to EVs. Yes, there are problems, but many of the points made in the above post are dubious to say the least. I’ve had my EV for five years and the brakes are still pristine (regenerative braking saves mechanical brake wear). So I don’t buy that particulate pollution is higher in EVs. 50 companies solving the same problem? That’s GREAT! More scope for competition and innovation. Or would you rather ever drove Soviet Lada cars? Car costs are being driven down and we’re nearly at the tipping point where EVs are cheaper than fossil fuelled cars - which is surprising as EVs are better in nearly every single way. We have continent-wide defacto standards for chargers. Ideally it would be worldwide, but really, this is a trivial concern. You talk about mining (lithium I assume) as a concern, but that’s probably better overall than the huge environmental toll of oil extraction, transport, refinement and exhaust emission. This isn’t the time to let perfect be the enemy of good. Get onboard with the transition and we will make progress. Progress is good.
  - lm28469 2y ago
    > Progress is good. "progress" is exactly why we are where we are today... Electric cars just perpetuates the same cycle, the only way out is a complete redesign of the system. Personal ownership of 2500kg hunks of metal to transport your lazy 70kg ass isn't anywhere close to sustainable. I bike everyday, and everyday I witness the same thing, hundreds and hundreds of cars, most are empty waiting on a parking spot, 90% of the rest are occupied by a single person, usually stuck in a traffic jam. EVs or not that's just pure madness and misallocation of resources. You're moving the needle 0.1mm backwards when we need to go back a good 720 degrees. But of course it's much nicer to have trailing dams in a country the average american can't place on a map than having a car idle in front of _your_ school
    - dastbe 2y ago
      720 degrees is spinning in circles and ending up pointed right back where you started.
    - cbeach 2y ago
      It's nice that you manage to live a simple life that doesn't require a car, but I assure you it's 100% necessary for me: * busy family of four with two young kids, both in different childcare settings * the UK climate * bulk shopping that is impossible to transport by bike, including heavy DIY stuff etc * transporting relatives etc * hospital visits (the UK NHS Ambulance service is basically unusable at this point. They didn't even come out to pick up my elderly nan after she fell down her stairs and was in an immobile heap on the ground for hours) * visiting relatives that are not readily accessible by public transport I have a driveway, so my car consumes no public space unless it's actively being driven, or parked for a short time in a car park. I feel the cycling / "active travel" advocacy movement is currently engaging in an ideological war against motorists - this is evident in the dreadful zero-sum policy making that's going on throughout the UK at the moment - road narrowing, model filters, "low traffic neighbourhoods" etc, which aim to change people's behaviour by artificially making life harder for motorists. However, what these ideologues don't understand is that busy families, elderly and disabled people absolutely rely on cars, and we will not be bullied into giving them up.
- ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  The shift to EVs will mean less mining of resources, since we'll not be digging stuff up to burn and then releasing the results into the atmosphere to choke our children and warm the atmosphere. EVs aren't the single sole answer to climate change either (they're in the top 20 though) but repeating climate denial factoids isn't really helping either.
  - lm28469 2y ago
    > repeating climate denial factoids Saying EVs aren't enough is climate change denial now ? lmao I bet your top 20 is full of things to buy and replace. Too bad the only way out is to use less and do less... As long as the goal is YoY growth ad aeternam it's game over. We can talk wishful thinking all day long, the bottom line is that we're breaking pollution (and energy usage) record every single year since as long as we cared measuring it: https://climatanthropocene.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/courbe2.jpg https://climatanthropocene.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/co... So much "progress", so many "clean" alternatives yet it goes up at the same or higher rate year after year... EVs won't even put a dent on that graph, but it sure feels good to pat yourself on the back knowing you saved the planet by buying a $50k+ "clean" car, you did you part! great job!
    - mlyle 2y ago
      > Too bad the only way out is to use less and do less... To be clear: you're saying that "doing things more efficiently" and "using power sources other than fossil fuels to do stuff" are not parts of the solution at all? > I bet your top 20 is full of things to buy and replace. T And this never makes sense? I should keep burning natural gas to heat my home forever instead of moving to use more heat pumps? I shouldn't buy solar and energy storage? > the bottom line is that we're breaking pollution (and energy usage) record every single year since as long as we cared measuring it: That's CO2 levels, not emissions. https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissions/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissi... We're getting closer to leveling off.
    - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
      I agreed that EVs weren't enough, so clearly that's not one of the climate denial factoids I was referring to. (It's kind of a non statement though, nothing you or anyone else is suggesting is a silver bullet either). Other dubious things you claimed: More particulate emissions. False (reduced brake dust being a big factor) More expensive. False. Already lower TCO in most of the world, lower upfront cost in China already. Generally heading downward. Bigger. False, nothing about EVs requires them to be bigger, they scale in both directions better than ICE. Higher maintenance/early scrapping. False, already we have enough data to show they last longer. Mining. False, as already stated. If you need this many false statements to back up your point, maybe it's a bad point? What's wrong with "EVs can cut GHG by half and reduce imports of fossil fuel from unfriendly regimes, but (electric) trains, (electric) busses and (electric) bike-friendly city designs are even better than that!" No need to sound like a Fox News talking head to promote those alternatives.
- borgdefenser 2y ago
  I think we know we can't solve the problem so we are just more interested in the optics. If the soccer mom switches from a gas guzzling SUV to another ridiculous size and weight electric SUV, they have done their part optically. I feel like I am doing my part by simply not having children. It doesn't matter what you drive, it doesn't even come close to the offset of not having children. Who then can't have grandchildren, grandchildren who can't have great grandchildren, etc. It would be hard to calculate the difference between me not having children and the person driving an EV with two kids in the back seat. They have done a better job with optics than me but in reality I have probably done 10,000X more over the next 200 years because what they have done is basically nothing.
  - more_corn 2y ago
    Yes, but learning how to live sustainably lowers the impact of every person. It’s worth doing.
- triceratops 2y ago
  > the absolutely insane amount of mining we'll need to do to replace 1.4 billion ICE cars with EVs Replacing the automobiles will involve less mining than replacing the cities that depend on automobiles.
ZeroGravitas 2y ago
Ironically the base justification for protecting local car manufacturing is so they can be transformed into building tanks and bombers in case of war. But protecting them in such a way that they can't even transition from one kind of car to another over several decades and are unable to complete basic tasks that involve computers seems almost counter productive. Actively weakening the country at great financial cost.
- rightbyte 2y ago
  Machine factories are not as general as they were in the 40s when things were made with high skilled labour. They are more or less just buildings in that sense.

lm28469 2y ago

It truly doesn't matter though. Electric cars are here to save the auto industry, they won't help much for climate change. They simply perpetuate the mindset that we can waste insane amount of energy to displace our lazy asses and our insane amount of useless gadgets. Nobody with half a brain cares about who's going to "win" this "race", there is nothing to win. Where are the "dumb" < $10k EVs ? Where are the world wide standards for chargers/batteries/interfaces ? Why do we have 50 companies working on solving the same problems in the US/EU ? All of this is so inefficient and so unimaginative, we basically keep everything the same, except the cars are bigger, more expensive, create more particulate pollution (huge tires, higher torque), will last decades less (who's going to fix a gen 1 tesla in 2040 ?), anything other than a fender bender = written off (https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/scratched-ev-battery-your-insurer-may-have-junk-whole-car-2023-03-20/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/scratc...). Let's not even mention the absolutely insane amount of mining we'll need to do to replace 1.4 billion ICE cars with EVs (plot twist, mining isn't very eco friendly)

cbeach 2y ago
Every time I see a fossil fuel car sitting outside my son’s nursery, engine idling, spewing out huge amounts of poisonous fumes (23 shipping containers worth every five minutes), I’m thankful that we’re transitioning to EVs. Yes, there are problems, but many of the points made in the above post are dubious to say the least. I’ve had my EV for five years and the brakes are still pristine (regenerative braking saves mechanical brake wear). So I don’t buy that particulate pollution is higher in EVs. 50 companies solving the same problem? That’s GREAT! More scope for competition and innovation. Or would you rather ever drove Soviet Lada cars? Car costs are being driven down and we’re nearly at the tipping point where EVs are cheaper than fossil fuelled cars - which is surprising as EVs are better in nearly every single way. We have continent-wide defacto standards for chargers. Ideally it would be worldwide, but really, this is a trivial concern. You talk about mining (lithium I assume) as a concern, but that’s probably better overall than the huge environmental toll of oil extraction, transport, refinement and exhaust emission. This isn’t the time to let perfect be the enemy of good. Get onboard with the transition and we will make progress. Progress is good.
- lm28469 2y ago
  > Progress is good. "progress" is exactly why we are where we are today... Electric cars just perpetuates the same cycle, the only way out is a complete redesign of the system. Personal ownership of 2500kg hunks of metal to transport your lazy 70kg ass isn't anywhere close to sustainable. I bike everyday, and everyday I witness the same thing, hundreds and hundreds of cars, most are empty waiting on a parking spot, 90% of the rest are occupied by a single person, usually stuck in a traffic jam. EVs or not that's just pure madness and misallocation of resources. You're moving the needle 0.1mm backwards when we need to go back a good 720 degrees. But of course it's much nicer to have trailing dams in a country the average american can't place on a map than having a car idle in front of _your_ school
  - dastbe 2y ago
    720 degrees is spinning in circles and ending up pointed right back where you started.
  - cbeach 2y ago
    It's nice that you manage to live a simple life that doesn't require a car, but I assure you it's 100% necessary for me: * busy family of four with two young kids, both in different childcare settings * the UK climate * bulk shopping that is impossible to transport by bike, including heavy DIY stuff etc * transporting relatives etc * hospital visits (the UK NHS Ambulance service is basically unusable at this point. They didn't even come out to pick up my elderly nan after she fell down her stairs and was in an immobile heap on the ground for hours) * visiting relatives that are not readily accessible by public transport I have a driveway, so my car consumes no public space unless it's actively being driven, or parked for a short time in a car park. I feel the cycling / "active travel" advocacy movement is currently engaging in an ideological war against motorists - this is evident in the dreadful zero-sum policy making that's going on throughout the UK at the moment - road narrowing, model filters, "low traffic neighbourhoods" etc, which aim to change people's behaviour by artificially making life harder for motorists. However, what these ideologues don't understand is that busy families, elderly and disabled people absolutely rely on cars, and we will not be bullied into giving them up.
ZeroGravitas 2y ago
The shift to EVs will mean less mining of resources, since we'll not be digging stuff up to burn and then releasing the results into the atmosphere to choke our children and warm the atmosphere. EVs aren't the single sole answer to climate change either (they're in the top 20 though) but repeating climate denial factoids isn't really helping either.
- lm28469 2y ago
  > repeating climate denial factoids Saying EVs aren't enough is climate change denial now ? lmao I bet your top 20 is full of things to buy and replace. Too bad the only way out is to use less and do less... As long as the goal is YoY growth ad aeternam it's game over. We can talk wishful thinking all day long, the bottom line is that we're breaking pollution (and energy usage) record every single year since as long as we cared measuring it: https://climatanthropocene.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/courbe2.jpg https://climatanthropocene.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/co... So much "progress", so many "clean" alternatives yet it goes up at the same or higher rate year after year... EVs won't even put a dent on that graph, but it sure feels good to pat yourself on the back knowing you saved the planet by buying a $50k+ "clean" car, you did you part! great job!
  - mlyle 2y ago
    > Too bad the only way out is to use less and do less... To be clear: you're saying that "doing things more efficiently" and "using power sources other than fossil fuels to do stuff" are not parts of the solution at all? > I bet your top 20 is full of things to buy and replace. T And this never makes sense? I should keep burning natural gas to heat my home forever instead of moving to use more heat pumps? I shouldn't buy solar and energy storage? > the bottom line is that we're breaking pollution (and energy usage) record every single year since as long as we cared measuring it: That's CO2 levels, not emissions. https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissions/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissi... We're getting closer to leveling off.
  - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
    I agreed that EVs weren't enough, so clearly that's not one of the climate denial factoids I was referring to. (It's kind of a non statement though, nothing you or anyone else is suggesting is a silver bullet either). Other dubious things you claimed: More particulate emissions. False (reduced brake dust being a big factor) More expensive. False. Already lower TCO in most of the world, lower upfront cost in China already. Generally heading downward. Bigger. False, nothing about EVs requires them to be bigger, they scale in both directions better than ICE. Higher maintenance/early scrapping. False, already we have enough data to show they last longer. Mining. False, as already stated. If you need this many false statements to back up your point, maybe it's a bad point? What's wrong with "EVs can cut GHG by half and reduce imports of fossil fuel from unfriendly regimes, but (electric) trains, (electric) busses and (electric) bike-friendly city designs are even better than that!" No need to sound like a Fox News talking head to promote those alternatives.
borgdefenser 2y ago
I think we know we can't solve the problem so we are just more interested in the optics. If the soccer mom switches from a gas guzzling SUV to another ridiculous size and weight electric SUV, they have done their part optically. I feel like I am doing my part by simply not having children. It doesn't matter what you drive, it doesn't even come close to the offset of not having children. Who then can't have grandchildren, grandchildren who can't have great grandchildren, etc. It would be hard to calculate the difference between me not having children and the person driving an EV with two kids in the back seat. They have done a better job with optics than me but in reality I have probably done 10,000X more over the next 200 years because what they have done is basically nothing.
- more_corn 2y ago
  Yes, but learning how to live sustainably lowers the impact of every person. It’s worth doing.
triceratops 2y ago
> the absolutely insane amount of mining we'll need to do to replace 1.4 billion ICE cars with EVs Replacing the automobiles will involve less mining than replacing the cities that depend on automobiles.

ZeroGravitas 2y ago

Ironically the base justification for protecting local car manufacturing is so they can be transformed into building tanks and bombers in case of war. But protecting them in such a way that they can't even transition from one kind of car to another over several decades and are unable to complete basic tasks that involve computers seems almost counter productive. Actively weakening the country at great financial cost.

rightbyte 2y ago
Machine factories are not as general as they were in the 40s when things were made with high skilled labour. They are more or less just buildings in that sense.