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This genre of article is starting to get to me. It seems like we can either try to address climate change through carbon emissions by changing our relationship

This genre of article is starting to get to me. It seems like we can either try to address climate change through carbon emissions by changing our relationship with cars or we can ensure nothing changes and ensure that by the time my kids are my age that the world is a fundementally worse place. If the casualty is old parking garages, it seems like a fair deal Edit: it's been a few years since I looked at the numbers but any conversation about ev fires is statistically FUD. Full stop

mock-possum 3y ago
Right? Like - we might have to replace old parking structures oh nooooo
mcdonje 3y ago
A solution to transportation related climate change, traffic, and parking infrastructure is trains. The scenario isn't EVs or nothing.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
Electric cars were invented to save the motor industry, not the planet. What we need to do is to get as many people using active travel as possible, and recognise that electric bikes and electric scooters solve almost all the issues with EVs. They're much lighter than ICE vehhicles, don't cause congestion and with removable batteries, don't have any problem with finding charging points. Also, with removable batteries, it's possible to just swap in a fully charged battery - makes sense for delivery companies that have a fleet of riders on e-scooters.
- frumper 3y ago
  Unfortunately solving almost all of the problems isn't good enough. Electric bikes and scooters don't solve the problem of getting to work in a reasonable amount of time.
  - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
    Your fallacy there is letting perfect be the enemy of good. E-bikes and e-scooters are sufficient to transport a sizable percentage of the working population in less time that it would take a typical car, and the benefit is that every journey that they don't make in a car reduces congestion for everybody else as well as substantially less pollution. I would consider that the main failing of the personal motor car is that people try to use it for everything and design roads/cities around it. However, that doesn't work when the population density increases as more and more roads need to be built which then separates the businesses and houses even more which then requires yet more roads. Rinse and repeat until you have people sat in traffic queues just in an attempt to commute to work.
    - notacoward 3y ago
      > Your fallacy there is letting perfect be the enemy of good. Isn't that also approximately what you are doing? Yeah, maybe e-bikes and scooters are better for many (but certainly nowhere near all) use cases, but then regular bikes or public transportation or not needing to make a trip at all (e.g. WFH instead of RTO) are often better still. Your suggestion is clearly in the middle of the spectrum. Firing salvos to your left while ducking those from your right isn't going to be very persuasive.
      - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
        Not really as I recognise that transportation involves many solutions - active transport (walking, cycling), EVs (including scooters, e-bikes and cars) and public transport. No one solution solves all the issues and journeys of different lengths will lend themselves to different solutions. Unfortunately, too many people think that only car transport is an answer and use cars for short trips when walking is likely to be quicker (certainly much healthier).
    - frumper 3y ago
      Your fallacy is assuming that the e-bike is a "good" solution for me. I'm not even suggesting perfect, it's so far outside of realistic that it isn't a viable solution. According to Google Maps, each way of my commute is 47 minutes in car vs 4.5 hours on a bike.
corbulo 3y ago
EVs don't help global emissions. They centralize them to power plants and mining. Its debatable whether its net better than ICE for global emissions.

mock-possum 3y ago

Right? Like - we might have to replace old parking structures oh nooooo

mcdonje 3y ago

A solution to transportation related climate change, traffic, and parking infrastructure is trains. The scenario isn't EVs or nothing.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

ndsipa_pomu 3y ago

Electric cars were invented to save the motor industry, not the planet. What we need to do is to get as many people using active travel as possible, and recognise that electric bikes and electric scooters solve almost all the issues with EVs. They're much lighter than ICE vehhicles, don't cause congestion and with removable batteries, don't have any problem with finding charging points. Also, with removable batteries, it's possible to just swap in a fully charged battery - makes sense for delivery companies that have a fleet of riders on e-scooters.

frumper 3y ago
Unfortunately solving almost all of the problems isn't good enough. Electric bikes and scooters don't solve the problem of getting to work in a reasonable amount of time.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  Your fallacy there is letting perfect be the enemy of good. E-bikes and e-scooters are sufficient to transport a sizable percentage of the working population in less time that it would take a typical car, and the benefit is that every journey that they don't make in a car reduces congestion for everybody else as well as substantially less pollution. I would consider that the main failing of the personal motor car is that people try to use it for everything and design roads/cities around it. However, that doesn't work when the population density increases as more and more roads need to be built which then separates the businesses and houses even more which then requires yet more roads. Rinse and repeat until you have people sat in traffic queues just in an attempt to commute to work.
  - notacoward 3y ago
    > Your fallacy there is letting perfect be the enemy of good. Isn't that also approximately what you are doing? Yeah, maybe e-bikes and scooters are better for many (but certainly nowhere near all) use cases, but then regular bikes or public transportation or not needing to make a trip at all (e.g. WFH instead of RTO) are often better still. Your suggestion is clearly in the middle of the spectrum. Firing salvos to your left while ducking those from your right isn't going to be very persuasive.
    - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
      Not really as I recognise that transportation involves many solutions - active transport (walking, cycling), EVs (including scooters, e-bikes and cars) and public transport. No one solution solves all the issues and journeys of different lengths will lend themselves to different solutions. Unfortunately, too many people think that only car transport is an answer and use cars for short trips when walking is likely to be quicker (certainly much healthier).
  - frumper 3y ago
    Your fallacy is assuming that the e-bike is a "good" solution for me. I'm not even suggesting perfect, it's so far outside of realistic that it isn't a viable solution. According to Google Maps, each way of my commute is 47 minutes in car vs 4.5 hours on a bike.

corbulo 3y ago

EVs don't help global emissions. They centralize them to power plants and mining. Its debatable whether its net better than ICE for global emissions.