This is why people hate liberals, and why liberals often migrate over to conservatism: no matter how right you are, there’s always someone happy to crap on you for not being right enough.
Don’t shit on EVs for merely being one of many solutions that all need to be engaged with. It’s not like without EVs, so many people would be rushing to areas of greater density and riding public transit, so your message is not helpful in achieving what you want, and actively angers your allies.
I don’t doubt that that’s the case, but I’m just pointing out (humorously) the absurdity of someone who is purportedly a principled individual who cares about things like climate change, civil/human rights, equality, bodily autonomy and most importantly democracy changing to the side that is openly against all of those things because people can be harsh and nasty on the internet sometimes.
Like, if someone really was so flimsy with their morals that they could bend so easily, did they ever really care in the first place? Or were they just looking for an excuse to blame the other side for their fecklessness?
I hate ignorant conservatives, but you mostly can’t do much about them because they listen to no one. But progressive ignorance is something I feel compelled to correct: progressives pretend to care about things other than their own assholes.
Meaningless meme. Because people see problems with your simplistic stance doesn’t make them Trump. There should be a plan to get there from here, and right now, you guys are removed about EVs, which are part of the plan for getting there from here.
Ah yes conservatism, the famous side of rational thinking and anti-bias thoughts, such as avoiding the perfect solution bias
Your comment having so many upvotes is disgusting
I shit on liberals mostly because of their notions on ‘altruistic capitalism’. As soon as they purchase an EV, they think they’re out there saving the world and most don’t think critically past that.
I think both sides are lacking nuance here. If you shit on people getting electric vehicles or just thinking of getting one because that’s not far enough: fuck you. But also, for people that just switched or are thinking of getting one but then see something like this and slam into reverse and say “I’m gonna support ICE cars till the day I die to spite those overly hostile woke liberals”: fuck you too.
People should be able to take the information in a more nuanced way, and should stop swinging from extreme to extreme which has led to the current fucked state of politics
I really have to agree that it’s posts like this that made me give up on left wing politics, in certainly not right wing but I see no hope for the left until fundermental problems are fixed which I don’t believe politics or media is capable of addressing.
Further I am absolutely convinced a large portion of the loudest voices on climate change are so obsessed because they desperately want it to be the big doom that fucks up all the impressive things other people are achieving.
If you’ve given up „left wing“ politics because of a few things people have said on the internet, I have news for you: You never were left wing to begin with. Also, you’re an idiot.
If pointing out that EVs aren’t a real solution is enough to alienate those “allies” they weren’t really allies at all. It’s also less about individual choice to move to areas with better transit, and more about pressuring the government to install better transit everywhere instead of just funneling endless money to car manufacturers.
EVs aren’t a solution to anything except as a way to trick people into thinking purchasing a car is saving the environment or helping fix society.
If liberals are so shallow that they adopt racism because someone was mean to them online, then I’m glad they’re being more honest. The message is that cars, all cars, are something worth fighting against. Electric cars are not a step in the right direction, they’re not even a bandaid. They’re just something liberals can purchase to make them feel like they’re helping something. They’re toys.
Honestly I would rather if most liberals outright come out as conservative, because it sounds like they’re on the line already. It would be more honest of them.
Adopting EVs is an important step imo. The primary achievement of going EV is reducing oil/gas use. Moving away from cars as a society is a separate goal that can happen alongside this. We can never make gas green, at best net zero. EVs on the other hand can be better, with electricity from renewable sources, to batteries made with better materials. Both things which are happening and actively being researched.
So we can make EVs much better environmentally, and reduce gas demand significantly alongside reducing car use. Because we won’t just stop needing gas magically, so replacing that is important for any transition away from it in the grand scheme.
Yeah I just don’t see it. If we want to reduce oil/gas use then the goal would be eliminating private car use altogether and providing alternatives. EVs are still a huge machine designed to transport a single person. They’re still a waste, not to mention how much the global south is getting exploited for their lithium.
Cars just aren’t going to save anything. Here, I’ll compromise. Electric bicycles.
For city use I agree with you but if you live in a small town you need a car. You are too far from almost everything you need. And you don’t have public transport.
If you live in a little town in the middle of nowhere you won’t have public transport. It’s too expensive. Private transport it’s the only way to go anywhere from there. It’s a shame but…
Yeah, I’m an angry ball of rage because I live in a white supremacist hellscape where everyone is too smug or too tired to care. I don’t have any thoughts remaining other than the word fuck. The pretense of being thoughtful is a facade. My true self wants to roll in mud and scream obscenities at anyone I think looks too wealthy.
Don’t take it so personally. sure EVs have a role to play but if we’re to be serious about tackling climate change and environmental sustainability it’s going to require massive infrastructure redevelopment projects, not asking everyone to please swap to rechargeable batteries. It’s not about being “right enough” it’s about recognizing a non-solution and also on a policy level a blatant scam. All these EV subsides the liberal Biden administration is throwing out are an obvious hand out to the failing American auto industry to try to keep them competitive and desperate ploy to their quickly dwindling supporters for them to look like they’re doing anything worthwhile on climate change at all.
Having every American buy a new electric car is just going to make a few auto executives rich as hell and not even reduce overall global emissions because those cheaper ICE cars that can’t be sold in America are just going to go to other parts of the world that don’t have EV infrastructure but have plenty of already existing gas stations. And there’s all the emissions of actually building the damn things. No, they need to put their money where their mouth is and build some fucking trains.
I’m not taking it personally: hyper-progressive policies that require achievements in infrastructure change orders of magnitude more costly and complicated than any other event in human history described as “just something folks have to do” as if it’s that easy, as if they’re not just happening because of half a dozen car company CEOs… they just make me queasy that you’re an ally of mine in our desire to fight global warming.
Lmao you are not an ally in fighting global warming if you don’t support major changes in infrastructure. You are taking this way too personally, you’re in a fuck_cars community crying about how we shouldn’t be mean about cars.
You can agree that EV’s are a non-solution while still accepting that you live in a place that’s so fucked up that it doesn’t provide you with an alternative.
No, I’m saying that removed about EVs does what, exactly? The infrastructure change you’re glib about happens how? You haven’t even thought of that. You have a goal, but no map from here to there. You’re still stuck at the fuck cars stage it seems.
Try to actually solve the problem instead of removed about incremental solutions that don’t do enough for your taste.
Infrastructure change at the scale you’re speaking about is not unheard of. The Netherlands did it twice. First because Europe got the shit bombed out of it and building car centric cities was trendy, then second because they realized what a shit idea that was and reversed it.
Sure, the Netherlands was never sparse in the first place, but nobody’s asking for trains to farmer John’s house in Nebraska. If the Netherlands can rework their cities to at least chillax on cars, so can American cities.
I know using the Netherlands as an example is trite, but urban planners literally know the solutions.
First because Europe got the shit bombed out of it
It has little to do with that, actually. There are very few cities that got heavily hit. What was removed and remodelled in the 60s and 70s was way more than the war had damaged and it happened after the major repairs were already done. Even cities and countries the war never really touched got extensive remodelling.
It was a completely deliberate decision to remodel those cities, driven by modernist ideas.
Diesel trains are much more environmentally friendly than EVs. Diesel emissions become less of a problem when one engine carries hundreds of people. And diesel doesn’t even pretend to be good for the environment.
I have the occasional beer I’m on year two of LSV [low speed vehicle] 25mph max, 30 mile range. The GEM does what I need it to do. Old & retired, so my requirements are minimal, maybe 100 miles a month. I heard lots of opinion that the low speed would invoke road rage. I find that driving the GEM is much like towing a RV, if there are more than a couple of cars, I pull over & let them pass. Mechanically & electrically basic. Everything is smaller & lighter, so I can do the minor maintenance. The difference in travel time is minimal. Easier to drive safely as my physical skills decline.
Not really a climate solution, more of a pragmatic conservation of my personal resources.
A good start would be greatly restricting the speed, power & performance of vehicles allowed to be registered on the street. Wanna drive 0-60 in 3 seconds & three times the speed limit, go to the race track
Oh man, waiting an hour or so for a bus in -30℃ weather is great. Then the bus is inevitably late because it’s Edmonton (where public transit doesn’t seem to get public funding) and you get to enjoy the great outdoors for another thirty minutes. I’m surprised I still have my toes…
I’m so glad my parents gave me their old truck so I don’t really have to deal with that shit any more.
I agree this kind of post may play in favour of ICE manufacturers and oil companies but I disagree with the comparison you make between EVs and tobacco patches. EVs are produced and sold in order to replace ICEs in the exact same segment. They do not impact peoples lives significantly and will not change anything in the way cities and activities work now. The example you give is the epitome of a work/life organization which was only made possible by the massification of individual motorized transportation, with all the negative externalities listed in the OP. Yes individual cars are going to be needed for many reasons in the future. But we need to work collectively to make them less convenient and less needed in everyday life.
oh buzz off with your weird essay filled with jabs and fallacies and bad faith. actually I just reread it and I have to ask: what the fuck is wrong with you? you’re acting like a white guy who hears two black people talking about racism and leaps in to say “stop calling me racist!” you think this post is calling you out? what the actual fuck is wrong with you?
NO ONE IS SAYING YOU ARE PERSONALLY MORALLY WRONG FOR DRIVING A CAR TODAY IN 2024
that’s the whole fucking gist of this entire guy’s essay, folks. he thinks criticizing EVs is a personal attack on him and people who don’t currently live in walkable cities
So the entire metric for ‘shithole’ to you is based on how many people ride electrified trains? Really? Nothing about, say, their economy or their standard of living or their record on human rights or anything like that?
And the country with the flawless human rights record is what? Iceland because there’s no one to oppress since everyone’s related to everyone else? Great. The rest of 200-some other countries are shitholes by that measure. Again, not the best metric.
Let’s talk about your country now. Where do you live? Will you even volunteer that information?
I am now deeply curious about the deleted comments. All countries have their flaws and past mistakes, Canada's no exception, at the end of the day. The thing is what we're doing now to improve and reflect on these mistakes of the past going forward.
The problem with electric cars is that they’re a distraction. They make people think they’re part of the solution when they’re only partly addressing one of the many problems cars cause. I’m not against people buying them assuming that they’re in a position where they need a new car, but advocating for electric cars as a solution is wrong. I read the OP like this, not how you read it.
My favorite part about this sub is how everyone acts like the entire world is able to just stop having a car and be able to carry on normally about their lives as if cars haven’t been forced into nearly all infrastructure plans globally since this inception. Like it’s every citizens personal choice that nobody built a functioning transit system in the many decades before they were born, or that the place they can afford to live is too far from the place that pays the wages they need to live is too far to bike or bus to.
Like, push for fewer cars and less car centric design, but also stop being a fucking cunty dick about it.
Oh I’d love to hear your explanation for why it’s irrelevant, and what crucial oversight I’ve made that you’ve managed to in your extensive 16 hours on Lemmy.
Ur comment is irrelevant to this post, as this post is merely talking about the inefficiencies of electric cars. It has not even mentioned the humans driving these cars. Had that been the case, your comment would’ve been relevant.
This post is an attempt to dispel the myth that electric cars are somehow better than ICE cars. Do you see why your comment is dumb?
Your reading comprehension and understanding of English vocabulary is about on par with your lemmy account age.
Til things like “urban sprawl” are inefficiencies inherent to electric cars, and the lengthy list of these inefficiencies are definitely not drawn parallel to ICE in order to suggest that people should instead drive neither as the underlying theme of the post, particularly given the theme of the sub, which I am able to observe because I’ve been here longer than 16 hours.
Your reading comprehension and understanding of English vocabulary is about on par with your lemmy account age.
Are you really trying to discredit someone else’s argument by using their “lemmy age”? Like… are you trying very hard to be this guy?
Now I’ll still assume that your argument is in good faith and respond accordingly. So let’s recap.
The post listed the inefficiencies of electric cars besides ICE cars. The underlying message was that electric cars only solve a very very small problem that ICE cars have, but still possess most of the issues of ICE cars. Hence, we need a much better alternative (trains, wink wink).
To this, you replied saying that this community unfairly criticized car owners. According to you, the infrastructure is the biggest one to blame rather than car owners. Which I would only partially agree (as most car owners still support car centric infrastructure). Of course, if there’s not train in your city, you can’t ride one! But you definitely can lobby for one. Your implicit biases against this community due to those one or two crazy posts skewed your perception in weird ways.
This post is most definitely directed at the tech bros (or the Tesla fanboys), according to whom the solution for GHG emissions from the transportation sector is electric cars. I hope that you agree that this is a dumb argument. This post merely makes fun of this argument. This community is not a monolith, you know… It is thus very important to take the context of every post within itself.
You could’ve argued against/for this idea. Instead, you put up something weird and irrelevant like “this community is dumb for blaming car owners”. You might be right, but it just diverts away from the topic of discussion. Why not create your own post explaining your position? It’s like going to a post saying “We need to increase the minimum wage” on a lefty community and commenting “but the lefties are commies”. This MIGHT be true, but it is not at all relevant to the discussion itself, is it?
I mean when it burns it burns, it’s a total either way, it just blocks traffic longer than a normal car, with the upside of not leaking burnable liquids that can do damage in larger areas.
Car fires from ICE's are magnitudes more common and cause more damage every year because of this. If you spent half a second to search this you'd find that reports indicate that per 100,000 vehicles sold in their respective powertrains in their lifetime, 25 electric cars catch fire, and 1,530 gas vehicles catch fire. While searching this, something that caught me off guard and surprised me was that hybrids are even higher, 3,475! The more you know.
Emission standards are based on size and weight. Bigger vehicles have less strict emission standards so rather than giving a fuck about the environment car manufacturers found a loophole by just making everything bigger.
Something people overlook when the word “loophole” is used in federal regulation. Mot of the time those loopholes are intentionally put there so that the industry that is the target of regulation doesn’t have to do anything. And since congressmen don’t actually write regulation, understand what they are regulating, nor give a fuck about anything besides getting paid, they all vote for legislation that has those “loopholes,” and can shrug their shoulders when the “intent” of the regulation is ignored.
Public transit would be great if you didn’t have to ride with other people. That’s my real problem with it in America at least; there are always loud and gross people aboard. My town has phenomenal bud infrastructure, but people drive because it’s faster, and because you don’t have to be around undesirable people.
Maybe public transportation where each person or group could ride in their own automated pod, which would be publicly owned. That way you could still go skiing/hiking/etc, since mass transportation to those places is very difficult due to low volume.
or you could bring in headphones to public transport like the rest of us
also lmao “public transportation where each person or group could ride in their own automated pod”, you’re either advocating for taxis or straight up segregation
It’s also (western) safety standards. Even small cars are larger; compare an 80s Corolla to a 90s to a 2010s. Compare bmw 3-series across the same time span. To make cars safer for occupants, you need more metal and more space. So they got larger.
There are stil legitimate reasons for those size vehicles to be on the road so I think it’s still good to have safety for all sizes, but I see what you mean about spiraling out of control easily.
Another interesting contributing factor are safety regulations and their knock-on effects, which weren’t immediately obvious when they were implemented.
For instance, in an effort to reduce pedestrian fatalities from frontal collisions, vehicles in the US were mandated to have at least three inches of crumple space between the hood of the car and the engine block. The thinking being that more crumple depth would help prevent fatalities and serious injuries that occurred when a pedestrian hit the hood of the vehicle, which would deflect, allowing those soft human bits to continue right into the (not soft at all) engine block.
Well increasing the height of the hood of the vehicle meant that they had to raise the A-pillar, which raised the height of the window opening on the doors, since the bottom of the side windows generally lines up with the hood on passenger vehicles. This meant that the side body panels of the vehicle just generally increased in size, and in an effort to maintain a proportional look, the wheels also had to increase in size otherwise they would look weirdly small. And to maintain a comparable amount of visibility out the windshield and side windows, the roof of the vehicle had to be raised to compensate for the new position of the window sill in the doors.
So something that was intended to just add an inch or two of height to the hoods of existing passenger vehicles to satisfy a safety need, ended scaling up the entire vehicle.
I live in Vancouver and our transit agency is seriously considering ripping the trolleybus lines out. Just like how they ripped the streetcars out before the trolleybuses came and then shamelessly told us that it’s too expensive to reinstall the tracks so we’re just never getting it back. In both cases it was because “it’s getting too expensive to maintain” after they deferred maintenance for ages so everything is falling apart and the small problems got compounded into showstoppers from neglect.
I’m sure this is unpopular this community but I feel like “fuck cars” folks are either living in a dream world where public transport can answer everyone’s transportation needs. If you live in a city with all the amenities you need where public transport is good and economically viable sure, “Fuck cars”, but if you don’t…
I’m not a farmer, my nearest grocery store is 8 miles away. It’s rural and the cost of living is extremely cheap. it also snows a ton and often drops to sub zero temps.
It doesn’t. But that’s okay, because nobody gives a shit about special snowflakes way off the tail end of the bell curve like you – solving the problem for the 80% of everybody else, for whom reasonable solutions do apply, is plenty good enough!
Demanding that any solution be perfect enough to solve it for literally everyone including you is just bad-faith reactionary bullshit.
Bad example that you provided. I do not lease or make payments on my car. I may be on the end of the been curve but you save assume every person ever pays what’s in the articles headlines.
Using the calculator literally provided in the article you are citing my monthly cost for my car is $120. A lot less than the $1000/month they say as an average.
I’m also saving way more than that per month in rent by living where I do outside of a town or city.
Not a bait. I guess I belong to a small group of people who decide to make life-changing commitments in order to minimize their impact on the environment.
You assume your proposal is an “easy” solution. The main reason I live here in the first place is because the surrounding cities, that do have amenities and public transport, are much more expensive to live in. Is not that the town I live in is large in area, it’s quite walkable, it simply doesn’t have much.
It also reminds me of a guy I used to know who said he didn’t need a watch. Claiming he didn’t need to know the time that often. But what did he do? He asked everyone around him what the time was instead. Quite often. Oh and he was usually late to class.
Why am I telling you about him? Because it is the same sentiment as “I don’t need a car, if I want to see my friends (and relatives) I simply ask them to travel to me.”
You are clearly pointing one if the real solutions to individual motorized transportation, which is shared motorized transportation. In my area, people constantly borrow vehicles, equipments, tools and so on.
If you only have the option to drive and it looks like it will never change where you live, then yes, driving electric is better than driving an ICE car. You’re not the problem for needing to live your life with the limited options you have access to. However, that does not mean the intrinsic problems with cars disappear the instant they become electric, and this meme is mainly meant to respond to the techbro people who think just because electric cars exist now it makes transit obsolete or it solves literally everything wrong with cars in general, and use that to actively resist public transportation or attempt to turn public opinion against it. I should have added additional context to make that clearer.
Well I do drive electric now but I could not get by without a car. Honestly I would love it if public transport were viable for everyone. In London and Zurich I have experienced public transport that worked. Where I live a 1 hour car journey can mean a 3 or 4 hour trip by public transport and only if you are travelling at the right time of day. Unfortunately I don’t necessarily get to choose when I make some of those trips because it is part of my job. Unfortunately here, public transport is slow, expensive and unreliable here.
I know electric cars don’t solve everything, and maybe this meme is not exactly what I’m responding to, but for a lot of people, public transport is just not a viable alternative.
Like I said I know it’s not going to be a popular sentiment here.
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