Everyone knows that electric vehicles are supposed to be better for the planet than gas cars. That’s the driving reason behind a global effort to transition toward batteries.
But what about the harms caused by mining for battery minerals? And coal-fired power plants for the electricity to charge the cars? And battery waste? Is it really true that EVs are better?
The answer is yes. But Americans are growing less convinced.
The net benefits of EVs have been frequently fact-checked, including by NPR. "No technology is perfect, but the electric vehicles are going to offer a significant benefit as compared to the internal combustion engine vehicles," Jessika Trancik, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told NPR this spring.
It’s important to ask these questions about EVs’ hidden costs, Trancik says. But they have been answered “exhaustively” — her word — and a widerange of organizations have confirmed that EVs still beat gas.
We’re going to run the country into the ground because we have such a large group of people being totally fine with (or even encouraging) their lack of education and the ability to reason properly. They’re just proud to be “against” something together, they don’t even care what it is they’re against.
There are already EV battery recycling plants springing up now that there are enough used EVs to warrant them, there wasn’t much point building them when there weren’t any battery packs to process.
The renewable energy switch is already happening, because even without subsidies they’re still cheaper.
But no… gotta get out there and roll coal.
North American auto has lost its mind and handed over any chance at being top-tier in the future. Seems game over to me. Canada is joining in on the 100% tariff game and I’m furious that my government will, this late in the game, try and protect an industry that gambled with the oil and gas industry and lost (not to mention their compete fall into profiteering in five to six digit major life purchases) by passing costs of avoiding Elon and subpar selection onto consumers.
I hope the industry wakes up and goes hard for competitiveness in EVs and stops waiting for elections to decide if climate change is real or if the economy will be affected by their decisions. To stop waiting for elections to decide if people want EVs. To allow manufacturing to flourish regardless of who’s fighting for the rights to our money while we briefly have it.
And to your point yeah - just like Asimov said:
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
Be sure to call a few government reps and speak your mind. Try to do it by asking questions. If you can turn a few aides against the system it can have a snowball effect bc those are people who are young and passionate about politics
I live in Virginia and the other day I saw a Tesla with a custom license plate for friends of coal. like I don’t even…
I must admit this is a big-brain move — being for electric cars in order to have more coal-fired plants rather than burning gasoline.
Even a coal burning EV emits less carbon than a gasoline car. The payback threshold may increase uncomfortably though. A while back I read something doing that analysis per US state. I believe the threshold ranges from 2 year in states with cleaner energy, up to 14 in coal burning West Virginia and Wyoming
Wasn’t that what Desantis did, put a coal sticker on his Tesla? Then had dealerships write up a bill to restrict people from purchasing vehicles directly from manufactures without going through a dealership, keeping the costs higher for the people. The bill had an exemption for certain vehicles… Like the Tesla he bought.
That feels like they’re trolling or making fun of themselves a bit. I know a few people in Kentucky with EVs and they also have “friends of coal” plates.
This is the bottom line. We all know who these morons are and they’re never going to care what actual repercussions are for their actions. They think it is funny to “own the libs” no matter what the issue may be. If a left-leaning person advocates for one thing, their automatic reaction is to oppose it without question.
It’s truly scary to look around (especially in red states) and to know a good percentage of those around you are that dumb.
The end of life battery recycling has been the #1 thing I’ve been looking at. Glad to see they aren’t going to landfill.
I’m curious to know what you’ve learned. Would you care to share?
If you’ve been looking at it, then perhaps you’ve seen this:
EV Batteries Can Outlast A Vehicle’s Lifetime With Minimal Degradation, Study Finds https://insideevs.com/news/733987/ev-batteries-outlast-vehicle-degradation-study/
““Batteries in the latest EV models will comfortably outlast the usable life of the vehicle and will likely not need to be replaced.” That’s what David Savage, Vice President for the UK and Ireland at Geotab said in the company’s latest study that looked at how EV batteries degrade over time.”
But if not, the article, and research it’s based on is worth a gander. EVs require a whole lot less maintenance, too, as it turns.
So far, the biggest problem with battery recycling is that not enough of it is done locally. Depleted batteries are being shipped to China for recycling.
https://www.npr.org/2024/06/27/nx-s1-5019454/ev-battery-recycling-us
But things are improving here, so that’s good!
Ideally what I’d like to see are large, regional, recycling centers and that’s just not a thing yet. I’d say a minimum of 6, 2 in the West, 2 in the East and 2 in the center of the country.
You can buy an EV and have a country invest in transit. These do not need to be exclusive things
Sure. Or I can drive my old car very little and be pissed my country subsidizes a clearly inferior solution just to save the car industry instead of subsidizing way more efficient and environmentally friendly mass transit.
Edit- I think we’re agreeing now that I look at your other comments but I’ll leave this.
Incremental change would have been fine in the 1970s when the world should have instituted it, including incrementally reducing industry to absolute necessities like medical products, and individual developed world quality of life, to find homesotasis with our only habitat.
Now it’s smash the factories today, and accept the hundreds of millions dead breaking those poisonous supply chains, including possibly ourselves, for humanity to have any non-nightmarish future on a planet we terraformed to be hostile towards Human life for the next couple million yers.
But having absolutely failed to institute incremental change half a century ago despite warning, and absolutely failing to take drastic action now that we are just beginning to feel our irreversible fine work, our species clearly and resolutely chooses no future/nightmare susbsistance future, or at the very least there wouldn’t be a pop figure/pointless plastic crap factory left standing in the world. 🔥🤷♂️🔥
What I find the most ridiculous is what we’re doing: resolutely choosing death by actions, while still strangely preaching hope for a future. WuT a weird fucking species we were.
Automotive tires are a leading source of microplastics so EVs aren’t exactly a darling angel
Could we not just make tires out of a different material?
Yes and no.
Yes it’s possible. No it’s not scalable or affordable.
Synthetic plastics (all plastics for the purposes of this conversation) are byproducts of the petroleum industry. They’re making gas out of oil and are left over with plastic precursors so those get made into something and everyone wins* because the materials are basically free.
Last I looked we were creeping up on two billion tires a year.
it’s not just capitalism, the US is a very spread out place compared to most other countries. if you want everyone to use mass transit you’re asking them to either 1) move into the city for similar commute times, or 2) spend an inordinate amount of time riding busses around the suburbs for the same distance commute. Neither are good solutions.
And also we have solved the “getting to work” debate with teleconferencing. why should we need cars or an even bigger mass transit system when most people can simply work from home?
if you want everyone to use mass transit
That’s the point, nobody wants to move people in the middle of nowhere to buses. Everyone wants these people to move to buses:
That’s like a half-full train’s worth of people if they single-seat, which they do, or 5-10 buses.
Imagine how cooler the place would be if that 16 lane road would be a 2 lane train track.
Someone has to see Not Just Bikes. Capitalism was the driver to the sub-urbanization process made after WW2 in the US, as a national economic policy to orient growth around building detached houses, private cars and suburban infrastructure (and secondary security considerations of reducing losses and damage in case of nuclear bombs in cities). The US was not a '‘very spread out’ place before WW2 (i.e. for the vast majority of its history), in fact cities like San Francisco were world leaders in mass transit, and trains were the axis of transportation of both people and goods (even existing suburbs were connected to trains, in whatever shape and size they come). The us cities spent and spend an enormous amount of money and debt to pay for all the road infrastructure, that even neoliberals say it’s not economically sustainable, and that money can also be better used paying for higher quality mass transit, not the tertiary thought they give it now (horrible buses that stay in traffic with the cars for the poor people that can not afford a car). Most people do not work remote all the time, even flexible / hybrid workers need to transport themselves some trips per week. Not to mention that full remote work may over time trickle to foreign countries that do the service cheaper, and the work remaining onshore is work that the owners need-want at least hybrid or on site workers.
The US was not a '‘very spread out’ place before WW2
no kidding, the population was also like a third of what it is now.
in fact cities like San Francisco were world leaders in mass transit, and trains were the axis of transportation of both people and goods (even existing suburbs were connected to trains, in whatever shape and size they come). The us cities spent and spend an enormous amount of money and debt to pay for all the road infrastructure,
yeah, mass transit within cities is a great idea and should be used as much as possible. I am not shitting on the general idea of mass transit. what I’m saying is, in the context of a practical daily commute, mass transit only works to a point, and a LOT of people live beyond that point.
Most people do not work remote all the time, even flexible / hybrid workers need to transport themselves some trips per week.
again, I’m not saying mass transit should never be used. what is the cost:benefit for the infrastructure to cover out to the suburbs? how much time is added to very long trips, and are people willing to deal with that?
Public transportation is even better yet
And when we actually get that going I’ll stop making sure I always have a car available.
Can’t all use public transportation? I don’t know what you read up there, but I’m in favor of it, I just don’t think we’re ever going to do it. We’ll bring back corporate owned worker’s barracks with corporate scrip before we actually give ourselves good public transportation.
The US used to have an incredibly comprehensive rail network, combined with street cars in every town. This “public transit is only for cities” nonsense is pro car propaganda.
You can still have public transit/trains on suburban areas. See Germany or the Netherlands.
Or Japan, or China, or South Korea, or Italy, or Argentina, or Lancaster PA, or parts of New Jersey even. Fuck man so many places have public transit.
Its not a “you can” problem. Its a “we don’t” problem. I cannot get to work on time (7am) using the only public transport we have (bus) in a county with a million people. Also would take about 1.5hrs longer than by car. to be 15m late (assuming the bus is on time) every day. puts it around 4 hours travel to/from work, so work takes up ~12 hours of your day.
Saw a rural bus system working perfectly fine in South America. If they can figure it out, so can we.
can you really blame us?
let me run through the last 8 years of American history with four words, “we were lied to”. doesn’t matter from whom, doesn’t matter what. we’re constantly being lied to. truth is, it’s been true for longer than 8 years, but the last 8 have been especially transparent.
we’re learning that the upper echelon only trusts the American public to do three things; consume, produce, and die. if you can’t even do that for them, you’re removed as an undesirable.
so yeah, trust in the system is broken. it’s going to take at least a generation or two just to repair it ** if they work on it**.
I can’t fault anyone who’s untrusting of a system that continuously covers lie after lie with more lies.
8 Years?
How long did fossil fuel companies know about climate change?
How long did the fuel industry know about the effects of leaded petrol?
How long did cigarette companies know about links to cancer?
How long did pharma companies know about opioid addiction risk?
How long did social networking companies know about psychological manipulation?
How long did the sugar lobby know about their links to diabetes and obesity?
How long did the manufacturing companies know about PFAS and microplastics?
I would say you have always been lied to.
I can’t fault anyone who’s untrusting of a system that continuously covers lie after lie with more lies
I can and will. Learn some basic critical thinking skills and apply them. Throwing your hands up and ranting about how “the system is broken” is mopey teenager shit.
Things are far more complicated than your whiny rant. They world is shades of gray rather than the simplistic “bad guy in black / good guy in white” situation that you characterize it as.
The only valid criticisms of EV’s are:
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They’re harder to extinguish than a gas car if they end up catching on fire.
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They don’t really solve any of the major issues with car based infrastructure.
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Tesla is a shit show because of that damn muskrat which pushes a lot of people away from EV’s in general.
They are heavier and accelerate faster than an equivalent ICE vehicle on the same frame, and so result in more pedestrian fatalities.
They are heavier and accelerate faster than an equivalent ICE vehicle on the same frame, and so result in more pedestrian fatalities.
I lump that in with part of the major problems of car based infrastructure but that’s still fair to point out.
They’re harder to extinguish than a gas car if they end up catching on fire.
Yeah that is gonna be a bigger problem than most people imagined.
My firefighter neighbour told me that the procedure now is just to let them burn, like they do with gasoline fires. They make sure it doesn’t spread, but they won’t try to extinguish it because it’d take 10-12 hours and thousands of gallons. By just letting it burn they’re done in an hour with a few hundred gallons.
They don’t steal a lot of data too? Or this privacy nightmare affected gas car too?
