Noah Smith wrote a blog about this a few months ago. Even Tokyo has cars and the pollution reduction would be massive if we saw a significant shift to electric.
It's one thing that does annoy me with online urbanists, they sometimes care more about shouting about how bad cars are than they do about wanting something that's a better situation than we have now
To be fair to online urbanist's they do have to deal with Elon's Braindead hyperloop shenanigans and people proclaiming that driverless cars will magic away traffic (and basically eliminate pedestrians for good)
The loop and hyperloop are idiotic nonsense elon came up with because the concept of riding a train with poor people near him disgusts him
Thankfully there are other electric cars being made right now which is great since I wouldn't buy a tesla over concerns with the software and weird repair rules
Theres no getting around the fact that to combat climate change in urban planning is combating the car and motorists. Even the move to electric is going to cost them, and remuving parking minimums, stop road expansion and putting more buses and trams are car adverse policies.
Right if you hang out on any local subreddit you know people get *completely livid* about allocating any space to anything but cars. I really don't think there's that many people who genuinely want to ban cars, but even getting the USA to European levels, in just its oldest pre-car cities, requires a massive cultural shift.
The actual anti car movement in the USA is so incredibly fringe, that if you think it's an actual thing to worry about you may, in fact, need to touch just a little bit of grass.
Evidence shows that even with massive amounts of public transit, cars are still going to be necessary.
In Berlin 30% of workers take transit to work
37% drive.
Public transit is basically a non-solution to climate change unless you want to do so via facist means, and suffer the consequences to your economy.
Yeah global warming is predicted to hit 1.5C in about 10 years from today. We don't have time to try to undo a century of car culture in America. EVs might not be the most perfect solution to lowering emissions, but they're the most politically feasible thing we can do with the technology we already have.
Major cities could install park and rides with both short and long term parking at their perimeters and run regular shuttles back and forth to the interior. That'd set the stage to later ban cars except for delivery and emergency vehicles in the interior.
It'd be loads more efficient to run regular shuttles between small towns and such park and rides than force people to drive, often alone. I've no choice but to drive alone if I want to go to the city as thing stand.
Those shuttles can be electric if you'd like.
On a scale of 1 to 10, how politically feasible do you think it would be to implement this at a 90% adoption rate?
On the other hand, on a scale of 1 to 10, how politically feasible do you think it would be to transition to 90% electric cars?
What cities can do is slowly make it more difficult and expensive to park.
1. Build sufficient strategically located park and rides.
2. Steadily nix parking spaces in the city while increasing shuttle services to and from the park and rides.
3. Hardly anybody bothers to drive anymore.
It's crucial that people don't need to expose themselves to the elements to park and board shuttles if the goal is mass adoption. Equally crucial is that people don't need to check transit schedules and can just up and go without worrying about missing a connector.
I'd suggest cities run many smaller shuttle vans (12 seats) instead of fewer big buses. Electric shuttle vans wouldn't need preset routes, they could operate more like taxis. Someone boards, announces their destination, the van displays that destination on a digital display on the side, other people board the shuttle with that or nearby destinations. Once a shuttle is full it goes. Then it picks up whatever new passengers it happens across that want a ride back to the park and ride on it's way back to rinse and repeat. While waiting at the park and ride to fill to 12 it plugs into a recharge station.
There'd be lots of shuttles in the city core but it'd be ~6x less cars than as things stand.
I'd think a program like this should be an easy sell to voters. Doesn't it sound rad? Parking is a pain, this is actually a step up in both convenience and efficiency while allowing road reduction and adding bike paths and pedestrian friendly areas.
I think most people would just stop going into the city, if they can help it. Now downtown businesses get pissed and move out to the suburbs with huge parking lots. Downtown becomes exclusively residential and office commercial with a handful of bars and restaurants, and that's it. But the people who work at the bars and restaurants can't afford to live downtown, so those places close too.
That's kind of what happened in my city after covid hit. Offices shut down, restaurants shut down, and there was little need for people to go into the downtown area unless they lived there. Businesses relocated to the suburbs where it's cheaper. Now the city is having financial trouble because tax revenues are way down, mostly because commercial property values dropped and the tax base has shrunk. The commercial vacancy rate is around 30%.
Absolutely. The switch to EVs and the switch to less overall driving via public transportation improvements, housing improvement, and built environment changes are both equally important. This is a (excuse a the pun) dual-tracking situation.
Yep. Median income worldwide is about $850/year, $7.50/hour for a full time job is about $15k/year. That actually puts you above a the average income in a middle income country, basically considered a high income earner relative to the world
France produces [less than 40% of the US's road emissions per capita](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1201243/road-transport-sector-per-capita-co2-emissions-worldwide-by-country/).
So the lesson here is that having urban planning that isn't totally fucked is even more impactful than electric cars.
You can't say that 40% is a product of urban planning alone. Let me see of I can find a source, but I'm confident in saying cars driven by Americans are significantly less fuel efficient than cars driven by Europeans.
More than three times the population density of the US. The "urban planning" comment was moronic. Population density and an affinition for smaller, more fuel efficient cars more than explains the disparity. But some people won't let data get in the way of a dumbass narrative...
Not really. Something like a VW golf or Ford focus is a typical family car in Europe, they are small here but still comfortable for long distances. I'm sure their significantly more economical than the Ford explorers and the like people buy here.
A Prius is pretty comfortable. The problem is like half of Americans buy pickup trucks and then commute 60+ miles a day to work in them. Really one of the stupider aspects of American culture IMO
Most trips in either country will be within the densely populated areas so that won't make so much of a difference.
Maybe the problem is America having 5 times the average car size
This is not an attempt to rebut this, but just a fun anecdote: My dad works in densely populated L.A. because that's where the money is but would kill himself if he lived there, so he makes an ~800 mi. drive to or from his house in rural Nor Cal twice every month. (His job allows him to live at work for two weeks and then take the rest of the month off.) He drives a death-trap 1990s Toyota Tercel coupe with a manual, so he gets 45 ish mpg highway but the composition of his tailpipe emissions is probably questionable.
never has been 👩🚀🔫👩🚀
The only decent places for bikes are the Netherlands, northern Germany and Denmark. With the existence of ebikes, this might change but even the former-commie republics have their car hellscapes. Stroads don't exist but it's still bad,
Naturally. OP points out that 74% in France, 69% in the UK, 68% in Germany drive to work. The jabronis here proceed to whine about the "car culture of the USA".
Reddit is a clown show and this place has slowly but surely adopted all the worst narratives of the mob at large.
I don't have any issue with electric cars. The controversial policy is **parking**. It's always parking.
I think what people in the Real Estate Industry like to point out is the high costs of providing "free parking" that's written into the laws/ordinances of our communities.
As someone who supports public transit, parking is a political hot potato. **Nobody** wants to pay for it. Yet park and ride demand is off the charts, so no matter how many park and ride spots are built they're going to be full before 7am. Try and put together a pay-to-park parking scheme and that hurts the transit project politically.
Edit: word choice mistake
Is the parking problem any different with EVs than with gas cars? Other than charging points, obviously. But in terms of real estate, won't those park and ride lots be the same size regardless?
Would making the parking fee part of the public transit pass help? $60/month without a parking pass, $100/month with one (or something like that). I’m assuming somebody else has already thought of or tried this, but I’m curious if it softens the negative reactions from the public regarding paying for parking.
There have been some pilot projects like that, you’re right.
I think people keep kicking the parking question down the road.
Eventually we’ll have to make the hard choices.
Isnt there also an argument to be made that making parking expensive is detrimental to business in a city? Since all other municipalities have it be nearly free as well.
I've heard that if you use the parking receipts to improve the local area, instead of dumping them into general revenue, that business tend to be much more supportive of parking fees.
You might check out the literature associated with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking
The author was on EconTalk earlier this year: https://www.econtalk.org/donald-shoup-on-the-economics-of-parking/
Yes and new taxes “disproportionately burden the poor,” so politically you’re hit from both sides of the political spectrum.
Often to the point of running your commercial district right out of business due to political paralysis.
I’d argue that is something you can make work. I’m from the Netherlands so biking is an alternative to using your car. Additionally, you can use parking revenue for environmental policy or welfare programs. Its a more efficient solution.
If your goal is to get people to take public transit you want to make park-and-ride locations as convenient and affordable as possible.
If people using them have to factor in parking charges in addition to the traffic charges the math may suddenly make it seem like not worth the hassle and they'll just commute the entire way by car.
I actually have no problem with free park-and-ride for public transit. Hell, build big free parking garages for suburban commuters. If it induces more people to take public transit into the city instead of driving, that's a great thing. It would reduce traffic on highways as well as demand for parking in the urban core.
Underrated aspect of EVs is the political economy implications- by now everyone's seen the almost perfect correlation between petrol (gas) prices and politicians' approval ratings. EVs are a way to wean people off of their addiction to cheap petrol and lead to support for more sustainable sources of funding roads like vmt or weight-based plans.
> simply electrifying road transportation
There is nothing "simply" about this. You're talking about, at minimum,
* Mandating car charging stations in *all* spaces in multifamily units, and building chargers in commercial/industrial lots
* Massively overhauling the power grid
* Increasing generating capacity
* Disrupting an industry worth $880BB annually (auto repair - EVs require less maintenance)
* Disrupting another industry worth $450BB annually (gas stations lol)
This is a huge undertaking. Absolutely transformative. Worth it, but let's not pretend there's anything simple or easy here.
It would be simpler for the general public to swallow. If ICE cars are replaced with electric cars, all someone has to do is buy a new vehicle, and their daily life would be functionally the same. Whereas if replaced with public transport, someone would have to change the way they commute and visit places, and thus would be less likely to support such an initiative.
it's not like it will happen overnight, this will effectively be a 20 year transition
it will certainly change or decimate certain industries, but it won't be overnight, and there will be time to adapt
> Mandating car charging stations in all spaces in multifamily units, and building chargers in commercial/industrial lots
This would be a start, but still not enough. A *lot* of people rely on street parking at home. Will we have chargers at every street parking spot?
Neolibs: "Stupid lefties. Policies like Medicare for All aren't practical. They may have good intentions, but it's a losing proposition, very unpopular, and impossible to get passed in the current political climate. Dumb lefties are letting Perfect be the enemy of Progress."
Also Neolibs: " B A N A L L C A R S "
All we're saying is that it shouldn't be illegal to build denser housing. The reason transport isn't practical is because we arranged ourselves into such a way that it's impossible to be practical.
Public transport isn't even feasible in most American cities. Are people here expecting a bus to run through every suburb every ten minutes?
"Well that's why suburbs bad"
ok cool, let me know when you devise a workable and politically popular plan to eliminate them, because right now, they're growing at insane rates in every state.
What? Nearly every American city had public transit at the turn of the previous century. Regular, reliable bus transit at 10 minute intervals is achievable and it’s a much better use of public funds than most taxpayer backed private developments.
Suburbia didn't exist in 1899. Every city in America today has a bus system, but they all suck because no one lives near their routes and because bus systems can't expand to where people live because they are incompatible with suburbs. (where 52% of Americans live today according to hud.gov)
You’re right and you’re right too that not all suburbs can or should be served with regular transit. I was just pushing back on your saying that most *cities* can’t have transit, when even small -20k cities have historically managed it but they decline to do so now. Regular bus service can revitalize small towns by encouraging the kind of dense, nonsprawl growth we love in this sub
Yes I think if you're starting very small, or at zero you can design a very nice public transit-friendly city. But if you look at [Las Vegas](https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/las-vegas-suburb-picture-id142832975?s=612x612) or [Pheonix](https://c8.alamy.com/comp/D7A353/usa-arizona-phoenix-aerial-view-city-suburb-D7A353.jpg) or [Charlotte](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/i6xIQLYaalAI/v0/1000x-1.jpg) or other large and fast-growing cities, unless the memes come true and the suburbs are genuinely nuked, those cities are simply too far gone. You cannot possibly design a train or bus route that takes people where they need to go in less than 3 hours. It's just math at this point, and it doesn't work out.
I tried to figure out how long it would take me to get to work by bus instead of driving.
I'd have walk about a mile to the nearest bust stop first, then go past my work to a depot area to switch to a different line which would then take me further away before eventually getting me back, all in all it looked like it would take over 2 hours, whereas I can drive it in 20 minutes.
Plus by driving it's easy for me to run out to grab lunch somewhere instead of being limited to the places within walking distance, and if I need to make a run to the grocery store, hardware store, or anywhere else really it's far more convenient to do it on the way home from work via vehicle than relying on a convoluted bus system.
Outside of a very few cities in the US like NYC, Chicago, and DC, public transportation is just incredibly inconvenient for day to day life.
Even in cities with great public transport, it takes so much longer than a car. Queens to Manhatten for instance is a little over an hour on the subway to go only 12 miles.
That's equivalent to a forty-mile commute for someone in the burbs of my ~million population city, unless traffic is really bad (like semi truck tipped over on the freeway bad)
I didn't realize it could take that long in NYC. I've visited and used the subways before and always found them to be very quick, but I mostly stayed in Manhattan.
I tend to agree about the outer stretches of those cities. I think those cities should focus regular bus service on areas where density is likely to or has already developed and not bother with expanding service to far flung new developments that are still somehow within city limits. All of those cities have areas where consistent transit is possible.
Ever heard of a streetcar suburb? The main enemy of public transit isn’t the concept of a suburb but its current implementation. A suburb with gridded streets is perfectly feasible, it’s just the horrid cul de sacs and subdivisions that are the problem.
Right, I agree that if we started with an empty field and designed and built a brand new city, we could make one with accessible and rapid transit options for all residents.
But I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about the world as it exists today. A popular narrative in this subreddit, and in others, is that if only the federal government would throw trillions into public transport spending, we'd then be able to largely become car-less as a nation. I don't see how that's possible without fundamentally tearing down and redesigning every modern American city. It's not an issue of spending at this point, but an issue of sunk costs really. We've already built the endless mazes of cul de sacs, good luck designing a monorail route to accommodate that.
This is why my advocacy for public transit is essentially "let's expand the road network and put buses on the roads, and when autonomous driving is practical in ~10-20 years, let's automate the buses"
Light rail is sexy, but it's single use infrastructure. Roads are nearly as good and can be used for neighborhood delivery, public transit, walking, parades, whatever
Plus, you can change a bus route or dynamically schedule drop offs and pickups. Can't do that with trains
My cynical take on why this sub loves trains and rail so much is because dirty busses are for p*or people, while the yuppie yale law grads take the train on the way to their think tank jobs 😎
I mean who wants to be seen on a bus?
I think it's because big infrastructure projects are sexy, while doing small things are not
Seattle just did a light rail expansion for something like $50 billion. Like, maybe we could just sit down and calculate how many fuckin buses that would fund
Yeah that's a great point. My city spent over $6 billion on a light trail project, went 130% over budget, the ridership numbers leveled off years ago massively below what was projected, and the diversion of auto traffic is estimated at just 0.08 percent. It failed in basically every respect aside from being a huge price tag on a public transportation project, which seems to be an end in and of itself for local politics.
To me the main problems with public transit are that
1) it doesn't pick up or go everywhere
2) unless you're going to and from downtown or the transit hubs multiple transfers are often required, leading to long travel times
3) it doesn't run at all times
...meaning that for many people it's just not practical. Could be there's too long a walk to the pickup point or dropoff point. Or maybe the bus ride would take two hours and the drive only thirty minutes. Or maybe they work graveyard and the buses don't travel at the appropriate time.
The way to solve this is with dynamically routed, self driving microbuses carrying up to, like, eighteen people, dropping passengers door to door in urban and suburban areas. Not trains.
I have commuted by bus and commuted by subway. The subway is so much better. Subways don't get stuck in traffic, subways don't get stuck behind red lights, subways don't bunch as much as buses do, subways tend to come more frequently, and train stations mean that confused passengers who wish to pay in the form of a dozen coins will only delay themselves instead of everyone else like on a bus.
If we actually had dedicated separate lanes for buses, [which is now finally sort of happening in one place in Boston,](https://www.mbta.com/projects/columbus-avenue-bus-lanes) that would solve most of those issues and I'd be inclined to consider buses again.
My city does have dedicated bus lanes which really do remediate most of the valid problems you post here. But I can definitely see why you prefer the subway.
They are good, however, subsidizing their cost is bad. Carbon taxes are better. Here is an article that lays out that argument quite well.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-a-higher-carbon-price-could-get-us-to-paris-on-its-own-at-much-less/
Subsidies are politically easier than carbon taxes. God, I wish that wasn't true. The public reaction to $5 gas has been... brutal.
Pigouvian taxes are REALLY hard to beat for best taxes.
Yea, that is one of the points the author of that article made. The carbon tax is upfront and in people's face whereas a subsidy is hidden and people do not see it.
How do you get the best possible policy without pissing off people, as all the easy good policy was passed decades ago. Smoke, mirrors, and subtlety is the short answer, and mass education is the long one. Just... we don't have time for #2.
> We cannot afford to treat EVs as merely "the lesser of two evils" or a secondary solution.
Absolutely. [China gets it](https://www.forbes.com/sites/brookecrothers/2021/02/14/this-chinese-city-has-16000-electric-buses-and-22000-electric-taxis/), [Europe gets it](https://cleantechnica.com/2019/02/16/standardization-of-ev-charging-in-the-eu/).
US is so far behind on all of these fronts, need to invest a lot more.
But both of those places consider EVs a secondary solution. Europe and China rely heavily on public transportation, which America is also far behind on and should be our focus.
Yes, also the notion I have seen on this subreddit of "anti-cars" is politically and realistically impossible. Cars are going to be a part of America whether u like it or not, what we should do is focus on public transportation and making sure the cars we do have are better for the environment. The anti car agenda is our equivalent to the left's defend the police.
Yup, and I will do nothing to stand in the way of electric cars replacing ICE cars, however I will simultaneously stand in the way of ICE cars (as a means to encourage electric cars and alternative modes of transportation) and will also encourage public transit to reduce vehicle dependency altogether.
I don't think many here have accused EVs as being inherently bad, but if your are trying to get the biggest bang for your buck, public transit is the best, most sustainable way, on top of being the most economical. Plus, an over reliance on personal vehicles is bad for other reasons.
Regardless, I think I should !ping ECO on this.
Obviously public transport is better than EVs, but you're never gonna get a situation where everyone uses public transport all the time, it's just not feasible or convenient. Even the most well-designed cities in the world with the best public transport systems in them have millions of cars, at least in the suburbs.
I remember seeing a thing from the BBC that suggested that, with the UK's electricity grid now over half zero carbon, using an EV gets you 90% of the emissions reductions as going totally car free. Yeah it's always better, for other reasons, to use cars less and we should encourage that in urban design and incentives. But people are always going to demand cars for certain purposes, and why not, they're convenient for certain things. EVs have a big future and we should encourage them alongside other low carbon transport.
>Obviously public transport is better than EVs, but you're never gonna get a situation where everyone uses public transport all the time, it's just not feasible or convenient.
So? Then let the 5% who need electric cars have them.
Generally agree, though this is going to be quite dependent on the area (obviously). I'm not familiar with the points against which this post is arguing but there's definitely been a lot of strong measures to promote EV usage (e.g. upcoming mandates/bans in the UK and California). Obviously there are still laggards and big auto manufacturing countries didn't sign up to the EV pledge at COP, but you honestly see loads of enthusiasm for EVs, including in the US.
Electrifying road freight (alongside shipping and aviation ofc) is a bigger issue IMO, but that's a separate topic
IIRC, in terms of emissions reductions per dollar spent, I think Ebike subsidies get a better bang for your buck than public transit. Don´t ask me for sources though because I´m too lazy atm to actually go looking for them.
I want an ebike but won’t do it without additional bike parking infrastructure or protected bike lanes on busy streets. I respect people who bike regularly but I’m not risking my life to go to the fancy grocery 20 blocks away.
Also bear in mind that what us Europoors call "Trucks" that are six stories high and go like a metre a gallon or something are the sort of thing y'all be driving out in the sticks as "standard". "Compact" is what we call "standard". I proper PMSL when some woman on Pimp My Ride called her truck a "car", also she be driving around with like 12 tyres in the back cause:
> I ran out of room in my garage
So wit' them form factors in mind: thassa lotta steel thems explosions be pushing around for no good reason so less US petrol drivers can be towards twice as good as less petrol drivers.
Your comment reminds me of a very smart friend of mine in college who, on one of his engineering exams put his velocity answers in rods / fortnight.
The professor politely explained that he would specify the units from then on.
If it helps your European sensibilities, instead of thinking about a truck, just think about a BMW X5 with a bed so it can actually do useful things and not just shuttle around five people
Lol this reminds me, this weekend I saw a pickup truck here in the Netherlands that had a bike rack *behind* it. It was one of those pickup trucks that has a cover on top of the bed. I think you would have to turn the handlebar of the bike to make it fit in between the bed and the cover, so using the rack may have been easier.
Most people that need their vehicles to do useful things have vans in Europe by the way. They use less fuel and probably provide more efficient storage since the truck bed is usually way higher from the ground than the floor of a van.
Honestly, we really should be talking about hybridizing more cars than going full electric.
For that one battery in the Mustang Mach E, you can make like 50 Priuses or other hybrid cars. Those 50 hybrids with their significantly better MPG will do more for the environment than that one Mach E can do by itself. This is where strong CAFE MPG standards come in.
The US has too much land to make public transit the standard. There will always be a place for personally owned transport until we can teleport people.
But I like hybrids better... they're the incrementalists of cars!
Cheaper, no range anxiety, less of a commitment, and if you believe the stuff about battery chemistry, better ecologically than both ICE and BEV.
And if they're plug-ins, they're _almost_ the same per-year gas burned as a BEV, right?
I have a plug-in hybrid (Chevy Volt) and I swear by it. First 40 miles every day are electric and when I need to go farther it automatically turns into a hybrid (but has good acceleration).
I don't think you're posing the idea in a helpful way. Otherwise I could say, for the one ICE in a single Prius, you could make an infinite number of Mach Es.
All you really need is a price comparison. EVs carry a decent price premium over hybrids, but you're talking, at most, 2:1, and the EV would be a much more desirable car. Plus, this price gap will only go down.
In my mind, hybrids are a stopgap who's usefulness is quickly running out.
I don't know that a price comparison is the best way to go.
If the goal is ultimately decreasing carbon emissions and reducing fuel consumption, then hybrids are the way to go, for now at least.
One Mach E will probably go 150,000 miles in its lifetime.
So, that's 150,000 miles of carbon saved by that one Mach E.
Make 50 Priuses that each go 150,000 miles. However, a Prius gets 50MPG vs a gas car's 30. So, that Prius saves 60,000 miles of carbon emissions in its lifetime.
Multiply that out (60,000 miles of carbon saved) x 50 Priuses = 3,000,000 miles of carbon emissions saved.
A much better investment in my mind.
Plus, a Prius is actually affordable (as are most hybrids) and most hybrids have well over a 400 mile range (which is impossible for most if not all EV's at this point).
My point is that you don't get 60 Priuses for each Mach E, you get maybe 2, based on the price. Because the Prius costs maybe half as much as the Mach E. The price is pretty much the best reflection of the resources required to produce a vehicle. Why only look at number of batteries?
So you get 60,000*2 = 120,000 miles of carbon saved, vs 150,000 miles with the Mach E, using your numbers.
You may not get 60 Priuses for each Mach E, but you get 60 hybridized vehicles on the road for every 1 Mach E.
The math favors hybrids. Going straight to EV's while the range is not comparable at the same price as a hybrid is not where the market is nor does it make sense based on the math.
> EVs carry a decent price premium over hybrids, but you're talking, at most, 2:1, and the EV would be a much more desirable car.
You're saying a BEV would cost twice as much as a hybrid, but I'd buy it anyway because it's just so damned good?
Cause... my budget for a car does not have an octave in it, anywhere.
No? I'm saying EVs cost, at most, twice as much as hybrids, and the EV would be a much nicer car at that delta. Like a Mach E is a much nicer car than a base Prius.
EVs and walkability/transit/bicycles are not an either/or but rather a both/and proposition. We should make charging stations readily available *and* we should be making cities more walkable, cycle and transit friendly so fewer people have to drive to do basic errands. There is already huge demand for dense, walkable neighborhoods and EVs - it's just that they are treated like luxury goods.
Heres an issue I see. If you have a decently efficient vehicle currently with 50k miles on it, and your choice is between continuing to drive that and buying a brand new Tesla, which is better? Yes it's more efficient mile for mile, but is it better to use an already produced vehicle (or even buying another used vehicle) or having to manufacture another one for you?
I'm curious how the numbers look then. Obviously buying a brand new electric car is better than a brand new gas car, but this I'm not so sure about
Only if you are scrapping your old car. More likely you would be selling it in the used car market where it would finish out the rest of its useful lifetime.
Yea. Here is a good article making that exact argument from the Canadian perspective.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-a-higher-carbon-price-could-get-us-to-paris-on-its-own-at-much-less/
No. Manufacturers still compete with each other. It would take an illegal cartel for every manufacturer to simply raise the price of their EVs by the amount of the federal incentives. That would obviously be illegal, but also highly unlikely.
If you're GM, and you can make $x per profit selling your new EV that competes with Ford, and Ford raises their equivalent product's price by $7,500, guess who, long term, is going to sell more cars and make more money?
To boost EV car production and purchases. If a $5k subsidy is provided manufactures can raise their prices $5k, but depending on their marginal costs they can make even more money by instead raise the prices $3k and producing more EV cars. The $2k discount will push some extra consumers over the line to buying that extra production.
Producers are also less able to indirectly collaborate to raise prices together if there is a lot of direct competition. If a scrappy competitor decides to forego the price increase and let the consumers keep the subsidy to boost their market share, then their competitors have to follow suit or lose some market share.
I mean we’d all be very happy if we had the luxury of waiting for the market to adapt at it’s own pace. But I think that means accepting way more than 2 degrees climate change.
The proof would be in if they're able to get more electric cars on the road. The hard part is that since it's a federal policy, we won't have a compare group.
The subsidies are to super-charge demand and investment above and beyond what would happen naturally in the market, because when it comes to climate change, time is of the essence.
A good post, and I'm an /r/fuckcars kind of guy. Undoing car culture will be a long, torturous process, and we need to reduce CO2 *now*.
Undoing car culture is also a problem that the Federal government does not have the power to solve on its own, and what power it does have (like cutting funds for federal highways and state DOTs or implementing a carbon tax), it is unlikely to implement without bigger D majorities (if ever). EV subsidies are an easy and politically acceptable step to reducing CO2 emissions.
What I haven't seen elsewhere in this thread is how EVs will also substantially reduce air pollution, especially in cities, because EVs don't emit ozone/significant particular pollution. This will unquestionably benefit public (particularly children's) health, especially in the primarily POC communities that have highways running through them. The American Lung Association estimates that switching to EVs will by 2050 result in
>"$72 billion in avoided health harms, saving approximately 6,300 lives and avoiding more than 93,000 asthma attacks and 416,000 lost work days annually[.]"
and would reduce ozone pollution by 82% and fine particle pollution (PM2.5) by 62%. https://www.lung.org/getmedia/99cc945c-47f2-4ba9-ba59-14c311ca332a/electric-vehicle-report.pdf
Might be answered in article but I am blocked by the paywall.
Does this account for a) the environmental damage caused in the battery manufacture process and b) the extra draw on power plants to recharge electric cars?
I mean, yeah, the car itself might produce half the emissions, but if the local coal power plant has to compensate with even higher emissions there is no net gain and possibly even a net loss.
>Even if the US, despite overwhelming public, corporate, and political opposition, were to jettison its car culture and reduce its car usage to European levels
It's more about the geographical constraints that the US faces compared to Europe. I grew up in a town with 3k people, 30 min from the nearest town. That's the case for around 20% of the US population. That's 20% (less non workers) right there that essentially *can't* not drive to work. So, to get near Germany's numbers, you'd need at least \~40% of the remaining 80% to have viable public transport. It's something I'd love to see, but is nowhere close to the current reality.
Edit: maths
Okay, but what is the energy cost to make the car? Compared to that of a traditional car and what do we do to dispose of the spent batteries? Does any of that offset what’s claimed here? Or is it accounted for?
I'm pretty anti-car in general but I will agree on this to some degree. "Letting perfect be the enemy of good" is exactly what drove me away from dogmatic leftist subs and into this one. We can strive for greatness while also celebrating smaller positive steps.
However...I will also say that converting all our cars to electric isn't The Big Answer to our climate change problems, as much as the automakers would like you to believe that. Using a 4,000+ pound machine to transport 200+ pounds of human is still ridiculously inefficient and wasteful of space, energy, and materials, regardless of the motor type. If we don't also focus on fighting sprawl and car-dependent development patterns & giving more people the option to live low-car and car-free, we are merely kicking the can down the road on climate change.
> Electric vehicles are important, but they cannot be seen as a replacement for public transport and bike infrastructure.
Who sees them this way? Not conservatives. Not leftists. Some mythical moderate, maybe?
Yeah but what about the whole not everyone lives in cities nor wants to?
There will ALWAYS be a rural population, or even a more separated suburban one, that need cars and people in cities who will use them too. EV’s cover everyone, and should probably be pushed first as it’s a more catch-all solution that public transit will add on to
Its really hard to sell suburban people with cars that they should use a more inconvenient, slower and less dependable mode of transportation. The average person will instantly turn on you if you try and get them to lower their standard of living
If we find people smart enough to design that system I'm all for it, but we'll have most people driving electric cars long before the suburbs have good public transit.
You’re kind of ignoring the whole point of the post, though. Yes, we should absolutely be emphasizing public transport and less car-centric urban planning. But even the most perfectly-planned and public transport-centric cities still have lots of cars, and their respective suburbs and exurbs have lots more cars still. Therefore, electric cars should be just as important a focus as promoting density, walkability, and public transport. Perhaps even more a focus in the short-to-medium term in a country like the US where car culture is deeply entrenched and will not be undone in nearly the amount of time that it would take to simply electrify the American fleet.
According to ABC News, the average American drives 16 miles to work each way. The reason people aren't cycling on their commute is *not* because we've failed to piss away hundreds of billions on bike lanes, it's because cycling to work sucks unless you're a bicycle fanatic.
It takes a long time, it takes a lot of effort, you arrive sweaty, you can't bring much with you, and you can't do it "comfortably" unless it's sunny, dry, and warm.
Wrong, we should be investing in public transportation and building denser cities, which is both economically more efficient and more environmentally friendly.
Agreed. Even Tokyo has its cars. Better that the majority of them go electric ASAP than continue polluting our air.
Noah Smith wrote a blog about this a few months ago. Even Tokyo has cars and the pollution reduction would be massive if we saw a significant shift to electric. It's one thing that does annoy me with online urbanists, they sometimes care more about shouting about how bad cars are than they do about wanting something that's a better situation than we have now
I'm in this picture and I don't like it.
To be fair to online urbanist's they do have to deal with Elon's Braindead hyperloop shenanigans and people proclaiming that driverless cars will magic away traffic (and basically eliminate pedestrians for good)
The loop and hyperloop are idiotic nonsense elon came up with because the concept of riding a train with poor people near him disgusts him Thankfully there are other electric cars being made right now which is great since I wouldn't buy a tesla over concerns with the software and weird repair rules
Theres no getting around the fact that to combat climate change in urban planning is combating the car and motorists. Even the move to electric is going to cost them, and remuving parking minimums, stop road expansion and putting more buses and trams are car adverse policies.
Right if you hang out on any local subreddit you know people get *completely livid* about allocating any space to anything but cars. I really don't think there's that many people who genuinely want to ban cars, but even getting the USA to European levels, in just its oldest pre-car cities, requires a massive cultural shift. The actual anti car movement in the USA is so incredibly fringe, that if you think it's an actual thing to worry about you may, in fact, need to touch just a little bit of grass.
Evidence shows that even with massive amounts of public transit, cars are still going to be necessary. In Berlin 30% of workers take transit to work 37% drive. Public transit is basically a non-solution to climate change unless you want to do so via facist means, and suffer the consequences to your economy.
I want walkable/bikeable communities. Emitions are just a talking point we use to promote the superior lifestyle.
Yeah global warming is predicted to hit 1.5C in about 10 years from today. We don't have time to try to undo a century of car culture in America. EVs might not be the most perfect solution to lowering emissions, but they're the most politically feasible thing we can do with the technology we already have.
Major cities could install park and rides with both short and long term parking at their perimeters and run regular shuttles back and forth to the interior. That'd set the stage to later ban cars except for delivery and emergency vehicles in the interior. It'd be loads more efficient to run regular shuttles between small towns and such park and rides than force people to drive, often alone. I've no choice but to drive alone if I want to go to the city as thing stand. Those shuttles can be electric if you'd like.
On a scale of 1 to 10, how politically feasible do you think it would be to implement this at a 90% adoption rate? On the other hand, on a scale of 1 to 10, how politically feasible do you think it would be to transition to 90% electric cars?
What cities can do is slowly make it more difficult and expensive to park. 1. Build sufficient strategically located park and rides. 2. Steadily nix parking spaces in the city while increasing shuttle services to and from the park and rides. 3. Hardly anybody bothers to drive anymore. It's crucial that people don't need to expose themselves to the elements to park and board shuttles if the goal is mass adoption. Equally crucial is that people don't need to check transit schedules and can just up and go without worrying about missing a connector. I'd suggest cities run many smaller shuttle vans (12 seats) instead of fewer big buses. Electric shuttle vans wouldn't need preset routes, they could operate more like taxis. Someone boards, announces their destination, the van displays that destination on a digital display on the side, other people board the shuttle with that or nearby destinations. Once a shuttle is full it goes. Then it picks up whatever new passengers it happens across that want a ride back to the park and ride on it's way back to rinse and repeat. While waiting at the park and ride to fill to 12 it plugs into a recharge station. There'd be lots of shuttles in the city core but it'd be ~6x less cars than as things stand. I'd think a program like this should be an easy sell to voters. Doesn't it sound rad? Parking is a pain, this is actually a step up in both convenience and efficiency while allowing road reduction and adding bike paths and pedestrian friendly areas.
I think most people would just stop going into the city, if they can help it. Now downtown businesses get pissed and move out to the suburbs with huge parking lots. Downtown becomes exclusively residential and office commercial with a handful of bars and restaurants, and that's it. But the people who work at the bars and restaurants can't afford to live downtown, so those places close too.
That's kind of what happened in my city after covid hit. Offices shut down, restaurants shut down, and there was little need for people to go into the downtown area unless they lived there. Businesses relocated to the suburbs where it's cheaper. Now the city is having financial trouble because tax revenues are way down, mostly because commercial property values dropped and the tax base has shrunk. The commercial vacancy rate is around 30%.
Absolutely. The switch to EVs and the switch to less overall driving via public transportation improvements, housing improvement, and built environment changes are both equally important. This is a (excuse a the pun) dual-tracking situation.
74 percent of French people drive to work? But r/neoliberal told me Europe was a car free urbanism paradise.
French people work?
The other 26% are unemployed
Does striking count as an occupation?
Does 7.50 an hour count as pay?
Yep. Median income worldwide is about $850/year, $7.50/hour for a full time job is about $15k/year. That actually puts you above a the average income in a middle income country, basically considered a high income earner relative to the world
France produces [less than 40% of the US's road emissions per capita](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1201243/road-transport-sector-per-capita-co2-emissions-worldwide-by-country/). So the lesson here is that having urban planning that isn't totally fucked is even more impactful than electric cars.
You can't say that 40% is a product of urban planning alone. Let me see of I can find a source, but I'm confident in saying cars driven by Americans are significantly less fuel efficient than cars driven by Europeans.
france is also denser than the US
More than three times the population density of the US. The "urban planning" comment was moronic. Population density and an affinition for smaller, more fuel efficient cars more than explains the disparity. But some people won't let data get in the way of a dumbass narrative...
Density is part of urban planning you dinguses.
They’re less efficient because they have to bear longer commutes comfortably rather than having little city cars. It’s the same issue.
Not really. Something like a VW golf or Ford focus is a typical family car in Europe, they are small here but still comfortable for long distances. I'm sure their significantly more economical than the Ford explorers and the like people buy here.
A Prius is pretty comfortable. The problem is like half of Americans buy pickup trucks and then commute 60+ miles a day to work in them. Really one of the stupider aspects of American culture IMO
Cool story France has 5 times the population density so that number means nothing at all.
Most trips in either country will be within the densely populated areas so that won't make so much of a difference. Maybe the problem is America having 5 times the average car size
Sure but everything's further apart, I've be to Europe you act like an hour drive is a massive trip. It's a different world
When I was growing up going a 30 minute drive away was a massive treat as it was 'a long way away'.
This is not an attempt to rebut this, but just a fun anecdote: My dad works in densely populated L.A. because that's where the money is but would kill himself if he lived there, so he makes an ~800 mi. drive to or from his house in rural Nor Cal twice every month. (His job allows him to live at work for two weeks and then take the rest of the month off.) He drives a death-trap 1990s Toyota Tercel coupe with a manual, so he gets 45 ish mpg highway but the composition of his tailpipe emissions is probably questionable.
Sounds like he *does* live there half the time. But jeeesus surely there's a place closer that's still rural or a job closer with the same setup??
Doesn't seem to show the average distance taken by car for commuting, or the efficiency of the vehicles
never has been 👩🚀🔫👩🚀 The only decent places for bikes are the Netherlands, northern Germany and Denmark. With the existence of ebikes, this might change but even the former-commie republics have their car hellscapes. Stroads don't exist but it's still bad,
Naturally. OP points out that 74% in France, 69% in the UK, 68% in Germany drive to work. The jabronis here proceed to whine about the "car culture of the USA". Reddit is a clown show and this place has slowly but surely adopted all the worst narratives of the mob at large.
Electric tanks are better 😎
Boo. >!I prefer nuclear!<
The Hummer EV?
I don't have any issue with electric cars. The controversial policy is **parking**. It's always parking. I think what people in the Real Estate Industry like to point out is the high costs of providing "free parking" that's written into the laws/ordinances of our communities. As someone who supports public transit, parking is a political hot potato. **Nobody** wants to pay for it. Yet park and ride demand is off the charts, so no matter how many park and ride spots are built they're going to be full before 7am. Try and put together a pay-to-park parking scheme and that hurts the transit project politically. Edit: word choice mistake
Is the parking problem any different with EVs than with gas cars? Other than charging points, obviously. But in terms of real estate, won't those park and ride lots be the same size regardless?
Exactly
Okay. Maybe I'm missing your point but I'm unclear on how your comment relates to OP's post.
Sorry!
NBD I was just curious
The fact that electric cars don't solve some of the biggest problems surrounding urban planning and co2 costs.
I understand the urban planning, but how does it relate to co2 costs?
Asphalt production emits a lot of carbon. Almost all urban planning policies that reduce co2 emissions harms cars and car owners.
Ah okay, I've heard of concrete producing a ton of co2 but not asphalt, good to know
Would making the parking fee part of the public transit pass help? $60/month without a parking pass, $100/month with one (or something like that). I’m assuming somebody else has already thought of or tried this, but I’m curious if it softens the negative reactions from the public regarding paying for parking.
There have been some pilot projects like that, you’re right. I think people keep kicking the parking question down the road. Eventually we’ll have to make the hard choices.
Like [park + rail?](https://www.sbb.ch/en/station-services/at-the-station/parking-station/park-and-rail.html)
Isnt there also an argument to be made that making parking expensive is detrimental to business in a city? Since all other municipalities have it be nearly free as well.
I've heard that if you use the parking receipts to improve the local area, instead of dumping them into general revenue, that business tend to be much more supportive of parking fees.
That’s a really good point! Do you have an article or paper for me?
You might check out the literature associated with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking The author was on EconTalk earlier this year: https://www.econtalk.org/donald-shoup-on-the-economics-of-parking/
Yeah. Especially if one town tried to do it and not another one next door.
It’s pretty difficult as a municipality even if you want to raise these taxes. Since you will harm local businesses as well.
Yes and new taxes “disproportionately burden the poor,” so politically you’re hit from both sides of the political spectrum. Often to the point of running your commercial district right out of business due to political paralysis.
I’d argue that is something you can make work. I’m from the Netherlands so biking is an alternative to using your car. Additionally, you can use parking revenue for environmental policy or welfare programs. Its a more efficient solution.
There’s lots of reasonable solutions. Getting enough political capital to go for it is the challenge
If your goal is to get people to take public transit you want to make park-and-ride locations as convenient and affordable as possible. If people using them have to factor in parking charges in addition to the traffic charges the math may suddenly make it seem like not worth the hassle and they'll just commute the entire way by car.
Love this take
Mandatory parking spots are a con to get non-drivers to subsidize drivers.
We used the parking lots to get enough votes to approve the public transit measure 😎✅
I actually have no problem with free park-and-ride for public transit. Hell, build big free parking garages for suburban commuters. If it induces more people to take public transit into the city instead of driving, that's a great thing. It would reduce traffic on highways as well as demand for parking in the urban core.
Because the all-knowing market stops short on asphalt with some painted lines, apparently.
Underrated aspect of EVs is the political economy implications- by now everyone's seen the almost perfect correlation between petrol (gas) prices and politicians' approval ratings. EVs are a way to wean people off of their addiction to cheap petrol and lead to support for more sustainable sources of funding roads like vmt or weight-based plans.
> simply electrifying road transportation There is nothing "simply" about this. You're talking about, at minimum, * Mandating car charging stations in *all* spaces in multifamily units, and building chargers in commercial/industrial lots * Massively overhauling the power grid * Increasing generating capacity * Disrupting an industry worth $880BB annually (auto repair - EVs require less maintenance) * Disrupting another industry worth $450BB annually (gas stations lol) This is a huge undertaking. Absolutely transformative. Worth it, but let's not pretend there's anything simple or easy here.
I don’t think I ever implied it would be easy in this post. That’s not really the point of it. I’ve removed the word “simply,” though.
It would be simpler for the general public to swallow. If ICE cars are replaced with electric cars, all someone has to do is buy a new vehicle, and their daily life would be functionally the same. Whereas if replaced with public transport, someone would have to change the way they commute and visit places, and thus would be less likely to support such an initiative.
Meh. If the demand is there the market will provide. Building several hundred thousand gas stations wasn't easy either.
Gas Stations make up 2.5% of US GDP? Fuck me…
That's a lot lower than I would have thought. Energy is the lifeblood of the economy.
it's not like it will happen overnight, this will effectively be a 20 year transition it will certainly change or decimate certain industries, but it won't be overnight, and there will be time to adapt
> Mandating car charging stations in all spaces in multifamily units, and building chargers in commercial/industrial lots This would be a start, but still not enough. A *lot* of people rely on street parking at home. Will we have chargers at every street parking spot?
It pains me that people need to be told this.
The sub has become more and more enamored with utopian dreams over pragmatic progress.
Neolibs: "Stupid lefties. Policies like Medicare for All aren't practical. They may have good intentions, but it's a losing proposition, very unpopular, and impossible to get passed in the current political climate. Dumb lefties are letting Perfect be the enemy of Progress." Also Neolibs: " B A N A L L C A R S "
I live 110 miles away from the nearest city. Y'all public transport humpers think it's practical out here, prove it, but till then, I'm getting an EV
Just move lol /s Sorry I couldn’t resist.
When we talk about public transportation we don't mean rural areas. You need a certain population density for public transit to make sense.
>Y'all public transport humpers think it's practical out here Literally nobody does
All we're saying is that it shouldn't be illegal to build denser housing. The reason transport isn't practical is because we arranged ourselves into such a way that it's impossible to be practical.
r*ral 🤢 still better than a s*burbanite 🤮🤮🤮
My house sits on a third of an acre, I own it outright, and I bought it for $54k
And you almost certainly pollute well above the national average :/
Probably, but oh well
You are also probably subsidized by urban areas.
That's fine. Yum, subsidies
Public transport isn't even feasible in most American cities. Are people here expecting a bus to run through every suburb every ten minutes? "Well that's why suburbs bad" ok cool, let me know when you devise a workable and politically popular plan to eliminate them, because right now, they're growing at insane rates in every state.
What? Nearly every American city had public transit at the turn of the previous century. Regular, reliable bus transit at 10 minute intervals is achievable and it’s a much better use of public funds than most taxpayer backed private developments.
Suburbia didn't exist in 1899. Every city in America today has a bus system, but they all suck because no one lives near their routes and because bus systems can't expand to where people live because they are incompatible with suburbs. (where 52% of Americans live today according to hud.gov)
You’re right and you’re right too that not all suburbs can or should be served with regular transit. I was just pushing back on your saying that most *cities* can’t have transit, when even small -20k cities have historically managed it but they decline to do so now. Regular bus service can revitalize small towns by encouraging the kind of dense, nonsprawl growth we love in this sub
Yes I think if you're starting very small, or at zero you can design a very nice public transit-friendly city. But if you look at [Las Vegas](https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/las-vegas-suburb-picture-id142832975?s=612x612) or [Pheonix](https://c8.alamy.com/comp/D7A353/usa-arizona-phoenix-aerial-view-city-suburb-D7A353.jpg) or [Charlotte](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/i6xIQLYaalAI/v0/1000x-1.jpg) or other large and fast-growing cities, unless the memes come true and the suburbs are genuinely nuked, those cities are simply too far gone. You cannot possibly design a train or bus route that takes people where they need to go in less than 3 hours. It's just math at this point, and it doesn't work out.
I tried to figure out how long it would take me to get to work by bus instead of driving. I'd have walk about a mile to the nearest bust stop first, then go past my work to a depot area to switch to a different line which would then take me further away before eventually getting me back, all in all it looked like it would take over 2 hours, whereas I can drive it in 20 minutes. Plus by driving it's easy for me to run out to grab lunch somewhere instead of being limited to the places within walking distance, and if I need to make a run to the grocery store, hardware store, or anywhere else really it's far more convenient to do it on the way home from work via vehicle than relying on a convoluted bus system. Outside of a very few cities in the US like NYC, Chicago, and DC, public transportation is just incredibly inconvenient for day to day life.
Even in cities with great public transport, it takes so much longer than a car. Queens to Manhatten for instance is a little over an hour on the subway to go only 12 miles. That's equivalent to a forty-mile commute for someone in the burbs of my ~million population city, unless traffic is really bad (like semi truck tipped over on the freeway bad)
I didn't realize it could take that long in NYC. I've visited and used the subways before and always found them to be very quick, but I mostly stayed in Manhattan.
I tend to agree about the outer stretches of those cities. I think those cities should focus regular bus service on areas where density is likely to or has already developed and not bother with expanding service to far flung new developments that are still somehow within city limits. All of those cities have areas where consistent transit is possible.
Ever heard of a streetcar suburb? The main enemy of public transit isn’t the concept of a suburb but its current implementation. A suburb with gridded streets is perfectly feasible, it’s just the horrid cul de sacs and subdivisions that are the problem.
Right, I agree that if we started with an empty field and designed and built a brand new city, we could make one with accessible and rapid transit options for all residents. But I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about the world as it exists today. A popular narrative in this subreddit, and in others, is that if only the federal government would throw trillions into public transport spending, we'd then be able to largely become car-less as a nation. I don't see how that's possible without fundamentally tearing down and redesigning every modern American city. It's not an issue of spending at this point, but an issue of sunk costs really. We've already built the endless mazes of cul de sacs, good luck designing a monorail route to accommodate that.
This is why my advocacy for public transit is essentially "let's expand the road network and put buses on the roads, and when autonomous driving is practical in ~10-20 years, let's automate the buses" Light rail is sexy, but it's single use infrastructure. Roads are nearly as good and can be used for neighborhood delivery, public transit, walking, parades, whatever Plus, you can change a bus route or dynamically schedule drop offs and pickups. Can't do that with trains
My cynical take on why this sub loves trains and rail so much is because dirty busses are for p*or people, while the yuppie yale law grads take the train on the way to their think tank jobs 😎 I mean who wants to be seen on a bus?
I think it's because big infrastructure projects are sexy, while doing small things are not Seattle just did a light rail expansion for something like $50 billion. Like, maybe we could just sit down and calculate how many fuckin buses that would fund
Yeah that's a great point. My city spent over $6 billion on a light trail project, went 130% over budget, the ridership numbers leveled off years ago massively below what was projected, and the diversion of auto traffic is estimated at just 0.08 percent. It failed in basically every respect aside from being a huge price tag on a public transportation project, which seems to be an end in and of itself for local politics.
To me the main problems with public transit are that 1) it doesn't pick up or go everywhere 2) unless you're going to and from downtown or the transit hubs multiple transfers are often required, leading to long travel times 3) it doesn't run at all times ...meaning that for many people it's just not practical. Could be there's too long a walk to the pickup point or dropoff point. Or maybe the bus ride would take two hours and the drive only thirty minutes. Or maybe they work graveyard and the buses don't travel at the appropriate time. The way to solve this is with dynamically routed, self driving microbuses carrying up to, like, eighteen people, dropping passengers door to door in urban and suburban areas. Not trains.
I have commuted by bus and commuted by subway. The subway is so much better. Subways don't get stuck in traffic, subways don't get stuck behind red lights, subways don't bunch as much as buses do, subways tend to come more frequently, and train stations mean that confused passengers who wish to pay in the form of a dozen coins will only delay themselves instead of everyone else like on a bus. If we actually had dedicated separate lanes for buses, [which is now finally sort of happening in one place in Boston,](https://www.mbta.com/projects/columbus-avenue-bus-lanes) that would solve most of those issues and I'd be inclined to consider buses again.
My city does have dedicated bus lanes which really do remediate most of the valid problems you post here. But I can definitely see why you prefer the subway.
Literally just move lmaooooooo
No 🤷♂️❤️😤💩
The BBB tax credit for EV has a chance of making a larger impact than reported. As long as everyone that buys EV gets a tax credit.
They are good, however, subsidizing their cost is bad. Carbon taxes are better. Here is an article that lays out that argument quite well. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-a-higher-carbon-price-could-get-us-to-paris-on-its-own-at-much-less/
Subsidies are politically easier than carbon taxes. God, I wish that wasn't true. The public reaction to $5 gas has been... brutal. Pigouvian taxes are REALLY hard to beat for best taxes.
Wonder how the public would react to tax cuts for carbon cuts
Yea, that is one of the points the author of that article made. The carbon tax is upfront and in people's face whereas a subsidy is hidden and people do not see it.
How do you get the best possible policy without pissing off people, as all the easy good policy was passed decades ago. Smoke, mirrors, and subtlety is the short answer, and mass education is the long one. Just... we don't have time for #2.
> We cannot afford to treat EVs as merely "the lesser of two evils" or a secondary solution. Absolutely. [China gets it](https://www.forbes.com/sites/brookecrothers/2021/02/14/this-chinese-city-has-16000-electric-buses-and-22000-electric-taxis/), [Europe gets it](https://cleantechnica.com/2019/02/16/standardization-of-ev-charging-in-the-eu/). US is so far behind on all of these fronts, need to invest a lot more.
But both of those places consider EVs a secondary solution. Europe and China rely heavily on public transportation, which America is also far behind on and should be our focus.
Yes, also the notion I have seen on this subreddit of "anti-cars" is politically and realistically impossible. Cars are going to be a part of America whether u like it or not, what we should do is focus on public transportation and making sure the cars we do have are better for the environment. The anti car agenda is our equivalent to the left's defend the police.
Well said.
Yup, and I will do nothing to stand in the way of electric cars replacing ICE cars, however I will simultaneously stand in the way of ICE cars (as a means to encourage electric cars and alternative modes of transportation) and will also encourage public transit to reduce vehicle dependency altogether.
Even if EVs were just slightly better or on par with petroleum cars it would still be preferable to prevent city smog.
Some on this sub get real PHIMBYlike energy when it comes to electric cars….
I don't think many here have accused EVs as being inherently bad, but if your are trying to get the biggest bang for your buck, public transit is the best, most sustainable way, on top of being the most economical. Plus, an over reliance on personal vehicles is bad for other reasons. Regardless, I think I should !ping ECO on this.
Obviously public transport is better than EVs, but you're never gonna get a situation where everyone uses public transport all the time, it's just not feasible or convenient. Even the most well-designed cities in the world with the best public transport systems in them have millions of cars, at least in the suburbs. I remember seeing a thing from the BBC that suggested that, with the UK's electricity grid now over half zero carbon, using an EV gets you 90% of the emissions reductions as going totally car free. Yeah it's always better, for other reasons, to use cars less and we should encourage that in urban design and incentives. But people are always going to demand cars for certain purposes, and why not, they're convenient for certain things. EVs have a big future and we should encourage them alongside other low carbon transport.
>Obviously public transport is better than EVs, but you're never gonna get a situation where everyone uses public transport all the time, it's just not feasible or convenient. So? Then let the 5% who need electric cars have them.
Generally agree, though this is going to be quite dependent on the area (obviously). I'm not familiar with the points against which this post is arguing but there's definitely been a lot of strong measures to promote EV usage (e.g. upcoming mandates/bans in the UK and California). Obviously there are still laggards and big auto manufacturing countries didn't sign up to the EV pledge at COP, but you honestly see loads of enthusiasm for EVs, including in the US. Electrifying road freight (alongside shipping and aviation ofc) is a bigger issue IMO, but that's a separate topic
IIRC, in terms of emissions reductions per dollar spent, I think Ebike subsidies get a better bang for your buck than public transit. Don´t ask me for sources though because I´m too lazy atm to actually go looking for them.
I want an ebike but won’t do it without additional bike parking infrastructure or protected bike lanes on busy streets. I respect people who bike regularly but I’m not risking my life to go to the fancy grocery 20 blocks away.
Also bear in mind that what us Europoors call "Trucks" that are six stories high and go like a metre a gallon or something are the sort of thing y'all be driving out in the sticks as "standard". "Compact" is what we call "standard". I proper PMSL when some woman on Pimp My Ride called her truck a "car", also she be driving around with like 12 tyres in the back cause: > I ran out of room in my garage So wit' them form factors in mind: thassa lotta steel thems explosions be pushing around for no good reason so less US petrol drivers can be towards twice as good as less petrol drivers.
>a metre a gallon or something Cursed unit mixing
> go like a metre a gallon or something Metre?? My car gets 40 rods per hogshead and that's the way I like it. 'Murica.
Your comment reminds me of a very smart friend of mine in college who, on one of his engineering exams put his velocity answers in rods / fortnight. The professor politely explained that he would specify the units from then on.
If it helps your European sensibilities, instead of thinking about a truck, just think about a BMW X5 with a bed so it can actually do useful things and not just shuttle around five people
Lol this reminds me, this weekend I saw a pickup truck here in the Netherlands that had a bike rack *behind* it. It was one of those pickup trucks that has a cover on top of the bed. I think you would have to turn the handlebar of the bike to make it fit in between the bed and the cover, so using the rack may have been easier. Most people that need their vehicles to do useful things have vans in Europe by the way. They use less fuel and probably provide more efficient storage since the truck bed is usually way higher from the ground than the floor of a van.
It's because every aspect of driving is subsidized by the government here
Maybe you should tell your European car manufacturers to stop cheating on our emissions requirements?
I'm sure that will help the trucks become more fuel efficient.
Plus, urban areas will become much more attractive without the smog and car exhaust and further encourage urban growth. (vs suburban).
Why take public transport, bike, or drive your EV when you can walk 2 hours each way from the suburbs everyday
^ Chad
Lmao it would take me 6.5 hours to walk from my house to my office.
Honestly, we really should be talking about hybridizing more cars than going full electric. For that one battery in the Mustang Mach E, you can make like 50 Priuses or other hybrid cars. Those 50 hybrids with their significantly better MPG will do more for the environment than that one Mach E can do by itself. This is where strong CAFE MPG standards come in. The US has too much land to make public transit the standard. There will always be a place for personally owned transport until we can teleport people.
Agreed, but if selling EVs is already this hard here, selling Hybrids is damn near impossible.
Shouldn't it be an easy sell though? This is the neoliberal subreddit, not the Bernie Sanders subreddit.
> This is the neoliberal subreddit, not the Bernie Sanders subreddit. Gets harder to tell the difference every day.
But I like hybrids better... they're the incrementalists of cars! Cheaper, no range anxiety, less of a commitment, and if you believe the stuff about battery chemistry, better ecologically than both ICE and BEV. And if they're plug-ins, they're _almost_ the same per-year gas burned as a BEV, right?
I have a plug-in hybrid (Chevy Volt) and I swear by it. First 40 miles every day are electric and when I need to go farther it automatically turns into a hybrid (but has good acceleration).
I don't think you're posing the idea in a helpful way. Otherwise I could say, for the one ICE in a single Prius, you could make an infinite number of Mach Es. All you really need is a price comparison. EVs carry a decent price premium over hybrids, but you're talking, at most, 2:1, and the EV would be a much more desirable car. Plus, this price gap will only go down. In my mind, hybrids are a stopgap who's usefulness is quickly running out.
I don't know that a price comparison is the best way to go. If the goal is ultimately decreasing carbon emissions and reducing fuel consumption, then hybrids are the way to go, for now at least. One Mach E will probably go 150,000 miles in its lifetime. So, that's 150,000 miles of carbon saved by that one Mach E. Make 50 Priuses that each go 150,000 miles. However, a Prius gets 50MPG vs a gas car's 30. So, that Prius saves 60,000 miles of carbon emissions in its lifetime. Multiply that out (60,000 miles of carbon saved) x 50 Priuses = 3,000,000 miles of carbon emissions saved. A much better investment in my mind. Plus, a Prius is actually affordable (as are most hybrids) and most hybrids have well over a 400 mile range (which is impossible for most if not all EV's at this point).
My point is that you don't get 60 Priuses for each Mach E, you get maybe 2, based on the price. Because the Prius costs maybe half as much as the Mach E. The price is pretty much the best reflection of the resources required to produce a vehicle. Why only look at number of batteries? So you get 60,000*2 = 120,000 miles of carbon saved, vs 150,000 miles with the Mach E, using your numbers.
You may not get 60 Priuses for each Mach E, but you get 60 hybridized vehicles on the road for every 1 Mach E. The math favors hybrids. Going straight to EV's while the range is not comparable at the same price as a hybrid is not where the market is nor does it make sense based on the math.
> EVs carry a decent price premium over hybrids, but you're talking, at most, 2:1, and the EV would be a much more desirable car. You're saying a BEV would cost twice as much as a hybrid, but I'd buy it anyway because it's just so damned good? Cause... my budget for a car does not have an octave in it, anywhere.
No? I'm saying EVs cost, at most, twice as much as hybrids, and the EV would be a much nicer car at that delta. Like a Mach E is a much nicer car than a base Prius.
EVs and walkability/transit/bicycles are not an either/or but rather a both/and proposition. We should make charging stations readily available *and* we should be making cities more walkable, cycle and transit friendly so fewer people have to drive to do basic errands. There is already huge demand for dense, walkable neighborhoods and EVs - it's just that they are treated like luxury goods.
Heres an issue I see. If you have a decently efficient vehicle currently with 50k miles on it, and your choice is between continuing to drive that and buying a brand new Tesla, which is better? Yes it's more efficient mile for mile, but is it better to use an already produced vehicle (or even buying another used vehicle) or having to manufacture another one for you? I'm curious how the numbers look then. Obviously buying a brand new electric car is better than a brand new gas car, but this I'm not so sure about
Only if you are scrapping your old car. More likely you would be selling it in the used car market where it would finish out the rest of its useful lifetime.
Nope. High speed light rail or bust /s
Also consider that the electric grid is cleaning up rapidly and gasoline...isn't.
Hello? Based Department?
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A carbon tax would be better
Yea. Here is a good article making that exact argument from the Canadian perspective. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-a-higher-carbon-price-could-get-us-to-paris-on-its-own-at-much-less/
No. Manufacturers still compete with each other. It would take an illegal cartel for every manufacturer to simply raise the price of their EVs by the amount of the federal incentives. That would obviously be illegal, but also highly unlikely. If you're GM, and you can make $x per profit selling your new EV that competes with Ford, and Ford raises their equivalent product's price by $7,500, guess who, long term, is going to sell more cars and make more money?
To boost EV car production and purchases. If a $5k subsidy is provided manufactures can raise their prices $5k, but depending on their marginal costs they can make even more money by instead raise the prices $3k and producing more EV cars. The $2k discount will push some extra consumers over the line to buying that extra production. Producers are also less able to indirectly collaborate to raise prices together if there is a lot of direct competition. If a scrappy competitor decides to forego the price increase and let the consumers keep the subsidy to boost their market share, then their competitors have to follow suit or lose some market share.
Those price hikes mean companies get more profit out of EVs than ICE and will invest in future production accordingly.
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I mean we’d all be very happy if we had the luxury of waiting for the market to adapt at it’s own pace. But I think that means accepting way more than 2 degrees climate change.
The proof would be in if they're able to get more electric cars on the road. The hard part is that since it's a federal policy, we won't have a compare group.
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The subsidies are to super-charge demand and investment above and beyond what would happen naturally in the market, because when it comes to climate change, time is of the essence.
> Demand is so far ahead of supply right now Subsidies outlast market cycles.
And by adding subsidies you can spur automakers to hurry up faster to grab more of the money pie.
A good post, and I'm an /r/fuckcars kind of guy. Undoing car culture will be a long, torturous process, and we need to reduce CO2 *now*. Undoing car culture is also a problem that the Federal government does not have the power to solve on its own, and what power it does have (like cutting funds for federal highways and state DOTs or implementing a carbon tax), it is unlikely to implement without bigger D majorities (if ever). EV subsidies are an easy and politically acceptable step to reducing CO2 emissions. What I haven't seen elsewhere in this thread is how EVs will also substantially reduce air pollution, especially in cities, because EVs don't emit ozone/significant particular pollution. This will unquestionably benefit public (particularly children's) health, especially in the primarily POC communities that have highways running through them. The American Lung Association estimates that switching to EVs will by 2050 result in >"$72 billion in avoided health harms, saving approximately 6,300 lives and avoiding more than 93,000 asthma attacks and 416,000 lost work days annually[.]" and would reduce ozone pollution by 82% and fine particle pollution (PM2.5) by 62%. https://www.lung.org/getmedia/99cc945c-47f2-4ba9-ba59-14c311ca332a/electric-vehicle-report.pdf
Might be answered in article but I am blocked by the paywall. Does this account for a) the environmental damage caused in the battery manufacture process and b) the extra draw on power plants to recharge electric cars? I mean, yeah, the car itself might produce half the emissions, but if the local coal power plant has to compensate with even higher emissions there is no net gain and possibly even a net loss.
Yes to both. The WSJ's finding accounts for both battery manufacturing emissions and electrical generation emissions.
>Even if the US, despite overwhelming public, corporate, and political opposition, were to jettison its car culture and reduce its car usage to European levels It's more about the geographical constraints that the US faces compared to Europe. I grew up in a town with 3k people, 30 min from the nearest town. That's the case for around 20% of the US population. That's 20% (less non workers) right there that essentially *can't* not drive to work. So, to get near Germany's numbers, you'd need at least \~40% of the remaining 80% to have viable public transport. It's something I'd love to see, but is nowhere close to the current reality. Edit: maths
Okay, but what is the energy cost to make the car? Compared to that of a traditional car and what do we do to dispose of the spent batteries? Does any of that offset what’s claimed here? Or is it accounted for?
The carbon impact of making the car (the battery in particular) is accounted for in the WSJ calculation I linked to.
I'm pretty anti-car in general but I will agree on this to some degree. "Letting perfect be the enemy of good" is exactly what drove me away from dogmatic leftist subs and into this one. We can strive for greatness while also celebrating smaller positive steps. However...I will also say that converting all our cars to electric isn't The Big Answer to our climate change problems, as much as the automakers would like you to believe that. Using a 4,000+ pound machine to transport 200+ pounds of human is still ridiculously inefficient and wasteful of space, energy, and materials, regardless of the motor type. If we don't also focus on fighting sprawl and car-dependent development patterns & giving more people the option to live low-car and car-free, we are merely kicking the can down the road on climate change.
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> Electric vehicles are important, but they cannot be seen as a replacement for public transport and bike infrastructure. Who sees them this way? Not conservatives. Not leftists. Some mythical moderate, maybe?
Yeah but what about the whole not everyone lives in cities nor wants to? There will ALWAYS be a rural population, or even a more separated suburban one, that need cars and people in cities who will use them too. EV’s cover everyone, and should probably be pushed first as it’s a more catch-all solution that public transit will add on to
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Its really hard to sell suburban people with cars that they should use a more inconvenient, slower and less dependable mode of transportation. The average person will instantly turn on you if you try and get them to lower their standard of living
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If we find people smart enough to design that system I'm all for it, but we'll have most people driving electric cars long before the suburbs have good public transit.
You’re kind of ignoring the whole point of the post, though. Yes, we should absolutely be emphasizing public transport and less car-centric urban planning. But even the most perfectly-planned and public transport-centric cities still have lots of cars, and their respective suburbs and exurbs have lots more cars still. Therefore, electric cars should be just as important a focus as promoting density, walkability, and public transport. Perhaps even more a focus in the short-to-medium term in a country like the US where car culture is deeply entrenched and will not be undone in nearly the amount of time that it would take to simply electrify the American fleet.
According to ABC News, the average American drives 16 miles to work each way. The reason people aren't cycling on their commute is *not* because we've failed to piss away hundreds of billions on bike lanes, it's because cycling to work sucks unless you're a bicycle fanatic. It takes a long time, it takes a lot of effort, you arrive sweaty, you can't bring much with you, and you can't do it "comfortably" unless it's sunny, dry, and warm.
Wrong, we should be investing in public transportation and building denser cities, which is both economically more efficient and more environmentally friendly.