What does this mean, if anything? How would it be possible for a car company to be carbon neutral? Is this just nonsense/posturing since it’s so long from now?

  • @[email protected]
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    452 years ago

    Sorry, not an answer here, but a good analogy. It has a lot to do with creative accounting and making up definitions.

  • @[email protected]
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    2 years ago

    Carbon compensation like reforestation

    Energy from green sources for their factories

    No more gas cars also helps a whole lot if they calculate over the car’s lifetime vs a gas car

  • @[email protected]
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    132 years ago

    It’s like Micheal Scott yelling “AND WE’RE GOING CARBON NEUTRAL!!!” at the stock holders meeting.

  • Hegar
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    152 years ago

    Roche pharma also has a goal to reduce their cost to society by half by 2030.

    What does that mean? What metric measures cost to society? What will they actually do? Nothing, nothing, nothing.

  • @[email protected]
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    2 years ago

    There will for sure be some “Creativity” with their numbers.

    “Carbon Neutral” will only apply to the manufacturing of the product, not the life of the product.
    It will probably also only apply to the assembly that is done in-house. It might not apply to things like the tires.

    It will also probably be done through some bulllshit “carbon credits”, which are about as honest and reliable as those “no, our $2 chocolate definitely didn’t use any child labour, and the farmers definitely aren’t paid slave-wages.” badges you find on foods.

    • @[email protected]
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      212 years ago

      As someone who has a client who is an automotive OEM (I work with Customs and Imports), most of the parts are made by suppliers, who use parts from other suppliers, and barely anything is done in-house except maybe final assembly, so your comment totally tracks.

      It’s suppliers all the way down LOL.

    • @[email protected]
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      62 years ago

      You assume they are even going to justify the bare minimum… it is so far in the future they are just hoping everyone will forget about it.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      82 years ago

      Ah this makes sense. Seems like they are trying to say Honda’s impact on the planet will be carbon neutral, which seems impossible.

        • Em Adespoton
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          82 years ago

          I wouldn’t say they’re bad at it, just playing catch-up after they bet on the wrong technologies.

          Toyota was the first to sell a usable hybrid back when BEV battery tech wasn’t there yet; Honda bet on hydrogen fuel cell tech.

          When it turned out everyone was going with the Tesla BEV concept, Honda and Toyota were already mid-development lifecycle with investments in technologies that didn’t make the cut.

          Now that those lifecycles are starting to wind down, we’ll see of they can leapfrog the current designs for BEVs to come up with the next big thing before China or Korea beats them to it.

          • @[email protected]
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            2 years ago

            Honestly, I think hybrids are the least environmentally damaging of the 3 main car types. Mining lithium is extemely environmentally destructive, and we’re going to see the consequences of that in the coming years as full EVs continue to explode in popularity. Hybrids use a fraction of the lithium if EVs and produce a fraction of the emissions of full ICEs. I really don’t understand why hybrids aren’t being pushed more until better, sustainable and scalable battery tech is discovered.

      • Rhynoplaz
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        2 years ago

        Honda: WE’RE carbon neutral, but if you drive one of our cars, that’s on you.

        • @[email protected]
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          12 years ago

          Presumably by 2050 any new cars they sell will be electric. I don’t see anyone selling a ton of ICE cars at that stage except for niche applications (and they can easily spin that off into a different company if needed for carbon accounting purposes).

    • kersploosh
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      392 years ago

      Similar to how Subaru brags about their “zero landfill” production. Manufacturing a car absolutely generates waste. They just juggle the supply chain to have all the waste happen at their suppliers.

      • @[email protected]
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        152 years ago

        Zero landfill is not zero trash. It’s just that the waste has to be recyclable or incinerated.

        • @[email protected]
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          32 years ago

          "But their comment is still likely true and they’re offloading anything not recyclable onto their suppliers, heh.

          • @[email protected]
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            22 years ago

            But what waste do they have that they wouldn’t want to eliminate for production reasons? They assemble cars from parts they buy. A lot of times these parts come from smaller machine shops. A pallet of parts comes in, it gets out on the car, pallet returns to the supplier for the next load. I’m not sure why people are confused here. It’s not like they want the parts to be individually packaged.

            Caveat: I’m not a manufacturing expert but I have met some of these machine shop people.

  • @[email protected]
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    12 years ago

    Carbon neutral means you try to “offset” your carbon. It’s half scam, half helpful. The idea is if your company produces an unavoidable amount of carbon, you offset this by supporting Carbon-free solutions elsewhere making your net production “neutral”. It’s a scam because sometimes the offset is stuff that was never going to produce carbon, and also because using other areas to claim “neutral” causes a weird double count. Carbon neutral is less good of a solution than carbon free, but it’s a step in the right direction.

    However, target year of 2050?? Fucking what? That’s not something to brag about, that’s painfully and embarrassingly slow. That’s embarrassingly slow to be carbon free, much less carbon neutral.

  • Kalash
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    102 years ago

    How would it be possible for a car company to be carbon neutral?

    By only using carbon neutral energy in their manufacturing? Car companies are really not special in that regard.

    I’m not saying that’s going to happen and that they aren’t posturing. But like there is no fundamental mystery to the “how”.

  • @[email protected]
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    42 years ago

    Seems like you missed their other commercial where they said they’d start a nuclear Armageddon in 2049

  • @[email protected]
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    372 years ago

    Delta airlines is running similar ads. It all sounds like they are kicking the can down the road. “Oh in thirty years everything will magically be better!”

    • @[email protected]
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      2 years ago

      It’s not like these pledges are legally binding. You just say you’re working on it and that means governments can point at that and say they don’t need to implement any regulation as ‘the industry is self regulating’. Then 30 years later nobody will think to check, or the corporation will be acquired by someone else, or, best case scenario we have magical technology that makes it actually possible.

  • blazera
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    32 years ago

    As for honda yeah theyre bullshitting. But as for a car company being carbon neutral, where does it become impossible?

  • arthurpizza
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    122 years ago

    Just gotta buy some carbon credit and then you can burn as much oil as you want.

    • @[email protected]
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      42 years ago

      And the carbon credits are basically some scammer that promises to plant some trees somewhere remote where nobody can actually check.