Opinion | Relax, Electric Vehicles Really Are the Best Choice for the Climate
Opinion | Relax, Electric Vehicles Really Are the Best Choice for the Climate
Electric vehicles really are better for the environment than hybrid vehicles that have both gas and electric motors.
We got the first to replace our 10-year-old, gas-powered Subaru, and after only two years of driving, the E.V. has created fewer emissions over its lifetime than if we had kept the old car. It will take our second E.V. only four years to create fewer emissions over its lifetime than the 2005 hybrid Prius it replaced. That’s counting the production of the batteries and the emissions from charging the E.V.s, and the emissions payback time will only continue to drop as more emissions-free wind and solar power comes onto the grid and battery technology improves.
The author of course did not look at having one less car, and substituting an ebike or mass transit for part of their driving, which would have lowered emissions by a larger amount.
I would consider buying an electric car if there were any lightweight options that are not packed to the brim with annoying and unnecessary electronics as well as surveillance tech.
But there seem to be no such options and thus I plan to keep my 2008 ICE car that still has none of that BS running as long as I can.
Its really odd that as a tech enthusiast you are forced to look for things with as little tech as possible, as the tech that is forced on you is so bad that I rather go without it.
26An EV conversion is probably the only option, if you want a no frills EV
7There are a few if you go into the wacky import market, especially in most of europe where light EVs don’t require full drivers licenses. That being said, when your 2008 ICE gives out i wouldn’t have much hope in finding a peoper replament outside of the classics. You’ll propbably have to delve into the wonderful world of finding a model where you can disable the transceiver no matter what drive train the car has by then.
3The Aptera might fit the bill for a minimalist-ish EV, but I share your sentiment, and if that doesn't live up to what it's promised, I'll be sticking with my 1996 ICE as well.
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Right, if you need a car, an electric car is best for rhe environment. Even better is to not need a car. Better still is for your parents to have not reproduced so as to create one less human on earth. Why didn't the author compare not existing to owning an EV? Because that's not a reasonable comparison.
An ebike is not a replacement for a car. Relocating to a walkable urban space with functional public transit is not feasible for most people. It is not unreasonable when comparing the relative benefits of different cars to limit the discussion to, you know, cars.
19An ebike is not a replacement for a car. Relocating to a walkable urban space with functional public transit is not feasible for most people. It is not unreasonable when comparing the relative benefits of different cars to limit the discussion to, you know, cars.
No, the discussion should be about fixing the actual problem (lack of walkable urban spaces).
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I'm immediately put off by "relax." Complacency is not the solution to the climate crisis. Consumerism is not the solution to the climate crisis. It's going to take continuous collective action. It will take doing things that feel uncomfortable at first. Your flashy new EV that lets all your neighbors know you have EV money is not a boilerplate one size fits all solution. Your local municipality buying a garage to house and maintain a fleet of EV buses that transport ~2 people at a time is the solution.
People misunderstand how to assess if a bus is helping. They see a mostly empty bus and declare that it would have been better to have the two bus users in EVs when the reality is that as soon as you have the emissions of a bus divided across 2 people, you've already beaten any possible single vehicle configuration thanks to scale. Not to mention, you want some leeway at 11pm so that at 5pm (rush hour) you have crush capacity.
The other thing with bus advocacy is that buses are not sexy like light rail or metro rail solutions, but you can effectively implement them immediately. They're a magnificent transitional mass transit solution, and one you will probably want to have even after you have a light rail or metro rail solution because sometimes you'll need to do track maintenance and move transit passengers onto buses for those portions, and that the attractiveness of your mass transit solution is all about the final mile of transit. You can put a bus stop almost anywhere, ensuring that people can arrive conveniently and safely at their destination, even if there's absolutely no way you could put a rail station nearby.
"Relax, Electric Vehicles Really Are the Best Choice for the Climate" screams of privilege...
16I’d argue that trollybusses are a better option since they let you massively cut down on needed battery capacity at the cost of NIMBYs, but i doubt the average NY Times opinion reader is very likely to be convinced to take a bunch of time to get involved in local politics.
They might however be convinced to go with an EV instead of mindlessly buying another gas car like they were planning. Is it perfect, fuck no. Is it far better than the alternative, yes. EVs cannot solve climate change, but they are a way the average american that has a vague care for not getting killed by climate change can help.
I also suspect that the relax was aimed at the more commonly stated viewpoint on these sorts of articles, which is that EVs are a horrible scam and you should be driving the largest gas truck you can becuse its cheaper, not really, and actually better for the environment becuse cobalt mining is so horrible and climate change is really just a myth.
2Trollybusses are indeed an excellent filler in transit quality between a bus and a light rail solution. An ideal metropolitan mass transit solution has tiers. The first tier is "Walkable 15 minute neighborhoods," the second is "A bus to get you to the trollybus," the third is "A trollybus to get you to the light rail system," and the fourth is "A light rail system to get you to the next town over." And obviously, you don't have to hit every tier in the mass transit scheme to get from your current location to your final destination, but the mix of types of transit helps each type of transit support eachother, allowing transit users to get from place to place quickly and cheaply. My argument is mainly "you start with a bus" because the implementation cost is low. It's a bridge solution that helps you get from your current level of mass transit to your ideal goals, and one that you'll likely want to make use of even when your ideal transit solution is implemented, as it has a degree of flexibility that no other solution offers.
The other thing is buses can even make sense in exurbs and even rural areas. I grew up in a rural area in Appalachia that implemented a county level bus system that taxpayers immediately argued was going to be a waste of money, but when it was implemented, the buses out in the most remote portions of the county saw the most usage as it allowed elderly passengers, and very poor passengers, to go visit their relatives in town, as well as anyone with a broken down car to make a trip to AutoZone to get the part they needed to get their car back on the road again. A lot of the time, it's not just about making it possible for people to get to city services, it's also about getting city services out to the people.
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We got the first to replace our 10-year-old, gas-powered Subaru, and after only two years of driving, the E.V. has created fewer emissions over its lifetime than if we had kept the old car.
That's no way this is true, if the carbon footprint of the manufacture of the new EV is considered.
Most of the recent studies I've seen estimate over 40% of life cycle carbon debt from cars is making them. ~15 years ago I heard Peter Singer say it was over half.
If you need a car, don't ever buy a new one.
14From what I’ve see it can very with make and model, but typically about seventy five percent of a gas cars carbon emissions come from the fuel alone, which goes up to ninety percent if you count the carbon emissions of making and delivering that fuel aswell.
By contrast about sixty five percent of an EVs emissions come from our current mix of electricity generation, and thirty five percent from manufacture.
Also worth noting that the portion from manufacture is so large becuse the total emissions are so much smaller, as the EV only requires at worse about twenty percent of the gas cars total emissions. Given the average life span of a car is 12 years, two years to pay back the additional five to ten percent manufacturing cost is quite reasonable provided the author lives in a place with a good renewable energy mix.
an illustrative estimate of lifetime emissions on theoretical aver 300 mile range EV vs an average new gas car. https://www.epa.gov/system/files/styles/large/private/images/2022-06/lifecycle-ghgs-ev-gas-cars-670px.png?itok=2RCNUe6A
The average gas passenger vehicle will produce about 4.6 tons of carbon dioxide, about twice its weight, each and every year it is on the road.
In short, given the choice between a new electric car or a used gas car, there electric is the better choice if you plan to use it for more than two to four years.
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Better than trains that can last decades and run fully electric without batteries that will inevitably go obsolete and dumped? I know it can't be a solution for everyone but don't tell me a city like LA couldn't do more and eliminate the need for cars for half it's population. Cut the $20b of oil subsidies and start building up passenger routes
11What makes you so sure that the author didn’t look at having one less car, or lives in a place where mass transit even exists? I mean there’s currently half a foot of snow and ice on the road in front of my house, you can’t exactly expect everyone to bike though that. The whole point of EVs is that they are completely compatible with our existing infrastructure and don’t require the forcable resettlement of hundreds of millions of people to dense cities during an, amitidly artificially created, housing crisis.
Mass transit would be great if everyone had it, but they don’t, and no ones really trying to do so now. To say nothing of the fact it generally takes about ten years to complete even a new light rail line in this country and we don’t have ten years to maybe reduce emissions. If mass transit is better than driving, and that’s not hard because driving sucks, then people will take mass transit.
Sorry if this comes off as argumentative, but assuming what works for you works for everyone and the only reason that they wouldn’t do it is because they can’t think of it is rather silly.
4They didn't talk about it as even an option.
2Of course they didn’t, they were talking about their own experiences, and if the have the options the average american has then they wouldn’t have any local transit to even compare it to. It’s an opinion piece for the New York Times on EVs, not an exhaustive comparison of all possible transit modes.
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Relax. EV’s really are the best choice for auto-industry executives.
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