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Bwaz ,

If they’re made instead of making fossil fuel vehicles, they do (addressing the cartoon, not the barely related added title) . Cars will still be made as many become no longer repairable. Which kind to build? Yes, better to make more electric buses and trains, but cars wont simply vanish in any scenario.

thepiguy ,

Recently my parents got a car for emergency situations (like dropping my sister to school when busses are cancelled and she can’t bike because of rain). And when I did the research for a car with them, I realised just how good cars with sub 1L engines are (3-4l per 100km in the city). Sure, they are not gonna be fast, but they are still faster than the speed limit of 120km/h on our highways here. I am personally hoping to buy a rx8 or a na miata soon for enthusiast reasons. Modern transport should be 100% public.

Edit: grammar and spelling

KpntAutismus ,

if public transport is a valid alternative (cheaper, less crowded, more comfortable) i will use it. but currenly it is not. so i will drive my 1st gen yaris 1.0. besides 70€ of gas a month, there ate no other operation costs.

Discombobulated_Back ,

You fotgot taxes, repair and insurance costs…

yetAnotherUser ,

You don’t factor in:

  • tires
  • oil changes
  • repairing broken parts
  • insurance
  • the loss of value over time
KpntAutismus ,

fair points, a 1 litre car like this which is considered very safe basically costs nothing to ensure. i mainly forgot because it’s technically part of a company fleet of a family member, and they just pay the minescule bill.

it is a toyota. there are no broken parts.

i am not planning to sell it, it was already worth less than 1500€

oil doesn’t really cost much either, especially because i change it myself.

tires last really long and if you buy slightly used ones from someone who sold their car you can save a lot of money.

yetAnotherUser ,

Well, then there’s also a bunch of other stuff I didn’t mention:

  • cleaning the car costs a little every now and thrn because you mustn’t do it in your driveway
  • speeding tickets and other violations occur depending on how well you abide by the rules
  • TÜV et al. cost a little every few years
  • some parts may break due to bad luck - even Toyota cannot prevent stone chips on your windshield

There are a lot of small hidden costs which all add up, even on cheap cars.

KpntAutismus ,

which is all true. and that is the cost i’m willing to pay to drive my car. if you think you can not afford to drive a car, don’t.

eltimablo ,

Oh look, another anti-car meme from someone who clearly doesn't understand cars. Keep it up, Lemmy. One day your relentless negativity will achieve something, and I'll laugh all the way to my grave because it'll be the exact opposite of what y'all wanted.

Custoslibera OP ,

Hmmm what future do I want?

eltimablo ,

Whatever it is, being smug, sour, and ignorant about it is going to get people to oppose you on principle alone.

Custoslibera OP ,

Sounds like a lot of assumptions on your part about what I think.

eltimablo ,

I'm referring to the meme you posted, but ok. My statement also applies regardless of topic, so I don't know what to tell you.

Meowoem ,

I’m guessing a weird and impossible one if you don’t accept the obvious benefits of electric cars

thepiguy ,

But you understand cars right? Pray tell, what is wrong about this post. We all obviously need your divine knowledge, ofc which I presume will also have cited sources right.

eltimablo ,

Bike 45 miles each way to work and tell me it's still a viable solution for everyone, everywhere.

Try to build a rail network that adequately covers 3.8 million square miles without driving your country into blinding debt.

Tell me that I need to haul a cello that I value more than my own life in the rain.

Squeeze enough groceries for a family of four to eat for a week into bicycle saddlebags.

But as I mentioned elsewhere, the more smug and sour you act, the more the average person is going to oppose you simply because you're an absolutely insufferable asshole. Then again, if you had social skills, you probably wouldn't be here in the first place because you'd have friends (and maybe a fucking clue).

Go eat uranium, you smug piece of shit.

Ranger ,

Economical retrofit kits for legacy vehicles would help reduce manufacturing pollution & reduce vehicle emissions, if carbine free electricity production is increased.

jelloeater85 ,
@jelloeater85@lemmy.world avatar

The problem is it’s fundamentally changing the source of energy in a car. Even if you ripped out the motor and replaced it with an electric motor and battery Bank there would still be a whole fundamental sleuth of systems that would be missing inside the car. I think I better solution might be to look into converting cars to hydrogen instead.

Also feel free to ignore anything I just said I’m not no automotive engineer, just a nerd who used to tinker with cars when he was younger 😅

Malfeasant ,

Hydrogen is not an energy source, it is a means of energy storage, and a pretty bad one at that.

Cort ,

Also, it’s primarily made using methane steam reformation, which releases co2.

bufalo1973 ,
@bufalo1973@lemmy.ml avatar

If you want to go that route I think you should look more towards bikes and less towards cars.

MrSqueezles ,

Yeah, that’s the real problem. I wish hydrogen helped. Fuel cells and hydrogen are another way to store and release electricity, like batteries. Switching a car from gas to battery is a tricky proposition. Since they require more components to achieve the same result, delivering electricity to an electric motor, fuel cells would compound that problem.

CADmonkey ,

Ford and GM both sell electric “crate motors” for classic cars to switch them over to electric.

Cort ,

Not direct to consumer though. You’d have to go to a specialty shop and pay them for labor and whatever markup they think the market can bear. Point being, it’s not really economical to do on a large scale.

CADmonkey ,

Yes, direct to consumer.

mvirts ,

Yeah but they’re way more fun to drive

ekky43 ,

Electric cars are indeed much worse for the climate at production time than combustion cars likely will be throughout their entire lifetime.

But this matters little, as the electric car is not made to be the perfect alternative, it is instead made to be the “weird in between solution” that we need to bring as many devices as possible to use a common power source and get people acquainted with the concept, before moving to the actual solution.

The next steps will be better battery technology because, let’s face it, lithium gel batteries suck, and proper power sources.

In the end, I guess it’s kind of a “chicken and egg” situation.

Custoslibera OP ,

I’d argue trains are the solution for most city applications.

Rural areas can keep ICE’s if cities of tens of millions dispense themselves of cars.

scrubbles ,
@scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech avatar

Great, I agree too, but go ahead and start lobbying the US government to build more.

I’m all for your suggestions, but the fact of the matter is we need solutions yesterday and to build what you’re talking about will take 10 years of lobbying alone. California HSR is going to be another 10 years and they’re already building it.

EVs are a stopgap measure, we all know it.

Custoslibera OP ,

I have no interest in lobbying the US government on this.

scrubbles ,
@scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech avatar

well then please don’t shoot down the next best alternative. We would love HSR, hell even faster trains through areas like the Midwest, but no one is building them and no one wants to lobby for them. Until then we’re stuck in this car-centric hell, and EVs are the best alternative. (Again, we all know they’re not the best, they’re the best alternative)

Custoslibera OP ,

I have no interest in lobbying the US government because I’m not American.

TigrisMorte ,

It shows in how clueless you are about the US. Very little mass transit is actually viable. People can't afford to spend 4 hours getting to and four hours getting back from their 10 dollar an hour job. Worry about what is going on where you actually know something about.

mondoman712 ,

The US was built on mass transit. Pre WWII the US was covered in electrified interurban lines, it wasn’t until the 50s when the car started to become really popular that these were dismantled and your cities demolished to make way for more highways. Many people could easily benefit from new transit options if they were installed, while for others changes to land use (such as ending single family zoning) would also be need to be made.

mike ,
@mike@social.raytec.co avatar

@mondoman712
You are partially correct.

The dismantling of public transit in the US started in the 20’s, not the 50’s. GM, other auto and truck manufacturers, and the oil industry began buying up street car and train companies through proxies and then shutting them down. They also used government influence to make them unprofitable.

A former head of GM was made transportation secretary in 1948 and used the department of defense budget to build the highway system, further damaging any chance public transit had of taking hold here.

By the late 50’s we had all but destroyed any hope of having a mixed transit system.

The US wasn’t built by public transit though, it was built by car and truck. Public transit in the post industrial era has always been a pipe dream on the periphery for Americans.

Manifest destiny’s “go west, young man” has morphed into “go into debt, purchase cars and houses, young man.” And like “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” it has always been a lie.

With the legalized bribery system known as lobbying in this country we never had a chance at being anything but a facade of democracy propped up by corporate avarice.

mondoman712 ,

We’ll put, but I disagree with you on this point

The US wasn’t built by public transit though, it was built by car and truck.

Many US towns and cities started as railroad towns, and they grew due to rail connections. They had local streetcars around which new suburbs were built. Downtowns were originally walkable and mixed use. Only later were they destroyed to make way for urban freeways and parking, and the post war housing boom’s racist policies brought about single family zoning and car dependant suburbs.

TigrisMorte ,

When such actually exist, do get back to us.

Meowoem ,

So you want to keep drilling for oil forever? Oil wells, pipe lines, refineries, more pipes, trucks carrying liquid fuel… when you could just get rid of all that and have renewable powered cars?

There’s a brief window where if you look at it from a very careful angle ICE is briefly better in some ways than electric, long term electric is the only option.

ch00f ,

Electric cars are indeed much worse for the climate at production time than combustion cars likely will be throughout their entire lifetime.

Break even point is currently around 13k miles though it depends on where you live.

reuters.com/…/when-do-electric-vehicles-become-cl…

And that’s not even counting the growing market of battery recyclers.

scrubbles ,
@scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech avatar

and what kind of vehicle you’re replacing. Replacing a small compact ICE with an EV? Probably a longer amount of miles.

Replacing a Ford/GM Mega superduty emotional support truck with an EV? probably much lower.

TigrisMorte ,

In much of Southern US, they've got three kinds of vehicles. Massive new shiny trucks, really old gas guzzling reality size trucks, and speed bumps for the first. You can't see out of a compact car as you are always in a valley of truck.

scrubbles ,
@scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech avatar

What are they supposed to do? Not drive a truck? They have an office they have to commute to! Think of all the people who would totally make fun of them (read: not care at all).

TigrisMorte ,

accurate representation of Southern mentality. The Women want a Truck because they feel unsafe in a little car with massive monsters blasting past at 80MPH and Men want them because they've got very small peepee.

Custoslibera OP ,

I found this analysis quite interesting:

www.carboncounter.com/#!/explore

magnetosphere , (edited )
@magnetosphere@kbin.social avatar

I often wonder how much better battery technology would be today if batteries had become a more popular solution than gasoline back in the day.

It’s weird to think that electric vehicles (albeit primitive ones) existed over a hundred years ago.

TigrisMorte ,

Imagine if instead of rewarding Reagan for having the Iranians keep the hostages so he could rip the solar cells off the White House, we;d rewarded Carter for recognizing the trap oil was.

MxM111 , (edited )

I listened podcast/interview (one of the latest Making Sense podcasts by Sam Harris) with a person who studies climate change and the ways to address it. And she disagrees with your statement. She said that just couple of years of typical electric car use is required to offset the production, and the rest is all green.

Pixelle3D ,

What about just not using cars?

tdawg ,

God damn these comments

Custoslibera OP ,

Which ones?

Gormadt ,
@Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Honestly didn’t take too long to find a lot of people taking this take in the least generous way possible.

And who can forget the “I commute 50 miles each way I can’t use any alternatives” folks as well who seem to think that the better future means absolutely no cars.

It means better alternatives to everyone having to own a car and take a car everywhere.

ArcaneSlime ,

Tbh that should be expected. It’s always easier to convince someone to use an option that already exists and is observably better than their current situation than it is to convince them to support a theoretical change that will take place in the future if we inconvenience them now. That’s just how “humans” work.

Custoslibera OP ,

It’s to be expected I suppose.

Too many people think upgrading their car to electric is ‘doing their part’ but when they are replacing a vehicle less than 5 years old with an electric car they also intend to replace within 5 years, they haven’t helped anything.

Also people don’t want to feel like the action they took is actually unhelpful.

They like greenwashing and want to feel good about their choices. Applying critical analysis to a complex problem like climate change is hard compared to buying a Tesla.

Gormadt ,
@Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Straight up my car is 16 years old at this point and I plan to drive it until the wheels fall off

Do I want a different car with different features? Yup.

Will I buy a new car? Fuck no, I’ll buy a used car and do the same: drive it until the wheels falls off.

Saganastic ,

I sort of agree with you, but at the same time the wealthy are always the earliest adopters for expensive new technology. Them buying overpriced luxury cars helps subsidize the development of the tech for the rest of us. And when they switch to a new car in 5 years it adds more stock to the used car market for people that can't afford the cutting edge but still want to own an EV.

Meowoem ,

It’s an interesting one, a lot of people really do seem to be arguing cars shouldn’t exist which is absolutely insane, likewise there are people who have the equally hairbrained idea that cars are the only option for any journey.

There is no doubt at all that fleet managed self-driving electric cars are at some point going to be a vital part of all transport networks, the efficiency and utility is far higher than any other potential option. Lithium batteries can be recycled endlessly and the construction process can be powered from renewables so long term we’re going to get to a point where the ecological impact is negligible.

Of course we should be using other options where appropriate but we don’t have a magic wand so we need the utility of small personal transport, if we’re going to start switching off oil production systems then we’re going to need those vehicles to run on electric - the more we shift to electric the better the support and industrial infrastructure gets and the more refined the technology becomes.

saigot ,

If the better future has cars then those cars should be electric (or hydrogen ig)

EvolvedTurtle ,

I think electric cars address climate change Once we stop using coal and gas powerplants

Cause then all we are doing is shifting it

AngryMulbear ,

Only if we go balls deep on Nuclear

southsamurai ,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Mmmm, spicy sexy times indeed.

Crashumbc ,

Looks at state of world…

Oh we’re going balls deep in Nuclear my friend. Just not the kind you’re talking about.

ChaoticNeutralCzech ,

That’s not a huge problem. Chernobyl and Five Kilometer Island were old reactor designs, and Fukushima mostly sustained an earthquake+tsunami (it would fully succeed under better corporation oversight)

baggachipz ,

Not true. Large-scale power plants are WAY more efficient at turning fossil fuels into work than internal combustion engines. Even if all electric car power was generated by coal (it’s not, almost half of electricity generation now is nuclear + renewables), electric cars would still have net emissions that are half of gas cars.

Meowoem ,

It’s a process that is absolutely underway and making great progress, even the USA now generatea more from solar than from coal, many countries like Scotland are already producing over 90% of their electrical use from renewables with only 2% from fossil fuels.

It’s worth noting too that these numbers are only grid based usage and a lot of solar is direct use, often being stored in an electric car rather than sold to the grid - with rooftop solar at home and at work it would be possible to use a car without requiring any of the oil extraction, transport and refining faculties. I don’t know how many people it would take using solar cars before a single oil well goes untapped but I do know if we get to a point where no one is using gas stations then that’ll be an awfull lot of horrible polluting infrastructure we don’t need, just carrying the fuel through wires instead of in tanker lorries is a huge saving alone.

Dass93 ,

What about convert the old cars to electric?

Comment105 ,

No, buy new fossil fuel cars.

Oderus ,

There’s a heavy CO2 cost to making batteries so even if you convert an ICE vehicle to electric, you’ll have to drive it quite far to break even on the CO2 emissions from the factory.

Omega_Haxors , (edited )

Ah yes, that “lets do nothing and say we’re saving the climate” take straight out of bill gates’ think tank. Stop watching kurzgesagt.

andy_wijaya_med ,
@andy_wijaya_med@lemmy.world avatar

What’s wrong with kurz gesagt?

Omega_Haxors , (edited )

Gates-funded eco porky. People watch them for their science videos then get sucked into neoliberal propaganda. Like it’s one thing to be biased (everyone is) but it’s a complete other to be parroting think tank talking points verbatim.

Demuniac ,

Maybe you should start. They highly likely do more for climate change than you do.

Blackmist ,

The main issue in the push for electric cars, is that we’re pretending that we can fix things with no lifestyle changes.

And for the richer people, that’s probably true. But there’s a big chunk of people for whom the electric car revolution means no more personal transport.

I accept that, but we need to invest in public transport exponentially more than we are doing. It needs subsidising up the wazoo so people outside the inner-city bubble can still get around. By just pretending that electric cars will reach affordable levels for the poorest, we’re inviting trouble further down the line when they can’t use their petrol cars any more.

Haui ,
@Haui@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Well, transportation is the biggest emitter. [www.epa.gov/…/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions#:~…](https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions#:~:text=Transportation%20(28%25%20of%202021%20greenhouse,ships%2C%20trains%2C%20and%20planes).

And personal cars as well as trucks are the largest emitters among those. www.cbo.gov/publication/58861

I do agree that there should be done a lot more to make this go faster. One of the most obvious things is immediately outlaw the production of gasoline suvs. They‘re inefficient and rather pricey so you wont hit anyone who‘s life depends on it. Then outlaw the production of any gasoline sportscars.

Obviously the expansion of public transport is still important but selling new v8 suvs demoralizes anyone trying to do the right thing.

CCatMan ,

The used market is going to be full of gas cars for a longtime. Look there of you need gas otherwise go electric if you can.

rug_burn ,

Just some points that I have not seen discussed-

  1. Time to refuel / practical vehicle range 1a. The cost involved in having charging installed on your property
  2. Weather. Snow. Effect of cold on batteries. I know everyone hates those evil SUV’s, bit when there’s 14" of snow on the ground your tesla/volt/insert your favorite EV ain’t gonna cut it
  3. To the “just put in mass transit” crowd, do you feel that eminent domain is justified to take property from someone to fulfill this need?

Honestly not trying to troll, these are real questions that should be answered

And for the record, my vehicle is a compact sedan, getting on average 34-37mpg, so I’m not in that dick-size contest over who’s truck has the bigger lift kit

SasquatchBanana ,

1/1a. Yep. Public transit.

  1. Oh no. How did people do it before in the past before SUVs?! Also, public transit.
  2. Yes. A steong public transportation infrastructure. As we are going to experience worst and worst weather that challenges the survival of the human race, we will need to make sacrifices.
rug_burn ,

The discussion was about EV’s, you missed the point. But ill bite.

1/1a. My relatively short daily commute of 20 minutes turns into 1:10. My time is more valuable than money, so no. 2. “Before the SUV” people didn’t have to commute much further than down the street for work, so no. 3. Cool. You first.

SasquatchBanana ,

You had answers to your questions? I knew your comment was bait.

Yes, I am first. I am more than happy to have new affordable housing built near me and public transportation expanded! If done well it will always be a benefit. Imagine walkable neighborhoods with buses on time?? Yes please!

If we have an expanded public trans option, there will be less people on the road which means your commute will be shorter. Not longer. People in like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and other congested places would feel it!

So please, less individual vehicles and more public transportation

rug_burn ,

Not to argue semantics, but moving people from cars to public transit keeps the same people on the roads, but fewer vehicles. While i get your line of reasoning, accuracy counts.

If you’re willing to give up what you own to move to denser populated areas that meet your needs, great! I’m all for it. That’s YOUR choice.

On the flip side, who decides who is allowed to operate a personal vehicle? To me, that seems like the opposite of a choice.

But once again, the conversation was about EVs. You want dense vertical growth urbanism, be my guest, but I’m really not interested.

Bytemeister ,

Gonna further add, if there is 14" of snow on the ground and the roads aren’t clear, then with 99% of the SUVs, Trucks, and cars sold today, you aren’t, and you shouldn’t, be going anywhere.

That’s a design issue of the vehicle anyway, and not inherently related to the ICE vs EV drivetrain.

mriguy ,

Weather. Snow. Effect of cold on batteries. I know everyone hates those evil SUV’s, bit when there’s 14" of snow on the ground your tesla/volt/insert your favorite EV ain’t gonna cut it

How so? I live in Boston, where it gets cold and snowy. During the winter, the efficiency on my Bolt goes from 4.0mi/kWh (134.8 mpg equivalent) to 2.7mi/kWh to (90.99 mpg equivalent), and I park outside in the cold. Otherwise, it works just like any car I’ve had. Why exactly do I need an SUV?

rug_burn ,

I never said you need one. I make do without one, however there are plenty of times during our winters here the larger wheels/greater ground clearance would be extremely useful. Just because it doesn’t work for you or me doesn’t mean there are people it does work for.

Mammothmothman ,

What if I told you buying an EV is more about not paying for gas than it is about fighting climate change.

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