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We should obviously ban combustion engine cars, at least starting with cities. I can’t think of a single clearer win for air quality.
by rayiner 1y ago
We should obviously ban combustion engine cars, at least starting with cities. I can’t think of a single clearer win for air quality.
- jjayj 1y agoI would love to have gone electric (bought a car in September) but I rent and don't have any way to charge at my residence. How do we solve the renters-that-cant-charge-their-cars problem?
- barbazoo 1y agoAnd everyone you ask has a slightly different situation so no generic solution does it. We’ll have to spend some money and retrofit at least where possible. We’ll need free level 2 chargers wherever people congregate. And folks will probably have to adapt their expectation toward mobility in a way. Things change.
- Joel_Mckay 1y agoAll our local Tesla drivers park their cars partially blocking the alleyway each evening. They can't make it into their garages on the narrow road, and there are no curb side plugs in the front (NEC safety rules.) Funny until the Garbage truck rage mashes the horn at 6am... lol =3
- stouset 1y agoPublic EV chargers are pretty widespread nowadays. Not as much as gas chargers obviously, but for most people in the country if you don't have a way to charge at home it's not fundamentally that different from not having a gas pump at your house. Plus, most people can charge at home with an extension cord. It's not particularly fast, but you should be able to get 4-5 miles an hour. In the worst case scenario where you can only charge at home and can only charge for 10 hours overnight, that's still 40 miles of driving which is enough for a lot of commuters. Even if it falls short—again—you can use public chargers. Lastly, eliminating the sale of ICE cars will be a pretty rapid forcing function on the deployment of EV chargers. Still, I'd be all for locations that ban combustion engines mandating that landlords provide EV charging facilities.
- Joel_Mckay 1y agoPopularity has costs, some are waiting in line for 45 minutes to use a fast charger. EV is not for everyone, but those Rivian are nice though. =3
- KennyBlanken 1y agoWell given Rivians rank among the worst EVs in the world efficiency-wise, maybe if you care about not spending your life at charging stations, don't buy a Rivian? Or a Tesla for that matter, since Tesla lies about their efficiency numbers and the real-world numbers are middling at best.
- Joel_Mckay 1y agoIt is the low temperature performance that make most EV impractical. A Tesla power pack heater means the charge will be completely depleted if left outdoors for more than a week in winter. EV are meant for people that live in 4'C to 42'C weather, and have excess capacity on their solar installations. Everyone else is getting subsidized by their neighbors paying for excess electrical capacity. =3
- Toutouxc 1y agoSomeone needs to tell all those people in Norway.
- Joel_Mckay 1y agoNY and Chicago are a little closer... =3
- BHSPitMonkey 1y agoWalmart has some gigantic amount of sites under construction or in permitting at many of their stores, and many are being built by other operators too. Charging proliferation hasn't slowed down.
- Quitschquat 1y agoWell if you have a Tesla, I believe you can sit in it and it offers games to play on its iPad to kill the time.
- SV_BubbleTime 1y agoEverytime I fill my truck up, I’m at the gas station thinking “man, I wish I could just hang out here for two hours!!”
- Quitschquat 1y agoI’m keeping my Tacoma forever
- SV_BubbleTime 1y agoUsed vehicles are about to be where it is at. The tracking, the module security lockdown, and that in a couple years particulate filter systems like DEF for diesel that everyone just loves… is coming to petrol by regulation.
- Toutouxc 1y agoMore like 20 minutes, but ok, not everyone likes that.
- genewitch 1y agowhat happens when there's more people that need 20 minutes? it takes me less than five to pull up, fill up, and go. when the gas station is packed, i might have to wait 4-5 minutes for my turn. Now quadruple this. "super extra 1gigawatt charging" isn't coming to my area, potentially ever. Afaik there's two "super chargers" in my metro area, both at dealerships. i've actually never seen a Tesla charger in person.
- matsemann 1y agoWith home charging, I'm almost never charging anywhere else. Maybe a few times a year when doing a longer trip. I just drive, and plug the charger in some times when I get home. I literally never think about range or having to drive a detour to fill it up. But you have to do that probably weekly. And then also spend a lot of money while doing it. It seems you believe those driving EVs are "suckers", but do you realize you probably spend hours and hours more in a year going to the station and pump compared to most EV owners never having to do that in their daily life?
- DangitBobby 1y agoYou could possibly have come to an arrangement about getting a 50 Amp (think dryer plug) hookup in the garage and provided your own charger. Also depending on your driving patterns a trickle charger in a 20 Amp socket may have worked for you as well. Mine takes about 48 hours for a full charge on the trickle charger.
- jjayj 1y agoThere's no garage, and the only driveway-facing outlet is at the front door - opposite where my parking spot is allocated (an extension cord would have to go under/through the landlord's cars.) I have to drive 60km to work every day. Only laws (accommodate EVs and/or WFH) or spending time sitting at a gas station will help me here. No landlord is interested in accommodating an EV unless it's a net benefit to them (and thus a net negative to me, who already spends 40% income just to have a place to work.)
- jjayj 1y ago... to live, not work. I can't edit comments from Harmonic.
- DangitBobby 1y agoSorry to hear that.
- Aachen 1y agoMaybe it's possible to rent a cheap parking spot with charger elsewhere and take a tram/metro/bus/bicycle/scooter for the last ten minutes of distance as you get deeper into the city? Having a car right out one's door is a real luxury though, no more than two steps through any weather. I can see the appeal, just not sure if the collective downsides are worth it compared to arranging good transport inside of, and between, cities. Outside of populated areas, yeah, whatcha gonna do, but at least inside of major settlements we ought to be able to get this done (in many cities it's already okay to not have a car, but imo the facilities to get to the countryside are relatively annoying and needlessly expensive)
- Toutouxc 1y agoI’m in the same situation, but I did go electric. I’m in a bigger city in Europe and the public infrastructure here is adequate and reliable. I rarely have to wait for the car to finish charging, it mostly fits my usage.
- nottorp 1y agoWhy renters? I own but I still wouldn't have any place to charge if i owned an EV...
- esperent 1y agoIf you own a house, generally you can do things like install charging points (also backup batteries, solar panels, better insulation, all kinds of fun things) that renters can't. I'm sure there are some homeowners who can't - maybe listed buildings, or these weird HOA rules I hear about from Americans.
- nottorp 1y agoYes, especially on the 6th floor :)
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- esperent 1y agoWell, that's an apartment. We're talking about house owners.
- nottorp 1y agoNo the OP was talking about owners without qualifiers. Make EVs chargeable for those who choose to live in the urban jungle and then talk about their merits.
- bethekidyouwant 1y agoSo not the city. Can’t wait till we ban ice vehicles from the suburbs.
- mattlondon 1y agoIn the UK, in London at least, they're starting to put in more and more ~4-5KW chargers on the electric street lamps/lamp posts. So far its like 1 or 2 a street (and not all streets either), but hopefully one day it will basically be all of them in every street so you don't need to worry. So if you need to park overnight on the street anyway, park next to a lamp post that has the socket. Its "slow" charging at 4 to 5 KW, but if you're parked for 8-12 hours (while you are asleep), that is quite a considerable top-up in the 40-50KWh range.
- empath75 1y agoThe same way you fix parking problems and lots of other problems. You have regulations that require landlords to provide certain amenities.
- WorldMaker 1y agoOne option may be to ask your work to electrify a parking spot for you? Depending on the type of company there can be big enough subsidies and tax-write-off capital investments in adding more electric parking spaces that they might do it just for that. (It can be fun to use accounting games in your personal favor.) For other types of companies they may see that as a possible "captive audience" revenue source, with nickel and dime-ing electric charge fees on top of existing parking fees to be a a fun game to play with their own employees whose cars are stuck in the same place for many hours at a time because they "must" be in the office. Either of those two common types of companies you can possibly "win" an easy way to charge your daily commute.
- Zambyte 1y ago> How do we solve the renters-that-cant-charge-their-cars problem? By solving the renters-think-they-need-to-own-a-car problem.
- bethekidyouwant 1y agoWe don’t have a housing problem. We have a people think they need a room with a window problem.
- Zambyte 1y agoLacking windows is incompatible with high quality housing. Cars are incompatible with high quality transportation.
- barbazoo 1y agoYeah maybe starting with what they’re doing in places in Europe where gradually emission requirements become more strict.
- dontlaugh 1y agoExcluding the worst polluters makes a surprisingly big difference, yes. It’s still been a problem in several places though, because it forced poor people with old cars to either upgrade or stop driving. An equitable alternative would have included a way to get a new car free or at least cheap.
- Joel_Mckay 1y agoSure, first we spend a trillion dollars for over capacity electrical distribution grids and generation plants. B100 is almost carbon neutral, and has the energy density necessary for commercial logistics. Finding responsible manufacturing methods is far more feasible. EV only make sense with distributed generation like home solar. =3
- throwaway473825 1y agoBiodiesel doesn't solve the pollution problem. It's also very expensive, and often produced in an unsustainable way.
- Joel_Mckay 1y agoI like the company looking at a genetically engineered solution, and waste organic matter conversion. It is cleaner from a sulfur content and long-term carbon cycle perspective, but is very similar to regular fuels. The dilemma is whether B100 it more difficult to scale than trying to retool our entire global energy infrastructure with finite rare earth metals. =3
- Graziano_M 1y agoI’m against a ban. That sort of pollution is an externality and we could price it in.
- tshaddox 1y agoThe externalities are all the costs of medical problems and deaths due to pollution, as well as reduced property values due to polluted areas being less desirable. For the former I’d say a ban is appropriate, unless you’re suggesting to somehow literally clean the polluted air and pay for it with a gas automobile tax.
- Graziano_M 1y agoI mean even campfires and smoking in public have negative externalities which cause cancer. The marginal cost of each is tiny and probably hard to price, but it has a price. Adding this price would slightly offset the cost but more importantly act as a disincentive for buying a polluting vehicle.
- tshaddox 1y agoSmoking in public is widely banned. Campfires in populated areas are usually limited to very specific recreational areas. Home wood fires in populated areas are often banned and should be as long as there are reasonable alternatives.
- KennyBlanken 1y agoYeah, because that's worked so well in other sectors. You know how Tesla makes a fuckton of money? Selling their carbon credits to industry so they can pollute. So all the pollution reduction caused by people driving Teslas enables industry to pollute instead of controlling their emissions, reducing energy waste, decarbonizing, etc.
- mhb 1y agoIsn't that exactly how carbon credits are supposed to work?
- altairprime 1y agoIf all of us renters were forced to convert to electric there’d never be an open charger in any city again for the next five years, because no landlord will voluntarily afford that cost, and no municipal region can pass a ballot measure to afford that cost. California’s impending ban of combustion car sales hinges wholly on a magical DC-charging network that doesn’t exist in U.S. cities yet (i.e. at parking meters), only at U.S. personal dwellings. I would love to switch to electric but at current charging times and absolutely horrendously incompetent grid deployments, there’s no way all of the thousand people in my building could, much less the million other renters in the city. (And certainly transit can’t cope with us either, given the continued homeowner hostility to paying taxes for such things.) What city has charging available for an average of greater than one spot per five hundred multifamily-housing residents? What parking garages anywhere in the U.S. have 25 or more electric vehicle chargers per 100 daytime and/or overnight and/or reserved parking spots, in order to diffuse the grid cost through trickle charging? What funding model is proposed to ensure that’s built whether corporate garage owners like it or not? How will states who depend on fuel tax to keep roads in repair avoid cutting off city services to suburban outregions when their asphalt budgets crater? Technology has downstream effects, and it’s not as simple as “buy a Prius” when you consider U.S. non-homeowners. (I assume the prospect for India electric conversions would be much worse, too.) “Ban combustion vehicles” is a lofty goal, but until the charging grid problem is solved, it’s an unattainable one.
- BHSPitMonkey 1y agoLevel 1 charging overnight on a standard 120V outlet, while not ideal, is surprisingly adequate. Granted, many people rely on street parking or otherwise don't have a parking spot that is right beside their dwelling, but for rented houses or complexes with private garages/parking areas the size of the lift isn't necessarily "get upgraded service and a bunch of 240V EVSE put in".
- bruckie 1y agoI'll second this. We got a Chevy Bolt a couple of years ago, and I assumed we'd need to install a 240 V EVSE, but it turns out that regular 120 V 12 A charging is totally fine for us. I think there's been one time in the 2.5 years we've had it when we had to go to a nearby fast charger because the battery was getting low. Of course if you're commuting 2 hours every day, things will be different. But for us, it's been great.
- HKH2 1y agoYep, sell your ICE and buy a jet plane instead.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- SV_BubbleTime 1y agoWow. Well, I like that the people that think like this also probably live I places where you are actually driving a coal powered car. Like the clowns in Hawaii that have extra subsidies for EVs… their power comes directly from burning crude oil. I’m an automotive EE, and and the truth about EVs is in a rush to push them out the door, the media and politicians have set the tech back at least a decade by pretending it is something it’s not. EVs for most people outside of California. Make a great town vehicle or second vehicle. A ban on ICE… wow.
- throwaway473825 1y ago> Well, I like that the people that think like this also probably live I places where you are actually driving a coal powered car. That's still an improvement for both global and local emissions.
- webprofusion 1y agoI don't agree with a ban, but burning crude oil (are you sure about that, it's usually refined at least a little?) can have centralised carbon capture and filtration, whereas cars pretty much just pump it straight out. Luckily they made the smoke invisible so it's ok, almost like it's not even there!
- SV_BubbleTime 1y agoThey don’t even unload it from the tankers. Absolute crude. Seen it with my own two. Exactly, as long as no one sees it, it isn’t happening. Same with them burning plastic and trash.
- BHSPitMonkey 1y agoThere are more benefits to EV conversion in a community than the use of renewable energy, noise and roadside air quality being pretty big ones. Also... how do you know there aren't Hawaiians charging their EVs using rooftop solar? I hear they're known for being in the sun sometimes.
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- webprofusion 1y agoI don't think banning combustion engines is fighting the right battle, but incentivizing the alternatives (e..g lowering or removing sales tax) is a good idea. We don't actually want to scrap working cars unless they have reached the end of their life or passed an air quality threshold (UK tests every car over 3 years old, every year, called an MOT). Reduce, reuse, recycle etc.
- mjmas 1y agoRequiring LPG would be a better option. (~10x less CO)
- xyst 1y agoBan _all_ cars, bud. Make streets narrower. Reduce parking. Return road infrastructure in favor of walkability, green areas, and reducing urban heat islands.
- matsemann 1y agoJust don't do as we did in Norway. Sure, we've seen great adoption to electric, but with the insane amount of money spent and subsidies, we've could instead have improved public transit and reduced car dependence. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23939076/norway-electric-vehicle-cars-evs-tesla-oslo https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23939076/norway-electric-...
- alexey-salmin 1y agoI can think of many. The list should start with coal power plants (hello, green Germany), then two-stroke engines (both mopeds and leaf blowers / lawn mowers), then diesel engines, especially diesel buses and trucks. None of that is in place. Modern gasoline and hybrid cars are fine, banning them at this point in time would mean a drop in quality of life for negligible gain.
- Dylan16807 1y agoDiesel transport trucks and busses are getting a lot of work done per gallon. How much worse are their emissions? Hybrid cars might be good enough, but banning pure combustion cars from cities sounds perfectly reasonable to me. No real quality of life impact.
- boesboes 1y agoAnd how are we going to charge all those EV's? the grid is already overloaded in many places. Here we are requested to not charge our cars during certain times to reduce load. And how will all the people that are buying 500€ second hand cars afford electric? Don't get me wrong, I think there is merit in a ICE free future, especially in urban areas, but the practicalities.. And I am not convinced the long term impacts of EV are fully appreciated necessarily.
- pjc50 1y agoRealistically this is what's happening in the UK with "low emission zones", the worst of the emitters are banned. Although public buses of course get an exemption until they can manage a changeover.
- Symbiote 1y agoMeant German cities have electric or natural gas buses. Electric local delivery vans are becoming more common.
- badgersnake 1y agoI live in a city and I don't have a car. There are very few places to charge it, and many of the lamppost charges are seemingly permanently broken. Charging at home is not an option as I would have to park it on the street. If I needed a car I would definitely go ICE or hybrid, thankfully I don't.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]