i’d rather live. no thanks. german bike lanes are the worst. also i’m not riding my bike 20km every day, not happening. i’m depressed enough.
Should try UK bike lanes. They don’t exist, and when they do they only go until the next intersection.
You can change infrastructure to deal with all your issues.
Dunno if it was the part of germany I biked but god damn! That was the safest I ever felt on a bike!
Understandable. I ride 26 km a day to work and bike lanes in my city suck. You either ride on the most left part of it and risk getting hit by a driving car or you ride on right and risk getting doored. And if you don’t keep a meter distance to parked cars it’s already part your fault.
Also had my first crash after a few weeks because a motorist didn’t see me. And I never had a crash in my almost 10 years and ~175000km of driving cars.
I knew a guy when I lived in Germany who rode his bike 20km one way (40km per day) to work every day. That guy was nuts!
I do the same. Almost my entire route is car free, I’d say I have to cross 2 or 3 roads.
You can’t tell me how much of an improvement it is to my life. I used to stand in traffic 2 hours a day, this is the best switch I’ve done.
I don’t know where you live but where I live, riding bike is good and public transport also. Besides: how would biking make you more depressed? Wouldn’t it rather be a good thing to do some sports?
Yeah but everyone “needs” an e bike nowadays, which compared to regular bikes is another step back.
I see it as a bridge between cars and bikes, and both have a time and place. My area is pretty flat and I do it partly for the health benefits so I won’t get an e bike. But if you have tons of hills, want to haul cargo or have a longer commute I can see it. It can be a “gateway drug” for people that wouldn’t otherwise buy a bike.
My concern with e anything are the tons of batteries that will need to be properly disposed of in the coming years and how many can’t or won’t be.
which compared to regular bikes is another step back.
I initially assumed that too, but it turns out that e-bikes are even more efficient than regular bikes. In other words, holding the total amount of (food calories + electricity kWh) constant, an ebike rider can go farther than a regular bike rider on the same amount of energy.
I also recognize that it’s easy to fall into a gatekeeping attitude of considering e-bikes as “cheating” compared to regular bikes, but us cyclists have really got to work hard to get over it because it’s not helpful.
If it makes the difference between someone using a bike and not using a bike, it’s still a step forward.
In a way, yea sure. I have a gut feeling that those battery’s will become the next big issue once gasoline has a way lower market share.
Battery operated devices are all over the place, there are just more components that require a battery, even small sensors here and there may use one. The current trend is pushing for this kind of automation where more devices are practically necessary. Ebikes are a part of the deal. Besides they are the best micromobility vehicles so far.
Battery recycling is far easier than gasoline recycling
eBikes allow older folks and disabled folks to get out.
You guys are truly insufferable. You hate on cars, but then hate on people who rely on eBikes.
I guess we should stop making electronic wheelchairs, too. Quadriplegics should just sit and die.
And inconvenience my schedule? No way
This is actually a legit excuse. If someone is working more than one job to afford rent, are we just going to tell them to walk an hour back and forth to the grocery store every day for food?
If the solution is for people to do things that require more time, the first step is to make sure people have more time.
Why yes, yes it would.
I bus nearly everywhere but I’m lucky I’m in a city and have access to transit. Build more transit!
I’m entertained by the fact that everyone gets hung up on how EVs are still not totally green because the electricity comes from coal fired plants or that there’s still manufacturing emissions and stuff…
It’s like, yeah, but compared to an ICE car, which has all the same problems (environmental cost of manufacturing the vehicle, mining and refining the fuel, transporting it, etc) but EVs don’t actively pollute nearly as much during use, and they speak as if these are of equal environmental cost, and they’re not. Additionally, ICE vehicles need a lot more oil to operate that needs to be changed and disposed of every few thousand miles.
It’s like doing less harm isn’t valuable to the people arguing against it, but then again, those are probably the same people who drive their V8 truck to get groceries.
Plus there are plenty of people, like myself, who live in areas where the electricity comes from mostly renewable sources.
Me too. I’m pretty well surrounded by nuclear and hydro-electric here in southern Ontario.
A yes, renewable nuclear energy.
Somewhat renewable through breeder reactors.
Still, nuclear energy has a very good carbon footprint (unlike coal plants) and the public image of them being polluters was a joint disinformation project by Greenpeace and the oil companies in the early 2000s. Greenpeace backpedaled hard on their stance in the recent years.
It also moves most of the population that is produced away from where people live and so out of their lungs.
Also, charging from the electrical grid means EV’s immediately get future improvements in CO2 usage when the grid improves its mix of power sources.
Larger engines (such as those in power plants) are also generally more efficient. And RVs don’t use oil to drive the oil to where the car can get oil - we have the grid (a modern wonder of the world) to do that for us.
The magical Nirvana solution that will turn our society into Star Trek still isn’t here, so we need to obstruct less harmful solutions while failing to offer anything usable.
It’s like, yeah, but compared to an ICE car, which has all the same problems (environmental cost of manufacturing the vehicle, mining and refining the fuel, transporting it, etc) but EVs don’t actively pollute nearly as much during use, and they speak as if these are of equal environmental cost, and they’re not. Additionally, ICE vehicles need a lot more oil to operate that needs to be changed and disposed of every few thousand miles.
None of that is the real problem with electric cars.
The real problem with electric cars is that they’re still cars, which means they embody the same arrogance of space as regular cars. In other words, they take up too much space – both while driving and while parked – physically forcing trip origins and destinations further apart and ruining the city not only for pedestrians, cyclists and transit riders, but even also for the drivers themselves.
(That last link is from the perspective of a car enthusiast, by the way.)
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
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I’m not going to argue with you on that point, I think cars are too big in the first place. With electric vehicles they can be reconfigured to ebikes or something much, much smaller. but I’m only mentioning the ICE vs EVs cost of manufacturing and how “green” they are. It’s a step in the right direction; it’s not the whole journey. Walkable cities and more compact designs of metro areas is still something that needs to be done, but it’s an entirely separate argument to the one I was making.
As someone who primarily drives because I live in a small suburb in the middle of a farm region, I’d be happy to park at the edge of a larger city and walk/bike/e-scooter/transit my way into the city. I think transit costs and the costs associated with most of the bike/e-bike/scooter services to be a bit high, given that I just drove to the city in the first place, but that’s a minor gripe among the plethora of other issues it could and would likely solve to have the city more pedestrian friendly.
Personally, given where I live, I’m more or less obligated to have a car, and if that car is a PHEV or full EV, would benefit the world overall; maybe not by a lot, but certainly more than using ICE vehicles to get around.
I just visited the US and I was dumbfounded how insane your city planning is. Like you literally can’t just make a short shopping trip on foot. You’d have to walk half an hour to even reach basic stores because the sprawl is so bad (City in CA with about 100k inhabitants) and then there are parking spaces everywhere. Like atleast half to 2/3 of the land space is used for parking. And ofc most parking is planned so they can accomodate everyone which means they’re always atleast half empty.
I live in Canada, we’re not any better. And for someone who lives here, it doesn’t make sense to me either.
Environmental impact is still less than ICE, yes, but until we figure out a better way to process lithium and make batteries last longer hybrids still have a smaller environmental impact over the lifetime of the vehicle. Eventually we need to cut out petrol entirety of course, but until we get clean batteries the better short-term solution is hybrids when a vehicle is strictly necessary, and bikes or waking in all other cases. An electric motorcycle might be a good short-term solution too, but as of now battery manufacturing is unacceptably dirty. But as you said, it’s still better than ICE. I just think hybrid would be better as a transition while the technology is improved.
Hybrids are often times even worse dan pure gas cars. Don’t believe the oil lobby.
From a practical standpoint, hybrid cars make no sense. You inherit the problems of both electric and fossil and you gain pretty much nothing. I don’t understand why they are still being made.
I understand the electric bit is cheaper and more efficient in city traffic while the fossil bit is more supported over long distance travel.
It seems intended for the teething stage where the charging point infrastructure isn’t rolled out extensively enough for pure EV usage, and public transport doesn’t do the thing.
I see a risk in complacency where the final steps aren’t taken of rolling out charging points and buffing transit because hybrids are “good enough”. Probably not a massive risk though as fossil’s stigma grows and fuel prices rise.
I agree that battery tech needs to be better. We also need to put in the work now to improve the grid so that when there’s wide scale adoption, the grid won’t collapse under the strain.
For the most part it’s a transit issue… we simply cannot move that many watts of power.
For the rest of it, and hybrids versus full electric vs bikes vs walking, that’s a much larger discussion, since not everyone will be able to adopt something more green than a highly efficient vehicle (whether hybrid or EV or otherwise)…
My main point is that they’ll argue dumb crap like manufacturing, that causes so much pollution, and say it in a way that almost seems like they think that ICE cars are better for that, somehow?
It’s like, we know it’s not “carbon neutral” or whatever… it’s just carbon massively reduced and that’s the point Carl.
Actually hybrid cars aren’t more green than electric cars. As much as electric cars aren’t perfect, they are by far the greenest option. Don’t trust oil lobbies :)
They will continue to astroturf any and all arguments no matter how stupid to see what sticks. We must continue to refute these idiotic claims and progress towards cleaner air
How bout electric bikes? 😊
They’re the best!
Good for commutes under 30kms IME.
They work well with trams and trains
I don’t know about you guys, but I’m giving up on public transport and going for a driving license.
Reasons include constantly late buses and trains, constant errors in signal systems and track systems, people talking loudly on phones or playing games on full volume, completely packed trains so people have to stand within centimeters of eachother.
Just got sick of all of it and realized I had enough.
It’s like with everything - trying to make maximum profits means quality goes to the bottom. I rather pay for fuel and cars and have my own car then deal with that shit anymore. I want to be happy, not sad.
Are you really a peach?
of course! A hot one at that ;)
Oh so you must be a very ripe peach!
But if you’re a peach how are you communicating? Are you still attached to your tree? Are there other sentient peaches?
I am still attached to a tree luckily. Unfortunately I am the only sentient peach, but I have a computer so I can use lemmy :3
🍑🍑🍑🍑 🍑🍑 🍑🍑 🍑🍑🍑🍑, 🍑🍑🍑🍑🍑!
EVs are basically cars, but more expensive.
Bikes sound like a great idea until you decide to live in the hills/mountains, or a place where it rains/snows often, or you need to buy more than 4 bags of groceries, or you live in a desert, or you are moving furniture.
Most of the people spouting the “everyone should ride a bike” stuff don’t have to feed a family of 4+ people.
I keep getting really confused reading comments like this, then remembering “Ah, yeah, probably an American who doesn’t have a small supermarket with all the everyday stuff literally next door”
Sorry that I live in a state with a size as big as your county, and a city with a population as large as a lot of countries.
In order to get everything that close you’d have to stack people on top of each other in slums like the kowloon.
I would much rather drive a mile to the store than to live in a little box stacked on top of other people.
But I guess we should just tear down hundreds of cities like mine and start all over to make them bike friendly. 🤣
Weird take.
No, you don’t have to stack people at all. A small store with 2-3 employees servicing a neighbourhood would very easily be profitable and convenient. You’d need to walk 10 minutes instead of 30 seconds if people were more spread out, but much better than the US big box store surrounded by the parking moat.
Assuming you’re talking about US suburbs, the only change would be some franchise buying a single house in a neighbourhood, bulldozing that and building a small store. That is, if it wasn’t illegal to do that due to zoning laws.
I live in a neighbourhood with a mixture of apartment blocks, parks and stores. When I step outside my apartment block, I can either walk 30 seconds to the store, the park, the vet, etc. People who live down the road from me might need 5 minutes to get to those places as they’re a bit farther away from our local store hub.
Of course big stores with much more variety and less commonly bought things exist, for that you do need some form of transport, even here. It’s just not necessary to go there to buy pasta and sauce to cook for dinner, for example.
One thing that would go a long way in helping with that would be if we improved the quality of urban schools / parks to the point where fewer people felt like they had to move to the suburbs to start families.
Yes, that would help, but that would require major reworking of large areas. Additionally, having a large density of population all living on top of each other presents its own unique problems.
Really, its a situation where different people and places need different solutions. Some can use public transport and bicycles, and some cannot. And unless the Earths population becomes so large that every square inch of the planet is as dense as a place like Kowloon, cars will continue to fill a use that bicycles and public transport can never fill.
And unless the Earths population becomes so large that every square inch of the planet is as dense as a place like Kowloon, cars will continue to fill a use that bicycles and public transport can never fill.
Cars didn’t exist until 200 years ago and didn’t gain the depandance they have now until 60ish year ago. Cars will cease to exist sometime in the future.
We’re living in a small bubble in history where cars exist, the question is if we want to gradually reduce dependancy on cars now, or wait for the forceful bandage removal.
but that would require major reworking of large areas.
Yes, that’s precisely what will be required. There’s no getting through this without implementing massive changes to our way of life. Everyone wants there to be some kind of easy get-out-of-jail-free card, but that’s not how it’s going to be.
Please tell me more about how easy it is to move furniture with a VW Polo!
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You picked a subcompact car, rather than a vehicle that any person with more than one braincell would pick for moving furniture, such as a truck.
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You 100% will have a better time doing everything else I said in even a subcompact like the Polo than a bicycle.
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But I don’t need a bigger car 99.999 percent of the time. Why should I buy a bigger one and pay it while not needing it instead of take a rental when I need to?
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Please read my other comment.
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Right lol, you either use a truck or rent a uhaul for that kind of business.
Exactly. And in a hilly/mountainous area, you get a bike with multiple gears (21 gear bikes are not a rarity even in the north german plains where I live) or with electric motor support. If you need to get a lot of groceries you either do groceries more often or get a cargo bike. For bad weather there’s clothing.
Nobody says a bike is perfect for everyone. But the vast majority of people live in urban environments and don’t need to haul tons of cargo daily. Bikes are a piece of the puzzle and if only those people had a car who actually need one often it could be a huge piece.
21 gear bikes are not a rarity even in the north german plains where I live
It is not amount of gears that matter, it is range of transmission that does.
For bad weather there’s clothing.
Yeah, it seems a lot of people just don’t know or don’t want to know what proper clothing is. Maybe they don’t even know it exists.
Nobody says a bike is perfect for everyone.
Well, anyone who can’t use bike will use powered wheelchair.
It is not amount of gears that matter, it is range of transmission that does.
You are completely right. I just don’t want to get too nerdy here.
Yeah, it seems a lot of people just don’t know or don’t want to know what proper clothing is. Maybe they don’t even know it exists.
Which is surprising given how many people I see wearing super expensive outdoor/hiking jackets to go from the parking lot to the supermarket every time a drop of rain falls.
deleted by creator
If only you could pedal a bike like you peddle that bullshit argument.
eBikes really take the sting out of hills.
I live where it snows a lot, winter tires are a must, but so long as bike lanes are properly cleared it’s not really a problem (big IF I know), until it gets to -25C or colder the cold isn’t really a problem (you warm up fast peddling, I normally find myself unzipping my jacket).
My cargo bike is enough for me to take 2 weeks of groceries for 4 people. The largest thing I have transported has been a fridge (which funnily enough couldn’t fit in my EV). the bike is rated for 200Kg, but I would bet it can take more if you don’t mind going a little slower. I have also transported lawn mowers, bar stools and a rocking chair. For anything bigger than that 30bucks on a uhaul is more than worthwhile, although I look forward to electric uhauls.
Yeah, I live in Montreal which gets like 90 inches of snow annually and can get down to the -20s Celsius regularly in the winter. And yet I (and many others) still bike throughout the winter. Turns out having good protected bike infrastructure and plowing it regularly in the winter makes biking perfectly practical even in the middle of a cold, snowy winter.
In fact, two of the best cities for biking in North America are Montreal and Minneapolis, both very cold and snowy in the winter.
You will be surprised how much grandmas with grandma trolley can carry.
E-bikes still have a massive carbon footprint compared to regular bicycles, and the battery efficiency is very adversely effected by high heat (deserts) and low heat (snow) .
Either way, a car, even if its an EV, will be the better pick for every situation I stated above.
Twice of something that isn’t very big in the first place.
Lifecycle emissions of ebiking can be a couple times lower unless you eat very green. Its been regularly over 100F here and I wish it was a desert so I didn’t have to also deal with humidity: I’ve ridden in thunderstorms and think its nicer than riding the middle of the sunny summer days. Either way, still better than driving in traffic. For moving large things, a car is not any better. And driving around a moving van every day would be a huge waste when you can just use them when you need them and drive a much better vehicle (a bike) when you don’t.
E-bikes still have a massive carbon footprint compared to regular bicycles,
The comparison is not between regular bikes and e bikes but between e bikes and cars. E bikes win this.
Either way, a car, even if its an EV, will be the better pick for every situation I stated above.
A 3000€ gaming machine will be better in any task than a 500€ office pc. But as long as the office pc is sufficient, why spend the extra money?
You can make more than 100 ebike batteries with the same amount of lithium as one electric car battery.
Ebikes actually have a lower carbon footprint compared to regular bikes, because they go more kilometers in their lifespan.
Keep coping loser. Many of us will be trying to actually fix the mess.
E-bikes still have a massive carbon footprint compared to regular bicycles
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. If you’d prefer to use a purely pedel bike go right ahead, but I find having a boost for heavy loads and hills makes biking preferable in situations it otherwise wouldn’t be. My battery is a 0.8kwh battery, which is more or less 15 iPhone batteries strapped together. My car is a 65kwh battery, literally 100x bigger for only 10x the range. While hard to find info, my understanding is my car is one of the more efficient ones out there too.
battery efficiency
Never comes into play, my bike has a 40km range with no load and no pedaling so typically even in winter the battery is far bigger than most trips I would take. There is also a longer range option (I think 100km) and you can quick swap the batteries if you really wanted to marathon. I do take the battery inside in winter as starting it warm does help it alot. I probably would be more hesitant to take heavy things in particular if I didn’t have the battery.
Either way, a car, even if its an EV, will be the better pick for every situation I stated above.
Well no, if you look at my comment I do own a car (bolt euv). I literally couldnt take the fridge in the car, i had to go home and grab my bike which could carry it. I use my bike because my city has good infrastructure that makes it quicker than driving. No need to hunt for parking, and the exercise is nice. Being able to use it while lightly intoxicated is also a plus.
I lived on top of a steep hill where it gets icy and we still rode bikes. You learn pretty quickly. You should watch mountain biker down mountain races on YouTube. People are more like mountain goats than you know!
Finland would like to talk with you. At the end of talk your world will be shattered. Your ribs will be shattered as well.
How often are you going to move furniture?
How many people live in a desert? How many people live in the hills/mountains? Most people don’t.
“Most people”, where? Because most people in, let’s say, Norway, live in areas with hills and mountains. The US isn’t the whole world you know.
You have no idea how people in Europe live. I live in Germany. Norway has 5 urban people for every rural living person: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/NOR/norway/urban-population
And still, the urban areas in Norway ain’t actually flat. I know, I live here.
Nearly every person in South California, which is an incredibly high density of population? The entire bottom half of California is practically a desert, literally home to one of the hottest deserts in the entire planet the Mojave which contains the appropriately named Death Valley.
How about the people that live in parts of Arizona, Nevada, Utah, much of southern Texas, and New Mexico? And thats just in the United States. What about people in other continents like Africa and Asia? Large areas of those continents contain entire countries whose borders never leave desert or hills and mountains. Nearly the entire Middle East and top half of Africa is desert. A large part of Australia is desert, its like more than 50% of the continent. 1/5 of the entire land area of Earth is a desert.
Buses, trains, subways, and trams?
Yeah fuck them. If they dont do what I do then then can go to hell am i right. Pls like and subscribe, 5 likes and ill turn into the hulk and rip my weiner off
“Bikes don’t work for some people, therefore why bother? Let’s all just drive.”
Good strawman 😍 How do i send a super like?
We also don’t have enough lithium to replace every car with an electric.
On some level it has to be public transit and better infrastructure or ecofascism.
No one wants the former so they’ll take the latter.
The problem isn’t the quantity of lithium, the problem is the ecological damage of mining that much lithium.
I mean, the ecological damage is directly correlated with the quantity extracted. i also made a big ol post showing how there’s not enough though so i agree on the damage but think its both.
Not true. There is more than enough lithium in the world for every person to have an EV. This is not even accounting for new battery chemistries like sodium ion that don’t use lithium.
I still want more public transport though. Trains are remarkably easy to electrify and don’t need batteries.
I’m pretty sure you’re wrong even if we count the stuff that would take millions of tons of ore mined per kilo of lithium.
What numbers are you basing this on?
“The U.S. Geological Survey produced a reserves estimate of lithium in early 2015, concluding that the world has enough known reserves for about 365 years of current global production of about 37,000 tons per year”
“With known lithium “resources” at 39.5 million tons, we get about 50 years of supply with 100 Gigafactories”
There is a lot more lithium in the world, particularly in solution in the ocean, that is not currently listed in resource estimates. As lithium demands increase, more of these sources will be utilised.
that’s from 2015 and relies on some assumptions that im sure were reasonable back then but would raise eyebrows now.
we don’t need to extrapolate the amount of lithium in a tesla battery anymore, it’s 60 or so kilograms, not the 10 the article uses for its calculation.
i like reserves a heck of a lot better than resources for this calculation, but even using resources i come up with a disconcerting 4.4kg lithium available for each persons ev battery. not nearly enough.
my own source here says typical EV batteries have only 8kg lithium in them (see the spoiler for the flaw in their use of a particular nature article that definitely wasn’t making its calculation to represent an ideal universal median ev), but even then there’s not enough to give everyone an ev.
but wait, it gets worse! we use lithium in a bunch of other stuff, and even if everyone on earth could get by with half a battery and didn’t need to haul a load, go offroad or anything that would require a bigger battery, they’d still want lithium batteries in their phones, tablets, computers, power tools, flashlights, vapes, game controllers, standard size rechargeables of all kinds and you know, all the stuff we use lithium for that isn’t storing charge (and there’s a lot!).
it’s not all the way worse yet! resources is great if we’re trying to maximize for evs, but awful if we’re trying to save the planet in any way. who out here is trying to frack (in terms of extracting a “tight” resource, not the process itself) more?
if we use the more conservative reserves figure it gets positively grim: just one and a half kilos of lithium for each person on earth! so if we don’t wanna tear up every scrap of the planet to make batteries only a little over the current number of cars on earth (1.474B) could be accommodated and even then that’s using the “typical” mass of lithium in each vehicle!
hold on, i can make it grimmer: producing enough evs for everyone on earth would need 6.6 billion more rolling chassis to put all those batteries in. so four times the productive capacity for cars that we have now. that’s not gonna be easy on the environment!
so id say we can’t put every person on earth in an ev. if we’re getting out of this its gonna be with reduced consumption, not an increase!
the math!
- 39.5Mt World Lithium Resources
- 13.5Mt World Lithium Reserves
- 60 Kg (138lb) lithium in a tesla battery
- 8 Kg (18lb) lithium in a more “typical” ev battery
- 1.474 Billion cars in the world
- 8.1 Billion people on earth
- 5.1 Billion adults on earth
39.5Mt/1.474B = a little under 53lbs per existing car. so we can’t even replace all the worlds existing cars with tesla batteries, let alone produce enough cars for all the people on earth. but what if all the cars were using what was categorized in Nature as a more typical EV battery?
39.5Mt/8.1B = 9.75lb lithium per person on earth. so we can’t give everyone a more typical EV battery (and we better have 100% perfect recycling!), but a lot of those are too young to drive, so what about just adults?
39.5Mt/5.1B = 15.4lb lithium per adult age 20 or up on earth. so we can’t even give the earths adults a “more typical” EV battery!
i’m just gonna show work for the reserves calculations without editorializing:
13.5Mt/1.474 = 18.3lb
13.5Mt/8.1B = 3.33lb
13.5Mt/5.1B = 5.3lb
It’s worth diving into the nature article that my source bases their claims of 8kg on. they look at the existing evs and calculate the amount from that. existing evs are almost universally small and light whereas replacing all the cars on earth with evs would require a decent portion of evs that can go off road and carry loads and have awful coefficients of friction that would use bigger and more lithium intensive batteries.
You might be right on this one. I’m not able to find a source to dispute that.
In other news, some Chinese car manufacturers are releasing cars with sodium ion batteries late this year / early next year. Lithium might not be a bottleneck for EV production.
I still agree with your initial point. More public transport is needed.
Didn’t meant to make it seem like an internet nerd debunking post. Sorry about that if the tone is off.
But yeah that’s what I meant by our choice of public transit (I don’t wanna say degrowth because of the goose chasing meme “who are we degrowing, who are we degrowing, motherfucker!”) or ecofascism.
Unfortunately no one wants to have public transit and no one’s making billions in profits off public transit so we’re gonna get ecofascism one way or another.
I don’t understand how hydrogen didn’t win the race. Transports and explodes just like gasoline. Make car go fast. Doesn’t degrade like lithium. Can be “mined” by throwing electricity at water during times of excess generation by renewables. When you burn it, it turns into water. Has none of the national security concerns of distribution of lithium mining and production in other countries.
Hydrogen might get more prominent in the heavy vehicles, with few more innovation.
probably because of infrastructure. electric charging stations were one of the first around and if you ask a new car buyer to choose between two renewable fuel sources, they’ll chose the one with the most stations. In the US at lease, hydrogen stations have always been few and far between, and often quite pricey.
Production is wildly inefficient and the storage and transfer of the stuff is quite tricky.
As I understand it, the big issue is energy density? A tank of gasoline takes you quite far compared to an equivalent tank of hydrogen.
And don’t get me wrong, lithium batteries are super bad at this too, but I do think that has been a limiting factor for H cars.
And then there’s the whole tire dust issue which is definitely a conversation worth having.
Wdym super bad? Most new EVs go like 500km on a charge
Yeah, but they require somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand pounds of batteries to do so. Some of the more egregious ones need multiple thousands, e.g. the electric hummer whose battery alone is heavier than an ICE Honda Civic. Whereas a dozen gallons of gasoline (roughly 72lbs at 6lb/gal) can power that same ICE Civic for a nearly equivalent range, while causing much less wear & tear on the roads, and likely releasing less tire particulates due to the reduced weight. Of course it still releases CO2 and other nasties…
But yeah, the energy density of EVs is still super bad. It’s just “good enough” that we’re making it work.
Hydrogen currently doesn’t produce, store or transport well. This means it is not as economical as gasoline.
Not really a fan of lithium batts either. We’re going to end up with some environmental problems down the line but its the most economically viable tech we have at present if we’re intending on living the way we currently live.
You need green energy to produce climate friendly hydrogen. This is a LOT more inefficient than to just use that green energy directly in EVs. Thus green hydrogen is also expensive and most importantly it is needed in the industry. It’s the same with e-fuels.
Because right now we don’t have that much excess energy… Therefore it’s just a waste of energy to use it, because it is way less efficient. AND on top of it an hydrogen car also needs a battery just a smaller one. So it has all the downsides without any upsides. The only upside is that you can recharge your car faster and it has some more range. But both those things don’t matter for the average consumer
It makes sense for long haul trucking and aviation vs batteries, at least for now, but it doesn’t scale well for most common consumer vehicles. Any hydrogen vehicle needs to be a hybrid because there isn’t the fine tune fuel ratio control you get on traditional gasoline.
Hydrogen for cars is a nonsense. It is so inefficient. Unless you are making it from oil, which why the oil companies are pushing it, you lose loads of energy making it. Then it has to storages and transported, which is hard. Then the car use of it is inefficient too.
So ignoring the oil industries’ “blue hydrogen”, and looking only at “green hydrogen”, you are looking at about 22% of the energy generated ending up pushing the car forward! With an EV it is about 73%. So hydrogen car are over 3 times more expensive to run.
Plus you can just plug in an EV anywhere. With an EV, if need be, you can charge, slowly, off a normal home socket. Of course, normally, you fit faster charging at home.
Hydrogen cars is lie pushed by big oil.
What about hydrogen fuel cells? They got 79% efficiency and can replace batteries of EVs right?
and can replace batteries of EVs right?
Toyota bet on this and it didn’t go anywhere in the US. They’re pivoting to battery EVs.
Even countries that invested heavily in hydrogen are pulling back - like Denmark eliminating all hydrogen stations. https://energywatch.com/EnergyNews/Renewables/article16432608.ece
Yes, but turning electricity into hydrogen doesn’t have 100% efficiency, during transport, storage and filling the car with hydrogen you lose some of it and only then you get to the fuel cell, which isn’t very efficient in itself. And then you lose a bit more (although very little) in the electric motor. All this amounts to the 22% of the guy above (didn’t check the number btw, but it sounds plausible)
To be fair, i think it may have some use for fleet vehicles like taxis and long range buses because these are applications where being able to refill in minutes at a fuel depo you already run actually matters as compared to the stress you would put on a large battery fast charging day in day out. I also believe that Japan has a nuclear plant that is being built with the capacity to efficacy generate hydrogen directly. That being said, for personal vehicles I can’t really see the market of people who need that fast of a refil being large enough to reach the economies of scale necessary to be practical.
Afaik it has a higher energy density than common batteries, so it could be useful in things like aviation where this is the main concern and you can build special infrastructure to support it.
The frustrating thing is that a car running on hydrogen works really well, has a pretty long range and can be refueled quickly, so it looks like a good alternative. It’s only when you ask how that hydrogen was made and how it arrived at the refueling station that things start to fall appart.
I don’t think any average person would know of these advantages. So theres a general lack of education about the topic.
There is also a hydrogen refueling network problem to overcome. Before public electric charging stations existed, electric people could charge at home and install their own chargers where required so the electric industry has been able to partially side step that issue at the beginning.
Finally I think it just doesn’t seem sexy. To a casual bystander it’s like gas in, pay, then drive as usual.
You can use liquified hydrogen which need to be chilled and insulated, and will evaporate away in a short time if not properly sealed
Or you use compressed hydrogen which means you are basically carrying an IED that weighs several hundred kilograms with the amount of pressure inside the gas tank
And hydrogen combustion is as others have said, inefficient.
Another issue is that you also need to use basically pure oxygen if you want to use a hydrogen fuel cell, otherwise the catalyst inside the cell would get poisoned
And well, there is a car that did all that, the Toyota Mirai, but that also pretty much ended in commercial failure, due to lack of hydrogen filling infrastructure and a whole load of other reasons.
Everybody keeps talking about all the problems storing hydrogen, but that’s just quitter talk. You know how you solve 'em quick and easy? You simply combine the hydrogen with some carbon to make a convenient liquid fuel! As a bonus, you don’t even need to develop fancy new fuel cell tech: you can burn it in the same engines we already have.
(Half of me is serious, and the other half is making a Key & Peele style “motherfucker that’s called gasoline” joke.)
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Key & Peele style “motherfucker that’s called gasoline”
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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I tell people yes do get an EV for your next car. But also use this chance to really think about if you need the car at all. Or does every adult in the household need a car each. Our city is trash for everyone having to own a car.
Best is to run your car to the ground. Then get an EV if you must own a car.
Best is to run your car to the ground.
Absolutely not if you have an older ICE car with bad gas mileage and/or a diesel. Even getting a NEW EV would be better for global warming and the health of your fellow humans than continuing THAT shit show.
Of course, as per the OP, bicycle and mass transit is still much better than any EV, but the really bad emissions cars should NOT stay on the road until their “natural” death unless absolutely necessary.
I don’t understand. I thought there’s more emissions being made from the creation of the EV and its lithium battery than using the remaining life of a gas beater.
They offset the Co2 used in production at around 40k miles, but the batteries are extremely recycleable as battery banks for solar systems, or as raw material for new batteries since it is already out of the ground and they have processes to recycle it now. The gas burned by a car can never be recycled or reused and is extremely inefficient in moving a vehicle. Not to mention the toll extracting fossil fuels is having on this planet. EVs get almost 200 mpg equivalent because of their efficiencies of motors and aerodynamics.
That’s a commonly believed myth. In reality that’s only true for the most efficient ICEs, not the ones I mentioned.
Source?
The idea is the concentration of lithium production can be more controlled (and recycled?) as opposed to leaving gas guzzlers out on the road. Plus the distribution of gas to gas stations and such.
As much as I want an EV. My country is just not set up for a smooth transition to EV yet. Until then it’s best to just not give the auto industry more sales and run what you have until you’re realistically ready.
Unfortunately mass transit that works for everyone is the enemy of vehicle manufacturers.
And the rich. They need to differentiate themselves somehow from the poor
Optional first class for higher price could be used for this.
That’s a good idea
If I could guarantee that my job is remote forever, or have it written in my contract, I would sell my car.
Your car will be worth less the longer you hang on to it. You can sell it and hang on to the money until your company tries to get everyone back in the office.
This is likely not going to be the case for the classics (old->modern-day). A Honda Jazz will lose it’s value, a classic Aston? Less likely - even static some of them are works of art.
Ok but what if the Aston isn’t cared for properly and left out to rust? Then the price will go down!
Is my bringing-up-a-small-edge-case helpful? Does pointing to 1% of situations refute the general case or further the discussion in any meaningful way?
Simply pointing out that not all cars will depreciate in value. Well maintained ones should continue to hold their value until oil prices and taxes make them out-of-reach for the average citizen. Let us not forget that 80 percent of vehicles are bought in the second-hand market… Nobody has raised the prospect of killing that market off yet in a policy sense (of which I am aware).
I live a short bike ride away from the shops. I have some side bags for the ebike I built so lugging groceries isn’t too much of an issue.
The biggest shift is learning you wouldn’t shop the same way you do with a car. With a car you go to a big supermarket and load up a trolley. Spend over a hundred for a week’s worth and drive home. With a bike you kinda just buy as needed for the next couple days. You do more trips throughout the week which is kinda nice too. Forces you to get out of the house more. Benefit I realised when doing this was vegetables were less likely to just die out in the fridge since I bought as needed. Which meant I spent a little less overall.
Do you have access to food, stores, etc using public transport? How do you go about buying stuff and bringing it back home?
Live in a not so small town in Germany. I haven’t had the need to have a car after I have been living for 9 years.
I commute with bike to work, take public transport when it’s a farther journey.
Until I have a daughter a couple of months ago. I realize that I really need a car. :(
It’s hard to have a baby without a car. It’s for sleep, for nappy changing, your closet and your pantry. Those first few years especially. If you need one even for a few years it’s totally understandable.
Yeah. It’s very difficult. Going to pediatrician for example. Or if it’s raining. It’s so troublesome to bring a baby with a bike in that situation.
The cargo bike boom has brought us some really decent ways to transport small children and stuff by bike, I actually think it’s quite possible to use is you live in a not so small town. There are accessories to weather proof the cargo area, there are Iso-fix mounts for child seats and once the child can sit by itself it’s usually quite a joy for them as well. These bikes are also protecting the child in case of a fall much better than you would think.
However I really do understand that a car is significantly more convenient. I live in rural Germany and there distances can easily amount to 10-15km one way to run errands such as going to the pediatrician. It’s just a bit much, particularly with a toddler. And the car really does become storage for clothes and all that, you can just park it and everything in there is dry and safe, all that makes the car very attractive. Also a decent cargo bike with kids-friendly accessories will run you as much as a cheap small used car, although only the initial cost of course.
The key to bad weather is decent clothes, and children can easily be weather proofed for the most part. My kid is three now and I’ve seriously considered switching over to a bike, but only to replace the second car that I frequently use because my partner will need one to go to work anyways. But running the car cost me around 250€ every month (I keep track of every expense except cleaning) and that is only as long as nothing major breaks. Upkeep of even a large cargo bike is a fraction of that.
Sounds great! I still don’t think that a cargo bike is very safe. Especially for a baby. :(
It definitely crosses my mind, that I’d do that if the kid is getting older. But definitely not before 2-3 years old.
I haven’t bought a car yet. I’m still in paternal leave so I can manage to do everything. Once I start working, let’s see how well we are doing without a car. :)
Even in America, I have seen a fair few parents carrying their kids around by bike. It seems it’s not totally impossible, though you may need to put your bike through some upgrades.
I bet those people are doing it for economic reasons, not environmental ones. A bicycle is probably the most dangerous form of transportation for you to have your kid on.
How us bicycle more dangerous than cars?
Sure cars have all the safety features for people on the inside, but on a bike you’re exposed to much slower speeds and better field of view. Bike accidents have much smaller fatality rate than car accidents.
Unless of course you mean cycling among cars is less safe, but that argument just confirms that cars are unsafe, not bikes. Bikes are not dangerous. Cars are.
It wouldn’t be any dangerous if car and bike infrastructure was structurally separated (and if there were far fewer cars).
But they aren’t.
That should be changed, shouldn’t it?
Of course, but if my vehicle was the only vehicle in the world, I’d still feel like a 2 year old kid on the back of my bike going 7 miles is more dangerous than on a bus, train, or even a car over the same distance.
I don’t dare to bring my now 3 months old baby with bike. The weather is still "summer"y now. In winter I wouldn’t do it. I myself have fallen down from bikes at least 4 times in the last couple of years. I can’t imagine if that happens while I’m taking my baby with bike.
It’s possible, but it’s really obnoxious and shitty. Especially if the weather is too cold for a new born to be outside.
New born parents is one of the few true excuses to use a car over a bike, imo.
But that’s okay, we’ll still need roads for emergency services anyway so it’s okay if some people use them.
I have two kids and use a bike (for ecological reasons). I realize I’m incredibly lucky my area has very good and safe biking infrastructure. Had to upgrade to a electric cargo bike when the second one came about, but I don’t regret at all, it’s more’confortable and safer for the kids. I do own an old ICE car, which I considered replacing with a new EV, but since I drive maybe a few hundreds of kilometers per year, I figured it’d make more sense to keep the old diesel than to replace it.
Most of the criticisms that come from the right are solvable problems, such as lack of chargers, electricity coming from dirty sources, or lithium mining. We pretty much know how to solve all those at this point. Just a matter of doing it.
Criticisms that come from the left tend to be more fundamental. Things like car-based cities being too spread out, infrastructure costs spiraling out of control, or having the average person operate a 2 ton vehicle at speeds over 60mph and expecting this to be safe. None of those are specific to EVs, and are only solvable by looking at different transportation options.
But solving problems costs money! We need to be transferring those dollars to our wealthy donors, not spending them on public improvements!
The problems you’re describing from vthe right and the left are really the same problems. They’re just expressing their perception of them differently. Infrastructure solutions and spiraling costs are more challenging in less dense areas where the right tends to hold more sway. It isn’t a simple, cost effective answer. Yet.
How is lithium mining a solvable problem? Genuinely asking
Oceanic sources. The projects getting underway are focusing on brine pools like California’s Salton Sea, but sea water sources of lithium in general are basically indefinite, and can work anywhere with a coastline. Other harvested salts may also produce useful byproducts, and you may even be able to run it as part of a general desalination plant for freshwater.
Now, this is interesting!
Seawater contains 230 billion tons of lithium, compared to just 21 million tons in conventional land-based reserves. Lihytech estimates that extracting just 0.1 per cent of all lithium from seawater would be enough to meet humanity’s technology needs.
Source: https://www.theengineer.co.uk/content/news/kaust-spinout-will-extract-lithium-from-seawater/
Not to mention there are advances with lithium recycling, both in facilities and new processes to make it more efficient.
Also, wouldn’t it be an option at some point to switch to other resources? There is so much money being thrown at alternative battery technology
