We can do better than “same, but electric”
climateer.substack.com
climateer.substack.com
No. Well, yes, a "cheap" electric cooktop that simply produces heat (coil or IR) is worse than burners, and less responsive. But that's not what you want. You want an induction cooktop: safe, efficient, beautiful, and more importantly, more responsive than burners.
The required draw is too high.
If I remember correctly, my comment was based on an average household with about 4 to 5 KW installed in western Europe.
This represents about 12 panels which is roughly the maximum amount of panels a regular house has space for.
The first one I looked the specs up on at my home center has a 4.8kW largest element and 8.6kW total. https://images.thdstatic.com/catalog/pdfImages/d9/d92c8678-a...
I'm not even sure if my entire house has a breaker for more than 32A.
Also maybe you want to use the oven and AC and charge the car at the same time etc. As far as I understand, it's a plus and minus calculation. It's not any kind of compatibility issue...
Naturally big electric power sinks need bigger voltages, otherwise the current and thus the cabling would get very thick.
Cooktop with induction cooking zones:
Right front: 8” – 2300W, booster 3200W.
Left front: 8” – 2300W, booster 3200W.
Left rear: 7” – 1800W, booster 2600W.
Right rear: 7" - 1800W, booster 2600W.
Center: 10” – 2500W, booster 3800W.
Voltage: 240/208V.
Connection rating: 15400W.
Current: 40A.
So yeah, if you are in the habit of routinely maintaining four pots of water at a furiously rolling boil you probably will have problems. The rest of us are likely to be pretty safe.
Maybe a home however is lacking the battery intermediary.
You don't always have to start out with every burner on high!
Another thing to keep in mind: with gas about half the energy heats the air and flows around the pot or pan, so it ends up being about 50% efficient.
But with all said, the carbon monoxide buildup issue was what swayed me in the end.
I was rather talking about the required instantaneous draw which is usually too high for an average household's Solar setup.
I’m planning to install solar and was thinking around 3KW with battery backup. I definitely want induction cooking.
Should I get more capacity? Bigger batteries? Fewer burners?
[Edit: bigger batteries seems to be the answer, also because of cooking at night.]
Just need a grid-powered charger for the battery to replace the sun with if you worry about running out of electricity to cook.
[Edit: it's off the grid, only gets water, and I want to keep it that way in principle.]
If you have the charging top voltage at/below the peak of 240V mains (which is sqrt(2) higher than the rms of 240V), you can get away with using the load's voltage-adaptive power supply to handle the varying battery voltage. This will work with resistive heaters (no simple thermostats, though; "electronic trailing edge phase cut dimmer" is the technology needed, but with adapted control to work like a normal PWM), but resistive light bulbs would burn out.
There are plug standards similar to the ones used on computer power supplies that are rated as DC variants.
Feel free to stay in contact; I am looking for making use of local solar power for electronic loads that make up most of my electricity usage once I can spend the appropriate money on it, and combining it with UPS functionality as that's rather cheap to add.
Lithium batteries like you find in electric cars probably can support this but it does require a certain additional upfront investment.
In our kitchen we have both. Items heat faster with less heating of nonessential surrounding areas vs. standard burners.
My guess is cooking aside solar generation is probably not going to be by itself a sufficient source of household power for the foreseeable future. In any case optimizing use of electric energy requires taking advantage of the best available technologies.
I have to note that it is rated at 2000w at max setting (6), but due to it being so potent, we've never had it set to more than 3 out of 6, anything above that is way too aggressive. So make it 1000w typical draw.
The all-electrical all-self-produced setup probably isn't viable without a large enough battery and inverter.
https://www.inductioncooked.com/how-much-electricity-does-in...
The induction stove only heats the bottom plate. Whereas with a gas stove around a large wok, there is a lot of convection heating the thin walls of the wok as well.
I pity the dogs and cats especially!
Problem is solved by either using better components, or better matching the control frequency to the components used so there a no frequency modes that happen to match up with the resonant frequency of components used. Thus eliminating the transfer of electrical energy into mechanical energy.
Used to be able to hear it but can't anymore so either they all got better the last few years or I aged out of being able to hear it.
Regardless of price, multilayer ceramic capacitors are piezoelectric - meaning they physically vibrate. Inductors and transformers are electromagnets powerful enough to noticeably vibrate and move themselves. In fact, if you test them during assembly before taping them, the two halves of the ferrite core will snap together like magnets. Most noise comes instead from the windings, but that gives you an idea of their physical power. The biggest winding in an induction cooktop is the induction coil itself.
The reason you hear them is because they're being used at audio frequencies. Considerate designers choose higher switching frequencies above what humans and household pets can hear. Induction cooktops are kind of a special case where it's tempting to dip into the audible frequencies. Frequency choice alone doesn't eliminate all noise, so there are other mitigations like materials selection and assembly, to name a couple.
Overall, it's largely due to being cheap about the design and manufacturing processes.
https://www.thespruceeats.com/best-electric-woks-to-buy-4138...
The lack of adequate kitchen ventilation is pretty underrated by most people. Picked up a WYND Halo indoor air quality monitor out of general curiosity and was astonished at just how quickly indoor air can sour when cooking if you don't have adequate ventilation.
I cook a lot more outdoors than I used to now!
Ordinary domestic kitchens did not have the ventilation to do it properly.
Limited heat settings left me often wishing for more nuance, especially in lower temperatures.
Hysteresis. You can see this by putting your saucepan with water to 350, then lowering it to 212 when it reaches a boil. It will rapidly cycle between boiling and not boiling, making simmering very difficult. My particular induction burner has one setting for 140F (way too low) and the next setting is 212F. Where's simmer?
It does heat water up faster than a conventional burner, so I use it for cooking the pasta while I make the sauce on a conventional gas stovetop. I also use it when temperature control isn't important, but that's not very often in cooking.
Induction heat transfer is basically generating a magnetic field in the bottom coil, which is then picked up by the vessel, currents induced in it causing the heat.
Cheap induction stoves emulate lower power levels by turning the heat on and off, averaging the heat.
One solution is to use a thick bottom vessel that retains enough heat between the cycles to allow simmering.
Or buy a smooth controlled stove. But I dont think there are any such ones in the market.
I usually use these with electric stoves since they retain heat pretty well. They take a while to warm up though, so there's both time and energy lost in that warming process.
Cast Iron ones will do too.
If you have to cook something to simmer and hold heat for long, best use thick bottomed ones.
What could be done to mitigate the slow heating issue is to use a small amount of water initially, on high settings, allowing it to boil. Then you can add your contents, reduce the power setting and allow it to simmer.
What many dont know is that you can keep a cast iron or steel plate between the vessel and the stove, of a suitable thickness, that converts the induction stove to a "heater" stove (the plate gets heated through induction, but the vessel only sees the heat). However, a word of caution. If the plate is of a very large size, it will have un-even heating and may warp. Best size is one that is slightly smaller than the circular marker on the stove.
I do agree that there are far too many induction cooktops with gawd awful controls that are not responsive; that's more a matter of picking a well designed unit rather than a fundamental flaw in the technology itself. Same with granular control - higher end models offer not just finer control, but different control modes. It boggles my mind there aren't more temperature probe options for automatic temperature control. My GE cooktop had an optional bluetooth probe - but it only worked for low temps. If they had a high temp probe it would be a candy makers dream!
I only use gas when I want to cook with super high heat - like with a wok. And for that I use a left over turkey fryer burner - outside! Double bonus for all the gunk thrown off during cooking not being trapped in my house either. I don't have a restaurant style hood and make up air system; it's far cheeper and easier to just go outside for that kind of cooking.
I both agree with and disagree with your post- I agree that induction has not met its potential yet. If every induction range used the Control Freak's control systems, people would be abandoning gas in droves because it's better in every way: https://www.amazon.com/PolyScience-Temperature-Controlled-Co...
I disagree that it's specifically worse for cast iron, especially when you have a good device. The problem there is the quality of the cookware, cast iron works, and an aluminum or aluminum cored stainless steel work perfectly if they're well designed.
Have you tried a thicker, heavier pan? A good quality induction cooker should heat reasonably slowly and maintain a constant temperature if you set it to, say, 1/3 or 1/2 power.
I’ve been using a friend’s one recently and found it to be much easier to maintain a steady temperature than with my old electric cooktop.
I was excited by the prospects of induction cooking, and if I'm boiling water, or even making a slow-cook stew, it works great. But for sauces and meat (where fine temperature control is critical), I'll stick to gas or (if I have to) electric.
Indeed I love to cook so much and one of the downsides of induction I didn't see talked about too much in this thread - matching pan size to hob size - bugged me so much on my old cooktop I'm tempted to get something ridiculous like the Gaggenau 400 Series that doesn't have defined areas for pans, but a grid of smaller hobs that will autodetect and adjust to the size/location of a pan. There are at least three versions of that cooktop from various manufacturers and one of the non-Gaggenau ones was something like 30% cheaper. And I just realized I didn't save it like I thought I had. D'oh!
Waiting for integrated temperature control to become more of a thing with induction - higher end cooktops have it; just needs to percolate down. My GE cooktop had a bluetooth probe that worked great at lower temperatures - but usually you want automatic temp control more on the high end - frying and candymaking is what I was missing. I guess if you made lots of delicate sauces the bluetooth probe would have been a godsend and maybe that's what they were going for. Probably cheaper, easier and more reliable to only have a lower temp probe too. Just not nearly as useful for what I would have liked!
If you like to cook invest in good cookware. The biggest problem with induction is cheap cookware with "disks" on the bottom. Having as much ferrous magnetic metal as possible is the real key to success with induction - and why your cast iron performs so well!
I love All Clad - triple ply stainless steel sandwich of either aluminum or (if you are feeling really extravagant) copper. Far easier to maintain than cast iron (although I love my cast iron too - can't get fried chicken just right in anything else). Cookware and More is the official All Clad factory seconds (usual some dent or other cosmetic flaw) outlet with great prices and if you get on their mailing list they have an annual sale where they take even more off. I've gotten All Clad skillets for well under $200 and they will be something I can pass on. Good cookware never dies. Took several years to get the pieces I wanted but I did it without breaking the bank.
If All Clad, even factory seconds, are still too pricy - I'm not paying $500 for a stockpot no matter how wonderful it may be - then Made In has very nice pieces competitively priced. Got my stock pot from them for under $200.
Finally Tramontina has great induction ready clad cookware pieces and can be found at regular big box stores like Costco or even Walmart. Not quite as heavy/well constructed as All Clad or Made In, but still leaps and bounds better than anything with a disk.
Good, better, best - just reject anything with a damn disk welded onto the bottom of it and you will find induction a LOT more enjoyable. As good as your cast iron :)
Fine control comes with higher end units that have more settings. Didn't pay attention to that at my last house and got a cooktop with only 11 choices. My mothers induction range has double that and it's amazing what a difference makes, especially at the lower end - as you note. Getting a new house next month and won't be making that mistake again! Something with a at least 18-20 steps from low to high will be mandatory for me. 11 just isn't enough.
and loud
I prefer non-induction electric.
I get the principle but the UX leaves a lot to be desired. Other than boiling water it's a step down for me.
Also, it throws off way less heat than a gas burner. Almost all of it goes into the pan, where gas tends to throw a lot up around the pan.
I've never run into the problem mentioned by another in this thread about cycling when simmering or burning. My range is a $3500 Samsung range, more than a cheap electric, less than many gas, but not exactly cheap. Well worth it for me.
However, one downside I didn't expect is: My inductive range is more disposable.
Where a regular range, if it breaks, you can probably have a repair guy come by and do some simple troubleshooting and identify a burner element or knob that has failed... The inductive cooktop the repair guys tend to just want to replace the whole thing, to the tune of $750 parts, plus labor. At which point they start recommending you just replace the range, because most people don't want to spend more than a cheap range on a repair.
A year ago my range had two of the burners stop working. Thankfully, it was a well known problem, a blown solder joint on one of the boards deep in the cooktop. I was able to repair it for $0 in 3 hours (my son was helping, probably could have done it in half the time if I wasn't also teaching him), and we were back in business.
But no repairman would have wanted to spend 90 minutes on a "maybe" repair with no warranty and another 90 minute service call or potentially $300 board replacement or $750 cooktop replacement, and an angry customer because their fix didn't work.
No problem for a DIYer.
However a "make it electric" mentality doesn't address the fact that a big chunk of the "its" (at least in the global North) are just overconsumption that shouldn't exist at all, if we ever want to find balance with nature.
So instead of changing to an electric car that has a massive material footprint and takes up the same amount of space on the road as a petrol car, buy a bike (and vote for investments in bike lanes and public transport).
Instead of living in a huge house and needing a lawnmower, move to an apartment (and vote for more compact housing zoning).
Instead of buying vanity gadgets that relies on ocean cargo traffic, don't (and work less as you then need less money).
Bikes are of course great, and fitness is great. But, here in Colorado, even an E bike is impractical for the vast majority of simple errands simply because of distance. If you respond with "move to a city" you are failing in empathy. The existence of long distance trips with probably bad weather make bikes not the right answer for the vast majority of people outside of major cities in America.
The right answer probably does include public infrastructure at a vast scale, but, our government cannot afford it, and it is not a foregone conclusion that the environmental impact of major construction of infrastructure is better than that of electric cars.
The reason this is not a solved problem is because simple answers like "buy a bike" are not actually answers, they are deflections. As are the answers like, "there is no solution except a pickup truck".
edit: removed sarcastic comment.
I'm not convinced of that. If the will were there, I am confident we could totally afford it.
The US will never suffer Greece or Venezuela-style bankruptcy because the whole world will go down with it considering the US dollar's status. And what is credit other than trust, if I loan Bob some money I trust Bob will be able to pay it back, now Bob might get hit by a truck or start a gambling habit and his ability to pay me back would be reduced/gone, but the USA will always have income in the form of tax from productive people paying them.
Then again maybe that's too simplistic, the USA could suffer an even worse political gridlock than what it currently has and grind to a halt.
I didn't meet a lot more friends in a compact city than out of one. I never spend weekends in front of a TV, and the people who do will probably do that no matter what.
Doesn't the massive decline that is losing the personal space of a house of my own, having land of my own, a yard of my own, no shared walls.
The reality is just different here. We're not going to bike everywhere on the highway in Ontario in the winter, when it's -20C with windchill. We can't even get the government to bring internet to every street, much less bike lanes, street lighting, better infrastructure. My partner is really trying to make change at city hall, but it's just... difficult.
And of course, we'd love to have kept living in Toronto, but it's completely unaffordable and this is where the job was. And thousands if not millions of other folks are living in similar realities. Perhaps we could convince everyone who lives in small towns to move to the city, but the city is already a difficult enough place to live.
We should do everything we can as individuals to make this better, but that "everything" is getting the local government to actually do something to make biking a real possibility. Until then, blanket statements like yours are just humblebrags about either your city, your situation, or your amazing willpower.
There are many beautiful places to live on Earth where opting for a bicycle is not a compromise of any kind, but a practical choice. But we continue to build and live in places where the traffic, distances, planning are all hostile to pedestrians.
Every year is a point of no return, it's an adage that has lost it's original meaning. It's theoretically possible to reverse damage but we are a long ways from that to the extent that drastic cutting of emissions is necessary in the very short run.
> But we continue to build and live in places where the traffic, distances, planning are all hostile to pedestrians.
It's possible to strike a balance. There's no reason suburbs have to be hostile to cycling and public transpo. On the other hand, there may come a point where clean energy is so abundant that it hardly matters anymore.
The hole might be too deep to get out of it, so let's keep on digging down.
> On the other hand, there may come a point where clean energy is so abundant that it hardly matters anymore.
It still matters, even with free energy I wouldn't want to live in a place where it's miserable to take a walk.
The key point about free, clean energy is that carbon emissions would be nil even with increase in demand. That's what is meant by "it hardly matters". However, we need swift intervention right now to ensure climate doesn't descend into an uncomfortable range for many years.
I for one wouldn't want to live in a city that's too compact (more than 4k people per square kilometre or about 10k per square mile) - chiefly because this means high prices per unit of housing area.
I don't care if I have a corner store and a bar within walking distance if all I can afford is 60m2 at maximum while still making at least twice as much as the average in the area.
I live in San Antonio, and I went on a bike ride last night. On large community rides you don't have to think as much individually about safety - you have other people calling things out and there is some safety in numbers.
But for most of my ride, until I got downtown, I felt a bit on edge in a way I wouldn't feel on the River walking. Why? Because you constantly have to think about cars not paying attention and hitting you, even when you're lit up and following the rules.
I don't fault the everyday person for being skeptical about riding bikes in the suburbs, where there are even more bends and curves, no bike lanes, and even more aggressive asshole drivers who think bicycling is for loudmouth liberals. I wish we lived in a different world (or the Netherlands), but alas.
Cities now seem obsolete to many, if WFH is the future. And these people now need homes with more space, to set up a more permanent home office.
People won't accept being pressured to relocate into grim megacities while leaving the rest of the planet mostly uninhabited.
You could drastically revamp zoning laws and still living in the outskirts would be less expensive (See: Japan). Of course we should do this because it creates more options and opportunities for consumers and which NATURALLY increase density of cities without the need for senseless coercion.
Bothered by homeless people sitting on the street? A lot of them would rather be in a living room. Got mugged recently? While it doesn't excuse the mugger's behavior, they'd be less likely to commit the crime if their rent was dramatically cheaper. Don't want to listen to your neighbors arguing? Changing up the walls in your apartment building can help a lot.
Furthermore, even though I did address individuals in the above points, going after overconsumption needs a system change and a big political struggle, and is not something that can realistically be changed with individual consumption choices.
But keeping in mind that saving the planet is mostly a political struggle, individuals can change the commonsense and what's considered normal.
I upvote for this.
I wouldn't bike, either. Distances are too long (can be over 40 miles to go somewhere) and I'd be soaked in sweat after even a short ride most of the year.
A lot more people think like me. We didn't work so we could move back into cities and live like broke 25 year olds. The life you're envisioning honestly sounds like it sucks. If not I'm open to hear why, but you'll need to convince most people that it's better, not just that it's greener.
Global warming --> climate change --> climate crisis --> climate apocalpyse
What models are you looking at that you're seeing doom and gloom in the next few decades?
But just like in normal life, you can chop both ends of the hysteria off because they're not useful, they're just the loudest.
Global warming was probably a bad name choice, but it described the "thing happening" and not the effects. Climate change is probably a better term for it. It is a crises. Places like the American Gulf Coast and West Coast are in for a rough time ahead that's going to require gigantic expenses that probably won't materialize to solve problems.
Aside from the actual effects that will occur, the degree of severity and location can certainly be debated within some sort of reasonable parameters, we really fucked ourselves with this car-first infrastructure. It's a gigantic tax on productivity. All the money that goes into maintaining cars, roads, parking lots, etc. while losing natural habitats, gaining obesity, and unnecessary deaths because instead of walking a half mile round trip to a local grocery store you have to drive 30 miles to go to Costco.
I've also noticed comments about "living packed like sardines", which shows me that those making these comments really haven't thought much about this walkability thing. While I'd argue something like Hong Kong is better than Houston on just about every metric except the illusion of having "land", it's also not a desirable outcome. Better to look at Europe where small towns and villages, and medium-sized cities dot the landscape. If you still want to live in a rural community or live on a property with a lot of acreage nobody is stopping you! What we're trying to stop is a top-down program that enforces suburbia, to the benefit of car manufacturers and government transportation budgets, and to the degradation of the rest of us.
You should be looking at mixed-use walkable neighborhoods as your model for the future. This "either Hong Kong or Houston" discussion is nonsense. And us Americans know this at their core. That's why they all "love Europe" and "love the cafe on the corner".
Building in this way solves just about every problem we have. It can't be stressed enough how fucked up urban planning and architecture are making our country.
And you need to take on your own share of that suckiness to help out. Refusing to do so means you are pushing more burden onto everyone else, and that is nothing but pure selfishness.
Now, according to the media coverage, this will have the exact opposite effect - think about all the articles about "green jobs" and the "green economy", all the column inches claiming that ordinary people will be better off and rich right wingers are just trying to trick them into thinking otherwise to protect themselves. The propaganda can't go on forever though. Sooner or later, the true social costs of all this and who is actually losing out will become undeniable, and at that point a lot of people are going to be very angry.
I, for one, plan to be on the right side of history on this topic.
If the oil is running out or is otherwise untenable lets make some rational plans for something better (oil is dirty anyway and makes life suck) rather then running around in rough goat haired shirts flagellating ourselves and congratulating each other on how much we have made life suck and how virtuous we now are.
Largely because traditional suburban/rural designs are not climate conscious, nor economically solvent. Your tax receipts wouldn't cover the maintenance costs of infrastructure.
If the actual economic costs of maintaining the above weren't subsidized by people living in apartment blocks, you would probably change your tune.
The reason people cluster together in cities is so that they can trade with each other and have sex with each other and learn from each other and attend gatherings with each other and look at each other's art and so on. And even most sexless, joyless, introvert-art-haters need to sell their labor or their wares. So, sure, everybody would like more space, more privacy, etc, but the way the world actually works is that you have to make tradeoffs.
That's the beauty of technology though. I really don't have to make these tradeoffs anymore.
I can work from home which means I'm no longer limited to the job market in my immediate geography.
I can order practically any product I want online so it really doesn't matter if I live close to a city with great stores or not.
I can use a plethora of apps to meet people and date.
And of course, I have my car (and uber as a backup) so I don't need to be cramped into some terrible apartment in order to make the world accessible.
We love to romanticize these crowded industrial era cities, but when given the choice, most people would rather not live in dense cities at all.
> With particular reference to apartment houses, it is pointed out that the development of detached house sections is greatly retarded by the coming of apartment houses, which has sometimes resulted in destroying the entire section for private house purposes; that in such sections very often the apartment house is a mere parasite, constructed in order to take advantage of the open spaces and attractive surroundings created by the residential character of the district. Moreover, the coming of one apartment house is followed by others, interfering by their height and bulk with the free circulation of air and monopolizing the rays of the sun which otherwise would fall upon the smaller homes, and bringing, as their necessary accompaniments, the disturbing noises incident to increased traffic and business, and the occupation, by means of moving and parked automobiles, of larger portions of the streets, thus detracting from their safety and depriving children of the privilege of quiet and open spaces for play, enjoyed by those in more favored localities-until, finally, the residential character of the neighborhood and its desirability as a place of detached residences are utterly destroyed. Under these circumstances, apartment houses, which in a different environment would be not only entirely unobjectionable but highly desirable, come very near to being nuisances.
What is this nonsense? "[T]he apartment house is a mere parasite." So the Court prefers suburbs to apartment living? Who cares? This is no basis for overturning fundamental property rights.
The Court in Euclid did what NIMBYs often do, which is to listen to all the arguments and then say, ultimately, "yeah, yeah, productivity, property rights, freedom, etc, I get it, I get it, but I don't want more density near me and isn't the intensity of my preferences on this issue what really matters?"
Not Just Bikes did an excellent series on this specific problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0
I sure do understand it, but I also understand that when it comes to comparing the environmental impact of upper middle class urbanites and suburbanites, we're splitting hairs. Neither of these lifestyles as they exist now are sustainable, so what this really boils down to is a bunch of rich folks living in cities looking down their noses at us middle class plebs in the burbs, simply because they find suburbs aesthetically distasteful rather than out of any genuine concern for the environment.
Yea that is not at all true. You can literally compare the CO2 per capita for an average American/Canadian and someone from Europe and in general they produce 1/3 of the CO2. It is not a negligible difference.
This is largely caused because of the urban designs which don't focus on gas dependent suburbia. Or the benefits from efficiency at scale which can only be achieved in high density living accommodations.
https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-pe...
It is also a plain fact that downtown urban blocks are the profit generators for cities whilst suburbia is largely a financial hole.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI
You looking at a classist angle is I think an internal bias. There are poor/rich in both areas. It's just a straight fact though that suburban design is not sustainable both economically and ecologically.
I've never disputed this fact. It's true, the American suburban model is not sustainable. However, the urban lifestyle common in North America or Europe is likewise not sustainable either. So it does become a class/political issue since neither lifestyle actually address the issue at hand. It's just a bunch of people judging each other for their unsustainable lifestyles.
What do you mean by this? There is a large gulf of difference between the two, and I feel you are more commenting on the consumerist patterns of the above. That pattern is a lot more sustainable model in high density urban environments from a logistics, CO2 perspective.
From a modern quality of living perspective, it is vastly more sustainable both economically and ecologically to have people in high density housing. Hence why it was the traditional form of infrastructure for huge portions of history up until the failed US suburban experiment.
It's much easier to hook up good quality and efficient infrastructure to a high density block than to a suburban neighborhood. The above infrastructure would be better utilization rates, cheaper to install, and easier to offset than what you propose.
Ruralia and Suburbia are not financially or environmentally sustainable, not as modern society.
And even in rural areas, you expect all that technology to come to you.
So yeah, it works for you, because a lot of people think like you and you're a big voting bloc, but ultimately, you're increasing debt levels for everyone and burning the planet down.
But hey, you got yours, so we're cool...
That's fine, but cities like New York are not sustainable either. Ditto for commercial air travel, so the entire conversation is unproductive and pointless. It just degenerates into wealthy urbanites saying something along the lines of "You terrible suburb dwellers need to give up your unsustainable lifestyle and embrace our unsustainable lifestyle instead".
I'll take all of this more seriously when I start seeing environmentalists swear off things like commercial flight or eating food and wine that's been shipped halfway around the world. Until then, I'll enjoy my suburb and my car and my lawn with the picket fence.
CO2 emissions for households living in cities are noticeably lower (just goggle it).
> I'll take all of this more seriously when I start seeing environmentalists swear off things like commercial flight or eating food and wine that's been shipped halfway around the world
This is pure whataboutism and you know it. Just look at the co2 emissions of your lifestyle versus those of wine shipped from across the world.
This kind of network of mutually codependent systems is just the way things are.
You think your city is sustainable? Just two simple questions to put that lie to rest:
1. Where does your food come from?
2. Where does your water come from?
It's all about money. More people have more money.
The fact that we've pulled people out of agriculture and we can grow food for 100 with just 1-2 actually growing it is great for the planet, for the economy, for human development.
“Ruralia” is already entirely ecologically sustainable.
If you don’t want to subsidize rural infrastructure through your tax dollars, then frankly, we should just charge you exorbitant rates for our food and water, and then — by your metric — we’ll be entirely financially sustainable, too.
If you live largely "off the grid", grow much of your own food, don't go out much (since any going out means a lot of driving, if you're in the country), and rarely order goods delivery... sure.
Do you have your own paved road infrastructure, or are you relying on others to pay for that? Road infrastructure for low-density housing is a net drain on the public purse (unlike e.g. free healthcare, space exploration, etc. which are a net win, economically)
I'm a big fan of space exploration, but I seriously doubt that it's an economic net win.
The vast majority of people don't live like that.
Paved roads and sewage are probably least important to me. What's wrong with a septic system?
I am getting older. I was born in 1987 so I am already 30+. With my sedentary lifestyle, I am pretty much guaranteed to have health problems well before I am eligible for Medicare and there is no sign that we will have medicare for all in my lifetime. Therefore, I can only afford healthcare as long as I work. Long story short, I cannot afford to be airlifted out of the middle of nowhere when (not if) I have a major health crisis in the next thirty years.
If we can use a septic tank for sewage, we can also use solar (and batteries) for electricity, a state of the art in-ground heat pump for heating (and cooling) the house, satellite Internet for remote work. We can do all that but we still need paved roads.
I think (please don't quote me on this) this is the thing that the stronger towns dude keeps saying. We can probably afford to build sparsely populated suburbia and rural utopia ONCE where everyone has half an acre of backyard and where you aren't woken up in the middle of the night because your neighbor decided to do laundry at 3 AM on a Tuesday. However, who is paying to keep up all these roads?
> for example, a representative cost in 2014 for reconstructing an existing lane of [...] a collector street in a small urban area would have set you back $1.5 million per mile
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/1/27/how-much-does-...
I wonder if building out railroads would be cheaper than building out paved roads to everywhere. Thoughts?
I don't see any issue with state tax subsidizing roads a little anyway, especially for the farmers we depend on. Not sure about railroad costs but it would be great if passenger rail was invested in more again.
So you've got the rural 1/3rd of the population depending on 7x more roads and 20x more bridges than the urban population. If those folks actually bore the full cost of maintaining their own roads, I'd be willing to bet many of them would decide their rural lifestyle wasn't worth quite as much as they claimed.
I assume if it's vital infrastructure to a couple mega-farms they'll happily take over maintenance. They're not gonna just shut down operations because some rural bridges on their preferred routes aren't maintained anymore. They'll either accept longer routes using a smaller set of still-publicly-maintained bridges, or solve the problem some other way, maybe by maintaining the roads themselves. Public spending drops, and one or both of food prices go up slightly and profits go down slightly. Seems fine. May well be cheaper, overall—forcing companies to choose between longer routes and maintaining their own roads seems like a good way to weed out routes that are being maintained at a net loss.
Why do folks act like farmers are doing what they do out of altruism or something? "You owe farmers! They feed you!" Yeah, I do owe them. I owe them what I paid for the food. Right? If they decide I'm not sufficiently grateful they can stop. I'm not a "the market solves all problems" sort but I'm pretty sure it'd solve that one, no problem. Others will happily increase production to make up for the loss, because it's a market. Throw a fit that urbanites aren't subsidizing rural living & businesses enough, and stop producing, and someone with more sense will gladly take that market share.
If that wasn't the case, I am not sure the US would be a competitive position to grow staples compared with much of the rest of the world, which in itself is a whole topic of discussion.
Given that it already is being subsidized, I think thought needs to be done for handling the topic of broad agricultural good distribution and subsidies. Frankly I think corn, bioethanol, meat etc... should lose their subsidies but that in itself would be quite a vote loser.
E.G. How about canals, barges, railways instead of roadways
I just object to framing things like urbanites must subsidize rural living because "that's where their food comes from". Sure, of course... but that's why there's a food market. We're not propitiating the farm-gods to shower food upon us, but, instead, paying for food. Subsidies might make sense for several other reasons, but, as someone who spend much of his childhood in the country and sometimes living on small farms, the defensive "but you owe us" attitudes from some people when this topic comes up seem downright bizarre.
This would make subsidization more transparent to the general public, while also enabling free-market competition and innovation rather than free-money stagnation.
Also even though you get less room, the cost of living inside a city is insane. The trade offs don't make any sense. You can often live a much better QoL, for half as much anywhere else. Address the cost of living issues, then more people might be interested in the city lifestyle. The truth is even those that live in suburbs or rural areas that are interested living in the city simply can't afford it. If they work there they're paid just enough that they have to commute an hour or more to afford to live somewhere.
It really wouldn't. I don't think there is a mechanism for making the above infrastructure sustainable short of tearing it down.
In some places, the debt payments exceed total annual incomes for residents.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfQUOHlAocY&list=PLJp5q-R0lZ...
I think this does need to change, but I'm the minority here. Most people "need" to drive because of the weather.
https://rockinst.org/issue-areas/fiscal-analysis/balance-of-...
Note that 2020 is an outlier year due to COVID, so probably best to look at 2019 or before.
In 2019, 9 states paid more than they got back. And wow do some states make a lot of money: Virginia and Kentucky both have a per capita "more money than they take in" that's 3X that of Montana. But Montana still is raking in ~$4000 per capita than they pay out, whereas each Massachusetts resident sent out ~$2100.
I grew up in North Dakota, so can I get a free day ski pass next time I come out west and swing by Montana? :)
This is is opposite of how things actually work.
Generally, rural areas are fairly heavily subsidized by urban ones. The more taxes become localized, the less money from urban areas gets funneled to rural ones and the poorer the rural areas become.
Perhaps in your exact individual case this is true, but statistically speaking it is not.
Rural areas as a general rule receive (in many cases far) more federal tax dollars than their residents remit. Many rural areas would simply not be tenable much less solvent if they did not receive these dollars to assist with infrastructure.
This is one of the most pervasive myths my rural family members believe in.
Is this something that can't be solved by building codes?
In some sense I prefer a Lamborghini to the Hyundai I own. I guess everybody would. So why don't we make the Hyundai illegal? Because all things are not equal and when I'm free to weigh my options I make tradeoffs. In my case, I have decided I would rather own the worse car, so that I have the flexibility to use my money for other things.
Some people would prefer to do this with apartments, too -- maybe to save money or maybe to be close to the urban center or for some other reason -- except that most cities have made them illegal in most districts. It's no good to say in the abstract, "most people prefer houses to apartments, so developers should only be allowed to build houses." People don't make decisions in the abstract. They have constraints. They weigh tradeoffs.
Single-family zoning is a bunch of rich people making Hyundais illegal, because they're rich enough to ignore the tradeoffs and they think it's pretty obvious that everybody prefers a Lamborghini, anyway. Meanwhile, the rest of us would really like the option to buy a Hyundai -- the option to make tradeoffs.
And we have to weigh all those benefits against...the fact that you personally don't like it? I don't think it's a tough call.
I'll be 100% onboard when all these apartments kicking people out of homes are equity-based for residents.
I know I moved the goalposts a bit, but equity is a huge issue for me with dense living.
To your original point, I get it, but I've been in the world so long that the idea my neighbor can build a skyscraper against my property line feels... unfree, ironically perhaps. Your assertion is that dense housing is for the greater good, an opinion I share. So I guess I'm just human in my contradiction.
Pretty much no, by definition, in the US. If you buy something like an apartment in the US, it's generally referred to as a condo. An apartment in the US is pretty much strictly a rental. Additionally, the construction of buildings intended for purchase vs intended for rental are fundamentally different. I would consider it a raw deal to buy the typical US apartment, while most condos can be quite decent.
A Condo is basically any individual-owned (e.g. you can buy it) premise within a communal property (e.g. a multi-family dwelling). One of the defining characteristics of a Condo is that owners of Condos within a building pay monthly or quarterly fees to help cover maintenance of the building, grounds, and common areas outside their premise and are fully responsible for the inside of their premise. In other words, with a condo, you have to hire a plumber to fix your sink on your own, you have equity and can get a mortgage to buy it because you own the premise you live in, but you still have to pay additional monthly fees for shared maintenance of things like landscaping outside, parking areas, building exterior, and common areas like a pool or gym.
An Apartment is basically any communally or developer-owned premise within a communal property (e.g. a multi-family dwelling). The defining characteristic of an Apartment is that you pay a single monthly amount (maybe split by line items) which includes rent for the premise you have possession of, as well as maintenance for that premise which is handled by the owner of the Apartment (not you), and any communal maintenance. Most apartments in the US are developer-owned, but there are some which are communally owned, e.g. all renters are also investors into a community association which in turn owns the building (e.g. like a coop), however the communal rather than individual nature of ownership ensures this is still an Apartment and not a Condo under US definitions.
This isn't entirely uniquely American, but it's pretty much so. Outside of the US, there is usually less distinction in ownership structure and any premise within a multi-family dwelling is generically referred to as a flat, unless it's a fully open floor plan in which its called a loft. In the US, a loft is specifically an open floor plan dwelling with an open second-floor area (the loft is the upstairs), a single floor open floor plan is called a studio, and both lofts and studios in the US are subsets of apartments or condos.
More importantly, while it is somewhat commonplace for condos to "age out" and end up as apartments in the US (this is a called a "condo conversion"), you very rarely see apartments become condos. That is, as a building ages and decreases in value or maintenance costs become untenable to individual residents, someone may buy up multiple units until they own the building, and then convert it to apartments. In some condos, individual owners may buy and then rent out individual units to tenants as an investment as well, which when done by a business entity is a form of condo conversion. The major reason why this happens pretty much only in one direction is that apartments and condos tend to be constructed differently in the US. Nearly by definition, condos are considered luxury properties, and are built to last a long time with a high degree of privacy for residents, which means the buildings use a lot of construction techniques from concrete or other long-lasting materials and have thicker fully insulated walls between units. Apartments in the US generally are constructed as cheaply as possible and so that it's easy for them to be "turned" between tenants, which preferences drywall on stick-frame construction, meaning interior walls between units are thinner and less sound insulating, although exterior facades might be stone, brick, or concrete to reduce maintenance.
Generally, the term "condo" can refer to an individual unit or the building, and "apartment" only refers to the individual unit, and the building would be referred to with the suffix "building" or "complex" for a multi-building development. Condos generally are not developed as complexes, but as single buildings, and typically are on higher-value real estate locations (city centers).
As if houses are any different these days. It's not hard to find a lot of real estate investors encouraging people to buy houses for the sole purpose of renting them out.
It's one thing for someone to have a second home to rent out, it's another to have 20, 30, or 30,000.
The real problem with densification is how fast it occurs. An area will change its zoning and you'll see absurd things like a row of single story houses bookended by 6 story apartment complexes.
I'd rather see policy that allows the changes to happen slowly (e.g. you can build up to 5 feet higher than the average height of other buildings in the zone) but, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, some places have been applying no-compromise protectionist policies for so long that the pressure for immediate and drastic change is intense.
Buying a house doesn't grant you permanent rights to freeze the entire block for all time, otherwise why do property deeds have boundaries? The north american housing crises is almost entirely the result of many decades of terrible zoning laws, but we've let it fester so long it's going to take a lot more than just zoning fixes to get out of it.
Real estate in most areas is one of the least free markets you can participate in and I'd love to see neighbour-power reduced to almost nothing so that cities can grow organically again. If people really want single family homes that's fine, but the full and true cost needs to be priced into that purchase. Current zoning laws have productive urban areas massively subsidizing unproductive suburban ones.
I live in a single family home near a downtown. My street should be way more dense than it is and I look forward to that happening. If the neighbourhood character ever changes enough to the point I don't like living here anymore I'll sell and move somewhere else. I own my property, but that shouldn't give me any real sway over what is on the adjoining lot.
Why would you think that? I for one definitely would not prefer a machine that not only has hideous resource consumption but also makes it much easier to kill myself in it.
As for cramped/yard, the square footage and presence of a balcony are easily determined by the buyers. But building codes should accommodate balconies by exempting them from limits on floor-area ratio and building footprint.
But, ultimately I think you should be free to live however you want to live. What you should not be free to do is enforce your way of living via regulations that prevent density. If other people want to build density on property they own, then they should be allowed to do that, even if you don't like it.
Somebody once said that buying a plot of land near a city and expecting the areas around it never to densify is like buying a puppy and getting mad when it turns into a full-sized dog. Cities have to be allowed to grow, your preferences notwithstanding.
One issue I see is that ultimately when there are enough people, choice is removed. Eventually there is only density left. My town isn't very dense right now, but there is definitely pressure to build more homes. When that happens, my interests will be harmed, and the interests of people who would like more density would be served. It's effectively a zero-sum game. You could say "I have a choice to move somewhere less dense" -- but so too do the people who would prefer density: they can move somewhere else and leave me alone.
Now I'm not arguing that I should be able to prevent people from making my area more dense. What I am arguing is that under this regime, people who like density will always eventually win, and people who abhor density will always eventually lose. Why is it fair that one group's preferences matter and another group's preferences do not?
Say your neighbor wants to build a duplex. You might not like it, but that's as far as your harm goes. To enforce your preference, though, you have to restrict your neighbor's behavior. The metaphorical "lines" here are pretty easy to draw, because they're literally property lines with direct physical representations.
Here's an example. I absolutely do not believe that this is actually a fair comparison. I do believe it follows the same logic as your example.
Let me explain what I mean. Let's say that I lived in an apartment, and developed a habit of listening to extremely loud music with bass starting at 10pm, and ending at 5am. My neighbors have a "preference" to be able to not hear that loud music at all, and certainly not when they're trying to sleep. They may not _like_ the loud music, but that's as far as the harm goes. To enforce _their_ preference, they would have to restrict my behavior.
Now all reasonable people would agree that playing deafening bass in the middle of the night is inappropriate, and that it would be perfectly fine to restrict my behavior. In other words, we restrict others' behavior pretty frequently. And, this restriction is based on "common sense" judgements. When the preferences of somebody falls outside of the norm under this regime, they may not have much recourse.
Now to be clear, this is far from a perfect comparison: there are laws against noise pollution, and property lines are not really the same issue as "being obnoxious on purpose." In other words, I agree and admit that these two scenarios are not interchangeable in effect. (I do believe that they follow the same logic, however.)
It's also not the case that in the "duplex" scenario that the greatest ill is not simply that I must "see" the duplex. Really, population density in an area has a number of effects:
- More people means more noise pollution. (and in some cities, kids will play loud bass in their cars no matter what time of night it is)
- More crime. (if not per-capita, then in absolute terms)
- More trash, debris, and pollution in my general vicinity.
- Longer travel times.
- More crowds.
- Etc.
And again, I'm not suggesting that I should have a legal right to prevent density from occurring. However it seems that when density occurs I have no recourse but move. I don't have any way to preserve something which is singularly important to me.
Sure, and what's wrong with that? If your goal is to live in a rural area without many people, then many countries today have plenty of depopulated areas on the outskirts of rural towns. Why not live there?
It's like the parent commenter said; expecting desirable land near a city not to densify is like expecting a puppy to never grow into a dog.
If your goal is to live in a dense area packed with people, then many countries today have plenty of densely populated areas in the center of urban cities. Why not live there?
People who want their village life surrounded by farmland can go live in a small village with a train line stop and commute into the huge downtown city for work within 45 - 60 minutes. Look at berlin for example:
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Dabendorf,+15806+Zossen,+Ger...
"Move to another country" is a complete non-starter for most Americans too.
What Americans have done to their country is a fence sitting exercise that creates the worse of both worlds. Cities in Europe are smaller, more dense and the drop off into nature is significantly faster. When americans attempt to make something city like, they're noisy, dirty, traffic clogged and crime ridden because it's against the culture to make walkable, transit orientated cities that are significantly quieter, than an american car dependent 'city'. They still give themselves long commutes, but you get huge suburban sprawl that never really ends until your hours out, so you still don't get your log cabin lifestyle anyway.
By allowing cities to properly happen, you ironically create the conditions that make what you want more frequent and would still let you work close enough to a city core to actually make good money. A key issue with rural living is a bad income, because your too far away from other humans to make large productive groups than can make money.
Go to https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/region_rankings_c... and check out some European cities you know by name. I recommend looking at the "Mortgage as Percentage of Income" metric:
Mortgage as Percentage of Income is a ratio of the actual monthly cost of the mortgage to take-home family income (lower is better). Average monthly salary is used to estimate family income. It assumes 100% mortgage is taken on 20 years for the house(or apt) of 90 square meters which price per square meter is the average of price in the city center and outside of city center.
90 square meters is around 1000 square feet. In San Francisco, that's 50%. Sounds bad, huh? Well, it's 70% in Madrid, 92% in London and Munich, 101% in Rome, and 117% in Paris, and these are not even the worst: Kiev, Moscow, Minsk, Krakow or Dubrovnik are much worse than that. Maybe it's better in 2nd tier cities? Well, in some (e.g. 31% in Antwerp or 37% in Aarhus), but not in most: 115% in Brno, 93% in Zagreb, or 61% in Lyon.
Back to US: San Francisco 50% is basically as bad as it gets in US, outside of NYC (where it's 66%). Most places in US are in 20-30%s. You think Seattle or Denver are not affordable? Well, the mortgage-to-income ratio there is only around 27%. That's cheaper than basically any major European city.
So yeah, compared to most of European cities, San Francisco houses are a steal.
I think that's fair. I'm worried that some of this conversation is just a misunderstanding between the California-based population on HN. I'm fine with residents of California voting to modify their zoning laws to allow more density in principle.
My claim is that even areas away from dense urban environments seem to be getting more crowded. It seems like every place is. If it were restricted to urban environments and their suburbs I wouldn't worry so much. Even the rural areas are growing up and getting more crowded.
Of course it is. No one likes density, even those that say they like it (they enjoy the benefits, not the drawbacks) so it gets voted down almost literally everywhere - such as how you feel about greater density in your community.
Due to this, the only option to build was sprawl as density was banned.
The US really doesn't have "urban" other than for a few legacy pre-war cities that have marginally functional mass transit. The suburban/exurban way of life is pretty much the default for most of the country.
I'd feel a lot better about this debate if there were truly reasonable urban living choices. It would be nice to remove all forms of subsidy so everyone was paying their actual externalized costs.
One thing I've made note of my entire life as I watched sprawl continue unabated was that this is a historical anomaly. The human condition seems to be enough density to keep agriculture going in the hinterlands, with only a very select few being able to afford the upkeep/transport/etc. costs of maintaining an estate outside of the "dirty" city. To me it seems we might have spent a couple generations building a wildly unsustainable house of cards.
Look at this picture:
http://www.dannyquah.com/writings/en/files/2015/09/2015.09.2...
Notice how even in that circle most of that is water. People are moving out of that area for a variety of reasons, some density, some environmental (both natural and pollution), and some economic.
The current low-density north american way of living is a historical anomaly outside of agrarian lifestyles (farms are just open air biological farms). Expecting post-war living to continue is like expecting the post-war economy to continue.
Personally, I bought a 100 acres that are remote and off-road to build my own place off-grid. This is put-up-or-shut-up. You cannot expect to find less dense living without purposefully securing it.
Most of what we do today is a historical anomaly, because our times are very unique. However, it is the dense city living that's historical anomaly. As recently as 100 years ago, majority of Americans lived in rural places. Before 1900, only a small minority of people globally lived in urban environments, and before 1700, it was a very minuscule minority indeed.
Well, have you thought about buying a larger plot of land? Seems like the obvious solution if you are intent on controlling wide swaths of land surrounding your house.
We can call this idea “zoning”.
No?
Oh great, I guess I'll be commuting 2 hours to get to an office that is walking distance for my boss.
Of course human beings want to restrict what other people do on their own land. History is full of groups of people just, you know, taking land whenever they think it suits their purposes. That's why the right to private property is in the Constitution. It's why Euclid was wrongly decided. And it's why you don't get to appeal to "democracy" in an attempt to abridge a fundamental right.
I think there's a big difference in this case between what I should practically do to meet my goals and the philosophical argument at issue. In other words, even if I always lose the philosophical argument, I can simply try to buy some large plot of rural land as you suggest.
Philosophically, I worry about what happens when density is the only choice left for people, and a large majority of them don't or won't understand why that might be so unpalatable for a significant minority of people.
Your social life and neighbors will more skew towards the grey haired spectrum, but that is the sacrifice you will need to make!
As a counterexample, my partner and I require wherever we live to support life without a car. There's a handful of places in the US we can do that, all super urban. We'd be open to a lot of other places in the US were that possible, but it's singularly important to us.
I wouldn't say you're making the following point exactly but, there is definitely a contingent of people who argue for rural or single-family housing by saying "it's just objectively better". But I really think that's incredibly hard to substantiate. Probably the best we can do here is that people have strong preferences for one or the other (though they can change over time) and we should try to get people what they want without destroying the planet/creating infested hell pits.
I completely agree. I know there are a large number of people (perhaps a majority?) who prefer dense urban environments. I certainly don't want those to go away. I just also don't want to lose rural spaces.
The issue is that classic democrat “I believe in climate change but a large house and a F-150 / giant SUV is a want I don’t want to compromise on” is why we’re not making progress on any of this. Those things will still consume a ton of electricity when they’re electric.
> My town isn't very dense right now, but there is definitely pressure to build more homes. When that happens, my interests will be harmed, and the interests of people who would like more density would be served
When you bought your house, you bought the land, not the right to decide what other people do with their property.
> Why is it fair that one group's preferences matter and another group's preferences do not
Because you preferences lead to my grand kids having a noticeably worse planet to live in?
It inconveniences me personally, and only assists the survival of the species?
I've lived in both (most recently moved out of a house about a year ago and into an apartment), and prefer apartments for a lot of reasons of reasons too numerous to list here.
I wouldn't bike, either. Distances are too long
Well, duh. You just said that you chose to live in a rural area. No kidding distances are too long. That was your choice. But if you live in a city, they're not. Because of my jobs, I've gone back-and-forth between city life and rural/suburban life several times. Every time I move back to a city, I'm so happy to sell my cars and not have a car payment; or pay for car insurance; pay for gas; oil changes (which are expensive now); worrying about it getting dinged, scratched, stolen, or crashed into. Cars were fun when I was a teen-ager. But I'm an adult now, and have better things to do with my life and money.
A lot more people think like me.
Because real estate agents, real estate developers, and construction companies spend billions on advertising to make people think that way. Congratulations, they've successfully implanted all these fears into your mind, and you fell for them.
We didn't work so we could move back into cities and live like broke 25 year olds.
Older, wealthier, people tend to move into cities because the benefits of city living outweigh the hassles and expense of living in the suburbs.
Chicago's Lake Shore Drive isn't lined with apartment buildings with students "packed like sardines." They're filled with $5-$20 million condos inhabited by bankers, lawyers, and the people who own the companies that the people who live in the suburbs work for.
"Why would I do this? Over hundreds of years society has advanced to the point where I can easily have a ton of job opportunities without tearing myself away from the rest of my family and friends. I don't have to spend significant chunks of my time traveling back and forth from stores for basic necessities. If I have a medical emergency there's definitely a major trauma center close by, not to mention any chronic issue where I have multiple specialists in dozens of fields and access to ongoing treatment facilities at my fingertips. I don't want to live like some dystopian partial apocalypse set us back 80 years. A lot more people think like me. We didn't go through 20+ years of education so we could only see family at holidays and birthdays all to live like having to drive half an hour for groceries is actually some pastoral & pure way of life. Honestly it sounds like it sucks."
Both your point of view and the one that I presented above (which is not my actual opinion) get it wrong. The truth is that we all make tradeoffs in these decisions, and we all choose where our own lines are, and there aren't just 2 options, it's a spectrum.
Sure there are, at the federal, state & local level. Here's a few examples that a quick search turned up:
https://www.rd.usda.gov/programs-services/all-programs
https://www.ahfc.us/buy/loan-programs/rural-programs
https://www.kansascommerce.gov/program/taxes-and-financing/r...
https://www.harmony.mn.us/index.asp?SEC=022F2A6B-7FAA-4E0D-8...
From FHA to single-family home zoning, there are many laws that specifically encouraged sprawl into what were, at the time, rural areas. That became the suburbs.
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/postwarera...
I've lived in both "sardines in a can" and "sardines scattered all around the room" (less dense) levels of density for significant portions of my life, and I've experienced firsthand the many benefits and downsides of each. I imagine you have, too.
One thing I've only recently learned is suburbs are subsidized by the people living in the denser areas that you seem to strongly dislike.
This video gets into the math behind why that is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI
In my low density town of ~4,300 lots of us pay > $9,000 a year in property taxes.
But can a city “un-annex” land? I imagine the residents in the lower density area would not want to spin off, both because of the schools and other civic institutions they use, but also because of the higher taxes.
Maybe somewhere in the US, but in no areas I spent considerable time enough to be tuned into local politics and policies was this remotely the case.
Since I've been alive the political power has decidedly and unashamedly been fully in the "suburban living" policy group. Every meaningful infrastructure spending, expansion, zoning policy, etc. served to further those interests either directly or indirectly. The "urban policy" group wins were generally not material and mostly window dressing stuff like BRT routes and a few more miles of unconnected bike lanes.
If there was actual choice between "good urban living" and "good rural living" I'd totally agree. The issue is we've spent 100 years building suburbia at the expense of everything else, both as a political and financial investment.
I'm not sure how we can hope to stop that inertia short of being limited by cheap energy or running out of actual land.
Having the residents of the suburbs paying for their true cost seems like a great way to start: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI
As the video points out, would people be willing to start paying $9000 in property taxes instead of $1800 to stop operating the city at a loss every year?
I completely agree. I think the point I was trying to convey is that it's not just financial inertia going on here - it's probably the single most cohesive and politically active power bloc there is in the country.
I had FiOS for a brief glorious time though!
- environmentalism, which asks people to make personal sacrifices for the greater good (environment)
- urbanism, which asks people to allow others to live in denser, more efficient configurations
The problem we have is that the rhetoric is environmentalist but the policy is urbanist. I don't want to argue that you should make sacrifices. It's not essential to what I see as the core political-economic program I'm advocating for city development. Nobody anywhere ever is proposing to make you live in an apartment. But you're constantly asking me to defend this:
>I hate this dystopia you people envision of living packed like sardines in a can.
I never argue for this. I argue that zoning restrictions should be relaxed. I argue that bike commuters should be supported. I argue that buses should be funded. I argue that old poorly insulated buildings should be replaceable.
But radicals always talk more. I have a job. I can't join every discussion about urbanism and re-re-re-reiterate the case for liberty as a form of moderation.
Stop hyper-focusing on the most extreme version of urbanization in your complaints. It's not going to happen anyway.
Well, optimally, light transit would carry you to and from heavy public transit.
The problem is that this requires good heavy public transit available. On places that rely on cars, it's normally not there.
We could build roomy apartments with private outdoor areas that would still be more space efficient than a normal house.
I wouldn't mind living in an apartment, a backyard isn't a huge priority and these are perfect for single people, couples and small families.
The key thing is that an apartment and what your perception of an apartment is aren't the same. There's nothing that says it has to be this way.
Why would a commercial (or government) development project invest in something unprofitable (or unnecessary to their requirements)?
A state-level entity could mandate it as part of construction code for 2 reasons:
1) Even the higher construction-cost apartments would be more financially solvent over the long-run than continuing to subsidize the alternative rural or suburban lifestyles.
2) Having nicer attractive apartment lifestyles would entice more people to move to more sustainable urban areas rather than the environmentally and economically unsustainable rural and suburban areas.
This is a strawman. I live in a city and am not packed like a sardine in a can. We even have single-family homes in my city (here's one in a decent school boundary for $340k [1]). Lots of people also live in condos in 3-story walk-ups where they each have a private deck and share a large backyard. This is in Chicago, one of the largest and densest cities in the US. Your view of city living as exclusively high rises and tiny living quarters does not represent reality for the vast majority of city-dwellers.
> A lot more people think like me. We didn't work so we could move back into cities and live like broke 25 year olds. The life you're envisioning honestly sounds like it sucks. If not I'm open to hear why, but you'll need to convince most people that it's better, not just that it's greener.
According to PEW the breakdown is 14% Rural, 31% Urban, and 55% Suburban [2]. Rural preferences are in the minority, not majority.
[1] https://www.redfin.com/IL/Chicago/5019-W-Wilson-Ave-60630/ho...
[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/05/22/demogra...
This is not 1970 anymore, have you ever spend time in a modern building?
I've had to listen to my neighbours arguments and sex and whatever else in every apartment I've ever lived in.
I couldn't get out of that lifestyle fast enough.
How much space constitutes "cramped" in your view? My current apartment isn't that much smaller than the suburban house I used to live in, and that house had rooms that were almost never used.
You will have a small kitchen, only one bathroom, one bedroom, and not enough room in your living space for much more than a couch and a table.
In a small space like that you can't have any hobbies that take up space. You certainly can't have a family. You can't have people stay over unless they are ok sleeping on a floor or couch. Chances are you can't even have two people use the kitchen at the same time. You can't host big gatherings like Christmas or Thanksgiving.
Anyways I'm glad your experience with apartments was ok. Mine sucked. I'm also willing to bet that you not hearing your neighbours was a function of having respectful and quiet neighbours more than any quality in the construction of the apartment.
You mean you never had people stomping on the roof above you? You never had people arguing in the hallways next door? You never had people blasting music so loud it shook the floor at 2am?
Lucky.
While good neighbors always helps, good sound isolation is better. The biggest source of noise in most of the places I've lived is always exterior windows. I have lived in places where you could play music surprisingly loudly without it leaking into the hallway, never mind the neighbors. We'd test it just to calibrate -- barking dogs, screaming kids, giant home theaters, etc and it was essentially inaudible.
Some apartments have terrible sound isolation, after all some decent hotels have worse sound isolation than any place I've lived, but it isn't a fact of nature.
I can't hear my neighbors at all. They can't hear us. It's absolutely the construction.
The reason your experience with apartments sucked is because you probably paid as little as you could for them too.
Yeah I did. And every time they still cost more than 50% of my paycheque every month. And in some cases they cost more than the mortgage I pay now.
Overall, it's not really surprising that living in cities is associated with a sharp increase in depression, anxiety, and other mood disorders.
I'm sure there are ways we can improve our ecological footprint without trading off everything that makes life worth living (maybe we should ship less plastic/electronic trash from China?).
If urbanisation became mandatory I'd literally emmigrate to anywhere it wasn't even if it meant giving up my profession, I'd rather be lonely in a foreign land than forced into an urban life I'd actively despise a good 2/3s of my existence in. I cannot stress enough how deeply I reject the idea of moving to a city, and the lengths I will go to so that I can retain a rural life.
I'm lucky that most of my hobbies are either outdoors by definition or don't really need anything more than a plug socket which isn't the case for everyone, I get that lots of people couldn't hack living out in the country away from the things they do and if others want to urbanise I don't have an issue with that but for me personally I couldn't do the reverse either. It just grinds my gears when people think all humans are compatible with urbanisation because for me it really is the difference between an ordinary life and being profoundly depressed on a permanent basis.
Basically all of those skills would become worthless and living my frugal and resource efficient lifestyle would be impossible.
In fact, it sounds like what you want is the freedom to live the lifestyle you want, and that's all that YIMBYs really want: freedom to build houses on their land, and people paying their fair share of the costs of their infrastructure.
City living (at least near me) is definitely worse than suburban or rural living, but I don't think that's an unchangeable fact. More and better dense housing, mixed use areas, public transportation, and public common space are all vital to a healthy city. I believe that the lack of these is what drives people out of the city and into suburbs.
You try riding an e-bike? I have grandmas passing me on trails and I'm avid cyclist, it's great to see more folks on bikes than every before.
When you refer to people that don’t make the same choices as you as an “other”, do you find it surprising when you and them want the same things, but in different ways? And that you can _both_ actually help each other?
I used to be an advocate for high-density buildings, but they do suck, and suck a lot.
OTOH, high density buildings allow me to have two GP clinics literally within 1 minute of walking whereas if I lived in a smaller rural village... good luck with that. Same goes for groceries, public transport (forget about parking, and you can text or read a book while you drive)
High density buildings are very convenient, eco-friendly, practical, and allow land developers to get more money out of the same land, and governments to claw back more tax from the same horizontal footprint.
But I still will avoid apartments like the plague and get myself a semi-d at the very least, if I can help it.
for example if you live in the city there's no point on having a car and you should rely on a bicycle and public transports
if you live in a rural area you should be able to get some of the electricity you need from solar panels and windmills.
we have room to allow choices and live more sustainable, without forcing one way of thinking to everyone..in the same it was done with this car centric world
My zero turn mower, like most of my tools, is electric and I only use it when and where I have to. Nature takes care of most of it.
Even if you could convince most of your classist hippie/yuppie acquaintances to live in a cage, it would not make a difference. That is the infuriating part of the messaging, the projection of guilt onto consumers for not jumping on a hypothetical ineffectual bandwaggon. They sure like to talk the talk, but I don't think they would let their own consumer preferences truly open to public scrutiny.
Huge mansions, private yachts and jets with huge carbon emissions, luxurious high cylinder cars, etc.
But still I don't advice the opposite. This advice is good as long as it doesn't really affect your life necessities.
If not everyone can live a life of high satisfaction without throwing the world over carrying capacity, then we’re overpopulated. Ultimately the global growth rate is expected to stagnate, and we're expected to make strong gains in emissions reductions in the next few decades so it's a moot point except insofar as we need imperative solutions. In the very long run, environmental encroachment and destruction scales with population - only dampened by either innovation, or imposition of lower quality of life for commoners like us.
> Instead of living in a huge house and needing a lawnmower, move to an apartment (and vote for more compact housing zoning).
Or stay on your land, learn to grow food, eat healthy and profit from selling your excess to those poor depressed souls trapped in tiny boxes.
Because if my future is in an apartment I might as well get a better carbon footprint right now by killing myself.
Sounds great. But statistically, almost never happens. All they do is plant monoculture grass that they don't maintain anyway, filling the world with pesticides and other chemicals that ruin the planet.
I was with you until this:
...to those poor depressed souls trapped in tiny boxes.
You seem to be trapped in your tiny suburban fears. How awful to be "trapped" by having several hundred restaurants to choose from. I'm so depressed by having a dozen museums, dozens of coffee shops, libraries, parks, and hundreds of entertainment options within a 15-minute walk of my house. So awful.
Much better to be "free" by living in a shack in the middle of a windswept prairie with no infrastructure, no culture, nowhere to go, no people to see, and crap internet service.
> How awful to be "trapped" by having several hundred restaurants to choose from.
I don't eat out - me and my family cook our own food. It's cheaper and you know what you're eating. We also enjoy eating at home as a family, and having conversation as a family without umpteen other families or singletons/couples either overhearing or participating in their own conversations at the same time.
> I'm so depressed by having a dozen museums, dozens of coffee shops, libraries, parks, and hundreds of entertainment options within a 15-minute walk of my house. So awful.
Blinkered vision and sarcasm. Also, very selfishly subjective. Not everyone is like you. Not everyone wants to visit museums (I despise museums), go to coffee shops (see above), I don't visit even my local library. Sometimes it's suggested we go to some $entertainment_option and sometimes I'd like that but mostly having to mix with other people brings me out in hives - not due to being anti-social, but due to liking my peace and quiet (I don't like crowds).
I'm in Scotland and prefer open spaces and spectacular mountain ranges to little artificial-landscape parks where the pod-dwellers walk to pretend they're in some kind of open and "green" space which is actually located in the middle of their dystopian metropolis.
See, this is the problem with all the people who are proposing living in the pod in some metropolis somewhere - they're talking about their personal preference for such and haven't even considered either geographical location (which country outside of the USA, which part of said country, and so on) nor what _other people_ like to do, eat, or live with, or any number of additional factors. Everyone who is advocating/proselytising for the metro pod-life, needs to think outside of their particular box. Or pod.
I love nature. I lived in the desert for years, and really enjoyed it. But I also realize that people can do both: Enjoy living in a city, and enjoy nature.
Disingenuous people try to paint a picture of apartment living as being "trapped" in a city. Which is simply a lie. People who live in cities can get in these things called "cars" (rentable by the hour, day, or week) and "trains" and go other places to enjoy nature.
The difference between city living and country living, is that the city dwellers don't build their homes on top of nature, killing nature, forcing nature into smaller and smaller boundaries. We do the opposite: We put the people into a defined space so that the natural world can flourish.
If you love nature, stop building houses on it.
My own house was built in 1885 and is a terraced cottage in an old coal mining town where mining stopped decades ago.
You, are actually advocating I forego this for a pod/apartment in some shitty city somewhere. Have you seen Glasgow or Edinburgh? They're literal shitholes.
Disingenuous people try to paint a picture that their pod living /isn't/ being trapped in a city. Which is simply a lie. These people are advocating for the WEF "you will own nothing, and you'll be happy" dystopia.
To which I say "No."
Edinburgh is one of those places where it's a "nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there" - i.e. it has some tourist spots - and is getting worse due to lack of infrastructure maintenance let alone building new infrastructure. Glasgow has been turned into a literal shithole. Both thanks to 15 years of a Nationalist Socialist administration hell-bent on nothing but breaking up the UK therefore cares nothing for the people it governs and is one of the most corrupt governments in Western civilisation.
I lived in an apartment for several years and only moved into a house within the past couple.
The single-bedroom apartment we were in had a handful of fast food places and maybe a couple dozen other restaurants within a 20 mile radius (i.e. far from being able to bike there -- not that we had anywhere to store bicycles, anyway).
We had 0 museums, maybe 2 coffee shops (half of which were Starbucks), one library (which we also have by the house), same number of parks, and only a few entertainment options. Most of which were either a movie theater or shopping, which doesn't really help fight the mass consumerism problem.
This was not in some dump area, either. In fact, that area was growing rapidly. Mostly by building more concrete bunker apartments. I can't even count the number of trees that were cut down to support this with 0 replanting (not even for decoration).
Yeah, really sounds like it's saving the planet.
So I get it: well-planned urban apartments and higher density areas can be more ecologically sustainable, but it's more nuanced than that. Apartments aren't just magically/categorically better. A lot of apartment developers aren't really considering environmental impact when building.
EDIT: oh and our internet is about double the speed of what it was in the apartment, even though the apartment complex was in an area with Google Fiber. It just wasn't available to us.
The bank is the best landlord I ever had.
I think that a lot of $$$$$$ IT workers forget about slumlords (or are slumlords themselves!)
No, you got it wrong: it's not fear, it's experience. I've lived literally steps away from some of the best restaurants, museums (do you know Le Louvre ? The British or the Tates ?), coffee shops, libraries, parks and entertainment (AKA ways to consume even more) options. They're no match for the forest I enjoy everyday. I pity my old friends that stayed there during the lockdowns too. Of course a lot of them are now actively searching for a house in the country. Not that I want to sell it, but because of them my little house has now doubled its value.
You prefer the urban life, I get it, and it's fine with me (actually I used to enjoy it too, until I didn't), I think everybody should be happy with his life.
> But statistically, almost never happens.
Oh yes it does ! More and more people grow food locally and people start to organize. I now buy only half of my groceries in the stores and it's only warming up (pun intended).
ps: we have friendly neighbours that are also friends, work in the cultural domain, can enjoy a nice bike or horse ride and even have top notch internet via optic fibers for cheap.
But big lands with very few people living on them, is very hard to do at scale, especially when taking biodiversity loss into account.
edit: I agree that houses should not be "huge", because it's too much energy to heat. But a reasonable space is not much to ask.
Usually, in order to be any excess, you need to devote 40+ hours a week to growing food. Part-time small-scale gardening usually doesn't produce enough to cover caloric needs of even just a single person.
I doubt the grassroots approach will work for anything more than superficial change and that governments and economies will need to change before any real progress is made in that direction. The system is designed to work with consumption.
At the same time, I do have a little hope that commenting this here can plant some seeds that might grow into something bigger later on.
Also, not everyone can cycle 15-20 miles from their home to their place of work and back every day - especially in the usual wet & windy conditions we have here. Nor would families be prepared to uproot from one of your proposed living pods to another one closer to any new place of work.
I'm quite adamant that I will refuse to take part in your proposed Dystopia, for that's what it will turn out to be.
It's hot places, especially if you don't have easy access to showers after biking.
You can always put on warm clothing, you can't really shed skin.
For cold places:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU
+ you know, the Netherlands, which has a cloudy and rainy and chilly climate.
Besides that, places that aren't a flat are obviously a challenge, but even that's solvable with electric bikes.
More than that, to be completely blunt, most places are not Scotland. You have a reputation for a crap climate, for a reason.
Scotland is _very_ hilly. And cold. And _rainy_. Your proposals would NOT work here. Apart from Glasgow and Edinburgh, most towns, villages and other cities here are not suitable to forgoing cars in favour of cycles - electric or not - and that's not down to a lack of cycle lanes or tracks, it's down to the practicalities of life here.
Your Utopia cannot happen, and in fact would eventually turn into a dystopia.
And disregard the tone and listen to the words.
We're supposed to be geeks here, do facts or feelings matter more?
The facts are that whoever is advocating for this have not thought past their subjective experience and are exhibiting a serious lack of empathy for the majority of human beings they quite obviously are unaware of who are living in many environments which are completely different from the ones advocating.
Most people in the world don't live in rural areas, and where they are the majority, you wouldn't want to live like that because they're subsistence farmers living in undervedeloped countries (think Somalia, Afghanistan, etc).
In developed countries and developing countries people are being "herded" in to cities, and they like it because the alternative is worse. And they are the majority.
The fact that you don't know this basic fact kind of says all there is to be said about this conversation...
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS
Also, off-topic but still relevant:
One of the greatest triumphs of civilization is urbanization. All the cradle of civilizations are called like that because they built great cities, for their time.
Neighbor noise (and other issues) is a huge issue that these threads always ignore.
I suspect that your experiences and expectations may differ from others in this thread. What are your expectations and experiences in this area?
It is why I will _never_ share walls again.
What you're really saying is that you are a person who is not bothered by neighbor noise. That's fine, you've self-selected into an environment where tolerating that is necessary. You should realize that most people find neighbor noise to be a stressor, especially as they get older.
Also, as an aside, everyone I know who below the top economic tier and lives in SF _commonly_ complains about neighbor noise. I think you might just be insensitive to it.
This person isn't demanding that you live in their "dystopia" but asking that we stop forcing everyone through policy to live in the current one. I have to go out of my way and put my life in reckless drivers' hands just to cycle places. Maybe we could change the incentive structure of modern living so that my option is easier and driving is harder. Then everyone can still do whatever they want but there is less friction to doing the "right" thing.
Mainstream climate change activists employ a "motte-and-bailey" technique where the motte is "saving the planet" and bailey is "regression of human civilisation".
The fact is, our civilisation depends on energy and will depend on even more energy if we want to progress further. I don't want to live in smaller places, travel less, eat less (and worse) food and overall enjoy life less. Progress is Africa becoming more like Europe, regression is Europe becoming more like Africa. I want progress.
I don't disagree with the existence or seriousness of (anthropogenic) climate change. I simply disagree with most proposed "solutions". Build nuclear!
1) Power most things with electricity instead of fossil fuels.
2) Generate electricity with sustainable technologies like solar, wind, geothermal. (There is division on nuclear power, but many still support that, too).
3) Reduce the amount of power wasted overall. Most people don't need huge trucks. Fewer people don't even need personal vehicles. Very few people are saying "Take away your choice", most people are saying, "stop subsidizing the bad choice, and make the public transport option at least an actual option by fixing the way we build cities".
This also extends to "stop subsidizing rural lifestyles" where people waste energy on driving 20 miles to the grocery store and back and every trip they make, and deliveries, and all of their infrastructure which has a much higher per-capita cost, while cities subsidize them. If people want to live there fine, but make them pay for it, or at least make those costs more transparent.
In other words, subsidize for the public good (environmentally sustainable things) instead of the externalized costs (environmentally disastrous things), and let the market drive consumer choice.
In most cases, really, it comes down to: STOP subsidizing bad behavior and things will probably get a lot better. That is what I think most experts expect.
"For a while, let’s eat a cold dinner here and there. Continuity costs too much. Climate change kills, and it kills vulnerable people first. Intermittency saves lives, and it saves vulnerable people first. Let the pause take its place in continuous climate activism."
https://bostonreview.net/articles/david-mcdermott-hughes-bat... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/may/29/intermit...
It's not really a big deal in the bigger scheme of things; it's just asking people to adjust their lifestyles and habits to take into account the available resources at a given moment against the background of a deadly threat to humanity. It's certainly nothing that a billion or more people in countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Lebanon don't already have to deal with on a day-to-day basis.
And/or maybe we need to rethink the size of the "cars" (actually SUVs) we're driving around in. Not all trips are doable by bike (weather, health, etc are limiting factors). Instead of electric SUVs we should be looking at smaller vehicles like the Aptera [1] which uses much less power than most other electric cars (less than half the power / mile than a Tesla) and as such is practical to charge overnight with only 110v. (I hear the objections now - "but it's only got 2 seats", sure, but that's fine for like 99.9% of my trips. "But you can't go grocery shopping with that thing", take a look at some of their videos where they go shopping at Costco and get more stuff in there than most of us would need in a month.)
You're also asserting that everyone should live the same when the the reality is that we're all different and want/need different things. A lawns are largely a waste but yards, gardens, and green spaces are very important and in many ways culturally ingrained in people. Telling people to live in shipping container sized spaces a short walk from their job is delusional at best.
"Same but pedal powered" isn't really all that much different than "same but electric" though. As the contentiousness in the replies clearly shows, doing just that without addressing the fundamental issues with how we manage various kinds of consumption - especially but not only of land - simply will not work. Many people will not go along. Ever. Some of the alternatives create their own problems, or wouldn't make a significant dent in climate change, pollution, etc. The 90% solution for young, childless, non-disabled, crowding-tolerant people is nowhere near the 100% solution (or at least 99.9% solution) that's really needed.
"Rethink the whole design" (your words) means more than "move to the city and ride a bike" leaving cities and bikes and practically everything else almost entirely as they are or even making things worse. Hint: cities are prone to all sorts of problems from supply to waste, from crime to disease, even at current sizes and densities let alone those which would result from everyone following that prescription. When we think about reclaiming all that land wasted by suburban sprawl, a better solution might be making small- to medium-size town centers more nearly self sufficient (i.e. living + working + shopping + recreation and food supply around the edges). Thousands of those, well connected to one another, would be far better than dystopian dozens of NYC/LA/Beijing clones with no human habitation in between. It's a larger change, but both more likely to appeal and more likely to make a difference.
The only gas item I still have to keep around is the snow blower as we get a significant amount of snow. Fortunately I really don't run it that much at all over the course of the year. Maybe 5 gallons of gas a year. But when I need it, I really need it.
(I’m guessing everyone who has one Ego device is interested in more tools to defend the investment in batteries. Like myself.) ;-)
The first battery lawn mowers were terrible. Today's are excellent.
Tons of reviews of battery powered tools. My priorities led me to Milwaukee for power tools (not hand tools), YMMV. Great channel though.
Dead dinosaurs is basically the universal tool battery for larger tools.
[0]https://www.homedepot.com/p/Troy-Bilt-XP-21-in-149-cc-Vertic...
Just about any mower you see is 4 stoke, which is far cleaner.
@grand parent - Mowing ditch/stream slopes with anything but petrol brushcutter is just next to impossible. Saying that as owning - a battery strimmer, a 4-stroke petrol push mower, a battery robot mower and 2-smoke brush cutter. I have tried using even a battery powered hedge trimmer. In other words - not everything is a nice flat rectangle short grass cover.
However, in practice the cables are no issue - you can have them installed and dug in the soil rather trivially (the cable is shot in). Once done - you'd never notice them ever again. No go zone can be organized with magnetic strips (also buried).
Not sure why nobody else is working on it. Could it be that the ToF sensors in indoor robot vacuums are just not powerful enough to operate in sunlight?
Maybe it’s because the boundary wire installation is a matter of minutes and only needs to be done once?
I guess they still rely on boundary wire because it's very reliable - you don't want a couple unlucky GPS readings to cause your robot mower, armed with very real spinning blades, to end up in the neighbor's yard or on the street and hurt somebody.
The bigger headache with boundary cables is finding and fixing any cuts that might happen when doing unrelated yardwork.
this is also easy if you have decent electronics equipment... or it's built in the mower, itself, where you can select to follow the line till the break.
>>dug in the soil rather trivially (the cable is shot in)
From my previous comment. Look for "Cable Laying Machine" rent; it's around 60euro/day here.
Yeah, unless you have a dog that wants to dig stuff up.
https://www.wired.com/story/robot-lawnmowers-are-killing-hed...
At night, dusk? Hedgehogs are nocturnal.
The robomover cuts the lawn so often so there is just a fine mulch that disappears below the lawn (and fertilizes it).
I have heard stories about your rabid HOA, but they can't have a problem with that?
My next mower will be electric though.
I don't have a leaf blower. Leaf blowers are stupid noisy and not any faster than a good rake.
The problem with electric tools is that the battery life heavily depends what you're doing. I also have an Ego mower (the top model/largest battery as of 2020). The only way my battery might actually last the advertised hour (with a ~40 min charge time) is if I religiously mowed twice a week. I'm usually lucky to get 30 minutes of real world mowing, but sometimes it's less than half of that. I used to prefer mowing in the morning to avoid the heat, but any amount of moisture in the grass slaughters the battery life. Likewise if the grass is higher than normal, say goodbye to the battery life. All in all my electric mower is quite a bit inferior to a decent quality gas mower, but not inconvenient enough (so far) to push me to switch back.
That just means that haven't been more than about 120 miles away from home in 2 years. An especially easy feat when a large part of that was COVID shutdowns. In general, easy access to rapid charging on the road is a luxury of urban & suburban areas. That's where most people live, so electric will be okay for most people, but this is a bit too much cheerleading on the subject of charging convenience if the comparison is ICE. We're not there yet.
Also the Bolt may not be the best example to use in the context of how electric can be better. I agree with the sentiment, but Chevy had to recall every Bolt ever made prior to the 2022 model year due to battery issues, requiring batteries to be replaced. It still hasn't replaced all of them. During this time, to avoid fires, owners were temporarily advised to only charge to 90% and not go below 70 miles of range, nerfing range to about 165 miles. Also not charge overnight in a garage and in some cases park 50 feet away from other vehicles. A firmware update has since removed those last restrictions in favor of a semi-permanent range nerf to 210 miles until the battery is replaced. Yes, we can do better than "same, but electric" but we're not quite there yet in a lot of ways, and the Bolt excellently demonstrates some of them. It seems like in terms of battery safety engineering we're at the Ford Pinto stage, but maybe catching up faster?
Why wouldn't Bolt owners be happy with their new battery? The new battery isn't the issue, it's what made it necessary that is the problem. With 100 mile reduction in range and safety issues I wouldn't have kept mine long enough to get the replacement. It wouldn't have been possible for me to keep it under the limitations imposed. And I doubt the many thousands of Bolt owners still waiting for a replacement are not very happy about it.
On a much smaller scale, I was happy when I got about $200 in a class action settlement from Apple for it's faulty iPhone liquid sensors. I was still pissed off that I'd had to pay for a replacement years earlier. And years before the settlement I had already switched away from Apple as a result.
I also have only really followed GM's recommendation to keep state of charge under 90%; I have happily driven my battery as low as needed, but have always worked to plug the car in and raise the state of charge within 24 hours back to the "appropriate" range.
Agreed with you about some folks not wanting to put up with it - there's plenty of stories on the Bolt EV Facebook group about folks going through the buy-back process. But I wouldn't sell my Bolt for even its original MSRP.
Sure they are. If statistics weren't at least slightly on your side that would mean that roughly half (or more) of these were catching fire. In most equipment safety issues I can think of the statistics of something going wrong are always on your side.
A more comprehensive approach is probably risk/reward. How much will it cost to get rid of the car early? What is my liability if the car catches fire and data logs show I drove the car down to a 65 mile range a few times? Would Chevy still replace it? Am I liable if such a fire caused damage to someone else's property? What if the parking deck where I work doesn't have an open-air top floor to park on? What if I don't have anywhere near my house where I can park 50 feet away from other vehicles?
For the same reason, if I owned a Tesla I'd probably turn off all self-driving options except maybe lane assist. Though I wouldn't buy a Tesla or other EV quite yet either-- I'd like things like battery safety to get more mature. It's not even just manufacturing, but also car accidents: EV battery fires can ramp up faster than those from an ICE.
On the other hand, there's promising tech on the horizon that works around some of these things: https://www.forbes.com/wheels/news/ev-battery-fires/. When I had to buy a new car recently I ultimately decided against an EV [1] but I expect that may change by the time I buy my next car.
[1] Not just tech maturity, but for a variety of reasons. Not least of which is that where I live electricity is almost exclusively generated by fossil fuels anyway, including coal, with an overall efficiency that isn't much different than a new car w/ average gas mileage. Add to that the efficiency loss of translating grid power into EV motive power...
The questions you ask about what would be the case IF the car actually went up in flames are extremely valid, and underpin why I probably won't be waiting longer than the end of this calendar year to get the battery swapped.
You’re ignoring the fact that your insurance will account for willful negligence of recalls, you’re missing out on 8% more range now, you you’re missing out on a slightly faster charging curve, you’re holding up the replacement process for other Bolt owners… just stop lying to yourself.
I'll probably take care of it before the end of the calendar year - and I think I've benefited from learning from the early adopters of the battery swap; especially around some reported instances of coolant not being adequately taken care of after the swap and even more issues resulting from it. I at least know of one thing to keep an eye out for after the swap happens.
Chevy Bolts literally had to be parked outside your home and have battery charge permanently reduced 50%, only 43 upvotes here on HN.
Not that I think that's how it should be. For me, even (especially?) from a technophile POV, problems with EV's from a company like Chevy (well, GM) or VW are more interesting. These are the companies that, in the shorter term, will have a much larger impact on mass market EV adoption. They're the ones with the manufacturing, distribution, and service base needed to quickly scale into low & mid market segments that Tesla doesn't much seem to care about. That's what will define how much, or how quickly, these become just another everyday piece of tech.
In 5 years the mobile phone market went from most people buying a feature phone to most buying a smartphone. The screwups made by the big EV manufacturers will define how quickly EVs do the same thing for the automobile market.
Not necessarily. I live in a suburb where most people drive cars every day for most things. I can still walk a few hundred feet to the bus stop at the end of my street, hop on the train, ride to one of the biggest and busiest airports in the US, and fly anywhere around the world. Or I can hop on a cheap bus and ride to the nearby cities for ~$30-40 for a last-minute ticket, $1 if I'm planning well enough in advance.
Of course there are other ways a person could have travelled more than 120 miles away. Used a friend's car, a (very expensive) uber, a rental, or the other options you mentioned. All of which would actually support my point: The only way they could do a 2-way trip of any length, with only charging their car at home, is if they didn't use the car for the trip.
I took your statement quite literally. Your comment literally states that because they have a Bolt and haven't used a public charger, they "haven't been more than about 120 miles away from home in 2 years". Sure, adding an additional "in their Bolt" to the end of that then means quite a bit more, but taken very literally this statement is stating they haven't gone more than 120 miles from their home. You don't appear to be someone making that argument with the additional context, but there are people who would assume that having an EV means they literally haven't travelled >120 miles from home. I know this because I've talked with people who have thought that of my EV.
China is building a number of new nuclear ships starting with icebreakers but container ships are in the plans: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3155860/ch...
We know how to secure a reactor on land, but the sea is a big, dangerous place - and it's only a matter of time before some cost cutting idiot blows up a ship because they wanted a bigger bonus.
On the bright side: if a nuclear reactor melts down in the middle of the ocean, there’s basically nothing around to be inconvenienced by that event.
The more pertinent risk would be piracy and the like; if thorium ever catches on, it'd probably help make that less of an issue.
Regardless of cost, which itself makes this whole idea impossible, nuclear-powered container ships are simply not a possibility for this reason (and in fact the link you shared doesn't even mention them).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_icebreaker
Do you think any Chinese or Russian-built nuclear container ship is going to be able to dock in the port of Los Angeles or New York (the two busiest in the country)?
(Edited to remove an incorrect statement - sorry!)
Yes, such ships will likely have to stay away from the US territorial waters, but there's plenty of routes where this won't be a problem.
As for tight margins: fuel costs represent 50%-60% of overall costs ([1]) and if these expenses are replaced with CapEx (hopefully, benefiting from economy of scale), then the tight operational margins suddenly become amazing, and there's a room for quality.
1. https://www.morethanshipping.com/fuel-costs-ocean-shipping/
if it turns out that such shipping via nuclear reactors is much more cost efficient (including all currently externalized costs such as emissions), then the US will have no choice but to accept it - or be uncompetitive in the global markets.
Maybe I’m too jaded these days.
How about hundreds of cargo drones capable of lifting containers to transfer them from one ship to another? Something like this: https://www.cognitiveseeds.com/395-2/
Don't forget - a nuclear-powered ship that's not moving has a lot of free electricity: enough to charge all the drones (likely, bearing supercapacitors, as their flight from one ship to another will be very short)
Building drones that can lift containers from cargoships requires electricity/energy storage densities that are so far beyond anything realistic. A container can weigh up to 28 tonnes, there was exactly one helicopter that could carry this kind of load the Mil Mi-12 and that looked really more like a plane. Moreover if we would have those kind of densities why would we even use nuclear ships?
Nuclear drones!!1one! Problem SOLVED. Gee I'm smart. ;)
Let's see. There are two variables here in regards to power subsystem: power and energy capacity. Let's start with the power:
>A container can weigh up to 28 tonnes, there was exactly one helicopter that could carry this kind of load the Mil Mi-12 and that looked really more like a plane.
According to ([1]), we need around 0.28 kW/kg of thrust. Assuming that the drone weights twice more than a container, we need to have a lift of around 84 tonnes-force minimum, and ~100 tonnes-force in reality. That translates to 0.28 * 10^5 kW = 28 MW. This is close to what Mi-12 had (19.2 MW).
LTO batteries from Toshiba ([2]) advertise 3.5 kW/kg of energy density, which gives us 28 MW/3.5 kW/kg = 800 kg of batteries. Reasonable, given that our budget for drone dry weight is 56 tonnes.
Let's consider the energy capacity. To transfer a container from one ship to another standing 200 meters apart moving at 10 km/h, we would need 144 seconds for roundtrip. Let's make it 300 seconds for redundancy.
28 MW * 300 seconds = 2333 kWh. At 84 Wh/kg ([2]), we get 27.8 tonnes of batteries. Not great, but within out weight budget of 56 tonnes.
The gotcha here that I see is the longevity of these batteries (they are rated for 8000 cycles). Do you see any other issues? I mean, basic physics seems to allow for such drones (not saying it's trivial to make).
1. https://store.tmotor.com/goods.php?id=974
2. https://www.electrive.com/2022/01/12/toshiba-presents-new-20...
If one container move generates $10, and the drone moves 12 containers per hour, 12 hours a day, it will only take 6 months to earn the quarter of million mentioned.
Also, it might actually sound like a very cheap option compared to the ship-to-shore container cranes, which cost $20M-$40M each: https://www.freightcourse.com/port-cranes/
As for recharging: if our power train is 28 MW, why not charging it at the same speed as we discharge it? Why settle on 500 kW, which is really low? For comparison, Tesla supercharger is up to 300 kW, and a car is a much smaller EV.
As for charging at 28 MW: might work, given that the battery is physically larger, so there's more space to dissipate heat. I agree that it's not proven by the napkin math that it's doable.
What I really suspect is that if Los Angeles refuses to accept nuclear container ships, Mexico would let them in, and then the regular railway will be used to move them to the US. A much simpler solution. :)
But the biggest issue is is recharge, you can't recharge every 5 min. I mean how many of those drones are you going to employ? I mean a panamax class ship has 5000 containers. So either you need 5000 of those drones (good luck with them managing the off-onloading in 5 min) or some small subfraction, which then need to be recharged. Even if we assume we need to only move 500 containers (and use 500 drones), That means we either need to recharge 500 2333kWh batteries in 300s, how are you going to do that out on the ocean, or more likely you have 5 drones operating which need to work for 100 times as long, which increases you weight by 100. It just doesn't add up.
As for drones to handle cases of ports which don't allow nuclear ships to dock: this is just a potential workaround. I kind of guess, that they will just focus on other ports first, and then eventually (like, in 5-10 years timeframe) everyone calms down and just allows such ships to dock in LA / NY / other US ports.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with port cranes.
As for can be offered: we're talking about moving a container from ship to ship which stand just hundreds meters away. The physics / math works, see my other comment.
I guess if you get the design to where it acts like a giant battery that is nearly impossible to tamper with it could work fine. Of course the political will to even try to do that doesn't exist.
If you have the access and ability to safely operate a nuclear reactor you also have the access and ability to operate it very unsafely if you choose to. There is no way around this that doesn't also remove your ability to operate it safely.
Not only they exist for decades, but as recently as January 2022, you could have bought tickets for a nuclear ship cruise: https://poseidonexpeditions.com/northpole/north-pole-icebrea...
Also, the nuclear container ship (the old one, but still in service): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevmorput
The link I shared is about a Chinese nuclear icebreaker that is supposed to lead container ships behind. Then there's no difference in terms of security if there's just one nuclear ship in a caravan or all of them.
As for Chinese specifically planning for nuclear powered container ships, I can offer this speculation: https://www.neimagazine.com/opinion/opinionpropelling-decarb...
That's while we have cheap oil. Once it is gone, having nuclear powered container super-carrier will be strategic interest of countries.
You can, of course, use nuclear energy to run your ships, and even trucks and planes.
Use the nuclear energy (both the electricity and heat) to produce fuel from CO₂ and H₂O. Use this fuel in your jet engines and colossal diesel motors. Burning it is carbon-neutral.
Oil should become much more expensive though, and building of nuclear facilities, much more cost-efficient, for this to become economically viable.
Nuclear container ship Sevmorput: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevmorput
Civilian nuclear icebreakers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_icebreaker
Floating nuclear power plant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_floating_nuclear_power...
That is essentially a state operator as far as I can tell.
I don't see a problem having nuclear container ships to be operated by civilian governmental agencies / state-owned enterprises. This might not work for the US, but we often have very unique ways of doing things.
The more interesting example is NS Savannah [1], which indeed crossed oceans unattended, and was accepted at European ports.
If you threw away all preconceived notions of how a car should look and feel and spent an unlimited amount of time and money to design a new perfect one based around electric power, it would...still look very similar to any other car on the market today. The reason is that the design of a passenger car (and all of the infrastructure around it) has evolved over many centuries independent of its power source – from a horse drawn carriage to a Ford Model T to a Tesla.
I like the distinction between the sources that shaped a development.
Cars on the market looks wildly different compare a Smart (the brand) car with the new GMC humongous pickup truck.
To your point, they're not even that different from stagecoaches--two people across, similar size.
Personally I think a 30-40kph speed cap within the city would save thousands of lives, make cars cheaper and smaller, make everyone less stressed out, allow more people to be comfortable using alternate modes of transportation (bikes, scooters, etc) and would probably add well under 5min to most journeys (traffic being the limiting factor 90% of the time)
Trains are generally not really designed to collide with anything at all (except maybe the occasional suicidal deer or human, but I doubt that this requires any particular design considerations), certainly not "train A is only designed to deal with stray passenger cars whereas train B should be able to deal with heavy freight".
What might be a design issue, more for the network and operation procedures than for the rolling stock is confidence about not meeting anything like a stray car. Different approaches exist, including train-side boxes on the last car or axle counters in the network.
American trains seem to suffer this more than others. Given that freight trains have priority on most of America's rail lines (which the freight companies own), that might have something to do with it.
Electric cars seem more about saving the car industry ecosystem, under the guise of saving the planet.
I recognize a valid counterpoint is that because we already have car infrastructure* BEVs are a drop-in replacement culturally and physically where transit, urban planning, and remote work all require more systemic change and have long timelines and NIMBYism. Electric vehicles also make sense in most fleet situations (delivery, school buses, trucking). The backwards-compatability argument makes sense in the short term, but misses the sort of step change needed to recalibrate western lifestyles to become both resilient and sustainable.
In the end, while BEVs are better than gasoline cars, and they may provide a stepping stone, the real investments must go well beyond the default individual car ownership model--to considering designing the best local mobility experience as a network and services rather than a thing parked in your drive.
This is where user experience and service design can make a profound climate impact, in creating better, more desirable mobility experiences as alternatives to car ownership.
Acronyms: BEV = Battery Electric Vehicle = electric car NIMBYism - Not In My Backyard-ism. The tendency of property owners to push against urban densification, rapid transit, and similar efforts in their neighborhoods.
Yeah, sure, you'd see a lot of public transport in dense areas.
However I disagree that the population would all be housed in dense housing.
The only reason dense centers exist is because its walkable, bikable, etc. People who don't want to live in dense areas would still exist in significant enough numbers that the automobile as we know it would still exist.
Densification occurred prior to the automobile; it was not sufficient to prevent the invention of the automobile as we know it.
That's not axiomatic. Commuter rail systems address this - there's a heavy rail line going through low density places, with infrastructure centered around that - be it bike lanes and racks, bus lines, or worst case scenario car parkings. The last mile problem can be solved in a variety of ways even in low density environments ( and FYI has been solved in many places around the world - e.g. in Paris the RER network continues to what are literally villages with houses, with population in the hundreds, with big parking lots and some other related infrastructure, and bus lines going there. So even if you live in a big house with a yard, you can bike, walk, take the bus, use your e-scooter or whatever to get to the train station which takes you to where you need to go).
Sure, but using public transport is a heavy trade-off in time. Where I am now, at peak hour a train (to my chosen destination) arrives every 15m. The bus/shuttle to the nearest station arrives as often as they can, which can be between 10m and 15m.
My last trip (from suburbs to a CBD +-20km away) during peak hour involved 30m total of waiting for the next shuttle/bus/train. That's 30m without the actual time in transit (on the train its quite fast - about 10m transit. On the bus, it is not, about 15m transit because it has many stops to make).
The next day I drove instead, and took a total of 30m to get to my destination.
Commuter transit systems work wonderfully for people who want to do things during transit but otherwise have no other use of their time.
For me, and a lot of people who opted to live in child-friend homes in child-friendly suburbs, an extra 60m-90m spent in transit is 60m-90m of time we lost with our family.
I don't care that I can read during that time; I can always simply read after my kid has gone to bed after all. I care that I get to spend those few extra hours per day with my kid.
This is before pointing out that while there are daycares, there are grocery stores, there are restaurants available easily by the bus or by bike, there are far more options readily available by car and maybe its not fun carrying a week's worth of food for a family with me on the bus. And then there are people I like to visit who don't live near public transit, so choosing to go without a car means I wouldn't be able to visit them regularly.
Owning and operating a car is definitely expensive. I could technically live my life without a car, its entirely feasible from my location. However the time, ease, and freedom tradeoffs make car ownership still make sense for me. I still ultimately prioritized living in an area with decent mass transit and love to take it when it makes sense. I know people who do rely on the public transit for every day transportation, and I'm happy they're able to visit me easily and I'm perfectly fine with subsidizing it.
EDIT: I just looked up a normal trip I take on Google Maps to double check transit times in comparison to driving. 10 minute drive. 30 minute bike ride. 1 hour bus trip. Another common trip: 10 minute drive, 30 minute bike ride, 30 minute bus ride. Even for the shorter one, that's 40 minutes round-trip not counting on waiting for the bus for a trip I normally do weekly. That's about 33 hours a year of extra waiting for just that one route.
Electric is the future. Everything can be electric AND good.
Bought a house a year ago. The house (oddly enough) had a huge propane tank out back wired exclusively for the two stoves.. in addition to oil heat. So, when I moved in, my house had oil, propane, and electric service. No gas line. (Eastern Massachusetts, so, winter low temps around 0F but rarely below 5F).
My propane tank emptied after a month and the company said the tank itself was at end of life. A new tank would not be cheap. So I decided to cut the cord and replace my two stoves with electric ones.. and they’re awesome! I don’t think they’re quite as good as gas, but I can boil water in minutes, and I won’t blow my house up. The safety trade off is worth the reduced responsiveness.
Heat- installed a heat pump and it’s WAY better than the oil heat radiators. So much quieter and I can control each room independently. I like my office at 72, my wife at 68, that’s completely doable. Oh, and I’m saving a fortune on oil, plus I get air conditioning.
The biggest difference is that you can nor just cut the power like gas. You need to (horror of horrors!) move the pan off the heating element to dramatically cut the heat.
Modern induction stoves really are a massive leap from things you could get a decade ago. You can even get ones that work with woks. A trip through a few newer airbnbs on an island with very few gas lines was a serious revelation for me. From the article:
> except with electric heating coils instead of burners. Better for indoor air quality, doesn’t do that click-click-click thing, but less responsive
Which basically ignores modern induction stoves which also don't heat up and are more responsive for thick-bottom pans! Which is the essence of the article - going further than "we'll make the job hot but with electricity".
The stove I bought has great dynamic range, which is helped by a safety feature that monitors conductivity through the plasma between the igniter and the frame, and re-lights the gas if it blows out.
Now I've a fancy glass top with one burner that takes forever to warm and then blasts through the desired temperature and incinerates the food, and three anemic burners that do very little.
I miss cheap coils.
I was not planning to spend that much, but I'm glad I did. I was replacing an obsolete 32 inch cooktop, which had a roughly 31.5 inch cutout in the counter. I found out that this 30 inch cooktop actually covers about 31 inches of counter, more than any of the others that I saw. I epoxied a stainless steel shim to narrow the opening on the far side of the cooktop. It looks good and works well.
I chose this model in particular since it has a high power center burner. With a lightweight steel wok you can make great stir fry with good temperature control.
https://www.thermador.com/us/products-list/cooktops-rangetop...
What did you think the premise was?
> Electric is the future. Everything can be electric AND good.
The premise was that electric can be better than gas-powered, as it doesn't have as many compromises.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_X-57_Maxwell
Lightweight electric motors allow for a couple of noteworthy improvements:
* With the reduced weight of electric motors, they can now be placed at the ends of wings, with props that can then be used to counter the wingtip vortices and combat induced drag.
* The simplicity of electric power distribution means that propulsion can be done all along the wing's length, which can enhance lift coefficients by actively overcoming boundary layer conditions that lead to stalls.
* The increased wing lift coefficients mean that smaller and lighter wings can be used, which reduce structural weight as well as parasitic drag.
I'm not sure if we'll see production aircraft like this, but this is a great example of rethinking design decisions that were standardized under an entirely different regime of design constraints.
Electric planes also favor more, smaller planes due to weight/energy-density constraints and the economics of jet engines vs electric motors: a small jet engine isn't dramatically cheaper than a big jet engine, so airlines prefer larger planes with big engines; however, electric motor costs scale more linearly so a smaller electric planes are not significantly less economical than big electric planes (even excluding energy density concerns).
With more, smaller flights, we could well see significant changes in the flight network. Rather than big flights between hubs, we may instead see more flights between smaller regional airports.
This might be more complex and expensive though than just having the pantographs the full length of the line, but I thought about it recently when my local line was closed as a tunnel on it was too small to fit the pantographs through and had to be rebuilt.
So should be feasible with trains too
There induction stove improves compared to the gas stove, but touch buttons go too far.
Ebikes and scooters are definitely capable of reimagining transportation, if we can get the scary cars reduced on the same infrastructure.
1. At least for now, the power still goes out. Maybe I'm still smarting from a week-long power outage this past winter, but in the US, our electric grid is fragile in many places, and we are probably decades away from it being more resilient, so more dependence on electricity is more reliance on large utility providers. Dirty fossil fuels are still better at being able to be moved around in bulk - gasoline has 50-100x the power density of batteries. Electricity has more potential for being decentralized, but we are far away from that.
2. Electricity tends to mean miniaturization and computerization. That tends to mean more difficult to repair; someone related to me a story about a small village somewhere in Africa that was reliant on a gas-powered pump for the well. They had to get gas for it of course, but if it broke down it was simple enough that nearly any person in the village knew how to repair it. A solar-powered pump would eliminate the need for gas, but no one had the tools or knowledge to repair it if it broke. Additionally, with manufacturers desiring ever more control through embedded DRM, it leads to a future where even if the electric power is available, we might not be able to use it because we didn't pay the licensing fees.
These are perhaps very dystopian concerns, but recent world events somehow make these sorts of concerns more realistic.
Solar, wind, and batteries are not that complicated. If you are handy, you can buy some cheap stuff on ebay and wire it together yourself or you can pay some people in your area to do it for you. Different set of skills than maintaining an ICE engine but not fundamentally a lot harder than that. There are plenty of people handy with that sort of stuff that are busy electrifying everything they can get their hands on. There's no basis for your paranoia here.
If you want to put in a oil/gas pipeline, you need one permission from the state, then you're a go.
BUT. If you want to install new power lines it's a whole different ball game.
First you need state level permission, then you need one from the cities you're passing through, then the counties, then the individual property owners and everyone who can see the high-voltage lines. The amount of NIMBYing in the permit process is staggering.
>Apparently, most shipping routes tend to hug the coast and make cargo or maintenance stops anyway, and so this won’t really be a big change from current practice.
This is not true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_transport#/media/File...
Hope that's clear enough.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/253988/estimated-contain...
Transatlantic + transpacific routes account for ~60% of cargo shipped.
The Great Circle between Los Angeles and Beijing cuts through Dutch Harbor and the Aleutians. http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=PEK-LAX
There are certainly remaining routes that might not be well-served by the "electric short hop" strategy, but I think most of the world's shipping routes could be amenable to Fleetzero's electrification plan.
And a bigger version of that same map:
Suppose you're a coastal city that wants to setup a charging facility for passing local ships. You can either build a full seaport (which might not be practical depending on geography) with a crane and battery storage and charging facilities, which can handle ships one at a time, or maybe two or three if you have the dock space. Or you can run a high voltage line out to a buoy, and ships can hold position out in the water and connect to the power receptacle at the buoy for an hour and charge. If you want to have ten ships be able to charge at once, you run ten high voltage lines out to ten different buoys. I would suggest that the latter option is probably cheaper and easier.
It's also not out of the question to have HVDC lines that connect continents to each other for power sharing (i.e. buying and selling solar power based on where the sun is shining), and if such cables exist across oceans it's not much of a stretch to imagine a string of charging stations at regular intervals for passing ships to use, even across the Pacific.
Even better would be some system where you can have a continuous connection to power, like the pantographs connecting to overhead lines in electric street car systems, but I have no idea how you would do that at sea.
Why not both? charge on-ship batteries while swapping off-ship batteries.
One of the things that's counterintuitive about batteries is that if a battery is twice as big it still takes the same time to charge, not twice as long. (That's assuming you can supply enough power to charge at the fastest rate the batteries can handle.)
What if this assumption isn't true: dispatchable energy and opportunistic energy are two very different things.
If you want to build out battery storage to get a stable grid from intermittent sources, chances are you'd end up with cargo-container sized standard modules anyways, instead of every port having its own bespoke facilities reinvented in some folksy local style
Delivering power to the ships would be interesting. I suppose it would have to come in at high voltage (either AC or DC) and be stepped down to a suitable pack voltage. That means each ship would have the equivalent of an electrical substation on board.
Recharging those containerized batteries would require some infrastructure. Conveniently, off shore wind parks are currently pretty popular, can generate lots of GW of power, and can be close to shipping routes. There are all sorts of solutions that you could imagine here. You could even shuttle batteries to and from ships that need them so those ships don't even have to make an expensive detour.
Plus you likely want to stack these to one part of ship and then risk having them relatively close each other which in case of fire could be risky.
Hmm. Sorry, but I'm not impressed. Faster acceleration is fun but it doesn't improve the trip from point a to point b. If anything, it could make the ride less comfortable and safe.
The heater coming on instantly is nice, but it's at the cost of mileage whereas in an ICE the heat is free (in that it is otherwise wasted). If you're using the heater it's because you're in cold weather and you will lose significant range because of the battery's lower performance in the cold (to the tune of up to 40%!) or the battery's heaters keeping it in a performant temperature range. I'd call this a trade-off rather than an improvement.
Storage space in some models makes sense. Same with exhaust in garages, if you have a garage and want to idle the car inside it.
However, talking about all this without mentioning the biggest step backwards with electric cars seems pretty disingenuous; this step backwards being the shorter distance electric cars are capable of traveling in the same period of time as ICE vehicles due to their significantly longer refueling times and decreased range in cold weather.
Here's an example: I save 5 mins a week not having to fill up at the gas station, which is 260 mins a year. On a typical road trip I spend about 30 mins charging each way. So even after 4 road trips in a year, I've still saved 20 mins.
My electric car is hands down my favorite purchase ever, and those I know who have gotten one tend to feel similarly.
A large chunk of people drive well under 100 miles a day. Plug the car in when you get home and it's ready to drive again the next day. The fact is, even with current shortcomings electric cars can meet quite a few needs for people. If I were to get one and needed to take a long trip I'd just get a rental car. Bonus is you don't put those miles on your vehicle.
I dunno - I see pro's and con's for electric cars; way more pro's than con's a this point. The biggest con for me personally is I am not in the market for a new (or even used/new to me) car and don't intend to be for as long as I can. Constantly changing cars (gas or electric) is the best way to stay broke. None of my cars have built in cell phones or telemetry - and I value that quite a bit too!
this is a similar flaw with things like “solar roads” or “solar sidewalks” it’s just unnecessary complexity
Not to forget drag and what it means to actually drag something at even speed current cargo ships travel. Traditionally my understanding is that barges are used at much lower speeds.
And again, all of this is overshadowed by the fact that there's enough open unused space on land to power the entire planet with solar by multiple orders of magnitude. You could power 100 earths with ground-based solar and still have room left over.
Then again, is it wise to install liquid metal on an unstable vessel surrounded by water?
[1] https://electrek.co/2021/08/25/worlds-first-autonomous-7mwh-...
[2] https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/getting-a-charge-out-of-...
[3] https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/slideshow-updat...
For the same reason, a lot of those ships are already electric actually. Sure, they burn fuel but only to drive a generator that drives the engine. Electric engines that size are just better. You get a better range of torque across different speeds and maximize the fuel economy for the generator. The maintenance is simpler. They last longer. Etc. So electrifying is a lot easier than you think. Basically containerize batteries, park a few on the ship, bypass the generator and you have a nice hybrid container ship. Now you can sacrifice useful load for a vastly cheaper fuel (electricity). It becomes a cost equation.
Battery electric changes that game. Most of the transport cost is fuel. Fuel is expensive. Electricity is not. It's all about the cost of fuel. When you burn millions of $ of fuel, fuel economies are very interesting to shipping companies. The main reason for large container ships is the fuel cost. Decimate that cost and that reason goes away. You could do the same volume with a lot of smaller ships instead.
As for liquid metal, batteries are probably a lot easier to clean up than oil and fuel spills. There's no question about how devastating oil spills are. Plenty of recent incidents with oil ships and container ships sinking regularly to prove that. Even just burning fuel produces a lot of pollution. Bunker fuel is the nastiest fuel imaginable and most ships actually have to switch to alternate fuels when they get close to population centers because poisoning the locals is a bit problematic.
I experienced this with the battery lawn mower I bought. Because it was electric, they could do two smaller motors and have twin blades. Sounds fancy. But I don't love it. It can't accommodate a side-chute, leaving me only with mulching and bagging. Those are fine until I leave the lawn long and then things get real slow. The twin blades also sometimes leave a little bit of uncut grass down the middle, which wouldn't happen with a single blade. This might be a product of only being 40V rather than the blade design, but it also seems to have less "suction" to pull up the grass to be cut than I've noticed in traditional gas mowers.
Huge Pro - since there is no active heat source unless there is pan, nothing happens if the controls get accidentally turned on. With older parents I'm very happy they have an induction stove - my dad always hits the controls when cleaning and he can't hear the beeps. Luckily after a few seconds, without a pan, the cooktop just turns itself off again.
A significant con - matching pan to hob (burner) size. The more mismatched, the louder/more high frequency squealing you get. It drove me crazy enough I'm seriously considering something like a Gaggenau 400 Series that will auto detect the pan size and location.
There was an article on HN a while back about using lifting gas (specifically blimps) as a way to reduce shipping costs. I naively wonder how feasible it is to at least lighten the load of ships using hydrogen gas?
https://www.thecgo.org/benchmark/bring-back-hydrogen-lifting...
Actually, electric lawnmowers have come a long way in the past 10-15 years. They have batteries now! No need to drag a cord.
Electricity is no different. Enough current (or exploding gasoline) to move a car is concerning enough to be around in the enclosed package of an engine. Enough current to move a road's worth of cars just hanging around on a third rail, or pantograph, or whatever is downright terrifying.
When we look back in time we see that new technologies very often tried to emulate the old technology that they were about to replace. Cars used to look like horse carriages, computers used the desktop metaphor and smart phones skeuomorphic design.
The time isn't ripe for better than “same, but electric”.
Did it? I see plenty of them around. Over 227k sold world wide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_i3#Global_sales
Then Tesla came along and now everyone says that their success is because of the cars looking like normal cars. shrug. I think the look takes second place to the technology and how well its implemented.
"tail-runk" -> trunk
"front-runk" -> frunk
The center console storage would be center-runk -> crunk
The bottom line is, they're already better everywhere today, and the grid is only going to get cleaner.
Other pollutants have a direct effect on human health. Some pollution has a very fast effect, some pollution has a delayed or chronic effect. We need to replace systems that create this pollution immediately.
For small tools like a two stroke gas engined lawn mower, weed eater or chainsaw, you have an immense immediate benefit from not having the particulate, unburned gas and oil, NOx, and carbon monoxide in your lungs. This immediate benefit to human health makes the transition worth it at almost any cost.
For larger things like vehicles or heat pump based home heating, you need to consider the pay off time. The pay off time is shorter (better) when replacing less fuel efficient vehicles (as low as 20,000 miles). If you have an existing vehicle that gets decent mileage (35+ mpg) and your local electricity is coal powered it can take much longer (50,000 miles or longer). But there is always a finite payoff time for any realistic scenario.
I was going to say, isn't this thesis already exemplified by Tesla?
Besides, if we somehow managed to create an EMP above your city and not set off a full scale nuclear war, your gasoline car and gas pump wouldn’t work either. Those also have computers in them that are critical to their functioning.
This is not something your average person has to worry about, no matter what kind of car they drive.
Yes, there are also cargo ship kites, but those only work as a small adjunct to a big diesel engine.
IMO, this will really induce change, instead of minor inconveniences to your pocketbook.
- can we build enough batteries just for private cars? I really doubt. Not because the absence of a developed and battle-tested supply chain like we have for oil, a supply chain can be made and developed it advantageous or anyway needed it's just a matter of time, but in terms of natural resources. Actually we do not know how to recycle batteries, that's is. In an EV they last 5 years of intense usage (after the vehicle might still run, but not suited for intense usage), or 8 years for normal usage, the tag of 10 years is mostly for a very light usage in good conditions;
- we can change actual logistic chain, for instance (re)develop far more rails (electrified) with a network dedicated to transport only non-perishable/non-urgent/storable goods that operate only when the electricity grid can give enough surplus power from renewables, that's still not solve anything, just reduce fossils usage though;
- we can develop WFH at maximum, designing an entirely new society, far spread than now with significant dense urban agglomerate just for campus/research, factories that need a certain scale, military stuff, political stuff etc while most other live spread in single-family homes not more dense that the local territory capacity to satisfy basic needs (water, foods just at the level of minimal self-sufficiency, commerce as usual for comfort and well-being), maintaining only local and minimum road networks, privileging aviation for the rest, since despite people-who-not-compute-TCO claims is the cheapest option for quick non-local human travels (and substantial development of flying things for human transport is a good proof of that);
- we can change whole scale production systems from very lengthy supply chains to shorter ones in a far less concentrate production, witch is also good for environmental reasons.
All the above offer ways to consume less, once built, all the above offer flexibility to evolve and change even rapidly, all the above might needed to adapt to climate change since rising see levels, subsidence's phenomena, soil liquefaction's, hydrogeological instability in general likely demand big relocations and a new civil infrastructure to correct errors and horrors of the actual one BUT still do not solve the most basic problem, being really "renewable". For industry we still need too much energy, so we need nuclear where classic hydropower can't be used orthographically. For shipping we can use nuclear, French not-much-rich uranium naval reactors might be a good answer. Still no solution to replace fossils for:
- metallurgy, steel/iron in particular
- lubricants
- electrical insulators, hydraulic seals etc
- generic polymers production on scale from elastic tissues to packaging
We have alternatives, yes, but nothing developable in a large scale sustainable manner.
Long story short, even in theory we know how to design a new society for transition to something still unknown.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerant#Refrigerants_with_...
But no one ever thinks about economic costs of trying to do so, no one thinks if it is even possible to do so in the near future. No one ever thinks if 100% electric and 100% wind and solar is really that friendly to the environment.
It seems many are replacing critical thinking and science with passion and ideology.
Nuclear has produced a lot of electricity and avoided a lot of emissions. We should keep our existing nuclear fleets. But new nuclear is prohibitively expensive. (Our 1960s-70s nuclear fleet was super expensive too, the system was just set up in such a way that people building power plants didn't mind it being expensive.)
Meanwhile solar got real cheap real fast in the past decade, and wind has had a pretty good run of getting bigger and taller and cheaper too.
I think that wind and solar and batteries are the obvious path forward from where we are today, being the fastest and most economical route to decarbonize. Had the Build Back Better plan passed, I think the US would have been on-track to be about 65% wind+solar by 2035. https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/solar-futures-study
That said, decarbonizing with wind and solar alone becomes exponentially more difficult as you try to hit 100%. But 75%? Totally doable. 95%? Might be feasible.
According to the current economic system the future is being discounted and considered unimportant. Anyone who tries to extend the lifetime of humanity or the planet is a lunatic because longevity counts for nothing.
If you were to account for the next 500 years, then the costs that we have to pay today would definitively be worth it. If you only account for the next 30 years, then sure collective suicide (hyperbole) is more efficient.
>no one thinks if it is even possible to do so in the near future.
Germany is doing everything on hard mode and yet its electric grid is already 50% renewable. The government did almost everything in its power to slow things down. It's certainly possible if you stop the analysis paralysis of pondering whether it is possible.
>No one ever thinks if 100% electric and 100% wind and solar is really that friendly to the environment.
Is this supposed to be an attempt at the nirvana fallacy? Taking the next step will reduce damage to the environment by x% where x is smaller than 100. After that we will have even more stringent environmental standards and then figure out how to implement those.
As a society—maybe, as human kind—maybe, as individuals—I highly doubt it.
The former two depend on how do we handle everything else on this planet. Looking at what happens in Ukraine, I’m sceptical. The latter: none of us is going to be here in 500 years. Maybe sone will, assuming we, the kind, don’t get wiped by other external factors.
I’m not saying it isn’t worth trying to make a change. I’m only discussing that single point.