Fuck Cars
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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Regardless how you power it, private automobiles will always be ineffecient and have a massive resource cost. The EV isn't here to save the planet, it's here to save the car industry. This is part of why we need the conversation to shift to energy efficiency instead of just emissions.
Also never forget the tires. We're breathing them.
And there are a lot of cases where we could just stop commuting....
And ceramic brake dust! Yummy 😋
EVs have regenerative breaking, so in theory that should help with brake dust if people aren't using their brakes as much.
In reality though, I doubt some people will make use of RB to actually see any benefits (unless it's configured right in the car), plus tires are still a problem regardless of EV or ICE.
Pretty sure regenerative braking is on by default for every EV. It allows them to claim higher range/efficiency.
The difference is in how aggressively to configure it. More aggressively is more efficient but harder to drive smoothly.
Topping! 😁
But employers are increasingly ordering people back to work and even just the fear of it is measurably impact staff wellbeing.
The push for RTO put on full display how bullshit the push for EVs "for the environment" is. If .gov was actually serious about helping the environment, WFH would be encouraged when possible. It obviously isn't feasible for many (probably most) jobs, but removing the vehicles that you can from the roads is still a step in the right direction.
Many (probably most) jobs are bullshit jobs just to make the economy roll.
If we skipped the middleman, and just fed everyone, we would cost environmental costs by 90%.
Exactly.
Tires are a big issue right now. 6PPD-Q might be an extinction event for salmon.
Some studies have shown work from home may eliminate the commute miles, but those miles are replaced with leisure and errands miles. So ultimately we still need transit to replace a lot of car trips cause be it work, grocceries, or a night out, people need to get places.
We need to pull all strings. I didn't say people don't need to get places. I just stated there are many cases where it's not required. Corona has shown what we could do if we wanted.
In wonder if, in terms of logistics, delivery of groceries and online shopping could be a good thing.
Of course not with instant-services like Flink. Of course not with single-use cardboard boxes and worker exploitation.
More like the good old milkman. People order their groceries, and they are delivered in reusable boxes next day, old boxes picked up. Same with online shopping.
Both is already a thing, but few do it. Maybe it would work much better if a huge percentage of people would do it, e. g. 15 % for grocery delivery. The grocery truck would not have to do more miles than if it would deliver to the current 1 % (guessed), just needs to be bigger and have more stops.
In communities that are not built to live car-less, that might save many individual car trips.
At my place there are two supermarkets within 500m, no need for any driving besides one lorry supplying the markets.
People will come up with any solution so long as it still relies on roads. The parent comment to this thread is all about tire dust and this solution just replaces private tire dust with commercial tire dust. The system you propose would still be more complicated, energy and resource intensive than people just taking transit to the groccery store.
The thing is, we don't have transit. And I'm pretty sure demolishing our cities and rebuilding them in order to enable transit is even more harmful to the environment.
Only in the short term. In our current timeline we destroy our cities to pave new highways. By rebuilding our cities we can reduce sprawl, increase density and make the whole city more effecient while reducing the new land that gets developed.
How many cities are building new highways, not just slightly expanding existing ones?
Corona isn't a perfect example as many places had restricted capacity and hours. There was also a significant precentage of the population minimizing their exposure to the outside world. Yes we should encourage work from home but my point is it won't be reducing car use nearly as much as it seems and even if everyone worked from home we still need alternatives to driving.
It is just one example. I think you and I might misunderstand each other a lot.
If you live in a bicycle friendly place, a lot of car trips can be replaced.
Sure we need bike lanes too, but we still need transit as an option for longer distances/faster travel, for when the weather is awful, and for people unable to bike. You could even bring your bike on the transit, maybe visiting another city and bringing your bike with you on that transit.
The EVs' carbon footprint is marginally smaller, and even that tiny difference is highly dependant on drivers taking care of their cars and using them for many years. The only realistic advantage is that the pollution moves from cities to power plants. It's a pretty nice improvement, but it does nothing to 'save the planet'.
Another advantage is the entire gasoline distribution industry can go away. Tens (hundreds?) of thousands of gas stations in the US alone, with their tanks leaking hazardous chemicals into our groundwater. Trucks and storage facilities in every town. Pipelines and tankers. Middlemen at many layers. Gone.
This is also one of the key strikes against hydrogen. Do you really want to build out an entirely new distribution infrastructure just to keep all those polluters in business?
Some smaller gasoline cars actually beat out the total impact (production, use, disposal) of oversized electric trucks or SUVs
We can do both, but emissions should remain the priority. We can continue to scale energy generation while reducing emissions. We aren't anywhere near extracting all the energy the sun provides, and solar, tidal, and wind power are all very low emissions even including manufacturing and decommissioning costs
That said, we do need public transit solutions that make raising 3 children in a loving household to be a life well-lived. Many SUVs are used because the house manager has to wrangle all the children while also picking up weekly supplies from one or more locations.
My limited experience with public transit is that it is a lot harder to do bulk purchases, keep groups together, or both.
This is the real challenge. My approach has been biking to what I can and going single small and efficient car when it's viable. It's better than what a lot of people manage with kids, and marketing has convinced a lot of parents that they need a gigantic 3-row SUV that struggles to achieve 20mpg