this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
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The Climate Crisis

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The impacts and solutions of the Climate Crisis

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 year ago (3 children)

This is great and all, but any EV with a decent charge is expensive as shit. I’d rather just have decent public transit.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

You can buy an older BMW i3 for $12-15k with a 70-100 mile range. No you're not driving cross country with it, but you can certainly putt around town with one.

Of course the i3 is ugly as sin and I would never own one. But I have friends that have two and love them. I'm keeping an eye on the used EV market and waiting until the right style/price point to get one that has a 100 mile range to get around town.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Look at the MG4, 200 mile range and very competitively priced.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Going on previous things I've seen, this must be from using public/fast chargers that have jacked up rates. Charging at home has always been vastly cheaper than gas.

[–] tangentzero 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But this is saying that, in Washington for example, you would save $80 charging an electric truck vs filling up a truck with gas

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Easily. I have a model 3 and save about $40/m over a Prius and $80/m over a similarly powerful car. I'd imagine a truck would be even more skewed towards the EV.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Wouldn't it be far better to compare fuel cost per mile ($/mile)? This graphic seems useless to me. Maybe I'm missing something.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

@Hopscotch @mmatessa I can only speak for my situation but we've crunched the numbers.

Per mile it is half the cost per mile than my wife's ICE car if I used only public chargers.

If I charge exclusively at home (which I do 99% of the time) it is a third of the cost per mile.

This is in Canada though, where gas prices are very high.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I did the numbers for Alberta a long time ago when electricity was really cheap and it came to 1/9 the price of gas. But that was cheap coal which we really shouldn't have.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

Of course it would trivally be. That on the other hand does not sell electric cars loaded with subscritptions nobody wants.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Wasn't it always?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Great, but when are we actually going to redesign our society so that we don't need cars? Electric Vehicles are not a path to lower emissions overall, and are also only "green" if you measure tail-pipe emissions and ignore all other aspects of vehicle ownership.

Not to mention the market costs of EVs.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

EVs are a path to lower emissions, yes measured all aspects from cradle to grave. I mean c'mon this has been so well established you're just lying. Yes we also need to get rid of car dependent cities.

EVs should also last a long time, far longer than an ICE vehicle. So overall costs are actually lower, though yes the initial price is higher.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You're misunderstanding his point. Yes, from cradle to grave EVs are better than ICEs. But they aren't better than other alternatives. The other costs the commenter is referring to is all the other costs of car ownership: building roads and parking lots, building sprawling car-dependant suburbs which destroy ecosystems and inflate infrastructure costs, the tens of thousands of annual car deaths and millions of car injuries, microplastics from tires, heavy metal dust from brakes, the induspitable contribution of car dependence to the obesity epidemic, the exacerbation of inequality, etc. etc.

EVs are better than ICEs but they're still cars, that's the main point. They're touted as a solution to environmental problems: which they are not, period. The solutions revolve around better land use (eliminating zoning laws which establish car dominance and sprawl), less subsidization of the auto industry (it's to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars a year in the USA), more subsidization of the public transit industry, and a commitment by people and politicians to build walkable places and enable car free living.

EVs are a small part of a complex and multifaceted issue. They are part of the solution, but only a small part compared to the commitments we silently ignore because of the plea that EVs will save us.

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

EVs do not last "far longer" then an ICE vehicle. The oldest EV is <15years old and Tesla doesn't even support the original roadster anymore. They are built to be disposable so that Tesla can keep selling cars. Plus EVs have a large ramping costs in terms of batteries that far exceed anything an ICE vehicle will ever have. Even with battery recycling, which doesn't actually exist yet at any significant scale, you still don't have a standard design that is expected to work on any other vehicle model then the one it came with. This means that eventually there will be as many battery "types" as there are models of EV, and that also means charging won't stay universal either. So eventually an old EV, say ~20 years, won't be able to use public charging infra, even if the battery problem was sorted out.

When I see people advocating for EV's I see people who don't care about the problems cars cause.

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

Lol electric motors are so simple they can last a million miles. Batteries are the hard part, but you can swap batteries and Tesla was even aiming for a million mile battery. But you want to wahhhhhhhhhh the literal first production vehicle had problems lol.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Way to not address literally any part of my post. I didn't even bring up the problems of the original roadster. I said that it IS NOT SUPPORTED anymore. Meaning that it's life was <15years, which is NOT "far longer" then any ICE vehicle.

Then you just gloss over the meat of the post which is that batteries are an incredibly expensive and wasteful part of the cost of EV ownership, and that problem still hasn't been addressed in >20 years of EV development. You think we can just "swap batteries" as if that isn't an absurdly expensive procedure that most car owners cannot do on their own.

[–] Kage520 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What does not supported anymore mean? It uses the same charge port I think. So no updates like a regular car? And I guess no brand battery swap if it dies? Has this happened a lot?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Current EVs are software driven and wirelessly connected. (It doesn't have to be that way, but all EVs that exist in the market today are.) This means that if the vendor stops supporting the car with updates that eventually things like Charging won't work anymore, and possibly other features. Not because their is any mechanical reason for them not to work, but because of the software reliance between charging stations and the car you are driving. It would be like trying to use Lemmy with Internet Explorer 5. It won't work. Again it doesn't HAVE to be that way, but Car Manufactures don't want to sell cars anymore they wants to sell cars as a service, and the software support sun setting is part of that strategy.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I didn't bring up [problem], I changed the wording to a [different problem] lol.

Batteries improve, you already have Tesla working on a million mile battery. Recycling will come, you're just wahhhhhhhh it's not here yet. It's all wahhhhhh it's not 100% right from the very start of the literal first production vehicle wahhhh!! You may continue your wahhhh rage, that's all it is. Peace.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Learn to argue, you sound like a child.

[–] ArmokGoB 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm curious what city planning without any cars would look like. I've been to parts of Europe, and the cities were very walkable. However, I didn't see any industry in the places where I was staying. How would goods be transported? How would people in loud/polluting industries get from where they live to where they work?

Anyone have the answers to these questions?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Absolutely, these are all totally valid questions to ask and answer as we build walkable places.

Goods do need to move: from hubs (ports, airports) to distribution centers (warehouses) to their "last mile" destinations (stores, restaurants etc). Cars and vans are great ways to move goods even to destinations: even pedestrian streets allow delivery trucks in at low speeds and/or off peak hours. It's just private cars not allowed in these people-centric places. Though bike delivery is increasingly popular in dense walkable places.

As for heavy industry, it's true that these places tend to be underserved by useful transit. In a lot of walkable places these kinds of places do have transit: especially industrial parks which can be pretty dense if designed properly. But if transit is truly infeasible, driving is totally acceptable to these places. The goal of a walkable community isn't to eliminate all car trips. They're absolutely a useful tool that will continue to play an important role in our cities and towns.

The goal of a walkable trip is to reduce the number of car trips and eliminate the low hanging fruit. Going to school, going to the shops or to get groceries, visiting your friends and family, going to the doctor: in a lot of places these trips can only be done by car because of how we build our cities and towns. There will always be trips for which cars are the best tool: we just need to make it a goal to reduce those trips through thoughtful land use and city building.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Most places you can't roll up and insert a card, yeah? I heard proprietary apps are required a lot of the time

[–] JackLSauce 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah but it's also nearly a duopoly between Tesla and Chargepoint, the latter of which I know to support NFC payments so it's similar to tapping your card

Obviously "it's OK there's a duopoly" isn't the most assuring argument, just saying after 3 years it's been low on my list of challenges when charging

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You should still be able to just walk up and tap your card. It should be no more difficult to use than a gas pump. It's bullshit that you have to use an app so that they can collect data on you to sell to third parties.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Here in the EU the law makers forced card payment. But you have to scan a QR code > put in your CC details in a form > confirm the request in your banking app obviously > wait for the charging point to confirm the payment and then you can go ahead. Also sometimes they charge you extra for those methods. Or anyone that Scans the QR code can cancel your charging. They argue “well you could have used our app or NFC card (which costs 20€ single payment but for each provider). I think it sucks. I did like the EV experiment and I love the driving of an EV but when it comes to long distance it’s just annoying as I’m constantly stressed looking at the ever changing “distance left” numbers. I feel like EVs still have a long way to go on each sides: the cars and the charging infrastructure.

[–] JackLSauce 1 points 1 year ago
[–] Coreidan 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Pretty irrelevant when the cost of EV cars is almost double. Stupid article.

Wake me up when EV cars are actually at a point of replacing combustion engines. Currently they are not ready.

[–] itadakimasu 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah I want an ev but can't buy one until the costs are the same or lower than gas cars. Can't afford anything more

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

My work does free electric car charging. I got an electric car in March and haven't spent a penny on charging it since.

Over the four years I plan to have it before I sell it on, the lack of fuel cost is going to more than make up the difference in cost.

[–] lemming741 2 points 1 year ago

That won't happen until people accept that 100 mile range is enough for 90% of commutes. Most of the battery capacity in current evs are wasted on marketing.

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

I see multiple people mentioning an article, but where is it? I want to post this on other places but they'll get mad if I don't have an article link :c