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this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023
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Fuck Cars
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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.
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
Yeah ok that’s fair, even in a transformed world there is still a need for some cars you’re right.
My point was more that a world in which we simply exchange fords for Tesla’s is still a fucked world but you make a fair counter point.
I find it helpful to remember "Perfection is the enemy of Progress."
Investing trillions of dollars into dead ends is, however, the enemy of progress. The ressources we're throwing at replacing existing cars with EV cars would be enough to implement better solutions.
No technology is a dead end, you can't run trains 30 miles out of town for 6 families already over 500 acres. Just because a technology doesn't benefit urbanization doesn't make it worthless.
I'm not opposing the research, I'm opposing the implementation. Spending trillions of dollars because >1% of the population would be inconvenienced as you showed by having to use less developed or more expensive alternative is stupid.
And trains don't even need batteries, the biggest issue with EV cars
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.
Boy I wonder where we might be able to find lots and lots of space within a city for new construction to densify it.
The fun part is that many societies have had and currently have dirt cheap urban rents, accurately reflecting the efficiency and lower cost of supplying services to people in urban areas. This isn't even a capitalism/socialism thing, since plenty of capitalist societies have figured out how to make it work via subsidies, public housing, price controls, etc.
The plan to address that is via crapping on EVs?
OK. Go for yourself.
I was just talking about urban rents. The fact of the matter is that climate change will not be addressed without significantly reducing the number of cars on the road, EVs or no, and you can't do that without overhauling urban sprawl.