European here. My next car will be electric, likely a Tesla. The dieselgate is the reason why I'm not even considering Volkswagen's upcoming 'ID' family of electric cars. I've similar feeling about the whole traditional auto industry.
With that as a starting point, the cars and planes might as well be electric. (Or hydrogen powered!)
Only if you want to live in a large city and don't do anything outdoors. I go skiing, hiking, mountain biking, camping 3-4 times a week. Where I live (the Alps), it is extremely difficult to not own a car. There is no infrastructure and the terrain is unfriendly.
There isn't a housing or location option in Europe that allows me to give up my car and have access to the things I like to do
People will need to compromise of course. The alternative, not beating global warming is a big compromise too.
It's not either-or. Owning a private car in the Alps and using it for the occasional shopping or skiing trip is far from being the main source of CO2 emissions for their respective country, let alone for the world.
Re "not the main source" - the co2 emission pie is very fragmented. We can't afford to go after only the biggest source of emissions. This is the divide-and-not-conquer method of losing this battle, to consider all the little parts in isolation and on each decide that it's not significant!
You're right, we're all responsible, and we can't just point at the biggest offender and not do anything about ourselves. But at the other extreme of the spectrum, hyperbole and guilt tripping of people who could be wiped from the face of earth without making a statistically significant impact on CO2 emissions isn't right either. Simply framing things as "cars or the planet" is wrong on so many levels.
As per 2017 statistics, the eight Alpine countries (including Europe's biggest polluter, Germany) accounted for about 4% of the world's CO2 (a third of US's numbers), half of it due to Germany. I'm not going to look up the statistics but I believe a large proportion of Germany's output is due to industry, and aluminum production in particular. It does not help that their atomic energy fears have driven up coal power plants. Even so, all but one of the Alpine countries have reduced their CO2 output since the 90s. Meanwhile over the same time period China has more than quadrupled its CO2 emissions and is the top polluter, and CO2 per capita both in China and the US is higher than in Europe.
> Yeah, there are always exceptions, but these planning decisions should be made by considering people in aggregate.
But we still (thankfully) allow people to make individual choices. If that means we improve the infrastructure required for a car-free life and still allow those who live in the Alps to choose a car (while strictening the emission & efficiency regulation), it's OK.
Or is it? Then why cars specifically? Right now there's no such thing as a personal carbon budget, but there's a whole bunch of things that contribute to the pie. The status quo is that if you're rich, you can consume more (income vs consumption): http://www.stat.fi/tietotrendit/media/uploads/tt2018/nurmela...
So far we've been very much accepting that some people produce more emissions than others. Should that change? I think that is something we should address before we ask if one should be allowed to choose to live in the Alps in a place where getting by without a car isn't feasible. In any case, private transportation in that region is not killing the planet. And for that matter, motorsport isn't either. I don't think we need to plan around those things, there are significantly more pressing areas to consider.
It doesn't scale because not everyone is rich enough to live close to transportation hubs nor they can take everyone that wants to live nearby.
Most cities, and most people's home vicinities, are not land cramped like the world's megacities.
Just don't assume it actually scales for everyone, specially when the closest bus stop requires 15m walking for a bus that only comes around every 30m, just to get to the next connection point.
Someone needs to work at those farms - and they are not going to commute to work by high-speed rail.
(Granted, there are experimental urban farms out there, but I don't see those feeding the planet on a short-term scale.)
Is the flip side of this "People who want to live in solitude are not qualified to make decisions"?
If all I ever wanted from life was to go to work and back to my apartment, via a grocery store.
As a matter of fact, I can't choose where my friends and relatives live, and I'd probably have to drop some of my hobbies too if I were to live without a car.
I still have a car, but I drive much less than those who commute by car every day. It might be sitting unused in the lot for weeks (I have my feet & bicycle for grocery store trips). But when I need it, I need it, the public infra and ridesharing simply isn't there. (But I occasionally give rides and haul stuff for people who don't own a car, hey, isn't that exactly what we need?)
As far as global warming is concerned.. well, one glance at the statistics shows that my car ownership couldn't matter less. For example, if you take the top polluters (China & USA) and compare to my country (Finland), and break it down by sector, you'll find that our transportation's contribution to CO2 emissions in the world is a fraction of nothing.
As far as domestic energy consumption goes, we've cold winters, and heating is the biggest drain. There's a lot that could be done to improve the energy efficiency of older homes without spending too much money but the will isn't there. The only way we get heat efficient buildings reliably is via regulation that applies to new buildings.
Things people do generally become a problem only at scale. If the scale isn't there, there's no problem. There is no global law, everything we regulate is regional. The consequences of regulating a speck of noise in the statistics does not matter; regulating a major contributor does.
I can go on a camping trip and light an open fire in the woods, no problem. My neighbor can do so too, no problem. If all the 1.3 billion people in India started doing it, we'd probably have to do something about it.
This applies to pretty much everything you can do. In Californian drought, it may be occasionally necessary to restrict the use of water for watering lawns or washing cars, but here we don't give a shit because we aren't running out of clean water. In areas with expensive desalination, all water use is rather consequential.
There are low density regions where it's ok to heat your home by burning wood, it will never cause an air quality issue and the planet won't die as long as the world's population is not concentrated in these areas doing the same thing (then it would not be a low density region).
There are high density cities where they're starting to reroute traffic around it and collect tolls from those who insist on driving through, and there are low density areas where it doesn't matter.
There are areas where little to no energy is spent on heating homes, and then there are areas like Finland with cold winters and a lot of home heating.
The attributes are absolutely relevant, we need to put things into perspective and attack problems where the scale is an issue. Planet earth doesn't care that you're pure of heart, or that you breathe less CO2 than your neighbor, it cares about the absolute quantity of greenhouse gases that are shot into the atmosphere. That is not solved by fighting the fight where the quantity is relatively zero. And yes, that means the world is unfair, and you may be subject to more restrictions depending on where you happened to be born, or where you chose to move. Holding everyone on the planet to the same standard was never a thing (unfortunately the globalists don't seem to understand this and we're occasionally suffering the consequences of regulation made by & for people a thousand miles south of us, in a different climate, thanks EU).
You can always adjust your hobbies, or work. Global warming is more important.
http://epanet.pbe.eea.europa.eu/ad-hoc-meetings/workshop-pla...
WorldBank Pollution data: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/en.atm.pm25.mc.m3?end=2...
Maplecroft Deforestation Risk 2018 (as opposed to his 2012): https://www.maplecroft.com/insights/analysis/esg-deforestati...
Statista Countries Polluting Oceans (updated version of his): https://www.statista.com/chart/12211/the-countries-polluting...
https://www.industryweek.com/technology-and-iiot/lithium-bat...
Unfortunately the society has been pushed into “car as a requirement” territory for ages.
I commend the effort, and I’d like to not need a car... perhaps I don’t, but it will require a few major changes.
It’s crazy that car pools are not more common, btw.
This is ideal for obvious reasons. If only cities and governments (especially in the U.S.) would see the value. But alas it seems like only some countries can pull it off.
Also, most EV batteries today are highly recyclable and with fewer moving parts they can last much longer than ICE cars.
This stuff pissed me of so much that together with the Exxon stuff I will never own a VW or a fossil ICE car ever again.
I went for the Leaf as I can fit a double buggy in the trunk and it has a good enough range. Not cheap but it’s what I can do as a consumer in this liberal market economy.
Good job, greedy bastards! :)
Side note - using an EV have given me for the third time kind of an technology epiphany experience:
1. Internet
2. The first iphone
3. Now, the EV
Charging in the garage over night, never visting a gas station other than for coffe on the road. It’s awesome!
What’s so incredibly convenient is that the grid is built out already, i.e the infrastructure is in place, and has been for decades.
Imagine someone suggesting we haul this toxic and highly flammable stuff called “gasoline” around the world to “stations”... what a ludicrous idea!
I see parallells to music and media distribution and the internet.
So you want a Tesla without batteries?
A single battery cell weights approx. 200 lbs (90 kg). The Model 3 has four. The total weight of the batteries is thought to exceed 1000 lbs (inc. housing, harnesses) or about 500 kg.
Then add on all the legally mandated safety technology a vehicle from 1957 wouldn't have (front airbags, seat belts, windshield defroster/washer, taller seats, and much higher crash absorption/roll support).
You could absolutely build a 500 kg kit-car that has 1957 safety. But no commercial vendor can sell you a vehicle even in that ballpark.
That's like saying you don't need to wear a helmet while bicycling as long as you don't go faster than X.
When in reality just falling over while standing still, can already give you quite a good knock on your head, depending on where you are landing with it. Just like you can't control the speed of other traffic participants.
Even if you lowered the allowed speeds across the board, people would still end up speeding, probably even more so than they are doing already.
In that context safety features should never be "optional extras" [0] because they usually are not "trade-offs" but straight up improvements.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/business/boeing-safety-fe...
To preempt some protests - You could put a trailer on it for occasionally transporting more stuff.
If that be the case I'm pretty sure we'll have to shut down Tesla within a couple of years over their "Autopilot"/"Full Self Driving" claims.
Citation needed. They didn’t do that.
Because VW ain't the only ones who engage in these kinds of tactics, by now it seems like it's some kind of "open industry secret" how manufacturers try to get the best measuring results during environmental testing for those good ratings, which directly translates to good marketing.
Cite this claim.
It is, literally, a large portion of TFA.
They state it in the fineprint. This is what the Tesla Autopilot page used to say for years (this is a 1+ year old screenshot) [0]. Which part of that is accurate? How clear are they about the limitations and the real capabilities of the system? Tesla took the narrow areas where those systems can do a reasonably good job and extrapolated to the whole self-driving experience, blaming regulations for the bits that aren't really there. No autonomous system in the world at this time is capable of anything close to what a human is.
They still claim that:
> Your Tesla will figure out the optimal route, navigate urban streets (even without lane markings), manage complex intersections with traffic lights, stop signs and roundabouts, and handle densely packed freeways with cars moving at high speed
Which is patently false.
Self-Driving is not even released yet, prove me wrong otherwise. What you're attempting to quote are forward looking statements. Maybe you need to read the document you linked, slowly this time.
[0] Except for the "we'll have it next year" bit. That's just to get a little more cashflow, pretty sure not even Musk expects to have FSD ready "next year" unless it's a perpetual "next year".
You can’t just make bold claims and not back them up... Makes you look imprudent.
> Many drivers (ask the dead) are/were under the impression that the car can drive itself.
Everytime you engage Autosteer. You get a warning that says “Always keep your hands on the steering wheel” and “Be prepared to take over at any time”.
More importantly, each driver assistance update also explicitly state the capabilities and you HAVE to toggle them on. No where in the car UX or manual even suggests that it can “drive itself”.
I think it’s you have the wrong impression. Unless you’re speaking anecdotally, which is I highly doubt.
That's not how the burden of proof works. Tesla is claiming the following:
> All new Tesla cars have the hardware needed in the future for full self-driving in almost all circumstances.
> The future use of these features without supervision is dependent on achieving reliability far in excess of human drivers as demonstrated by billions of miles of experience, as well as regulatory approval, which may take longer in some jurisdictions.
Where is the proof of that? The suggestion is that everything is in place short of regulatory approval. And it's always "next year". The result is this [0]. People genuinely believing and insisting that car can drive itself. The result is the only driver fatalities while autonomously driving were in a Tesla.
Do you see how people interpret this as "well it's there but you know, pesky regulators want to delay it by testing and stuff". If the vast swaths of internet commenters and drivers that can no longer provide an opinion is not proof enough that the statements are misleading I don't know what is [0] (again). You may see through them but it doesn't make them less misleading. That whole page is designed to give an inflated impression of the state and capabilities of the system regardless of consequences.
Other manufacturers have at least equally capable hardware and software but none make these claims, because they are misleading and will cause deaths.
What would you think if someone sold you a mobile phone claiming it's able to crack any encryption no matter how strong? Of course it might take longer than the lifetime of the universe but hey, it is possible. Not lying, just misleading. So wanna buy a phone?
[0] https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tesla+self+driv...
This is hilariously false. Do you really want to prove this? Go on the teslamotorsclub.com forums or teslamotors subreddit and ask actual owners if they think the car can “drive itself”.
Link the post and I will PayPal you $1,000 if you’re right. Because at this point you’re just going around in circles.
Just as a basic background for what happens, please try this: sit in a recent Tesla, engage autopilot, and read what it says on the screen. Also try ignoring the advice the screen gives you (pretend you didn’t read the “fine” print as you call it, and see what happens when you try to let the car drive with no input.)
Do this, then we can talk about this stuff, OK?
My point exactly. Yet he seem to have pretty stong and absolute (albeit skewed) opinions. A true armchair quarterback.
Honest question. Do you have a short position on the stock?
The screenshot is talking about future functionality that is not released yet, but you are mistakenly evaluating it as patently false when you have absolutely no way to know, since it isn’t released yet.
“System B will do X” is not invalidated by observing that System A does not currently do X.
What makes it patently false is that Tesla hasn't proved it even after claiming "next year" for several years now. Even worse, they still don't and can't know if the system will ever be able to perform as described or if the hardware is enough as claimed. If the party making a claim doesn't have the proof for themselves then how can the statement be true today, when they claim it? They are selling today's assumption as a certainty. It doesn't say "we hope" or "be believe" or "it might". They say "it will" with no reservation and no proof available anywhere. That is the falsehood.
And just as a sidenote, the company that was providing Tesla with the hardware and knowhow when the statements were originally made, Mobileye, ended the partnership in 2016 because they did not believe their own systems are able to fulfill the promise. That shows that promises were already made once without Tesla having any proof.
Any other company doing this and people would be all over them with accusations. But Tesla has great PR, it is actually working for a better future, and people love a good cause enough to disregard the dirt under the rug.
I’m not even talking about fine print. The stuff that covers this is all very straightforward and not fine print at all. People should take responsibility and read what is actually said.
The outrage should be directed at people who make wild misinterpretations of perfectly reasonable statements.
In the meantime Tesla is the only company with autonomous driving driver fatalities. Multiple. Unless you’re going to claim Tesla buyers are more predisposed to... laziness and inability to process information, then something is definitely wrong in the way the system is presented. Something other manufacturers and all their buyers get right. Mostly all others insist overpromising and underdelivering can be dangerous.
And that's the whole point, the car is unable to take the correct decisions but people still trust it to do so. Why would they? Unless you'll tell me Tesla drivers are intellectually challenged then it must be that they somehow get the wrong impression of what the car can do.
How come this doesn't happen to any other manufacturer building cars with this type of limited automation? I see a some people victoriously claiming I've been proven wrong yet all avoid answering this direct question. If nobody can explain why so many Tesla drivers are suicidal then the blame must lie with the system or the way it's described.
I see. You are looking to explain the facts and you have three theories here. 1) Suicidal drivers; 2) Bad system; 3) Bad system description.
Let’s just agree it’s not #1. Effectively suicidal you could say, but let’s agree they were (likely) not actually intending suicide.
Number 2 is ruled out because the system was never designed to be fully unmonitored... blaming it would be like blaming a seatbelt for an injury sustained by someone who wears the seatbelt incorrectly.
Number 3 seems like a likely possibility on the face of it, but the system is actually pretty well described in practice so I would suggest another, fourth, possibility which does not appear on your list:
4) The drivers were imperfect humans who, as some will do, failed to heed the ample safety warnings and were unlucky enough to encounter situations where this failure led to disastrous results.
I’ll note this kind of thing happens all the time in cars without autopilot as well. You can point out that in those cases an autopilot system was not in the picture, but that’s a circular argument... of course it wasn’t. People will sometimes be foolish. No system can protect all fools all the time. Expecting otherwise is unreasonable. You’re just blaming Tesla because its autopilot is the first / most prominent such system that has been rolled out to production vehicles. Of course there will be a few foolish people amongst the hundreds of thousands of Tesla drivers. That’s on the people, not the system or the description. Nobody ever promised autopilot would be a perfect nanny that can fend off all dangers and control all human behaviors.
>nobody can explain why so many Tesla drivers are suicidal
Not suicidal. Just foolish. And not “so many.” We are talking about a handful of incidents, in fact fewer than can be counted on one hand.
Fake outrage.
I know the earth is important and blah blah, but I have bigger fish to fry every day. I'm sure most people feel like that.