- cross-posted to:
- evs@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- evs@lemmy.world
YouTube’s Loaded With EV Disinformation::When it comes to articles on a website like CleanTechnica, there are two kinds of articles. First, there are the … [continued]
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YouTube’s loaded with disinformation about everything. Especially egregious are the awful ads YouTube runs about scammy health cures and devices.
Which is why we need downvote buttons by default for those videos. People say it’s unnecessary, but you at least have to let the upvotes go to zero if there are that many downvotes.
Only YouTube says downvotes are unnecessary, users want them back and never wanted them removed.
We need laws that make it illegal to disinform people for profit.
There are, and have been, but Republicans constantly work to repeal them, calling it ‘deregulation’.
Businesses would sell you cyanide and call it a weight-loss miracle cure if the laws didn’t prevent it.
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“Use this eye mask to protect you from 5g while you sleep” yes, such a thing existed, and it was removed from amazon for putting out harmful radiation.
And don’t forget that mr Beast is gifting all his subscribers 100$ if you just send a pic of your social security card
Not just ads, but actual content creators themselves. If a channel has someone calling themselves “Dr.” and giving out medical advice, 99% they are a chiropractor.
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Why do you believe that? And are you ok with the consequences of that? What’s your solution?
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You can’t see how that might be problematic!?
Stop being condescending. I asked an open question to give you ample opportunity to elaborate without presumption.
We’re talking about removing misinformation and flat out lies, not “being the arbiters of truth” as if someone where to control a narrative from behind the curtain. I know the Fediverse gets its underwear pretty wet on that one and it’s sometimes absurd to the point of being obnoxious.
Debunking has been a exercise on the internet for a long time and there are plenty of third parties that are quite reliable. YouTube already incorporates that to a degree and it’s not a foreign concept. There is plenty of popular and blatant material on there that could easily be subject to review without going to ridiculously extreme scrutiny that paralyzes all our thoughts and actions.
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There’s clearly a difference, no need to be obtuse.
Prove it.
I agree with tech oligarchs should not be arbiters of truth. But I’m concerned about them using that power to sensor critics. Like if a whistle blower called out a Twitter manager as a pedophile. What’s stopping Twitter from using it’s arbiter of truth power to convince everyone that information is false. But I also recognize that there are more commonly scammers who make false claims on Twitter and not getting them taken down will result in potential harm to random people. I think there should be a third party fact checking system but then you have the same problem of potential bad actors abusing systems to shift information to profit themselves. So I guess the best I can think of right now is a flagging system. Ultimately Im growing more and more to think the rute of the misinformation problem is that humanity is just getting worse and worse. We are leaving in a word with a population of good people decreasing while caluss people who just want take what they can become more common. We need more good people and not good as in you believe the right thing but good as in you believe what you believe that sertan things are bad and others are good. Not just blindly believing one group is ideal and can do no wrong even when they contradict themselves. Just look at our partys what does it mean to be Republican and what does it mean to be Democrat. They both exist to contradict the other. There is no mission accomplished on ether side, only we won this battle, onto the next one.
I would have agreed upon that only if youtube didn’t shove videos like these down everyone’s throat if you create a new account, you would get videos like these pretty easily
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To be fair EVs only solve the tail pipe emission problem of cars and not like the 50 others. It’s would be much better to focus on public transit and pedestrian and bike infrastructure, that solves more issues and is accessible to everyone.
They solve tailpipe emissions AND all the emissions associated with mining, refining and transporting the fuel - which is enormous and usually left out of the calculations. Public transportation / walkable infrastructure is god-tier but lots of people live away from dense neighbourhoods. Ev’s are not a golden bullet solution to climate change but they’re pretty good and neither is anything else. It makes sense to attack the issue from as many angles as possible instead of getting all tunnel-vision about one particular solution.
AND all the emissions associated with mining, refining and transporting the fuel
Except it’s nowhere near that simple. Manufacturing and shipping batteries is hardly a clean process. And the impact of the fuel is dependent upon the method used to generate the electricity, and both in the US and globally fossil fuels are still used widely for that.
Plus a lot of the pollution and carbon generation is virtually identical for personal vehicles regardless of how it’s powered. You still have tires that wear, tons of plastics and fluids (even EV’s need lubrication), and of course all of the metals involved. Then of course there is road infrastructure: thousands upon thousands of miles of asphalt and concrete separating neighborhoods and habitats. Acres upon acres of impermeable pavement soaking up heat and occupying valuable space that could be used for something more productive.
EV’s are better than ICE options because they at least will get greener as the electrical grid does, but still have the same fundamental issues that all personal vehicles do. You could add in bil-diesel and hydrogen cars too. It’s saving pennies when things like better public transportation and more walkable cities saves pounds.
The pollution from EVs is far lower than ICEs even if they are powered by 100% coal - the absolute worst electricity source. This is because a large generator is inherently more efficient than lots of small ones simply due to the efficiency of scale. And most grids are far cleaner - the UK uses almost ZERO coal.
The problems that you’ve just described are real and I support your solutions to them - but they apply to the entirety of modern industrial society. Public investment should absolutely go to these things, but since people are spending their private money on EVs ( which in many cases makes economic sense AND are better on emissions ) , why push against that? They are two totally different revenue streams. Spending on one doesn’t detract from the other. A private individual can’t buy a bus. American suburbia is not going to become walkable any time soon.
Except it’s not private money. Private vehicles have been heavily subsidized for almost a century in the US. We’ve had decade after decades or tax credits, interest-free loans, and bailouts to the oil and automotive industries. Most local road maintenance is financed with debt, and that debt has started to bankrupt municipalities. Minimum parking requirements encourage sprawl and reduce the tax base by filling these municipalities with land that is economically unproductive.
This all applies to electric too. Tesla famously would not exist if not for years and years of government money propping them up and artificially lowering their prices. Plus all the incentives for building owners to add charging stations, and the billions of dollars going towards expanding EV charging infrastructure in general.
And if you want to optimize for efficiency, personal EV’s are still not even close to buses or trains. Personal vehicle ownership absolutely does NOT make economic sense for anyone except the owners and managers of the companies who profit from them.
American suburbs aren’t ever going to become walkable if everyone just keeps saying “well it’s just too hard to have nice things” and keeps throwing money at perpetuating the problem instead of using that money to get out of the hole.
EVs are a good stopgap solution for climate change while we rework our urban environments to be less car-centric.
But we have to start somewhere, and as an individual I can pester my representatives to improve public transit & infrastructure and at the same time look at EVs next time I buy a car. One doesn’t preclude the other, and EVs are still a step in the march towards carbo-neutrality. They’re not the destination, but they absolutely have a role to play in getting there.
but lots of people live away from dense neighbourhoods.
then we should focus on creating a 15 minute city
This takes time and a lot more money. It’s something we should do in parallel, but even if we started this today, any EV sold in the next decade would be long off the road before sizable impactful progress had been made on 15min cities.
There are also tire and brake emissions that no one talks about.
These are bad from a local air-quality perspective, but they’re not relevant to climate change.
Tires sure, the vehicles all need to get lighter and smaller. EV Hummers just straight up don’t need to exist and are a danger to anyone near a road or parking lot.
Brakes however, are largely used less than in ICE vehicles. Regenerative braking turns much of the kinetic energy that would become heat and brake dust back to electricity (and some heat) instead.
Smaller vehicles will help reduce brake use even more. We need to limit heights, weights and sizes of vehicles since there’s no near term way to eliminate them. Even Texas is raising taxes base on the weight of the vehicle.
all the emissions associated with mining, refining and transporting the fuel
Not trying to be pedantic… But, EVs have the same essential issue, their batteries require the same mining, refining, and transportation process as any other powered vehicle. And if your electricity isn’t sourced from renewables, you’re just kicking the problem down the road.
And if your electricity isn’t sourced from renewables, you’re just kicking the problem down the road.
Partially. With the exception of maybe coal, fossil fuel energy plants are more carbon efficient than an internal combustion engine can be just due to difference in scale.
The better option is to have it powered through 100% renewable, but it isn’t an automatic lost cause.
The mining only happens once. The materials in batteries are infinitely recyclable.
Oil is single use and the impacts of mining it has caused sooooooo much damage, news agencies don’t even bother covering it anymore.
While it is recyclable unfortunately no one is doing that as recycling is more expensive than mining.
AND all the emissions associated with mining, refining and transporting the fuel
Highly dependent on the grid you use to charge the car.
Not really though.
If the grid is powered completely by coal, and the government has no plans to phase out said coal and the grid is going to stay all coal for the next 30 years. Then yes, in that case EVs aren’t a great choice.
But like anything else and the “but the grid is currently not clean” arguments don’t really hold water.
It’s would be much better to focus on public transit and pedestrian and bike infrastructure, that solves more issues and is accessible to everyone.
Or both…?
Yeah this sort of either or mentality and that “perfect is the enemy of good” is an absurd argument.
Make things better if even a little and iterate. At least you’re moving in the right direction.
infrastructure and public transit solve the same issue but infinitely better while EVs are accessible only for people with enough disposable income and are comparably very bad at helping with climate change so I’d rather focus on a more accessible solution that helps more.
In my country people buy used cars pretty much always because of cost and used EVs aren’t really a thing I have seen. There also aren’t many charging stations and local power is mostly produced from oil shale so EVs do squat to help with anything. Public transit on the other hand is easy to advocate for because it’s widely used and most people prefer the tram over car in my city already which is like the best form of transportation over short distances.
I’d rather focus on a more accessible solution that helps more.
I get that. But I think it’s extremely important to not mix climate policies with ideology. You risk alienating a very large chunk of the population, especially in the US, who are ideologically against public transportation.
We need everyone to get onboard with the green transition. Also conservatives.
I’m not in the US so I’m not advocating for anything there as I have no power to do that. Here advocating for public transit over cars is pretty simple and accessible, also not alienating to any group I’m aware of. I’m just saying EVs are not very helpful in comparison to public transit.
While public transit is great. It’s a lot more expensive to setup, and even more expensive to make convenient if the city wasn’t built with public transit in mind.
It’s just not a medium term solution for most north american cities, I do desperately hope that cities will start investing more in public transit, and encourage more dense housing, but realistically that is a 30-80 year timeframe. And that’s assuming 100s of municipal governments all get on board. The political lift here is also very large.
The reality right now in North America is, if you’re heavily advocating against electric vehicles, all you’re really doing is adding support to the oil and gas industry trying to stop the outright ban of ICE cars.
We need to do more public transit, and we need to stop using ICE vehicles.
Actually maintaining car infrastructure is quite a lot more expensive than setting up public transit. The issue is that the effects of climate change are here and will get worse faster and faster while EVs are a drop in the ocean as far as solutions are.
Sure, advocate for EVs if you want but don’t pretend they will have a meaningful effect with the environment unless you can replace every ICE vehicle globally and even then public transit would have a massively higher impact while easier and cheaper to implement.
The highest impact for climate change would be to force the 10 or so companies that produce like 70% of CO2 to not do that or just bomb their factories or something.
Which car infrastructure are you talking about in this case?
Roads and parking mostly
Roads don’t really go away with public transit, they might need less maintenance overall, but they still need to exist in some form, and roads lasting 10% longer doesn’t seem like a huge savings
Parking is mostly privately owned, so saving money on parking doesn’t really make more money available to invest in public transit.
They also introduce their own share of issues like increased road wear due to weight and environmental costs from the mining of rare metals like cobalt and lithium.
With the fact that vehicle size is generally trending towards larger, at least stateside; we’re looking at a situation where those shiny electric pick up trucks that need a battery that’s four to eight times larger than a compacts or sedans battery are going to require further scaling of rare metal mining and are going to result in vehicles that blow way past the weight of anything our roads were designed to handle. Public transit is just far more sustainable. Trains can be hooked directly to a grid so no ridiculously heavy battery, buses carry the same number of people on a road that it would take… Let’s be generous… 30 cars, so even if they were using a cell larger than a pick up truck, their wear would be far lower than the 30 or so cars they could replace.
Of course the issue with America is we’ve got bigger fish to fry like boys who kiss boys and people who want to fuck without having kids.
In terms of mining they kinda shifts it around, because gasoline cars also use rare metals (although smaller volumes). Weight depends, the batteries certainly need to be larger (currently) but motors are smaller and you ditch a lot of mechanics.
But public transit is definitely better overall
The damage to roads from added weight is absolutely tiny, practically negligible. Even pickup trucks barely cause any damage. Semis do exponentially more damage.
youtube’s loaded with
EVdisinformation…In other news, sky’s still blue.
Twitter isn’t blue anymore. It’s black like Elon Musk’s heart.
Ugh, so metal
That’s like the nicest thing anyone said about him
I wonder who is funding such efforts 🤔
Not sure either, I’ll have to think about it while I drink my coke
Verification can accepted.
Just in case my intended joke was missed:
Koch is pronounced like coke. Koch Industries is a megacorp involved in fossil fuel production and related manufacturing. The Kochs have a long history of donating millions every year to Republican politicians. They also engage in a LOT of astroturfing.
I am against cars getting more like everyday electronic gadgets. Why do you need a selfie camera inside it? Also who attends zoom calls in it? Evs are notorious for doing so. Not to mention all the privacy concerns over the data these smartcars collect.
At an EV car showroom the other day, one of the big main focus function of the car that the salesman tried to pitch was “you can browse Amazon or do shopping online on the infotainment system”. Also, you have to pay for a subscription to "unlock " the top speed and torque.
This is not the USA, so maybe it’s just a thing in my country.
BMW is already doing the subscription thing for certain features. Mercedes too.
Afaik they pulled back on some of those
Was it BMW because they’re awful for that kind of thing. But then again you deserve it for buying a BMW don’t you.
Not that this really has anything to do with electric cars the same thing could be pulled off with ICE vehicles. I don’t actually mind my car having cameras and microphones but if my car is going to have cameras I want all the data stored locally unless I choose to upload it to some online location.
Tesla has a game system on its huge touchscreen panel. At least you have to be parked to use it, but that’s still fucking stupid.
I don’t like or understand it therefore it is stupid.
My wife played some Fallout Shelter while we were in the carwash one time. I played some arcade game while in the waiting with my daugher while the wife was inside the store getting some groceries. It’s pretty neat. And when we go on a roadtrip next summer it might be nice to play a game of chess while charging.
It’s stupid
It’s completely out of your way if you don’t go looking for it. For those that enjoy it it is great. Too bad you are so close minded and simple you can not see other people’s point of view. How limiting it must be for you.
I worry about features in cars.
For example, our Mazda has headlights that turn with the steering wheel (ala Tucker Torpedo’s center light). Neat idea and it is a useful feature while driving at night on the rural roads by our house. But what will happen when it fails, and how much will they cost to replace? (I’ve been told they “fail straight ahead”, but who really knows for sure. I’m hoping we get rid of the car before that happens.)
I saw a pickup with automatic folding mirrors having an issue with them folding and unfolding while the guy was driving. I followed him through several traffic lights and watched it happen a few times. Automatic folding mirrors would be a nice feature on my pickup, but I’d rather not have them fail especially when I’m towing a trailer and be completely blind to the rear-right.
I’ve seen pickups with the running bar that folds out. I’m not sure there’s much value in that other than “oooh shiny” but if it fails to open while I’m getting out, it could hurt.
Our Mazda again has several software bugs in the infotainment system. None of these are critical, but it does make me wonder how much testing they did on the software that controls the brakes, for example. Are the brakes going to fail to release someday? I already know the computer has some control of them, because of the auto-hold feature that I usually keep turned off, and because I sometimes notice a slight delay in releasing the brakes when I take my foot off the pedal.
The FCA Uconnect 8.4 infotainment systems allowed an attacker to remotely take over throttle, brakes, etc. until they were patched. That’s an obvious safety issue.
And that crash at the Peace Bridge last week, it seems very likely it was caused by an issue with the car, rather than the driver (there is evidence the driver was alert and trying to stop, and he swerved around another car that turned in front of him before the crash). Turns out the right-hand drive version of that car had a recall of an issue with the accelerator…which supposedly did not effect left-hand drive vehicles. But here we are with two people dead and a third injured from a vehicle that may have been accelerating out of control through no fault of the driver.
The point is that including additional features, even if only software, increases the complexity of the system and makes errors more likely. It increases the chances of some unexpected interaction or failure. It increases the surface of a software attack for a potential safety issue. It makes the code that much harder to test for bugs in general and security in particular.
You speak as if there’s never been any recalls of cars in the past, before they had electronic and computer systems in them.
My Ford Explorer trunk door almost fell on my head and killed me. It’s tires shredded while driving on the freeway at high speeds, almost killing me and my family, twice. Neither of those had electronics or computer parts.
I don’t think you’ll have any car manufactured anymore that’s not complex, it’s just part of what happens over time, new technology is taken advantage of in the manufacturing of products.
I’m not sure I follow your point here. Even necessary parts of a car failed for you, and almost caused injury. Now people are advocating adding unnecessary parts to cars that may also fail and cause injuries or death.
It’s a car. Use your phone or something. Cars aren’t game systems.
It’s a car. Use your phone or something. Cars aren’t game systems.
AKA …
Bah Fucking Humbug!
Nothing wrong with playing a video game (or watch a show/movie) in a car while you’re waiting for somebody in the store. Doesn’t matter which device it’s being played on.
EV marketing is also full of misinformation, like net zero.
But they are planting trees!!!1!
I hate that grotesque faces are a clickbait technique.
That and the feigned look of surprise youtubers use, mouth open eyes wide with titles like “mr beast reaction compilation”
Fuck google seriously. The fact that these videos are not deleted and they don’t detect all these obviously fake comments tells a lot.
Has anybody else noticed that youtube is porting comments from related videos? I’m seeing the exact verbatim comment jumping from vid to vid in the same category per the algorithm, with fresh vote counts. It’s very obvious youtube is stuffing the comments with old material just to generate more views. Kind of pathetic really. Terrible user experience.
yea, i think thats just bots reposting the same comment.
Are you sure it’s YouTube doing that and not just bot accounts? It seems like you’re jumping to the conspiracy conclusion.
If that’s true, that would indicate that the vast majority of comments are just bot spam, making it even more of a cesspool than I originally thought. None of the comments are advertising anything. I guess there’s money to be made in stuffing the comment section in either direction.
Not surprising considering it’s the biggest shilling platform currently available. Low price of entry and easy way to reach masses combined with plenty of people with large following and questionable morals… you can push pretty much any idea and agenda. But good thing they don’t allow swearing. That’s just too much.
Lol, you just described every open content platform out there. This is not a YouTube-specific problem. You can’t personally control what’s uploaded on these sites, but you can choose if and how you interact with it.
YouTube does control what people upload… however they have a specific fetish on what is punished and what allowed.
Any idiot with a camera can put videos on YT so I’m not surprised. There’s misinformation about literally everything on there or any other platform that doesn’t restrict who can post. When the hell did news become nothing more than stating the obvious?
Don’t even need a camera
Just like Toyoda likes it. Him and his lemmings were parroting how bad sales were for their garbage EVs.
Some of the criticism is perfectly valid, frankly. I’m hyped for EVs but there’s a lot of work to be done before they’re really competitive. Glossing over glaring issues isn’t doing anyone any favors.
Aging wheels did a great video on the charging station problem. He drove a Polaris and a Tesla on the same route and demonstrated really well how unreliable charging stations are, unless you have a Tesla. This guy loves electric cars and has been reluctant to actually recommend any.
That problem is going to be addressed as American manufacturers adopt Tesla as a standard, but that won’t happen for two model years at least.
And in the long run, they won’t address climate change in any meaningful way either. We’ve just exchanged one resource disaster for another, and there’s far less rare earth minerals than there is oil. And we’ll still need oil. The only way we’re doing that is by massively overhauling every city and going away from any individualized transportation larger than a bike.
Honestly it’s the other way around. Most of the downsides are vastly overstated in my experience, and people don’t really grasp how nice it is to never visit a gas station and always have a full tank to start the day, until they are living it. If you have the ability to charge at home and aren’t making 1000 mile trips very often, there is basically no reason to not have an EV.
The first question I always get about my EV is “how long does it take to charge?” Most people can’t wrap their head around the concept of waking up every day with a full battery.
And also that they are probably stopping for around 20 minutes every 300 miles on road trips anyway. A certain 450 mile trip I have make several times per year for two decades takes me about 20-30 minutes longer in an EV vs my previous 35mpg vehicle. There are just a bunch of these small cognitive blindspots people have about their own driving habits that you see repeated over and over again.
We must stop all EV development until they’re good enough to serve the small percentage of people who drive 700 miles at once, pee in a bottle, and eat sandwiches they prepared ahead of time. Think of all the bottle urinators being left behind.
Seriously, I don’t think there’s a good reason to have ranges much over 400 miles. If you work out a highway speed of 70mph, charge to 80% at each stop (which is significantly faster than going to 100%), and add some margin for cold days, then about 400 miles is around the max you need considering you’ll want a break, anyway.
If there’s battery improvements to throw on top of that, then use them to reduce weight, not increase range.
“About as long as I’m charging my phone, and at around the same time: while I sleep, so who cares? It’s full when I wake up.”
The ability to charge at home is a big hurdle for most people, basically if you live in an apartment that’s something you can’t do.
I mostly agree with you, but there is barrier to entry cost.
I dunno man, the 5 minutes a week at a gas station doesn’t really seem like that much of an inconvenience. Especially if you live in a state that taxes EVs more than gas cars, my home state taxes EVs so heavily that it’s more expensive, even with fuel costs considered.
Winter and summer conditions are also an issue where I live, temps from very cold to very hot, sometimes within the same week, and the fact that most of the people who live around me who can afford an EV, are in fact taking routine road trips. Often to go camping where EV support is pretty minimal. Meaning at minimum, 1 car cannot be an EV.
Like, I get it. I’ve been trying to convince my wife to let me buy a sprinter van EV. Because you can’t get a decent pick up truck EV for a reasonable price. And even if you could you’re locked in to one of those giant 4 door monstrosities with a minimum sized bed.
We’re not even going to talk about the horrifying lack of an affordable station wagon EV, at least in the US (Peugeot’s got one coming in Europe at least), honestly that’s the biggest crime here.
The biggest complaint I have about the current lot of EVs is that they’re almost all trucks and SUVs. The manufacturers focused on the most profitable market segment first. Then, they make almost no units of the base model that’s advertised for ~$45k. Only one’s available are the top trims that go for $60k or $75k. Maybe more. Then they wonder why nobody is buying their EVs.
I want a hot hatch EV. Mustang Mach-E kinda is, but not quite right (and you’ll get plenty of sneering comments from Mustang fans of yore). Hyundai has some stuff, but also not quite right. My wife has the Mini EV, and that’s fun to drive, but its range is limited (and also FWD, which Mini will always do for historical reasons). VW apparently has a version of the Golf GTI coming out in a few years. So I’m sitting here waiting.
That’s my biggest complaint as someone driving a 14 year old Honda Fit, I just want a barebones hot hatch EV without all the fancy computer stuff, a car that’s a car and not trying to be a spaceship with bells and whistles. And I know a lot of people with EVs, we have free charging stations at my workplace, but I barely drive (once a week in office, errands, live in country and get everything delivered) so why would I spend over 60k in Canadian dollars for shittier version of what I already have. I could lease but that’s another monthly bill, I’m only paying like $120/mo to keep my current car on the road and that includes gas and insurance, I can maintain my car myself with incredibly cheap scrap parts as well. Also any EV I could afford, I’d have to rent utility vans to do half my errands with or keep a second vehicle, and like you say with the Mini EV the range isn’t quite there. I wired my shop/garage with service for an EV charger so I’m ready for it, I just can’t justify it with the current offerings.
I dunno man, the 5 minutes a week at a gas station doesn’t really seem like that much of an inconvenience.
Here in Indiana, where it can get into the minuses for a month or more in the winter, it can be a huge fucking inconvenience.
Was the cost benefit worth it? How much more did you pay for the EV? Did you do it to reduce your carbon footprint and if so have you evaluated how dirty your local grid is (the remote combustion fallacy of EVs)?
I think the bigger issue with EVs (at least in the USA) is that there’s a huge gap between what EV’s actually are and what EV industry players are claiming EV’s are and can be. It makes EV conversations divisive and ripe for misinformation.
This idea that batteries should ever be used in trucking and heavy machinery (before massive boosts to battery capacity and sustainability/recycling) is a total crock of shit. The idea that you’re doing the environment or yourself a favor by buying an electrified SUV or truck is a crock of shit. Buying a vehicle with 250mi+ of range using today’s battery tech is bad for the environment.
Small to medium sized commuter vehicles and delivery vans/fleet vehicles with < 50kWh batteries are prime EV candidates. EV buyers need to charge at home and drivers need to change their behavior, not chase 300 miles of range at the expense of the environment.
Everything else is better off with a hybrid engine for the very distant foreseeable future.
Instead, buyers are unloading perfectly good ICE vehicles for EV’s with 100kWh+ batteries and companies like Tesla are destroying the credibility of the EV industry with their stupid stunts and ridiculous EV semi claims. Others are making a bad problem worse by ratcheting up the consumerism and disposability of vehicles in the EV space by building premium vehicles that are inevitable purchased as a second or third car, completely negating any environmental benefit of the vehicle.
These buyers and industry players are making EV’s easy targets for an anti-EV crowd which wants to undermine the truly green and sustainable aspects of an automotive technology shift.
Pretty much all of the arguments against EVs from the right are solvable. There are arguments against them that are also unique from the left, but I’ve seen too many leftists adopt some of the bullshit arguments from the right.
Charging does need to improve. Believe me, I drove a Mini EV from Madison to Chicago once, and it was a nightmare to find two working stations along the way. But this is solvable with time. At least, it is when you’re presenting it honestly, and not “haha EVs suck ROOOOLLL COOAAAALLLL!”
They’re a huge facet to fixing climate change. Mining issues are not part of climate change. Burning petroleum is.
The problems with lithium mining do exist (and in ways that are less hypocritical for the left to point out than the right), but it’s also not permanent. There’s an interesting string technique that, assuming it can be scaled up, can use far less land and open up more reserves (that being the amount of lithium that can be economically mined, which people often mistake for the amount of lithium actually there). Even if it doesn’t, oceanic methods of extraction are being ramped up already, and there’s more lithium available there then we’d have a use for.
All that’s even assuming we stay on lithium batteries, or that we won’t reduce the amount of lithium per kwh.
Now, there’s another set of arguments–the kind conservatives would never touch–which get into how cars are bad for society regardless of what they run on. They take up tons of space just sitting there, they enable urban sprawl, they hit pedestrians and animals, and are all around an inefficient way to move your moist meat flesh around. These are why I did an e-bike conversion recently and am looking to heavily reduce my car reliance.
But we’re stuck with them to a certain extent. There are decisions literally set in concrete about where people live and where they work. Even with the most radical government imaginable, we could not rip our cities up and lay new concrete without releasing so much CO2 that we might as well drive ICE cars for an additional decade.
Getting rid of cars is not on the table, at least not in any reasonable timeframe. That said, what can we do to get American cities from <5% bike commuters to 25%? That alone would be massive.
Something I don’t think is really talked about in tandem but should be is the “tech” side of things. There’s a massive race to go as proprietary as possible none of this crap is easily serviceable by people. The tech that they put in most of these cars is cheap garbage. I don’t want some tablet with what is probably a fork of Android controlling my vehicle. First I know support for it is going to go out the window and I don’t want to have to think about software security for my damn car.
Then you have these companies that are putting features that are in the car behind subscriptions because the car can now support subscription model. I don’t want always online DRM for the DLC for my goddamn car.
Unlike oil, rare earth minerals can be recycled to a degree. What is today your car battery may end up in 10+ years as someone’s house battery, or a power bank or other low-load energy store. The raw materials can eventually be recovered to an extent as well.
A resource disaster is inevitable either way as nobody wants to give up the convenience that we have become accustomed to. Encouraging affluent economies to adopt EVs is pure damage limitation at this point, our biosphere is already fucked from over a century of waste emissions, the least we can do is try and find solutions that don’t involve burning fossilized plant matter for every car journey.
Newsflash — Tesla is opening its stations to all EVs. Guess that solves the “unless you have a Tesla” problem.
