Comment by MrBuddyCasino | Hacker News Reader

Comment by MrBuddyCasino | Hacker News Reader

"Fossil fuels are not sustainable, we must switch to EVs"

companies build EVs that consumers want, with good range and large capacity

"This is not sustainable. Bigger batteries, longer range, heavier trucks... these are not the hallmarks of the sea change the auto industry is trying to sell us on."

So its just the old "they should drive Lada instead of Mercedes"?

But what many people seem to forget is that heavier vehicles are inherently more polluting than lighter ones, regardless of whether they emit any tailpipe emissions. All vehicles produce non-exhaust emissions from a variety of sources, including rubber tires, road dust, and brakes. This is especially true for electric vehicles thanks to the added weight from their batteries.

This is never going to end, is it? First eliminate exhaust, still not good enough. EV brakes actually last a lot longer, because energy recuperation (electric braking) reduces wear on them, so what remains is... more rubber dust?

At what point is driving a car actually ok?

I think environmentalist have been trying to say this forever.

A lifestyle where everyone is supposed to own a car is not sustainable. Cities need to adjust to such an environment. You can see this slowly happening in Europe.

Furthermore you can check the infrastructure spend in Netherlands over time as they stopped prioritizing the needs for car drivers.

> A lifestyle where everyone is supposed to own a car is not sustainable.

Can you elaborate on why that is?

making them takes a lot of resources. keeping them in working condition is not without hassle, most only work for 15-20 years before complete breakdown.

(parking) space in cities is a premium commodity that other humans would like to use instead.

edit:

and then there is that thing with cars adding a weight overhead factor of 10-30x which correlates very tightly to energy use per person/distance

> making them takes a lot of resources. keeping them in working condition is not without hassle, most only work for 15-20 years before complete breakdown.

This can be said about every aspect of our civilisation. Everything you see around you, the houses, gardens, trees, roads, shops etc is there because people are working hard to maintain them. Without it, they would quickly fall into disrepair. I think people should decide for themselves if something, eg a car, is worth their money or not - who am I (or you) to decide?

> (parking) space in cities is a premium commodity that other humans would like to use instead.

The city often already charges money for this. Many houses have underground garages. You can argue that very large cars have no place in a city, but thats a nuanced discussion, not doing away with all cars altogether.

> and then there is that thing with cars adding a weight overhead factor of 10-30x which correlates very tightly to energy use per person/distance

The great thing about civilisation, industry and technology is that we are no longer limited to what our bodies can provide, which is just a few hundred watts. People were worked to exhaustion and death in the fields and then the mines, because we had no other surplus energy other than animals and maybe windmills. You can argue about the costs and downsides of specific energy production methods, but we worked hard to escape the abject monetary and energetic poverty of most of our existence, and I don't see a good reason to go back to those times.

> You can argue that very large cars have no place in a city, but thats a nuanced discussion, not doing away with all cars altogether.

i am telling you that owning a car is not a sustainable option for all of humanity.

you are arguing for "c'mon, just a little bit longer"

ok then I'll guess that settles it

Driving a car is OK when the cost to drive the car matches the price of driving the car.

Right now, the costs (in vehicle deaths, emissions, direct CO2 emissions, sprawl, noise pollution, CO2 from asphalt and concrete, animal deaths, habitat destruction...) are not reflected in the car's price. Instead, they are paid by all of us, our children, our grandchildren, and the living environment.

If you actually had to pay the true price of remediating these externalities, a toll on every road would cost $10, a toll on the interstate highway would cost $100, a tank of gas would cost $1000, and the car itself would cost $100,000. Would you still drive?

it's ok as soon as a minority of people use them, the people that actually need them and majority will use public transportation and bicycle, but it's debatable, since in US/canada most people need them due to sprawl, so I guess there, they should just increase tax proportionally to the vehicle mass/size in parallel with phasing out combustion. People will use cars as before, but using suv's will become more and more tedious and as result road damage and tire pollution will be reduced

> So its just the old "they should drive Lada instead of Mercedes"?

Just get a smaller Mercedes. :P

> At what point is driving a car actually ok?

When bike or public transport is not an option.

> At what point is driving a car actually ok?

Maybe it's not?

Everything we do has a negative impact on the environment. The best thing to do for the good of the others is to not exist in the first place. This will never end because it can always be optimized further

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