Tesla’s bioweapon mode is a stroke of genius for developing markets

Cars can cause it too. Long time Los Angeles residents can attest to that. The fuel efficiency and smog requirements in recent decades have made it much less likely though[1].

1: https://www.google.com/search?q=la+smog&tbm=isch#tbm=isch&q=...

Beijing has a population of over 21 million, and also a major concentration of the kinds of demographics that Tesla currently targets best. And I've seen similar measures at least discussed in other cities, because the problem truly is desperate and it's not getting any better. I don't think that odd/even exactly is going to be implemented in general, if only because it can be economically self-defeating, enforcement is very hard, etc., but there seem to be good odds that politicians will seek ways to internalize the costs of anything that contributes to air pollution. And politics being politics, it also would not be surprising if inordinate (and inefficient) pressure falls on things that are very visible to the common citizen and have less backing from entrenched interests, even if a bigger problem comes from something farther away.

Vehicles are a clear target, particularly once it's no longer a zero-sum as more and more practical alternatives start to exist. Again, only talking politics here not whether it's necessarily the best place for governments to focus on because governments have a regrettable history of not simply doing the most rational thing. Politics can work the other way too of course (China would still prefer to be making everything internally and gaining access/control of all IP rather then importing), but I can see why Tesla might consider this an area that could be a significant central plank and competitive advantage for them in the near term vs traditional car makers.

I just ordered the parts to convert a bicycle to electric / electric assist. This is essentially a replacement wheel (either front or back) with a hub motor built in; plus motor controller and battery pack. They work great on mountain bike frames, but in my case I'm adding a light weight geared motor to a road bike. Prices are from about $400 to $1000 depending on what kit you get, plus $300 - $700 for a battery (again depending on capacity) -- a $700 battery gets you about 50 miles range or so if you keep it under 20mph.

Check out the wiki on reddit.com/r/ebikes for a list of vendors of parts.

Right back at you. Can we please not bring up this utterly inane and incorrect talking point every single time the topic of electric vehicles is discussed? The equation is absolutely not the same.

>Electric cars use electricity to charge. Lots of electricity comes from fossil fuels (about 2/3 in the US and higher in China).

Obviously true, but also completely irrelevant. Part of the core advantage of using electric machines in general is that electricity acts as an abstraction layer between energy production and consumption, two areas which have wildly divergent time horizons, economics and politics. At one point all machines were tightly coupled to specific energy production systems, but now engines are one of the only ones left. Loose coupling has fundamental advantages in terms of achieving goals, and that includes pollution production. Electric cars, like any other electric machine, do not produce emissions themselves like a direct hydrocarbon system does. The energy sources feeding them may have hydrocarbon combustion as part of the mix, but they don't need to, and that that's a separate issue is precisely the point. Cars tend to have significant life times. An ICE car by definition locks in emissions for that entire time, but what if a company announced fully scalable, commercially cheap fusion a year from now? Or more realistically, look at how the price of solar has continued to plummet. What if 5 years from now solar completely dominates on price, with significant upgrades made to grids (include energy storage) allowing the contribution of fossil fuels to electric generation to plummet in turn? In a world that was 100% electric powered (or close enough, aircraft seem likely to remain a sticky wicket for longer) that would translate into an instant response in terms of overall emissions. But if ICE cars still dominated, then in turn they'll continue to emit anyway even as the overall world changes as they continue in service for decades.

All this too ignores additional basic advantages of making even fossil fuel combustion more centralized. Power plants can have higher temperature deltas and thus better fundamental thermodynamic efficiencies. It is easier to regulate and enforce better scrubbers, carbon pricing, and so forth on a small number of centralized plants then hundreds of millions of distributed mobile point emitters. Geographic considerations can be taken more easily into account with power plants placement. Investment in the grid and electrical production benefit the efficiency of a higher percentage of the economy, more rapidly, then even transportation alone.

So no, "a significant amount of electricity current comes burning coal" does not make loosely coupled electric appliances (of which fully competitive mass production economic electric cars are merely one of the more recent ones) at all the equivalent of tightly coupled fossil fuel consuming machines.

## Edited to add for anyone reading this down the road ##

On the front page of HN right now: "The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11617988

This is exactly the sort of development that underlines why decoupling usage and generation matters. It's hard to predict even 5 years ahead of time let alone decades, yet represents a significant continuing shift of the economic foundation for policy strategies. Every single electric appliance, be it a brand new mobile device or a decades old fridge, benefits from power generation shifts right away. Every single ICE car cannot.

Furthermore, decoupling the (potentially) pollution production of energy with the emissions at the tailpipe allow situations where power production can be slowly transitioned to cleaner while gaining an immediate pollution reduction local to the vehicles (in city center).

In terms of reducing urban pollution, they are still highly relevant. If the power plant is located well away from the city, in many cases the pollution won't linger in the same valley where the city resides.

[1]: https://www.energycodes.gov/sites/default/files/documents/BE...

However, there's also positive pressure inside my BMW when the HVAC system is running. This is one of the reasons that the windows slide down ~1cm when you open the door and slide back up after you close it. It makes it easier to close the door. Even with that, it takes a considerable amount more force to close the door when the HVAC system is running.

The HVAC system in the BMW was probably not designed with the intent of stopping bioweapons, but what I'm alluding to is that I'd be curious to see the same air quality tests performed on other cars which include in-cabin air filters.

Maybe they all work that well?

I don't think the BMW has a HEPA filter though. However, it should be good enough. I found the following online (though not from the best of sources):

----- Cabin air filters are very efficient and have electrostatically charged fibers that can trap particles smaller than 1 micron in size. Most quality cabin air filters will stop 100% of all particles that are 3 microns or larger in size and 95-99% of particles in the 1-3 micron size range. ----

http://www.underhoodservice.com/tech-tip-cabin-air-filter-q-...

Electric cars are simply cleaner - and by far. It gets far more interesting once you add in externalities like wars for oil or the nascent pervasiveness of solar power.

Additionally, modern power stations have very strict air quality rules and heavily scrub their exhaust fumes to almost totally remove hazardous (to health) substances. This is much easier at industrial scale than on car exhausts. See SELCHP for an example.

Obviously none of this is relevant to the separate issue of human induced climate change from CO2e emissions. However, EVs decouple the generation from the consumption, enabling more types of generation. The benefits of decoupling should be clear to anyone working in software.