I’ve seen a lot of posts here on Lemmy, specifically in the “fuck cars” communities as to how Electric Vehicles do pretty much nothing for the Climate, but I continue to see Climate activists everywhere try pushing so, so hard for Electric Vehicles.
Are they actually beneficial to the planet other than limiting exhaust, or is that it? or maybe exhaust is a way bigger problem?
EVs are good for the environment overall but you are not going to fix climate changing by buying more things.
Most of the criticism towards EVs comes from the idea that buying the shiny new thing is a net positive when it’s actually less harmful than buying a traditional car.
Tldr: if you are going to buy a car, buy an EV, but don’t just buy a new car just to switch to EV if you don’t need it.
The criticisms are also that companies use slavery to acquire the materials to make EVs. And they don’t work well in the cold (see current cold snap in Canada), the lifetime of the batteries aren’t great, and we still need to destroy huge swaths of land to create cars, park/store cars, and drive cars.
EVs are only going to save the car industry. To fix it requires a redesign of cities (see Strongtowns, not justbikes, city beautiful, etc.).
EVs are only going to save the car industry. To fix it requires a redesign of cities (see Strongtowns, not justbikes, city beautiful, etc.).
Nail on the head! EVs fix one problem, but the biggest problem is the idea of the personal vehicle. Most people shouldn’t have a personal vehicle, especially for people who live in medium cities or larger. There should be a sort of car share instead.
That’s only because the US and other first world countries have shied away from mining rare earth elements because it is traditionally a very dirty and polluting industry. So poor and developing countries did it their way… with slavery and incredibly ecologically damaging techniques.
New techniques are being developed in the US that solve those problems. It originally wasn’t worth the effort because we had plenty of lithium to make 18V drill batteries. Since BEVs have proven to be capable and desireable over the last decade, critical material supplies just didn’t keep up and those new techniques were just a twinkle in the eye of some smart people.
If you’d like to learn more about how we can completely avoid the slavery and pollution problems related to getting lithium, take a look at the Salton Sea enhanced geothermal projects. I am personally going to invest a portion of my life savings in that company if given the opportunity.
They haven’t shied away, it is just more profitable to mine outside your borders using slave labour. The fact of it is, with planned obsolescence being the best way to ensure a steady demand of a product, and the environmental destruction required to support the manufacturing and use of EVs, they still are not a solution. They are a market solution which means it is profitable, and a lateral move at best, and a back step at worst.
If EVs help the environment that is secondary.
https://miningwatch.ca/publications/2023/9/6/contemporary-forms-slavery-and-canadian-mining-industry
Another point is that cars, car infrastructure, and car oriented development is one of the single most wasteful ways to use land. Building smarter cities with alternative transit systems, mixed use areas, and actually using all 3 dimensions like many newer cities in China could protect so much habitat from needlessly being destroyed. There’s hardly any truly wild land left on the east coast, it’s hard to tell what things used to look like now that practically everything is covered in suburbs and strip malls.
I fully agree, cars are just not needed most of the time.
I once calculated that my upper-middle class EV (2.1 tons in kerb weight, sadly) is better for the environment (indeed, carbon neutral since I’m only using clean energy) starting at 70,000km of driving usage. I’m at 20,000km now, so I’m already 28% there :)
In terms of Carbon, they produce about one third of the damage which an equivalent internal combustion engine car would.
There’s a lot of factors that go into the final figures, like the specifics of the vehicle and the source of the energy used to charge it.
It’s a bit like vaping instead of smoking. Neither are good for you but one is clearly worse than the other.
Does that third also take into account any differences in manufacturing them? In other words, the entire lifecycle.
That’s the best figure I’ve seen for the total lifetime impact.
It depends on a like for like comparison. A really massive and inefficient EV will not stack up so well against a small efficient ICE, for example.
There’s just too much variation for any one figure to be both simple and accurate
HMU on telegram if you got verified Id.me let hit $100k upwards and split @pounddc1
If they want more people to switch to EVs specifically, they absolutely need to try to make some changes if they can.
Chargers: In a world where many people are living in old apartment buildings and condos, people are going to need public chargers. I don’t just mean enough for 20 people. If we want a big societal switch, we need to be able to assure people that they won’t encounter what happened in Texas recently. 60 chargers is still pretty rough if your city has half a million people in it.
Cost: MANY people can only afford used vehicles. This is not only because of the up-front cost. Parts for repairs can become a massive factor when deciding what type of car to buy. Even if you can get a used car for 6K, you might not go for it if you know that certain important repairs will cost you up to 20K.
Design: There are concerns for a lot of people with things being too screen-based. Some people like knobs that you can change without having to look away from the road. How many functions will be stuck behind a subscription? Will an update brick your car? Is it ok to tow normally, or will it sometimes require a special flatbed that most people can’t afford? Do we have the battery fire thing under full control yet?
If every single car eventually becomes too expensive, driving will either become a “caste” thing, or people will put things together at home that might be even worse for the environment. Shoddy DIY repairs can also count for this.
Reducing car use to a car driving caste is clearly an objective of the fuck cars movement. They want cars gone, if then public transit improves, that’s great but even if it doesn’t happen, at least the cars are gone.
I like to think of it as “better than”.
They’re not perfect, but they’re better than what people might do instead.
I could swap my older car for a second hand EV, which would be an environmental improvement.
The current car does 50-ish MPG, about 1.5 miles per KWH. An electric would do 4+miles per KWH, which going in reverse is 100+MPG.A bigger improvement might come from me getting the bus/train/bike everywhere, which is where the fuck cars argument comes from.
But I am disorganised, a bit lazy, and I don’t want to shepherd 4 people onto the train, paying £150 to go 100 miles.So for me, slightly better is better than no improvement at all.
The energy used can be green, depending on what the national grid is up to that day. But it’s always more green than burning dinosaurs.
And the reduction in brake dust is always a nice plus.How does one convert MPG to KWh? Electricity generation takes numerous forms with notably different efficiencies converting input to output…
Yeah, it should be miles-per-kilowatt-hour, or kilowatt-hours / litres per hundred kilometers, like most of the world uses it.
I kinda agree, lots of different formats in every direction, lots of dividing 1 by numbers to compare things.
One site lists Wh/mi, another Mi/KWh, manufacturer site only lists the range based on speed.
Then comparing it to figures for countries using metric distance, customary sized gallons for ICE, and L/100KM…It gets fiddly to make direct comparisons!On the efficiency of generation, I guess it’s open to the reader to apply their own modifier.
I’d be aiming to charge the car using private solar as much as possible which would drive it down.
National Grid emissions in the UK last year were about 217g/KWh on average. Even using grid the whole time, the emissions would be easily halved for me.Edit: There is a suitably lengthy wikipedia page on MPGe. Having skimmed it, MPGe doesn’t take into account upstream efficiency. While well-to-wheel gives a clearer picture, I can understand why for a simple metric MPGe does not. Especially since the primary function will be users gauging cost, and the electricity source should gradually improve over time.
which going in reverse is 100+MPG.
Holy cow, why don’t people drive in reverse all the time?
/s
I don’t drive much so my favourite EVs are trains, ebikes and electric buses.
Even looking only at the healthcare costs of the exhaust-induced unhealth, you see massive economic benefit.
It’s the old star-topology vs decentralized-mesh-topology question…
It is much more efficient to have 1 giant windmill, rather-than a zillion little ones.
It is much more efficient to have electric-trams than the number of cars required to move the same number of people.
As for electric-cars vs internal-combustion-engine-cars, the relocation-of-cost from always buying gasoline, to just plugging-in at night, is something that many people have openly adored.
The Engineering Explained yt channel bluntly stated that if you’re in the city, it’s a no-brainer.
Rurally, or in the arctic, you can be screwed, however.
I’ve no idea what the equation is for how much exhaust per mile-driven is produced, between
- star-topology fuel-burning electric-grid powered cars
- mesh/distributed-topology of the same number of I.C.E. cars
but it wouldn’t surprise me if it is significantly more efficient, just due to getting the maintenance up to industrial standards.
( sloppy maintenance costs, and some companies push sloppy maintenance, not changing oil frequently enough, e.g. in order to produce engine-wear, forcing required-replacement.
Some yt mechanics call-out this practice. )
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We rape Africa for those metals the in a similar way we’ve been raping the middle east for oil. I guarantee once the US starts mandating EVs and the majority start to transition over there will suddenly be some reason we need to have a vested military presence in Africa, with the possibility of wars centered around countries with these metals that we need.
It’s better for air quality and would do a shitload towards giving us some spare time to process climate change, but they come with their own baggage of bullshit in terms of environmental damage.
They are already shipping sodium batteries. By using lithium early and studying it they’re already finding cheaper and easier batteries to manufacture. Lithium is a stepping stone, that doesn’t mean it’s the final form.
It is the nuclear power vs fossil fuels vs renewables debate all over again. Nuclear is much greener than fossil fuels but comes with its own challenges regarding cost, safety and waste disposal. Renewable energy like solar, wind and hydro are better than nuclear but the point is that nuclear and renewables are not enemies rather they are allies who have to band together to beat fossil fuels.
Public transport is like renewables, the best solution but one which needs time because years of underdevelopment and under-funding means that they are not as developed as they should be.
EVs are like nuclear. Not the perfect solution but have the capability to serve areas and use cases that public transport (renewables) can’t. There are issues like them costing more than the alternatives and that the disposal of waste produced by both is a problem with an unsatisfactory solution.
ICE vehicles are like fossil fuel energy plants. The worst of the worst with regards to their effect on the planet. Their only advantage is that they offer convenience.
So I think we should stop the narrative that EVs(nuclear) are bad because the are not the best solution at hand but rather combine increasing adoption of both EV(nuclear) and public transport (renewables) to combat the true threat that is ICE(fossil fuel energy plants).
Nuclear power is alright if you disregard it turning two cities into wastelands for a century.
Here’s what the Union of Concerned Scientists has to say about electric vehicles. In short, they’re a win.
https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/electric-vehicles-are-cleaner
Doing “pretty much nothing for the climate” is hyperbole, I think. It’s hard to say what the net climate benefit EVs might have, because our system is so complex. The numbers I found show that electricity and heating accounted for the highest, single category of CO2 emissions, at around 15 billion tons annually in 2020. Transportation came in second at around 7 billion tons. If we could wave a magic wand, and instantly do a 1:1 replacement of ICE cars with EVs, it would put a big dent in that category’s emissions. It would also spike the electricity and heating category. Would the increase be less than the savings in the transportation category? LIkely, and the benefit would increase as more renewable electricity sources come online.
But even if we further used that magic wand to instantly get all of that new electricity for EVs from renewable sources, that still wouldn’t touch the vast majority of emissions, in which car-centric lifestyles play a large role, e.g. manufacturing, construction, land use, even electricity and heating. So saying that EVs will do pretty much nothing for the climate is inaccurate, but so is saying that they’re a big part of the solution. They’re just incrementally better, and the size of the increment is arguable.
I think the push-back is mainly directed at that line of magical thinking that says that all we need to do is switch to EVs to drive to the grocery store, bring re-usable bags, and get Starbucks coffee in compostable cups, and the environment will be saved.
#1 - Burning fossil fuels (automobiles, specifically) kills 250,000 Americans a year. It causes a TREMENDOUS amount of pollution that is hugely impactful to health and quality of life
#2 - The only way to make our energy usage sustainable is to centralize production - ie you have to make all automobiles electric to start before the transition of the grid to renewables has a more dramatic effect. BTW, 40% of energy production of the US in 2023 was renewable. So our grid is getting cleaner and cleaner by the day.
#3 - Climate change. It is the most existential threat to our survival in our lifetime, bar none. We should do everything we can to leave the planet better than when we came. And right now we are failing miserably.
FYI, for all the naysayers saying EVs are “as” or “more” polluting than their ICE counterparts, this has long been debunked. Please do not listen to the Russian/Chinese propaganda or the comments of idiots that have no ability to analyze data.
can you please provide sources for your claims?
- A study published in The BMJ states that air pollution from the use of fossil fuels in industry, power generation, and transportation accounts for 5.1 million avoidable deaths a year globally, with 61% of these deaths linked to fossil fuels. The study doesn’t provide a number for the US.
- According to the International Energy Agency, the transition to electric vehicles is an important step in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and combating climate change. In the United States, renewable energy sources accounted for 40% of electricity generation in 2023, up from 17% in 2000.
- The United Nations claim climate change is “the defining issue of our time” and “the greatest challenge to sustainable development”.
You just did. For #1, here is the relevant US data (https://news.mit.edu/2013/study-air-pollution-causes-200000-early-deaths-each-year-in-the-us-0829).
The increase of renewable energy sources from 17% to 40% from 2020-2023 is amazing and mostly due to policies enacted by the current administration. I don’t understand how that isn’t being celebrated and I can’t imagine how that progress will be damaged with the Republican nominee in power.
They’re marginally better but we don’t need marginally better, we need to get our shit together right now.
It’s the same thing with recycling, companies trying to sell the idea that climate change is a personal failing of every single person even though said companies are responsible for like 90% of carbon emissions.
The problem with EVs is that we already have a better fix for this: public transit. Like trams and trains are both electric and would solve the microplastics caused by tires. Car companies are just pushing EVs to make a profit as always, the percentage of adoption required to effect climate changes isn’t happening in the next several decades so just fix the issue centrally with proper public transit and actually effect climate change before we all die.
The often ignored part of this argument is that 50% of the US population at least lives in rural states. I grew up in a town with less than 10k people.
I’m 100% for more public transit, I live in a city and take the train to work. But for most Americans they do not and for the foreseeable future will not have public transit. I’m all for fighting for it, but it will be centuries before that happens.
EVs are NOT a perfect solution. They are a stopgap. But right now with where the planet is we need something now, we can’t wait for centuries.
As for the companies are worse? Yes, they are. That doesn’t mean we should just be complacent. It means we should be demanding they change AND lowering our own emissions. It’s going to take everybody changing their lifestyles. The rich are the worst because few of them cause a huge percentage, but that doesn’t mean the huge chunk of carbon we all put out together is excused either.
I grew up in a small town of less than 6000 people and we had bus lines connecting it to larger cities and a bus line that went around the town as well, I never had to take a car anywhere and you usually didn’t see more than 3 cars at once because everyone either walked or took the bus.
The problem with EVs is that won’t be adopted at a rate to make a difference while building public transit could happen faster so as a stopcap they do nothing currently and probably won’t until it’s too late either while only working as a distraction while public transit could be just be built with the same political will behind it as EVs have.
Getting everyone to switch to EVs is not happening in several decades, for example here in Estonia people mostly buy old used cars because new cars are ungodly expensive EVs even more so, I have seen one EV in 10 years.
You may not believe it but there in Estonia you are lucky for your transit. My town of 15k ripped up their railroad in favor of a 4 lane highway. Americans love their car so much that they’ll hurt themselves.
We also did not have a bus running through town, even the capital city of the state only had about 10 bus lines, all usually less than hourly, even during commutes.
So yes, I’m very pro transit, but people in America are literally centuries behind you folks in infrastructure
Yea, I have heard, that’s why I’m saying a better solution would be to build proper public transit. Like a political group I’m a part of are trying to get the city to expand the tram network to the surrounding areas in the county. We got them to expand it to the harbor recently and the construction finished like at the second half of last year.
That’s what I try to do here, I’m lucky that I’m in Seattle where we’re having the largest rail expansion in the country right now. But most of the country is not so lucky. I’ll always push for transit, that should be option 1. While waiting on transit, I say EVs are a better alternative than continuing to purchase ICE vehicles - which most of America is still doing. Push for transit, but individually use EVs if you still must drive.
