Always important to remember in this debate: electrification of transport is not just about carbon and climate. It’s about public health, not to mention public sanity.
The filthy noisy combustion engine was never compatible with dense cities, which is where most people live these days. Anyone who has been to one of the few places in the world where urban transport has been completely electrified will testify to the difference it makes to be free of the internal combustion engine. It’s night and day.
Let’s not lose sight of the wood for the trees.
The conservatives where I live shit blood absolutely any time any changes are made to roads to make them even slightly more pedestrian and bus/bike friendly. Preventing accidents/deaths and generally having a more usable, inviting environment for anyone that isn’t a car is unacceptable if it adds even a second to their commute. Go live on the fucking highway if you like it so much.
They have been brainwashed by car and oil companies.
That doesn’t excuse their ignorance, but it does highlight that the public information component will be very expensive to fix.
It’s funny because adding more non-car options tends to make using a car more pleasant. But conservatives aren’t known for being smart, correct, or good at long term thinking.
Not where these people live. Most conservatives don’t live in cities.
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80% of the population lives in urban areas, and about half the population is conservative. Even if we assumed that every rural person was conservative (which isn’t true), that still leaves more conservatives living urban than rural.
Cite your 80%.
Since we both know you won’t be able to so
That is only in the US. Not “the population”
Every car commerical shows the fantasy of being the only car on the road.
It’s so ludicrous. and consistent that when you know to look for it, it’s actually hilarious.
People do not like traffic. They already hate most cars, cause they’re only driving one.
Perfect! 👌
A two hour commute in an electric car is still two hours in crushing, soul destroying traffic. People ask me why I take a train and a freeway bus for my two days on campus, and I ask them why not? My drive is three minutes from my house to the train.
But in suburban Southern California, public transit is “for freaks and losers.” That was deliberate marketing.
I’m not disagreeing with the post, but mass transit is completely non-existent where I live. We have so far to go.
Don’t know where you live, but to put this into perspective: it’s the same situation here and I live in The Netherlands (outside of the major cities). Even in a rich, flat country, the size of a post stamp, we cannot make mass transit work outside of larger cities. I agree that we need mass transit, but it’s only one solution for the mobility puzzle. Cars also fit in there as a puzzle piece, especially in areas where the population density is lower.
So from my perspective, no, cars aren’t just for the rich.
Cars also fit in there as a puzzle piece, especially in areas where the population density is lower.
When there’s 1 farm per 5 km maybe. In 1920, you could get from Savanah to Boston just by taking trains and streetcars; every neighborhood was served by atleast a tram.
The USSR found it worthwhile to build rail lines to remote settlements, without stops, a few times a day a guy would just drive a 2 train locomotive and stop if he saw anybody.
In some rural parts of Japan, you have lines it’s just 1 railroad, and every 20 miles is an unmanned station where it splits into 2 for the trains to pass, for like 10 stations. So you have 200 miles worth of suburbs being served by 40-50 workers running 20 3 car trains, that arrive every 30 minutes or so. The unmanned stations tend to have tons of bikes, they probably have buses too.
Average cost of owning a car per day is 20USD or so. A single railroad line that allows just 1000 people to not pay for a car does not cost 20,000 USD a day to operate. This is not including the cost of road building and maintenance. But even if it did, cheap transit is a public good; transit isn’t supposed to be revenue neutral. Roads aren’t revenue neutral.
Sure, you can get from Savannah–a major city–to Boston–also a major city just by taking trains. That’s a great case for public transport.
But as someone else pointed out, can you get from one side of Savannah to the other efficiently, at off-peak times? I lived in Chicago for over a decade, and while the transit system isn’t great, it’s not bad. I lived in the Austin neighborhood (if you know Chicago, you know that’s not a great area); if I went to see a concert at downtown without driving, I had to walk about a mile and a half to get home, because that was the closest train stop to my home, and busses in my area stopped running at 11p.
Where I live now, even if trains ran to my town (and they technically do, but it’s only freight), I would have to travel 15 miles to get to the train. And that 15 miles from where I live to the train is also about 1500’ of elevation loss. That’s pretty great for riding a bike there, and really, really sucks for getting home. Especially if I have groceries of any kind.
I agree that we should have better public transit, and I agree that the cost is a net public good. But that doesn’t solve all transportation needs. It may take a large bite out of them, but it doesn’t fix all of them.
busses in my area stopped running at 11p.
Continuing to run some transit late at night is one of the few things NYC and Chicago actually do better than most cities.
Even Tokyo runs some of its last trains before midnight. Some stations don’t get their first trains until 6 am. Missing the last train because of an event that let out at 2AM or 11 and it took awhile to get to the station isn’t that uncommon. It’s not terrible to walk 5km in a more walkable city. But also that’s where ebike and scooter shares, and even taxis fill the gap. You don’t need to destroy the city with parking lots and wide roads to support that.
I think that most of the trains in Chicago run late at night, although far, far less frequently. I remember taking the green line with my bike late at night, drunk, and riding the mile or so north to my home through some moderately shitty neighborhoods (a bit west of Garfield Park, if that means anything to you). I lived in in a pretty rough area; there were definitely no taxis waiting for fares near the train stations (or anywhere!), and there weren’t any e-bike or scooters in that area either. It was just rough getting around the Austin neighborhood in Chicago late at night without a car.
Yeah no I’m not saying Chicago is ideal, only that does 1 better than most cities in that it runs trains late at night. Most cities have ebikes/scooters, and an app that you can use to schedule an uber or taxi.
Being able to take your bike on the subway during non-peak hours is also nice; a lot of the world they don’t let you do that, except on a few special trains.
I agree on mass transit. Highly recommend Adam Something’s youtube video on why self driving cars will increase traffic and waste. Its not a solution for cities large or small. Rural communities may see benefits but they pose weirder problems.
Because at least in the US the airline and car industries hand shake to stop commuter trains.
The west coast regions also have an additional problem where the slopes will need massive amounts of tunnels for high speed rail and are complicated by a lot active geologic zones. So while its the best solution (trains) its expensive but Japan managed to do it. Its not going to be cheap or quick to build the needed infrastructure. Add in most people are heavily invested in car infrastructure when they buy a car. So there’s a public will barrier here built out of billions of garages, cars, and driveways sold.
People also pose “flying cars” etc as a solution. Piloting air vehicles requires air traffic controllers and communicating on an extreme level in addition to pilot licenses and security problems. Its not also not a serious answer to transportation.
Also for flying cars, when a non-flying car breaks down suddenly, it can be a dangerous situation but you just need to avoid hitting anything until your momentum is lost and generally have options (brakes might lose power assist but could work, if they don’t there’s still emergency brakes, and if those also fail, there’s engine braking if you have transmission control, or steering back and fourth to lose momentum via turning friction, and once you’re going slow enough, even colliding with something stationary can help).
With flying cars, maybe it can glide, assuming it even works like that and isn’t more of a helicopter or just using some kind of thrusters. Plus, if you’re falling to your death anyways, you might not have the presence of mind to try to optimize what you do hit with what control you do have to minimize damage to others. Hell, the safety feature might even be ejecting and leaving it to fall wherever, while hoping none of the other flying cars hit you or your parachute, or fly close enough to mess with the airflow in a way where the parachute might fail.
And that’s not even going into how much more energy it takes to fly vs roll.
Flying cars don’t make practical sense. And where they do, we already have helicopters.
Need to pick your battles tbh.
If you tell every driver to give up driving, the planet ain’t getting saved.
Need to pick your battles tbh.
Trump admin cuts $60M for bullet train. Can railway from Dallas to Houston still happen?
The high-speed rail project intended to connect Houston and Dallas in just 90 minutes.
We literally cannot build trains in this country because we self-sabotage every opportunity.
Houston is getting $4B to redo I-45 but can’t be spared $60M on state mandated planning for an already established rail route.
This isn’t a question of abolishing cars. It’s a question of abolishing trains which we appear dead set on doing.
I often wonder how the emissions generated by producing and shipping a new electric vehicle compare to just keeping your old ICE vehicle until it rusts to pieces. Like how long does it take to break even from that?
A very long time. On the order of multiple decades, IIRC. Realistically, keeping an old ICE vehicle in proper running order beats the carbon footprint of purchasing a new EV.
My daily driver is a '98, I keep it running without codes in efficient closed loop and keep up on all the maintenance.
Now, the classic Ranger to electric conversion I want to do, not sure what the footprint is.
A very long time. On the order of multiple decades, IIRC
Not true. It also very much depends on where your power comes from (coal/sun).
Skimmed that article. If I’m reading it right, it’s 100k miles for a NEW EV to match the carbon footprint of a NEW ICE. That larger footprint is due to the batteries and rare earth/copper.
I.E. this doesn’t account for the carbon footprint of making a entirely new car vs keeping an old one running well.
I.E. this doesn’t account for the carbon footprint of making a entirely new car vs keeping an old one running well.
Any car’s carbon footprint is very much about the fuel, that will be much greater impact than the production of the vehicle itself. That’s why coal powered electricity is around the same as fossil fuels. Look at the graphs in the article.
I don’t think you understand the scale of the carbon footprint of manufacturing a new car. The footprint of all those raw materials. The majority of the materials are virgin and not recycled for new cars.
I’ll look again if you say it’s there, but that article is comparing the costs of new EV to new ICE. It does not show new EV to used ICE.
When talking about individual carbon footprints vs industrial footprints you get some counterintuitive effects. Recylcing often has a larger footprint than virgin and costs more, most corporations only pay lip service to recycling as it is more expensive. That being said, even with virgin materials, the footprint of manufacturing dwarfs the fuel usage footprint for decades when talking about vehicles. Especially if the vehicle is relatively efficient and the annual mileage is low.
Think about it this way, with a large margin of error, you can directly covert the cost of a new vehicle into carbon. Say $30k of carbon. Every step of the process from mining the ore to make the alloy to the carbon produced by workers driving to work. How many years does it take to burn $30k of carbon in fuel?
The person that purchases a new EV every few years has a larger footprint than the person that drives the same old ICE the entire time. The footprint disparity is also increased the lower the ICE driver’s milage.
The article does compare two new cars, but it’s not hard to see that if your ICE don’t have a start “price” (your well maintained ICE), then the EV will have to drive two years on hydro based power, about three years if it’s mixed power (green + fossil), and 13-15 years if pure coal power.
The success of EV (lower carbon emissions) highly spends on green power.
Not practical to have zero cars. Residential areas aren’t set up for it. How you going to get your shopping in with 2 kids when it’s pissing of rain like it is 70% of the time here in Scotland.
Priority should be public transport with cheap public autonomous taxis that can drive 24/7 and unclutter the streets.
I don’t think you’ll find anyone with a lick of sense in here that’s advocating for zero cars – just that the way the system is currently set up prioritizes cars above everything else when it ought to be the other way around – cars ought to be the very last resort instead of the first option most people go for. Taxis absolutely have their uses, and yes they should be cheap, but not so abundant as to divert people from using mass transit like buses or trams
You have a very city centric view. And yes this meme does hint at advocating for 0 cars. This is not the only reply you’ve gotten about this. And I know you guys love to tout the whole “most people live in cities now” while also ignoring the fact that it’s just barely half and half of humans in general don’t even live in the west. Those in Asian countries have completely different lives and routines to what you would all expect. Most of which do have access to public transit and they still have need of individual transport.
Funny you should mention Asian countries, considering both I and the author of the tweet in the screenshot live in an Asian country. We do use individual transport – but it’s not cars, it’s usually motorbikes or scooters. The “meme” (actually a serious opinion from someone who studies urbanism and transport for a living) is aimed at manufacturers and governments (like mine) who are pushing electric cars that most people can’t afford (and that people in rural areas definitely can’t afford) to the exclusion of public transit, which practically everyone can afford.
And you should know those motorbikes and scooters are FAR AND AWAY WORSE than cars. Can everyone afford public transit:
https://www.self.inc/info/cost-per-mile-in-america/
Depends on who’s setting the price.
I’ve just told you I live in Asia and you’ve sent a link about public transport in America.
Very good USdefaultism, sir.
And the topic is electric automakers. You gonna move those goal posts anymore. Would you like a lorry to help with that.
Now that people think Musk is a Nazi because of a gesture, electric cars aren’t the solution anymore.
