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[-] Fedizen@lemmy.world 5 points 3 hours ago

I agree on mass transit. Highly recommend Adam Something's youtube video on why self driving cars will increase traffic and waste. Its not a solution for cities large or small. Rural communities may see benefits but they pose weirder problems.

Because at least in the US the airline and car industries hand shake to stop commuter trains.

The west coast regions also have an additional problem where the slopes will need massive amounts of tunnels for high speed rail and are complicated by a lot active geologic zones. So while its the best solution (trains) its expensive but Japan managed to do it. Its not going to be cheap or quick to build the needed infrastructure. Add in most people are heavily invested in car infrastructure when they buy a car. So there's a public will barrier here built out of billions of garages, cars, and driveways sold.

People also pose "flying cars" etc as a solution. Piloting air vehicles requires air traffic controllers and communicating on an extreme level in addition to pilot licenses and security problems. Its not also not a serious answer to transportation.

[-] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago

Also for flying cars, when a non-flying car breaks down suddenly, it can be a dangerous situation but you just need to avoid hitting anything until your momentum is lost and generally have options (brakes might lose power assist but could work, if they don't there's still emergency brakes, and if those also fail, there's engine braking if you have transmission control, or steering back and fourth to lose momentum via turning friction, and once you're going slow enough, even colliding with something stationary can help).

With flying cars, maybe it can glide, assuming it even works like that and isn't more of a helicopter or just using some kind of thrusters. Plus, if you're falling to your death anyways, you might not have the presence of mind to try to optimize what you do hit with what control you do have to minimize damage to others. Hell, the safety feature might even be ejecting and leaving it to fall wherever, while hoping none of the other flying cars hit you or your parachute, or fly close enough to mess with the airflow in a way where the parachute might fail.

And that's not even going into how much more energy it takes to fly vs roll.

Flying cars don't make practical sense. And where they do, we already have helicopters.

[-] SnarkoPolo@lemm.ee 20 points 7 hours ago

A two hour commute in an electric car is still two hours in crushing, soul destroying traffic. People ask me why I take a train and a freeway bus for my two days on campus, and I ask them why not? My drive is three minutes from my house to the train.

But in suburban Southern California, public transit is "for freaks and losers." That was deliberate marketing.

[-] Randelung@lemmy.world 5 points 3 hours ago

It just sucks if 10 minutes by car/a little more by bike become 45 minutes by public transit, once an hour until 8pm.

[-] PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 16 points 8 hours ago

When I have a full disk and have no storage space left. I open a program and see a visual representation of the largest files taking space. I clear them out first because its easy and quick.

For some reason, when we have too much CO2 going into the atmosphere, we see the visual representation of who is polluting the most, and take care of the smallest, little fragmented space. We don't select the larger chunks like industry, aviation, marine transport, we pick each individual car and press delete.

Look, cars have to change and Americans will have to be dragged kicking and screaming but It kind of pains me when someone looks at an old car someone is driving, using it way past its intended lifetime, and tells them they are the problem. While being perfectly fine taking an airplane twice yearly and ordering shit from china, shit they will forget they ordered before it actually arrives..

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 4 points 6 hours ago

We don’t select the larger chunks like industry, aviation, marine transport, we pick each individual car and press delete.

In fairness...

The nuclear powered cargo ship is already here.

And as China is the premier builder of trans-Pacific cargo ships (1,500 to 1,700 ships per year, which is more than the US has built in the last ten) this is technically getting addressed.

Also, incidentally, the premier electric car manufacturers are almost entirely East Asian. The only functional airplane manufacturer is French. Heavy industry in the US is on the verge of total collapse (outside AI and Bitcoin mining).

The US plan to cut emissions is basically just Degrowth.

[-] Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca 7 points 8 hours ago

That because the big files right now are the OS. Just deleting system32 isn't a good idea, but moving to a more efficient system is difficult. So we do the easy thing and delete old PDFs, and maybe some old games. But the system needs to be changed, and the sooner the better.

[-] PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 4 points 8 hours ago

I get it. Is there really no bigger fish to fry? Cars are the only ting? I mean, yeah, we've put laws or goals in place to replace them slowly and thats good. Better we start the process as soon as possible. Are we doing the same for the bigger fish too?

[-] Nangijala@feddit.dk 13 points 8 hours ago

I agree. My boyfriend and I were forced to buy a car some years ago because public transport in our area kept cutting budgets to the point that he would have to get up at 3.30-ish in the morning in order to get to work at 8.

We were avid users of public transport for our whole lives and wanted to support it until we were no longer given a choice, but to cave. If I have to go somewhere nowadays, he drives me because of how shit public transport has become in our country. It is genuinely pathetic. He made this decision on both of our behalf after a longer train ride of mine ended in me being stuck on a train station an hour away from home at 2 in the morning, having to wait for the next train home at 4.30. He jumped in the car and came and got me and that was one of the last times I used public transport. Really sucks when you want to support it, but it doesn't want to support you.

[-] splonglo@lemmy.world 18 points 10 hours ago

Nice. A flase dichotomy so the right can cut EV subsidies as well as not spending on public transport.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 3 points 6 hours ago

A flase dichotomy

It's illustrative of our national economic strategy. Which is to subsidize private consumer manufacturing rather than to directly invest in higher quality infrastructure.

This isn't a false dichotomy, its a deliberate strategy of Patriarchal Libertarianism (which has mutated into full throated corporate fascism).

[-] splonglo@lemmy.world 1 points 6 minutes ago

Don't disagree but in China you can get a new EV for less than 10k AND get the train.

[-] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 8 points 10 hours ago

I often wonder how the emissions generated by producing and shipping a new electric vehicle compare to just keeping your old ICE vehicle until it rusts to pieces. Like how long does it take to break even from that?

[-] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 6 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

It depends how quickly you put on miles (and which study you base the calculation on). For most EVs, they break even with the emissions of an ICE car at about 15k miles. By 200k, the EV emitted 52% less emissions compared to the average car.

If the electric grid is powered by more renewables in the future, that would jump to 78% less emissions at 200k.

[-] Machinist@lemmy.world 4 points 9 hours ago

A very long time. On the order of multiple decades, IIRC. Realistically, keeping an old ICE vehicle in proper running order beats the carbon footprint of purchasing a new EV.

My daily driver is a '98, I keep it running without codes in efficient closed loop and keep up on all the maintenance.

Now, the classic Ranger to electric conversion I want to do, not sure what the footprint is.

[-] vandsjov@feddit.dk 12 points 9 hours ago

A very long time. On the order of multiple decades, IIRC

Not true. It also very much depends on where your power comes from (coal/sun).

[-] Machinist@lemmy.world 5 points 9 hours ago

Skimmed that article. If I'm reading it right, it's 100k miles for a NEW EV to match the carbon footprint of a NEW ICE. That larger footprint is due to the batteries and rare earth/copper.

I.E. this doesn't account for the carbon footprint of making a entirely new car vs keeping an old one running well.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

this doesn’t account for the carbon footprint of making a entirely new car vs keeping an old one running well.

Part of the problem is deliberate Planned Obselecence as an industrial manufacturing strategy. Cars - particularly American cars - begin to fail after ten to fifteen years. Finding parts becomes more difficult over time, finding skilled mechanics even more so, and risks of accident (particularly on highways with speeds exceeding 55mph) lead to cars getting totaled before they've been fully exhausted.

I'll spot you that simply yanking new ICE cars off the road and replacing them with electrics is wasteful. But when you're talking about a ten year old vehicle, the math for those next ten years gets fuzzier as the risks inherent in ownership rise.

Incidentally, this is why mass transit improvements are an overall better play. Swapping old cars for new is never going to be as efficient as swapping cars for buses and trains, which are maintained as a fleet rather than as an oddball assortment of flavor-of-the-month private vehicles.

[-] Machinist@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

No doubt. Most people don't have the skill or desire to keep 27 year old vehicles running at good efficiency. It's also common to start adding performance parts or disabling the emissions tech, which is even worse.

I'm on my fourth vehicle lifetime, including the one I lost in a flood. Been drving for over three decades. Figure that I'm actually pretty far down on emissions as so much pollution is tied to the original manufacturing.

There's that whole reduce and reuse thing everyone forgets about and jumps right to recycle.

The proper comparison here is replacing used ICE with used EV. As battery tech and manufacturers get better, new ICE should have a heavy tax that disincentivises private purchase and ultimately bans them except for edge cases. Keep a collector class with a small maximum mileage and other restrictions.

[-] wetbeardhairs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 hours ago

Those figures also assume all virgin materials for batteries. The reality is that as more batteries are built, they will reach a critical point where battery recycling is a major source of elements for new batteries. We're only just now coming to that point where there are 10+ year old EVs out there that have batteries that need to be recycled.

Also those studies all look at the super inefficient 3rd world exploitation of minerals and labor to get lithium. There are new techniques being developed out in the Salton Sea (desert in southern california) that extract lithium from ground water pumped in a closed loop. The expectation is that production technique alone will be enough for the entirety of the next few decades of American need. And that's a far, far more efficient technique.

[-] Machinist@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

No doubt. I'm not anti electric vehicle or anything. Common sense says mass transit, robotic taxis/communal cars with low private ownership and all of it electric would be the ideal end goal.

You can easily make the argument that you should buy used electric when your current vehicle repair cost is beyond the value of it.

[-] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 1 points 9 hours ago

Thanks for the source.

[-] Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub 11 points 11 hours ago

Even if every car on the road was electric, the world will still become an ash pile in 50 years.

It's more blaming the people for the problems of the rich, who will never be seriously regulated. It's easier to blame all of us.

[-] Tehdastehdas@lemmy.world 20 points 13 hours ago
[-] MajesticElevator@lemmy.zip 9 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

That's a problem, but small/micro particles aren't the only metric. The gases released by exhaust are also a real problem for people that walk nearby cars, and they're in a big quantity in certain cars.

But yea, balancing all of this is complicated.

Does having heavier electric cars with no exhaust but more tire usage (because heavier cars) so more particles in the air beneficial? I don't believe we have serious studies about this, but it could change the meta.

[-] FireRetardant@lemmy.world 12 points 10 hours ago

Hear me out here, less cars regardless of their enegry source will reduce both exhaust and microplastics. We don't have to trade one for the other when we can build alternatives that don't produce either.

[-] MajesticElevator@lemmy.zip 3 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

Yea, sure, but cars are still needed in many areas outside of cities

In rural areas or in small villages, it's basically the only real good option, or for someone in a city to reach those areas in a timely manner

I do believe that public transport should be way more developed in cities, to the point where it becomes more worth it to go by public transport than in a car (ex: Paris)

And alternatives will always cause some sort of pollution. Way way less, but not zero.

[-] FireRetardant@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago

Those areas don't have nearly as high a concentration of these pollutants as a busy, 6 lane road the center of the city. Thats where improving air quality can matter the most, especially because that road is likely to have more pedestrians breathing the pollutants than a rural road.

[-] MajesticElevator@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 hours ago

And on this I agree. But I still think for the air we breathe, the old polluting cars should go. I’d love a future where public transportation is way more developed and used, and the only remaining cars are electric or at least efficient (bye bye diesel)

[-] unemployedclaquer@sopuli.xyz 9 points 17 hours ago

mass transit enables the individual to travel far and wide at low cost

public transit provides autonomy to the individual to travel without the liability of owning and operating a half-ton missile just to get around

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this post was submitted on 22 May 2025
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