• darkmugglet@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Sigh…I own an EV and I will tell you that my reasons for buying it are less environmental and more practical. Not having to go to a gas station (charge at home) or how I literally have way more power than I need or that it’s just fun to drive. You can shit on EVs, but in all reality they are a superior car if you don’t get hung up on the fuel. I want to be better about the environment, but honestly, my EV is hands down my all time favorite car (and it’s not a Tesla). So before you mock em, go test drive a few.

      • darkmugglet@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, try living anywhere in the US outside NY, Boston, and a few other places. Most city planning outside Europe and Asia assumes a car. Unlike parts of Copenhagen, where you can literally get everything you need, unless you live in NYC (and cities like it) you have to have a car.

        So yes, I would love to be able to go anywhere via public transit and I would love to not own a cat. But for most of the world it just is a pipe dream.

        IMO, we need to focus on harm reduction. Cars are bad. But EVs are slightly better when public transit is non-existent. Taking an all or non position is one from privilege or life style or environment. Cars are a tool. And while expensive and an obsene waste of resources, the infrastructure and housing to have the mass of society in cities does not exist. If I lived where cars could be an option I would totally not have one.

        My point is that EVS are better than ICE. They certainly have their environmental problems but on whole, they are better and safer than ICE. An all or non position is nonsense and denies the reality we live in.

  • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    As much as I hate cars, removing them is only possible inside cities. North America has a very large rural area(and population) that needs to be converted away from fossil fuels.

    • thisfro@slrpnk.netOP
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      1 year ago

      Maybe yes, but a large part of society at least in America and Europe live in cities or suburbs, where cars are just bs

      • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        I completely agree with you on that one. Unfortunately I’m one of those rural people.

        I’m banking on autonomous busing in hopes that we can eventually drop to one vehicle, we already have bus service but it’s only 1/hour to the nearest little town, and only 3/day to the nearest city(commuting busses @ $20 round trip per day)

        We did buy an EV though for cost and environmental reasons (I live somewhere with a 99% clean grid)

    • zephyreks@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      North America has a large suburban population. The rural population is almost entirely dependent on fossil fuels for the near future because of infrastructure scarcity and the energy density of fossil fuels.

          • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            That’s a pretty shit argument. Humans are not ecologically viable for life to continue on planet earth at our current population, even if we remove all cars.

              • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca
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                1 year ago

                Yea no what? We are already setting population targets via immigration right now, the question is about what the target should be (and why) not whether or not to do it.

                • bulbasaur@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  To do what? Limit immigration so that poor ppl from countries we immiserated, exploited, and put in danger of climate collapse from our overconsumption can die? Sounds like nazi shit to me

              • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca
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                1 year ago

                Yes it is. We hunted multiple animals to extinction and poisoned vast stretches of land long before the industrial revolution, we didn’t need cars to be assholes to nature.

                • thisfro@slrpnk.netOP
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                  1 year ago

                  True, but we could sustain a lot more people and also not bring animals to extinction and destroy the environment with the right policies. Blaming overpopulation is just facist propaganda.

  • corm@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Oh shut up, ecars cause less environmental damage than normal cars by far. Yes they require lithium. The lithium required doesn’t get close to the damage of 300k miles worth of gas.

    “but power plants burn coal for that electricity”

    Not mine. I live in portland and have signed up for 100% renewable power. That’s a your-city problem. You should work on that.

    • 1993_toyota_camry@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      I think you’re arguing points that weren’t made.

      Individually owned automobiles and the systems required to support them are wasteful and polluting no matter how you power them.

      Electric cars are better, yes. But their popularity is in a large part because they allow us to mostly maintain the status quo.

      Do you think they are a sustainable long-term solution? Should we be planning our future around paved roads made almost exclusively for personally owned mostly single-occupant vehicles?

      • corm@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        It’s two months later and I’ve done a 180 on this opinion and went from “fuck gas cars” to “fuck all cars”.

        The car infrastructure is the shitty part, not so much the cars

        • CurtAdams@urbanists.social
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          1 year ago

          @corm @1993_toyota_camry Sort of? All cars ruin our lives. But gas cars also ruin the planet, where electric are substially better now and will be almost carbon free in 30 years or so. Getting rid of cars in general is very desirable, but getting rid of gas cars is an existential necessity.

      • bstix@feddit.dk
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        1 year ago

        I’m commenting on your first sentence, not the bullet points.

        Electric cars are better for the environment, no doubt about that, even if the electricity is produced by fossil fuel, because the production is done in a controlled environment instead of happening in thousands of cars, which can only utilise a fraction of the energy and outputs the exhaustion directly in the air.

        I’m not saying EVs solve the car dependency problems at all, but they are better for the environment than combustion engine cars.

          • bstix@feddit.dk
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            1 year ago

            No, obviously not. I’ve never heard anyone seriously claim that electric cars alone could save the environment.

            Transport as a whole only accounts for something like 20% of carbon emissions and only 40% of that is from cars, making it 8% total.

    • zephyreks@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Electric cars help pollution like filtered cigarettes help smoker health. It’s a tangible improvement, but on the grand scale of things it’s not a significant improvement.