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Comment by ant6n | Hacker News Reader

> But EVs (and hybrids, to a lesser extent) break this model. They are expensive, but environmentally friendly.

Not quite. EVs reduce direct pollution, but there are still a lot of negative externalities. There are obvious ones relating to the manufacture and also to then still requiring energy.

But car culture itself has all sorts of issues, no matter the drive train: it encourages bad urbanism and sprawl (with large environmental impact), encourages inefficient land use via extensive parking, it taxes the infrastructure, it encourages bad health, and also some direct accidents.

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"environmentally friendly" here means shifting pollution from the rich to the poor, i.e. from our western European cities to the countries where all the materials needed to produce the batteries and light-weight chassis are mined: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-19830232

Myth: The Tesla uses a lot of graphite in their battery, which contributes to China’s pollution problem.

Actually: The logic here is: “Tesla batteries use graphite; the world’s biggest source of graphite is in China; China has terrible pollution; therefore, Tesla is partially responsible for China’s pollution.” Except when I did some digging, I learned that Tesla uses synthetic graphite made mostly in Japan and Poland, and that the average Model S uses 100kg of it. That 100kg lasts for ten years, so the amount of graphite used to make a Model S is similar to the amount you’d use if you had a few barbecues a year.

There are pollution issues related to rare earth materials, and aluminium also requires a lot of energy.

But the big issue is still car culture and related energy waste, urban development and health issues.

Why the downvotes? Building and maintaining big roads, bridges, parking spaces has a huge social and environmental impact compared to increasing public transportation.

People don't like to be reminded that buying mansions with solar shingles and electric sports cars are far more about making consumers feel good than about meaningfully saving the planet in any sense.

Trickle down environmentalism is just like regular trickle down economics.

Public transportation is preferable to cars, but let us not paint electric cars as having any more negative externalities than their internal combustion brethren.

(The steel/aluminum/plastics of a car's exterior/interior/chassis are shared by cars regardless of drive train and still the overall impact of those materials dwarfs the environmental impact of battery technologies.)

> let us not paint electric cars as having any more negative externalities than their internal combustion brethren.

I wrote:

> EVs reduce direct pollution, but there are still a lot of negative externalities.

Sorry, I wasn't specifically directing that comment at you. There are a lot of people that will read what you wrote and assume you mean there are more negative externalities than the equivalent internal combustion car. Certainly you see that sort of talk/mythology a lot lately. I read your comment that way at first, but realized that was not what you had meant, but I can certainly see people downvoting it for assuming that is what you meant.

It's a digression, the topic is brought up in nearly every HN thread where somebody mentions the word "car," the ensuing discussions generally have the character of a religious debate, and that comment brings nothing new to the discussion. Being correct isn't enough to make a comment worthwhile.

ETA: For what it's worth, I think the downvotes on this comment are fair too. It doesn't need to be reiterated that tired, off-topic comments are tired and off-topic every time somebody makes one. I answered because I feel bad when I see somebody confused, but this is another example of a comment that probably deserves to be downvoted even though it's correct.

Then you should downvote the GP claiming that EVs should receive taxes subsidies becayse they "are environmentally friendly".

"there are still a lot of negative externalities"

True. but luckily most people don't commute by car here in Denmark, bike infrastructure is close to perfect. And most energy is renewable, so it's not as bad as it could have been.

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