cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/22605592
Reminder: electric cars are just as terrible for walkability and good urbanism as fossil fuel ones. Keep your eyes on the ball, folks!
this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2024
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The best EV is a ebike! Even better is just be able to walk where you want to go.
And the best ebike is just a regular bike 😛
I kind of disagree on 'just as terrible' noise/space sure, but not being able to smell the petrol is such a biggie for me.
the fact that they don't sit there going BRUBRUBRUBRUBRUB idling honestly does a lot for comfort in already walkable places where cars end up standing still or going slow a lot
Also still require manufacturing and a big ass battery, unlike our legs which only require the ass.
2025 and 2040 colors: what's the difference?
Ahh. I glossed over that and was thinking, “no way Mexico can hit 2025.” Zooming in I got more clarity, but still those colors are ideally more distinct.
Only Norway is targeting 2025
Actually, there's a tiny dot next to Switzerland as well. Lichtenstein also is 2025, but that is fairly meaningless, as everyone would just get gas cars from neighbouring countries like today.
i think you might be a bit colorblind, comrade, or else have environmental or technical issues making them less distinct on your device. 2025 is orange, like norway. 2040 is is pink, like india.
Like there's going to be a 2050. Bold moves.
Every personal vehicle I've owned has been used. There's nothing wrong with them so long as they've been maintained. Commercial vehicles might be replaced every ten or twenty years depending on the use.
If combustion vehicles were banned tomorrow, it's not like the industry would just collapse. The manufacturers have so many fresh off the line vehicles piling up that they could stop assembly today and still have stock for a few years.
They could retool the factories inside a couple years, and resume churning out EVs as if nothing changed. The major issue we'd face would be the infrastructure crumbling around the additional weight, but that's another discussion entirely.
I find the additional weight argument pretty lame considering SUVs and just general size increases have been adding huge amount of weight to cars and noone batted an eye.
Just 30 years ago, the most common cars in Europe, hatchbacks, weighted about 1 ton. Now, the vast majority is SUVs that weigh 1.5-2.5tons, none have lithium batteries.
Oh, and don't get me started on the SUV/pickup craze in the US - look at the weight increase on that vs a European sedan, hatchback or a station wagon - eletric cars are not the problem, this are.
A huge part of that issue in america at least is related to the CAFE standards which basically made it economically unviable to build small and effecient cars. Unfortunately i think american evs will also be bigger and heavier than needed which means they'll need a bigger battery, have a higher cost, remain deadly for pedestrians and take up lots of urban space.
I'm familiar with CAFE standards but US politicians don't seem to have much intent on changing them.
And it is not economically unviable, it is just not as profitable because every other country produces and sells properly sized cars with a profit (except maybe Australia).
The weight is certainly a large factor in the crumbling of infrastructure. A bridge made 50 years ago was engineered based on traffic loads they extrapolated at the time. In the 1980's, there were around 100 million vehicles across the United States. Today, that number has nearly tripled.
Combine a tripling of the number of vehicles with the increasing average weight - sedan or not - and that's a much larger number than a lot of infrastructure was designed to handle. As a result, roads and bridges are degrading faster and faster.
This is a primary factor in the push to get people into smaller vehicles, which weigh less. As FireRetardant pointed out, CAFE makes this difficult as manufacturers are heavily incentivized to make these longer wheelbase vehicles. Which, surprise surprise, weigh more.
You actually can't 'just all retool the factories'. The mining of certain materials, notably copper, becomes a limiting factor. To produce the worlds 100,000,000 motor vehicles per annum (given a generous assumption of 50kg of copper per electric vehicle) would require 5 million additional tons per year, a 20-25% increase over current figures. Meanwhile the cost of refining increases exponentially with decreasing ore grade.
Sure not every manufacturer would go out of buisness, but the industry would absolutely collapse.
Sounds like a supply problem with copper. I read a couple weeks ago about some progress with salt based batteries. Progress is being made on that front. Progress that would be exponentially faster if the manufacturer's wanted to.
Regardless of the materials issue, the industry could adapt. There's oodles of money to make significant change, and of course they would if they had to in order to continue making money at all. Just like any industry that experiences challenges. Fracking was once considered far too expensive. Then they figured out how to guide drills beneath the surface and what do you know, now it's mainstream.
Ideally, if this were to occur, the industry would realize what you've pointed out and simply reboot all the small hatchbacks and wagons they used to make, as a method of stretching the amount of minerals we have over a longer period of time.
Blue sky thinking but maybe the governments of the world would realize the mineral issue, and instead of allowing 100 million cars to be manufactured each year, they took those minerals and created a transportation network with them that would render personal vehicles irrelevant.
I don't see that happening in my lifetime though.
How is Japan going to do that by 2035? Almost nobody has a garage, and there are no charging spaces at the parking spots most people are forced to rent (you need one within 2km of your residence). I haven't heard of any mandate to get charging spots installed at these rental parking areas, and then there's the issue of how electricity would be billed. Electric cars are for the very wealthy right now ( in Japan ).
At least japan is walkable and has high speed rail so for many owning a car can be optional.
The big cities are walkable / have good transport, but the countryside is inaccessible without a car for the most part.
I don't know Japan at all, but might there be more space for parking at residences in the countryside?
Good point, in the countryside there's not as much apartment living so it would probably be easier to install a charging station.
That is still a lot better than most countries on this list can say. Canada for example has the same goal but almost no walkable neighbourhoods, barely any transit and car centric planning and lifestyles. Canada is also larger and has a smaller population. I'm not certain the grid is ready for the switch. Of all the countrys on the map, japan seems to be one of the most prepared.
Unfortunately rural areas will almost always favour the car, however town/village centers should still be walkable.
Maybe they're banking on the idea of hydrogen fuel, since Toyota is a big fan of it. Also the footnote stated they will allow hybrid as well, so pure ICE are the one affected.
Greece wanting to go all electric by 2030 is ridiculously ambitious given the price of electricity in the country.
I guess we're going to walk, I'm not seeing any progress being made or announced to provide support/alternatives for a switch.
- more walking wouldn’t be bad for most of us
- bans are usually on new sales only, so used cars will still be available for a decade or two
- hopefully the impending deadline and the ban will motivate progress - and more urgently as we get closer
Even in the US where most states are not participating, can legacy manufacturers really afford to give up states with like 1/3 the population?
That would be like giving up non-trucks to European, Japanese and Korean manufacturers, or giving up EVs to startups and to Chinese manufacturers…… shit
The hell, why statista always ignores switzerland?
Europe reneging atm
Everything past 2030 is a kick the can approach and is not actually being pursued by anyone with any genuine effort. The people that made those pledges know they probably won't still be working in 2035+. It's not actually their problem, it's the next guy's problem. And if they don't lay the groundwork or create steps for the next guy to meet their promised goals... Well, that's also the next guy's problem. They know they'll be happily retired or in a different position by the time those promises are supposed to come to fruition. And if they're not, they can just shrug and say something about a changing economy, or point out how no other country is meeting their goals (because again, almost no one is actually pursuing this in good faith), or, what's more likely, just never bring up or acknowledge the goal again and hope everyone moves on/forgets.
Absolutely. Many of these deadlines already have been pushed backed in the EU, and there's no reason to believe they won't be pushed back again. The car lobby is incredibly powerful here.
The reason the lobby accepted these numbers at all is because they now use them to demand government subsidies because otherwise they claim they won't be able to afford the necessary R&D and retooling of factories. All the while raking in solid profits, as usual. Socialize the costs, privatize the profits, as usual.
I fully expect there to be lots of moaning about "unexpected difficulties and expenses" over the next decade.
How will Greece, a country with the worst car charging infrastructure in EU, phase out gasoline cars? Electric cars are literally unusable in Greece.
I googled it and it seems that Greece has extended the phasing out of gasoline cars to 2035.
Was this image created by a colorblind person?
The 2025 and 2040 colors are definitely identifiable as separate colors…
I think you might need to check your color perception. They are identifiable, but they are very close and you have to look very carefully.
Awww you guys are so cute