They have their part in the solution, but the more we rely on ev the less we do more important stuff like public transportation, walkable cities, proper zoning, less unnecessary office time, etc. If we remove every petrol car ever and just make them all ev we will still have an enormous problem, but while we doing that we necessarily neglect everything else. Making the society not car-centric is more important, that’s where all the focus should be. Remaining cars should obviously be electric.
This isn’t about more windmills though, this is about EVs perpetuating the atomization and car dependency that got us into this mess, and thus being at best a band-aid fix and at worst preventing better solutions from taking form.
EVs are a distraction and driver funding from public transport options to spaces for cars. Cars need infrastructure such as traffic stops, crossings, parking, etc. And with metropolitan areas becoming increasingly crowded, all of this infrastructure takes up space and costs the city a lot of money as the land value rises.
For example, a car parking space where I’m from will cost something like $70/day. A shop double the size would be leased at $30k/month. Our rate money goes into subsidising the car parking spots because they need to sit somewhere where they’re not being used.
EVs (in car form) still use the same spaces as cars and use up money that could be better spent on other things to improve city accessibility. That’s a bit of the money part.
From an efficiency perspective, any kind of car (EV or otherwise), is extremely inefficient in Metropolitan areas because a large portion of the time is spent waiting in traffic. Any other type of transport moves more people per second than cars such as motorbikes, scooters, bicycles, trains, trams, buses etc. So, you’re allowing a significant chunk of infrastructure to be occupied by an extremely ineffective mode of transport in a city of millions. If you remove the entire aspect of private vehicles in Metro areas, you free l suddenly free up a lot of space and increase efficiency for the other modes of transport.
EVs or cars would be useful in low density areas where the efficiency would be higher than using any other type of transport and would have a much more minimal impact on the climate than if large cities all used EVs.
We have the technology and the smarts to build a better world but we need to rip the band-aid off and understand that the problems that arise in our day to day is of our own making and that we can absolutely rebuild it from the ground up so that it is more sustainable.
If you remove the entire aspect of private vehicles in Metro areas, you free l suddenly free up a lot of space and increase efficiency for the other modes of transport.
But we don’t HAVE those other means of transport, not nearly at the level to replace cars and not even at all in some places.
Your equation is basically “remove cars, replace with transit” but you’re totally hand waving away the second part.
All the government subsidies to benefit EVs are a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of retooling infrastructure to support public transit. It needs to be done, but it can’t be done quickly without a massive, exponential increase in funding, and EVs won’t cover that gap.
Being anti-EV is being against one of the most useful, efficient, and effective ways of lowering ghg emissions we have.
Your idea of “ripping the bandaid off” leaves millions of people stranded while they wait for transit to be built.
We can do both and must do both. EVs for now, transit for future.
I don’t know why you’re being downvoted, you’re right. Something as massive as climate change requires extreme change from us. A band-aid fix like EVs is only going to give the illusion of a solution. Reducing suburban sprawl and expanding mass transit will do much more for the environment than EVs ever could.
Yes, EVs are a good step, but they’re little more than a compromise, we should be pushing to reduce our reliance on cars and semis as much as possible. The focus on EVs makes some people lose sight of this. People seem to be reluctant to change, holding out for some drop-and-swap fix that will solve everything. At the end of the day though, even the greenest car is way less energy efficient than the average bus, while also consuming much more road space per person.
They have their part in the solution, but the more we rely on ev the less we do more important stuff like public transportation, walkable cities, proper zoning, less unnecessary office time, etc. If we remove every petrol car ever and just make them all ev we will still have an enormous problem, but while we doing that we necessarily neglect everything else. Making the society not car-centric is more important, that’s where all the focus should be. Remaining cars should obviously be electric.
We can do more than one thing, changing cars to ev does not distract from building more windmills.
This isn’t about more windmills though, this is about EVs perpetuating the atomization and car dependency that got us into this mess, and thus being at best a band-aid fix and at worst preventing better solutions from taking form.
How would EVs prevent better solutions? You keep saying this but I don’t understand why.
EVs are a distraction and driver funding from public transport options to spaces for cars. Cars need infrastructure such as traffic stops, crossings, parking, etc. And with metropolitan areas becoming increasingly crowded, all of this infrastructure takes up space and costs the city a lot of money as the land value rises.
For example, a car parking space where I’m from will cost something like $70/day. A shop double the size would be leased at $30k/month. Our rate money goes into subsidising the car parking spots because they need to sit somewhere where they’re not being used.
EVs (in car form) still use the same spaces as cars and use up money that could be better spent on other things to improve city accessibility. That’s a bit of the money part.
From an efficiency perspective, any kind of car (EV or otherwise), is extremely inefficient in Metropolitan areas because a large portion of the time is spent waiting in traffic. Any other type of transport moves more people per second than cars such as motorbikes, scooters, bicycles, trains, trams, buses etc. So, you’re allowing a significant chunk of infrastructure to be occupied by an extremely ineffective mode of transport in a city of millions. If you remove the entire aspect of private vehicles in Metro areas, you free l suddenly free up a lot of space and increase efficiency for the other modes of transport.
EVs or cars would be useful in low density areas where the efficiency would be higher than using any other type of transport and would have a much more minimal impact on the climate than if large cities all used EVs.
We have the technology and the smarts to build a better world but we need to rip the band-aid off and understand that the problems that arise in our day to day is of our own making and that we can absolutely rebuild it from the ground up so that it is more sustainable.
But we don’t HAVE those other means of transport, not nearly at the level to replace cars and not even at all in some places.
Your equation is basically “remove cars, replace with transit” but you’re totally hand waving away the second part.
All the government subsidies to benefit EVs are a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of retooling infrastructure to support public transit. It needs to be done, but it can’t be done quickly without a massive, exponential increase in funding, and EVs won’t cover that gap.
Being anti-EV is being against one of the most useful, efficient, and effective ways of lowering ghg emissions we have.
Your idea of “ripping the bandaid off” leaves millions of people stranded while they wait for transit to be built.
We can do both and must do both. EVs for now, transit for future.
I don’t know why you’re being downvoted, you’re right. Something as massive as climate change requires extreme change from us. A band-aid fix like EVs is only going to give the illusion of a solution. Reducing suburban sprawl and expanding mass transit will do much more for the environment than EVs ever could.
Yes, EVs are a good step, but they’re little more than a compromise, we should be pushing to reduce our reliance on cars and semis as much as possible. The focus on EVs makes some people lose sight of this. People seem to be reluctant to change, holding out for some drop-and-swap fix that will solve everything. At the end of the day though, even the greenest car is way less energy efficient than the average bus, while also consuming much more road space per person.