New EV vs. old beater: Which is better for the environment? | Hacker News Reader

New EV vs. old beater: Which is better for the environment?

arstechnica.com

17 pointsEvgeniyZh10 comments

Get an old petrol car, convert it to run on propane. Now you're burning stuff that gets flared off as waste gas from making plastics and fertilisers, and emitting only carbon dioxide and water. No carbon monoxide, no sulphur oxides, no nitrogen oxides, no unburnt HC, no particulates. You're still emitting greenhouse gases, but you're extracting useful work from them instead of just warming up the atmosphere.

The reason why they run warehouse forklifts on propane is because you don't die if you breathe the fumes.

The only downside is you need to find somewhere to put the tank, and that usually means giving up your spare wheel well. There's no good reason why you couldn't fit a tiny little petrol tank and use some of the old tank's space for LPG though.

c) a bike

Indeed. Might even be an electric bike (although personally I enjoy riding my fast human-powered road bike on a daily basis).

While the myth that old (small) gasoline cars may emit less co2 car than a reasonably efficient EV does annoy me, the average electric bike (8W / km) is still 15 times as efficient as my electric Hyundai Ioniq (130W / km) and very usable (and most of the time just as fast) for any distances under 30km. Plus it takes up much less space and promotes cycling lanes and such, something that pays off dividends in the long run. With EV’s, it’ll just be more of the same (more car culture).

EV’s are an improvement for sure, but by far not radical enough to solve the issues we are facing.

Glad your piece of the world doesn't have winter. When it's 10F and there's 3 inches of snow, I'll remember this recommendation and laugh in my heated car.

I bike year round, even in 10°F or lower. But it does require a place that plows the bike lanes. Going through snow with an ebike isn't bad when you're the first, but when it has already been turned into a potato field by everyone, then it's definitely a struggle.

This is one of the problems with living in the US. Most cities don’t care about bike infrastructure and certainly don’t maintain it when it snows. Drivers here tend to not be bike friendly either. I’ve had cars cut my off when I was in the bike lane because they wanted to pull over.

this is laudable, in the same way that running an ultra marathon is, however I can see why most people choose not to do it

Fair point. When our town was cut off by snow and all the roads were closed, I couldn’t use my bike to get out.

I used the train. Class 43 power cars and eight carriages don’t give a shit about snow on the line.

But I guess your heated car would have kept you warm for a while stranded on the B4437.

if you're going to give such out of context responses, you might as well pick d) live close to where you work and commute less

TANSTAAFL, Lycra's cheap availability is dependent on the large scale petrochemical infrastructure driven by internal combustion vehicles.

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