this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023
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Fuck Cars

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Electric cars: The equivalent of switching from binge drinking whiskey to binge drinking wine. (lemmy.ml)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Several years ago, I considered an EV, got sticker shock, and slowly backed away. I wound up with an ebike instead. What happened with the latter is it turned out I really loved that thing and rode it far more frequently than I would have imagined. It's not a total car replacement, to be fair, but it handles most trips.

Today, EVs are still expensive, though there are more options and a bit more competition on price. But to make them worthwhile, you need to drive a lot so that you get back some of that initial investment in savings with charging vs fuelling. This means I am not really the demographic for EVs anymore, since I don't drive enough. It's so weird… I guess I'll just keep that 2006 ICE around until it dies, which might be awhile yet considering how slowly the mileage is ticking up.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I really think we're too far in the hole here.

I think fear grips people at every angle and none of us are brave enough to accept bold action for positive change in our society. It seems like most people are just retracting instead.

I vaguely remember that "Ye" (formerly Kanye West) once said something like he formed a think tank to build a city but the thing stopping his team was that "Ye" didn't understand any of the concepts and he ran it into the ground.

I want public transportation, I think everyone wants it at this point but no no one understands why we need it. They all just want to escape.

(This message was brought to you by the new 2024 Ford Escape: just hit the road and escape to paradise)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I like my car. Nothing will change that opinion, because nothing beats having a personal vehicle.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

There's no comparison to the personal freedom of having a car versus being dependent on others to ferry you around. That's why America will always be built around our great car infrastructure. We will never give up our freedom to roam our huge awesome land.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Nothing like freedom like actively removing people from having multiple choices of transit by making illegal to build anything that isn't dependent on cars.

Nothing like freedom like being forced to spend thousands on a several ton machine to do any task outside your home.

Nothing like freedon like being forced to pay predatory insurance to private corporations in order to be legally allowed to drive your vehicle.

Nothing like freedom like being dependent on oil companies that actively lobby against you in order to drive the vehicle that you are forced to own.

Nothing like freedom like having infustructure that denies poor people and disabled people from participating in society.

Nothing like freedom like having no independence if you are too old, too young, too intoxicated, or too disabled to drive.

Nothing like freedom like being forced to have a license issued by your government in order to be independent.

Nothing like freedom like being forced to use a vehicle that spies on you and collects information such as your sexual activity, immigration status, 'private' conversations, location, and much more.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Tell me you can't afford a car without telling me

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

What a nonsense argument. Poor people don't deserve freedom of movement?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

And here again we see the typical attempt to put words in somebody's mouth. I never said anything about what poor people deserve, that's your words, not mine.

When you don't have a substantial rebuttal, you just make up a strawman argument.

IMO everyone, regardless of economic stature, deserves every form of freedom legitimately available in society. For this example, if a poor person couldn't afford a car I would suggest a cheap used motorcycle. I've bought a couple of those, one was $900 and the other was $2500.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This is incredibly insane when you consider the cost incurred to maintain a vehicle. No poor person would do this in the right mind it would be nothing but a debt trap. It's shameful that public transit is downright near illegal and most metropolitan areas in North America and it is the best solution get over it

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You're overestimating the cost to own a vehicle. My costs are very low overall. I spend about $50 a month on gas or less, and I have no car payments, and my insurance cost is about $100 per month. Total cost of ownership for my 2 vehicles is less than $200 per month, and I can drive them anywhere I want at any time.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I've both been poor and owned a few vehicles and $2000 repair bills happen, more than once in the life cycle of a car and much more than I could ever afford if I hadn't been better off before I pulled the trigger in cars but down take my word for it John Oliver did a great peice on how bad of a debt trap they are on average

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Disagree on inefficient.

Internal combustion engines in standard small size convert 19.65-22.1% of their energy from thermal to kinetic.

The ratio of electron throughput from battery to electric motor can be as LOW as 88% but hovers between 92-98% efficiency.

Even if you had a fuel cell in the back, running electric motors quintuples (5×) the standard energy efficiency owing to the principle of energy quality type preservation in conversion (High to High vs Low to High):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_transformation

So 1 electric car = 4 less carbon liquid fuelled cars worth of pollution.

What you're actually looking for is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

Jevon's Paradox states that improved efficiency of something will only increase its use, and in this case, electric cars will in fact, correlate to car use, and increased mineral demands.

This is a problem you cannot solve endemic to humanity.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I think the point is that compared to public transport when transporting a large number of people, they are inefficient.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

This is why people hate liberals, and why liberals often migrate over to conservatism: no matter how right you are, there's always someone happy to crap on you for not being right enough.

Don't shit on EVs for merely being one of many solutions that all need to be engaged with. It's not like without EVs, so many people would be rushing to areas of greater density and riding public transit, so your message is not helpful in achieving what you want, and actively angers your allies.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

The thing is you're just not right. EVs serve to save the car, not the world.

It's not like without EVs, so many people would be rushing to areas of greater density and riding public transit, so your message

Correct! Which is why you should fight cars in general, cause then that happens

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I think both sides are lacking nuance here. If you shit on people getting electric vehicles or just thinking of getting one because that's not far enough: fuck you. But also, for people that just switched or are thinking of getting one but then see something like this and slam into reverse and say "I'm gonna support ICE cars till the day I die to spite those overly hostile woke liberals": fuck you too.

People should be able to take the information in a more nuanced way, and should stop swinging from extreme to extreme which has led to the current fucked state of politics

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Do you even know what community you’re commenting in

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Fuck cars?

I hate ignorant conservatives, but you mostly can't do much about them because they listen to no one. But progressive ignorance is something I feel compelled to correct: progressives pretend to care about things other than their own assholes.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

cheeto-man

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Meaningless meme. Because people see problems with your simplistic stance doesn't make them Trump. There should be a plan to get there from here, and right now, you guys are removed about EVs, which are part of the plan for getting there from here.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago

My favorite part about this sub is how everyone acts like the entire world is able to just stop having a car and be able to carry on normally about their lives as if cars haven't been forced into nearly all infrastructure plans globally since this inception. Like it's every citizens personal choice that nobody built a functioning transit system in the many decades before they were born, or that the place they can afford to live is too far from the place that pays the wages they need to live is too far to bike or bus to.

Like, push for fewer cars and less car centric design, but also stop being a fucking cunty dick about it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (4 children)

They're a solution, not the solution indeed.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I'd call them less a solution, more an attempt at harm reduction.

And the only things they'll properly resolve are tailpipe emissions and idling noise. At least one of which is of no concern when dealing with the externalities of car traffic.

If you really want to solve the environmental impact of transportation, you minimise the need for transportation. Put homes and workplaces close together, offer mass alternatives for the pairs where you really do need motorised mobility solutions, and minimise the number of situations where it's more convenient to take a car. Ban on-street parking and heavily tax off-street parking. Need to park your car in the city? Hope you can afford to pay an arm and a leg. Oh, you can't? Looks the Park & Ride at the train station two towns over is the nearest alternative. Don't worry though, the trains go six times an hour and a day ticket is, like, four quid max.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Quid: you're British. Great.

You're smaller in area than Texas. It's a little easier for you to stay close to everything, you're never more than 70 miles away from the sea.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Look mate, if you're going to shove the "tHe stATeS arE ToO bIG, thus wE cANNot SOlvE The transIt ProbleM" rhetoric on us, please find another place to wallow in your lack of trains while assuming car industry rhetoric as undeniable fact.

Also, your claim has been debunked and reclarified so often that I'm not going to begin to explain just how wrong you are.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

You guys are all idiots. A bunch of Europeans lucked into an infrastructure that works with twice the people in half the space, and you act like it was an intentional and smarter design decision in anticipation of a climate crisis. You shipped your most insane people off your continent to become Americans, and their shitty Calvinism has made everything that has always been terrible about Northern Europe even worse.

Now you want to act like anyone who thinks what you propose isn't exactly easy (or democratic) is some kind of corporate fascist. Fuck off, the lot of you.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Hello, I'm Albertan. Stop saying this. Our governments maintain roads in between these cities every year, there is no reason they couldn't have been train lines instead. Roads are far more expensive than many realize.

Once upon a time, all cities were connected by train, and we ripped it all up to build roads instead. Sure, it's going to cost money to build these up again -- that's what happens when we make a mistake, we have to pay for it in one way or another. But connecting smaller towns and cities is not the herculean impossible task that people seem to want to pretend it is.

There ARE major urban areas in North America. People are not evenly spread out across the landmass equally. Connecting these first is obviously the goal, because that will take care of 70% of the problem already. And always remember not to make perfect the enemy of good - even if we stopped there we'd be in infinitely better shape than we were before.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

We've done a ton of that. The Acela is great, I've ridden it a bunch. But that kind of thing doesn't scale as efficiently as you would hope. It can serve corridors of people, but not huge continents of hundreds of millions all that well. There are to many places to be.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

They are a patch, not a solution.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I live in GA outside of Atlanta and rent is already tough. I've been to cities with not exactly amazing but serviceable public transportation (various parts of greater NYC and Chicago) and loved them. I've tried to use busses elsewhere, though it often meant 3 hours wasted to go to work, with similar time wasted after (hourly buss schedules and multiple transfers).

I have an electric car now, work from home, and try to avoid having to drive much, but there isn't much more I can afford to do atm. An bike would be nice but even that'll take money I'm still recovering, and some places I go to even just a couple times a month has no public transportation. I'd love if it did, but I have to use EV for now.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

I think when most people decry EVs, we're not talking about individual EV owners but the system which forces basically everyone to move around by personal vehicle. Sure, they'll be the occasional person who says, "I bike 28km to and from work at a very physical job where I often work overtime. I have to share the road with traffic. I don't know why everyone can't commute by bike," (this was the gist of a comment I read on reddit years ago). However, most people understand that changes can't just be personal responsibility.

With the information we have about your life, it sounds like you made a reasonable decision. If you can continue to be mindful about the decisions you make and advocate for a better world when you can, I think you're doing a great job!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Not really. At all. Like they’re barely even a bandaid.

The issue is a car weighs a couple of tons and it’s being used to move a person who weighs around 100kg.

It’s massively inefficient use of energy.

Even in some fantasy world where the energy used to charge the batteries is all renewable - not even close to reality but let’s pretend - all that lithium and other precious earths are still an environmental disaster.

The answer is mass transit and lower mass vehicles. A lifestyle change is actually required and the thing is it wouldn’t even make people less happy, just that change is so fucking scary for some reason.

Walkable cities are a dream lifestyle and an electric scooter in a walkable city is outstanding. Fuck urban sprawl.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Fuck urban rents, how about that?

People who give this message like everyone is just choosing to screw the environment for fun make a crapton of assumptions about the forces people face in finding a place to live.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

Fuck urban rents, how about that?

Boy I wonder where we might be able to find lots and lots of space within a city for new construction to densify it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

EVs are not limited to personal vehicles though. I absolutely agree on developing mass transit, be it rail or other, and preventing urban sprawl.

But cars (personal vehicles) and other vehicles will always exist (at least for the foreseeable future) and people will still need to haul stuff (garbage collection, artisans, deliveries, movers etc..).

I'd take an electric garbage collection truck over a ICE one for instance. It's anecdotal but there are roadworks in my neighborhood, and most of the machinery is electric which is very nice. Electric mopeds/motorcycles are also much quieter than ICE ones. You could also electrify buses, airport equipment, port equipment, trains (the diesel ones), mining equipment, etc.

So no, EVs are not the solution but a solution, and their development is a good thing if we want to move away from fossil fuels.

Edit: corrected thermic with ICE

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

And trains don't even need batteries, the biggest issue with EV cars

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago

Sorry, chief. We don't do nuanced thought in this community.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Like, I get your overall point, but the whiskey to wine comparison doesn't quite work lol.

For starters, you'd have to drink a LOT more wine comparatively, which doesn't translate when going from ICE to electric.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

It does, because the batteries for electric cars have a reliance on rare earth metals.

Lol the downvotes are hilarious. We will not solve climate change with electric cars. Public transit in walkable communities with niche uses for cars and trucks are the only way forward.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Right is possible if economy is local. Left is actual real life because of capitalism needs bigger markets in in small areas for maximing profits.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Don't bother mate, the people in this community don't live in reality.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Hello. I used to live in Bremen which is an economy hub in Germany. It's pretty much image #3

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Trains

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

You can't have bigger markets in smaller areas with cars because the cars take up so much space. Public transport gives access while still allowing for density, which provides a much larger market. The only ones losing out are the auto makers and oil companies.