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Electric Cars
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2025
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Fuck Cars
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Yes, but not if it promotes destructive behaviours such as increased car dependency.
EVs are like low-calorie sweeteners: they do nothing to stop obesity, and actually encourage more eating (and more obesity).
Yes, but yes actually. It's not how the question exists in the world, it's not and it's never "more car-centrism with EV or less car-centrism with FFV". It's usually two related but very separate questions and you need to fight for right answers for both.
Also, not how that works.
You want electric buses? You want battery electric trains? Electric airplanes?
Cars are your path to research and development for these modes of transportation.
I wish that happened. It's very difficult to convince an EV owner to take a train or bus, even if they are electric.
The more convenient we make driving in cars, and the better drivers "feel" about driving an EV, the more difficult it is to move away from car dependency.
Here's a survey from CAA (Insurance company in Canada, like AAA in the States):
Drivers were more likely to drive more in a battery-powered EV than even a Hybrid.
And this part kills me: "The majority of trips for both BEV and PHEV drivers are relatively short, typically staying within 10 kilometers of home. This pattern reflects the convenience of electric driving for routine commutes and local errands."
UCDavis Institute of Transportation Studies also found that EVs are driven more than gas cars (SOURCE).
As a side note, I'm especially annoyed that every BEV "needs" a 300 mile range when 50 miles would be more than enough for the average American (assuming they can charge at home). Those additional batteries make the vehicles larger, heavier, and more expensive, and the batteries could be better used elsewhere.
But still, electric cars were a gateway to electric bikes and scooters.
The 300-mile-range req is just ridiculous. However it's easier to pad the margin on a 60K vehicle by adding this or that for another 5-10K. It's harder to do that on cheap vehicles and they can't sell a 100-mile-range EV for a lot of money. Am working in automotive and emphasizing big expensive models is key for creating shareholder value.
10 km is pretty far. Walking 1km isn't bad, but 3 is a decent chunk of time and energy. 10 is a pain in the ass by bus and a relatively quick trip by light rail assuming you didn't have to walk that far to the station.
Like, I'm not contesting that a lot of drivers should walk for errands more, or that evs encourage car focusing, but that metric fails to account for the fact that few people will walk 2 hours one way for an errand.
That's "up to 10km", not that every trip is 10km.
In that context, it's going to be easier/faster to bike or take an e-scooter to your destination.
If it's under 2km, then walking really shouldn't be a problem.
And if public transportation is available for medium distance trips, that should be first (as it is in cities/countries that are not built around car-dependency).
Look at the bigger picture. We should be walking a minimum 10,000 steps a day (something like 8,000 to 12,000, realistically). That's 8km a day as a bare minimum for minimum basic health.
Driving costs more time, because you now have to allocate time to drive + time to get those steps in. Why not walk that 2km errand instead?
At those short distances, we aren't talking about massive differences in time to destination. And I think anyone can use the mental health benefits of movement, too.
Not sure if you're aware but we've had electric buses and trains for well over half a century. We don't need them to carry long range batteries. We have them in Europe and even in some places in North America. Batteries haven't been needed for electrifying public transit for a very long time. In fact some of the first public transit was electric. Some places just choose the cheapest upfront option instead of spending a bit more on infrastructure in order to realize environmental and efficiency benefits.
As for planes, yes probably. Although I'm not sure whether there's a viable route to electric planes that goes through batteries or whether that use case would necessitate synthetic fuel.
even without external electricity you don't need batteries, there were perfectly functional buses in the 60's that used flywheels to store energy. And i believe technology has advanced ever so slightly in the 60 years since then..