I’ve seen a lot of posts here on Lemmy, specifically in the “fuck cars” communities as to how Electric Vehicles do pretty much nothing for the Climate, but I continue to see Climate activists everywhere try pushing so, so hard for Electric Vehicles.
Are they actually beneficial to the planet other than limiting exhaust, or is that it? or maybe exhaust is a way bigger problem?
You must log in or register to comment.
EVs are good for the environment overall but you are not going to fix climate changing by buying more things.
Most of the criticism towards EVs comes from the idea that buying the shiny new thing is a net positive when it’s actually less harmful than buying a traditional car.
Tldr: if you are going to buy a car, buy an EV, but don’t just buy a new car just to switch to EV if you don’t need it.
The criticisms are also that companies use slavery to acquire the materials to make EVs. And they don’t work well in the cold (see current cold snap in Canada), the lifetime of the batteries aren’t great, and we still need to destroy huge swaths of land to create cars, park/store cars, and drive cars.
EVs are only going to save the car industry. To fix it requires a redesign of cities (see Strongtowns, not justbikes, city beautiful, etc.).
That’s only because the US and other first world countries have shied away from mining rare earth elements because it is traditionally a very dirty and polluting industry. So poor and developing countries did it their way… with slavery and incredibly ecologically damaging techniques.
New techniques are being developed in the US that solve those problems. It originally wasn’t worth the effort because we had plenty of lithium to make 18V drill batteries. Since BEVs have proven to be capable and desireable over the last decade, critical material supplies just didn’t keep up and those new techniques were just a twinkle in the eye of some smart people.
If you’d like to learn more about how we can completely avoid the slavery and pollution problems related to getting lithium, take a look at the Salton Sea enhanced geothermal projects. I am personally going to invest a portion of my life savings in that company if given the opportunity.
They haven’t shied away, it is just more profitable to mine outside your borders using slave labour. The fact of it is, with planned obsolescence being the best way to ensure a steady demand of a product, and the environmental destruction required to support the manufacturing and use of EVs, they still are not a solution. They are a market solution which means it is profitable, and a lateral move at best, and a back step at worst.
If EVs help the environment that is secondary.
https://miningwatch.ca/publications/2023/9/6/contemporary-forms-slavery-and-canadian-mining-industry
EVs are only going to save the car industry. To fix it requires a redesign of cities (see Strongtowns, not justbikes, city beautiful, etc.).
Nail on the head! EVs fix one problem, but the biggest problem is the idea of the personal vehicle. Most people shouldn’t have a personal vehicle, especially for people who live in medium cities or larger. There should be a sort of car share instead.
Wasn’t there just recently a study that found that contrary to what was predicted, the lifetime of the batteries is actually exceeding even manufacturer expectations? As in, they’re losing capacity less than estimated?
Maybe, it sounds familiar. But if past trends are any indication, once enough of the market is dominated by EVs, there will be a lot more money to be made by lowering quality to a bare minimum.
And the infrastructure argument still stands in that case.
Yeah that’s what people being annoyed at the push towards EVs seem to always misunderstand, too. It’s not about immediately throwing all your current stuff away. It’s the same with heat-pumps for heating: Should you immediately throw away your gas furnace you installed 2 years ago? Of course not. Should you get a heat pump if you need to replace your heating anyways? Hell yeah!
Another point is that cars, car infrastructure, and car oriented development is one of the single most wasteful ways to use land. Building smarter cities with alternative transit systems, mixed use areas, and actually using all 3 dimensions like many newer cities in China could protect so much habitat from needlessly being destroyed. There’s hardly any truly wild land left on the east coast, it’s hard to tell what things used to look like now that practically everything is covered in suburbs and strip malls.
I fully agree, cars are just not needed most of the time.
Yes. Shifts power source to the grid. Grid can use different sources for energy production.
EV power trains are much more simple to maintain, and will last longer once we stop anchoring them with disposable components and features. I’m looking forward to the EV “Corolla” with hand crank windows.
Shifts power source to the grid. Grid can use different sources for energy production.
Such an excellent point, which I hadn’t seen mentioned before. It means we can have more control over those sources. Thank you.
with hand crank windows
I want hand crank windows back anyway. Faster and more reliable. So frustrating when the “auto complete” aspect of modern car windows means I cannot easily get the window half way closed or only a crack open. But I must be in the minority on that.
So frustrating when the “auto complete” aspect of modern car windows means I cannot easily get the window half way closed or only a crack open. But I must be in the minority on that.
I love driving with all the windows open about 1/4 or 1/2 open when the weather is nice, and that has included cars I owned and various rentals over the years. All of the cars I have owned or rented for the last couple of decades require pushing hard enough to have a kind of ‘click’ feeling before it does the automatically all the way open or closed thing. I’m sure some car maker has a setup that makes it easy to trigger the fully open/closed accidentally though.
Does it not work manually if you only push it slightly on your car?
Every modern car I had had two stage switches for the windows. First click meant move as long as switch is held, then stop. Second click meant move all the way down or up.
It is the nuclear power vs fossil fuels vs renewables debate all over again. Nuclear is much greener than fossil fuels but comes with its own challenges regarding cost, safety and waste disposal. Renewable energy like solar, wind and hydro are better than nuclear but the point is that nuclear and renewables are not enemies rather they are allies who have to band together to beat fossil fuels.
Public transport is like renewables, the best solution but one which needs time because years of underdevelopment and under-funding means that they are not as developed as they should be.
EVs are like nuclear. Not the perfect solution but have the capability to serve areas and use cases that public transport (renewables) can’t. There are issues like them costing more than the alternatives and that the disposal of waste produced by both is a problem with an unsatisfactory solution.
ICE vehicles are like fossil fuel energy plants. The worst of the worst with regards to their effect on the planet. Their only advantage is that they offer convenience.
So I think we should stop the narrative that EVs(nuclear) are bad because the are not the best solution at hand but rather combine increasing adoption of both EV(nuclear) and public transport (renewables) to combat the true threat that is ICE(fossil fuel energy plants).
Nuclear power is alright if you disregard it turning two cities into wastelands for a century.
It’s the same thing with recycling, companies trying to sell the idea that climate change is a personal failing of every single person even though said companies are responsible for like 90% of carbon emissions.
The problem with EVs is that we already have a better fix for this: public transit. Like trams and trains are both electric and would solve the microplastics caused by tires. Car companies are just pushing EVs to make a profit as always, the percentage of adoption required to effect climate changes isn’t happening in the next several decades so just fix the issue centrally with proper public transit and actually effect climate change before we all die.
It’s the same thing with recycling, companies trying to sell the idea that climate change is a personal failing of every single person even though said companies are responsible for like 90% of carbon emissions.
God I wish this talking point would die.
- Companies emit on the basis of your consumption. This is not arbitrary, emit out of no where.
- Individuals being unwilling to tolerate even minor inconveniences or adjustments to their lifestyle makes systemic change impossible. Government and industry won’t change until collective individuals are willing to deal with it.
- Meat consumption, housing size, housing location, voting patterns, vehicle choice and use, are all individually driven decisions.
How do you propose the consumption would change without alternatives? For example the meat industries is subsidised to hell, why would people stop buying meat if its the effordable option. You will never achieve systematic change with individual action, that has like never worked.
Another example is the requirements for cars is driven by car companies, not individuals. That was lobbied heavily and a lot of cities got redesigned for cars instead of walking.
deleted by creator
Yes, it probably is the best that you personally can reasonably do, but I think the point is that the responsibility shouldn’t be put on working individuals who cannot really do anything beyond that. It’s very plausible that public transportation that doesn’t suck could be implemented in a few years if there were political will for it. It’s just hard to believe that if you live somewhere that has never in your lifetime had the political will for public transportation that doesn’t suck.
deleted by creator
Nope, building proper public transit would be better, then you can take a single tram, metro etc to work in 8 minutes.
deleted by creator
Find a different job? WFH? Bike? Buying an EV is just buying another car that keeps our already crappy infrastructure in use.
deleted by creator
Well whatever car you choose it will be bad for the environment at varying degrees. EV is better for the environment but the battery it uses was likely mined by a 7 year old slave. Enjoy your choices.
deleted by creator
What an odd reply. You want me to feel bad for you due having cancer then turn around and brag about something that shouldn’t be bragged about? I’m glad you’re better than me, bud. Nice job.
deleted by creator
The often ignored part of this argument is that 50% of the US population at least lives in rural states. I grew up in a town with less than 10k people.
I’m 100% for more public transit, I live in a city and take the train to work. But for most Americans they do not and for the foreseeable future will not have public transit. I’m all for fighting for it, but it will be centuries before that happens.
EVs are NOT a perfect solution. They are a stopgap. But right now with where the planet is we need something now, we can’t wait for centuries.
As for the companies are worse? Yes, they are. That doesn’t mean we should just be complacent. It means we should be demanding they change AND lowering our own emissions. It’s going to take everybody changing their lifestyles. The rich are the worst because few of them cause a huge percentage, but that doesn’t mean the huge chunk of carbon we all put out together is excused either.
I grew up in a small town of less than 6000 people and we had bus lines connecting it to larger cities and a bus line that went around the town as well, I never had to take a car anywhere and you usually didn’t see more than 3 cars at once because everyone either walked or took the bus.
The problem with EVs is that won’t be adopted at a rate to make a difference while building public transit could happen faster so as a stopcap they do nothing currently and probably won’t until it’s too late either while only working as a distraction while public transit could be just be built with the same political will behind it as EVs have.
Getting everyone to switch to EVs is not happening in several decades, for example here in Estonia people mostly buy old used cars because new cars are ungodly expensive EVs even more so, I have seen one EV in 10 years.
You may not believe it but there in Estonia you are lucky for your transit. My town of 15k ripped up their railroad in favor of a 4 lane highway. Americans love their car so much that they’ll hurt themselves.
We also did not have a bus running through town, even the capital city of the state only had about 10 bus lines, all usually less than hourly, even during commutes.
So yes, I’m very pro transit, but people in America are literally centuries behind you folks in infrastructure
Yea, I have heard, that’s why I’m saying a better solution would be to build proper public transit. Like a political group I’m a part of are trying to get the city to expand the tram network to the surrounding areas in the county. We got them to expand it to the harbor recently and the construction finished like at the second half of last year.
That’s what I try to do here, I’m lucky that I’m in Seattle where we’re having the largest rail expansion in the country right now. But most of the country is not so lucky. I’ll always push for transit, that should be option 1. While waiting on transit, I say EVs are a better alternative than continuing to purchase ICE vehicles - which most of America is still doing. Push for transit, but individually use EVs if you still must drive.
#1 - Burning fossil fuels (automobiles, specifically) kills 250,000 Americans a year. It causes a TREMENDOUS amount of pollution that is hugely impactful to health and quality of life
#2 - The only way to make our energy usage sustainable is to centralize production - ie you have to make all automobiles electric to start before the transition of the grid to renewables has a more dramatic effect. BTW, 40% of energy production of the US in 2023 was renewable. So our grid is getting cleaner and cleaner by the day.
#3 - Climate change. It is the most existential threat to our survival in our lifetime, bar none. We should do everything we can to leave the planet better than when we came. And right now we are failing miserably.
FYI, for all the naysayers saying EVs are “as” or “more” polluting than their ICE counterparts, this has long been debunked. Please do not listen to the Russian/Chinese propaganda or the comments of idiots that have no ability to analyze data.
can you please provide sources for your claims?
- A study published in The BMJ states that air pollution from the use of fossil fuels in industry, power generation, and transportation accounts for 5.1 million avoidable deaths a year globally, with 61% of these deaths linked to fossil fuels. The study doesn’t provide a number for the US.
- According to the International Energy Agency, the transition to electric vehicles is an important step in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and combating climate change. In the United States, renewable energy sources accounted for 40% of electricity generation in 2023, up from 17% in 2000.
- The United Nations claim climate change is “the defining issue of our time” and “the greatest challenge to sustainable development”.
You just did. For #1, here is the relevant US data (https://news.mit.edu/2013/study-air-pollution-causes-200000-early-deaths-each-year-in-the-us-0829).
The increase of renewable energy sources from 17% to 40% from 2020-2023 is amazing and mostly due to policies enacted by the current administration. I don’t understand how that isn’t being celebrated and I can’t imagine how that progress will be damaged with the Republican nominee in power.
Thanks!
I like your post, but regarding China, you are dead wrong. They are the country that hast adopted electric cars the most, even more than Norway. There are also lots of videos on youtube of travvelers being surprised about this, seeing lots and lots of car brands that they (and me) never heard of before.
Yes you are correct - China is more about destabilizing Western democracy but their commitment to electrification has been good. Thanks for the clarification!
Right, and to your point, part of that is stymieing focused, direct action and ramping up of industry in the western world. So it makes perfect sense to be a global leader in every part of the EV supply and manufacturing chain while being interested in sowing division elsewhere so there’s no convergence of public interest and policy momentum that grows competitive industries. There’s no contradiction between those two things insofar as they serve China’s interests.
They’re marginally better but we don’t need marginally better, we need to get our shit together right now.
Doing “pretty much nothing for the climate” is hyperbole, I think. It’s hard to say what the net climate benefit EVs might have, because our system is so complex. The numbers I found show that electricity and heating accounted for the highest, single category of CO2 emissions, at around 15 billion tons annually in 2020. Transportation came in second at around 7 billion tons. If we could wave a magic wand, and instantly do a 1:1 replacement of ICE cars with EVs, it would put a big dent in that category’s emissions. It would also spike the electricity and heating category. Would the increase be less than the savings in the transportation category? LIkely, and the benefit would increase as more renewable electricity sources come online.
But even if we further used that magic wand to instantly get all of that new electricity for EVs from renewable sources, that still wouldn’t touch the vast majority of emissions, in which car-centric lifestyles play a large role, e.g. manufacturing, construction, land use, even electricity and heating. So saying that EVs will do pretty much nothing for the climate is inaccurate, but so is saying that they’re a big part of the solution. They’re just incrementally better, and the size of the increment is arguable.
I think the push-back is mainly directed at that line of magical thinking that says that all we need to do is switch to EVs to drive to the grocery store, bring re-usable bags, and get Starbucks coffee in compostable cups, and the environment will be saved.
It’s a diversion tactic. The vast majority of greenhouse emissions come from large companies.
They want us to argue about irrelevancies amongst ourselves to distract from that fact.
Are EVs a net positive for the environment? Maybe. But that’s like asking an atomic bomb survivor what they were wearing that day.
Here’s what the Union of Concerned Scientists has to say about electric vehicles. In short, they’re a win.
https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/electric-vehicles-are-cleaner
A lot of good answers here. One made me think about the good aspects, not just the game reduction aspects.
Electric cars are creating additional sources of funding for battery research, improvement of the electrical grid (there was a movement to get rid of central power generating and just use generators at each house), and electric generation smoothing.
Better batteries faster will help humans to make better use of the minerals we pull from the earth and the electrons we set in motion. (Imagine a battery peaking plant with 1980’s batteries.)
Improvement of the electric grid could limit wildfires caused by them.
Smoothing electric grid drawls moves generation from peaking with natural gas to more base load, hopefully with something better than coal.
Electric cars are creating additional sources of funding for battery research, improvement of the electrical grid (there was a movement to get rid of central power generating and just use generators at each house), and electric generation smoothing.
The kinds of battery used in cars and the kinds of batteries suitable for grid-scale operation only have a small overlap. They have entirely different needs. Car batteries make lots of trade-offs to very lightweight for example which is totally irrelevant in a stationary facility.
I think the only reason Li-ION batteries were even considered for grid-scale is that better suited battery technologies simply haven’t been researched until very recently.
If our goal was energy storage for our grids, we would not be researching BEV battery tech.
Hard disagree.
This week, I’m designing a circuit which would traditionally use relays, but I’m considering IGBTs instead. IGBTs weren’t designed for my industry, but they’re so cheap (thanks to quadcopters) that I can just overspec them and get the job done despite the lack of optimization.
Grid scale energy storage was already being researched before the EV boom – remember when people stopped talking about vanadium-flow? EV batteries undercut stationary-optimized batteries in $/kWh because EVs are lucrative enough to drive the research that much harder. Without the EV industry as the incubator for competing battery tech, stationary storage would still cost what it did in 2010.
EV batteries undercut stationary-optimized batteries in $/kWh because EVs are lucrative enough to drive the research that much harder. Without the EV industry as the incubator for competing battery tech, stationary storage would still cost what it did in 2010.
Cool but that’s beside the point. I don’t care how lucrative a market is for some aristocrat arseholes. I want what’s best for society as a whole, not the pockets of aforementioned aristocrat arseholes.
If we put all the money and effort that went into researching BEV batteries into researching and developing grid-scale batteries instead, I imagine there’s a good chance we wouldn’t need coal power plants anywhere on earth anymore.
I have absolutely no clue about your example but you can ask the same questions: If the R&D went into relay tech instead of IGBTs, wouldn’t you think those would be even less expensive for your use-case?
We rape Africa for those metals the in a similar way we’ve been raping the middle east for oil. I guarantee once the US starts mandating EVs and the majority start to transition over there will suddenly be some reason we need to have a vested military presence in Africa, with the possibility of wars centered around countries with these metals that we need.
It’s better for air quality and would do a shitload towards giving us some spare time to process climate change, but they come with their own baggage of bullshit in terms of environmental damage.
They are already shipping sodium batteries. By using lithium early and studying it they’re already finding cheaper and easier batteries to manufacture. Lithium is a stepping stone, that doesn’t mean it’s the final form.
The biggest hurdle that needs to be overcome in my own eyes is how we source the precious metals for the batteries. Look up Lithium and Cobalt mines in Africa. Of course this applies to all lithium batteries (phones and cars being the biggest players).
Sodium-ion batteries are already a thing and they look very promising. A few more years and we might not need precious metals for batteries anymore.
Interesting. I’ve not heard of this new battery technology before. Sodium should be much more easily sourced I would think. We’ll see, but for the meantime I’ll hang onto my phone as long as possible and not buy lithium battery powered vehicles. Most people don’t know about the working conditions that those children and adults are exposed to while mining lithium and Cobalt.
ICE vehicles are no better for mining and labor, it’s just a talking point at this point to try to make people buying EVs feel stupid. Like oil companies don’t have blood on their hands and we haven’t literally started multiple wars over oil
Manufacturing as a whole is terrible. Fact is if you buy anything there will be ethical concerns. At least with an EV once the purchase is done you won’t be continuing to poison the planet with fumes.
I once calculated that my upper-middle class EV (2.1 tons in kerb weight, sadly) is better for the environment (indeed, carbon neutral since I’m only using clean energy) starting at 70,000km of driving usage. I’m at 20,000km now, so I’m already 28% there :)
I mean “nothing” is beneficial to the planet besides just stopping dumping CO2 into the air and toxic bs into the land and ocean. There is NO substitute for stopping corporate pollution, I mean nothing. That said, electric cars have more perks than just environmental impact, they do marginally help and they’re cool. but in reality, you have to learn to tease apart what actual climate action looks like VS corporate adoption of “green washing” their products and putting the responsibility on the avg citizen. But that is infinitely hard for some people to come to realize.
You can run a fleet of ev on regenerative energy, that doesn’t work with converting engine vehicles. BUT the problem is it makes no sense if we just exchange all the ce cars with ev ones. We need to stay away from individual transportation solutions towards public transportation.
