Zero-Emission Vehicles Progress Dashboard [pdf]
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I mean if cities were more walkable there'd be less need to join the arms race of more and more aggressive cars on the road.
Cars still pollute - dust from tires causes harm to lungs and streams and is contributing to the decline of salmon populations.
Cars are heavy, damaging roads, increasing maintenance costs compared to electric bikes or public transit.
Cars are large, and need to be parked. That means larger roads and more parking lots, rather than using the space for housing, businesses, or parks. Bikes, buses, and trains don't have the same problem.
Cars reduce access to cities - highways and arterials are difficult to cross, and divide neighborhood activities.
Cars are dangerous, humans are generally only moderately adept at driving them. We have tons of injuries and deaths because people are bad at driving. (Or have to drive when they shouldn't.)
Cars are inefficient. The energy used to move 1 person via a car compared to any other form of transport is one to two orders of magnitude higher.
Cars require distributed energy rather than the centralized infrastructure that public transit requires, which means many small chargers rather than one electrified rail.
Cars aren't affordable for everyone, leading to inequalities in who is eligible to work at certain jobs.
There are probably more reasons, but cars are a deeply inefficient and costly means of transport.
It makes the world uglier, noisier, and homogenized.
It makes urban regions hostile to families with children.
It creates a constant feeling of stress and aggression (road rage)
It requires a surveillance state, a police state, and thousands of laws that all must be followed precisely to uphold. And this takes away justice system resources that could be used for other things.
The roads must constantly be under construction, adding annoyance and expense for everyone.
Congestion wastes innumerable hours of our lives.
Not great with kids because car seats are expensive, annoying to install, and keeps you more tied to one vehicle because ridesharing and rentals don't always have them.
They are an attractive target for thieves because they are among the single most expensive things people own and you can use the loot itself to escape.
It comes with an endless barrage of annoyances for the drivers: parking fees, tolls, insurance, tickets, license renewals, city stickers, emissions tests, maintenance, car washes, refueling, getting towed, getting booted, etc.
If you want to increase non-car infrastructure, you need to convince people it's in their best interest, not attempt to punish them for owning a car. People would love to have an fast, safe, and convenient system for getting around, and right now, that's a car. Most anti-car discussions talk about punishing people for having a car without trying to replace it with something sensible that is fast, safe, and convenient. Of course there's push back.
But the frame of the discussion right now is to punish motorists for being motorists - they don't have a choice. They can't afford to live closer (or there's no options that give what they are looking for), and there's no safe, fast, or convenient way to any place they need to go without a car.
Give them a safe, fast, and convenient way from suburbia to downtown, and they'll support reducing highways into half their size. Right now, the discussion is "suburbia bad, car bad, you bad - be better"
You don't achieve that by talking down to them, treating their choices with disdain, or telling them that they expect to much. You do that by giving them a vision they want to fight for & a path to fight for it. A vision, for example, where you don't need to drive, but you could drive - and that driving experience will be even better than today. A vision that you wouldn't want to drive, even though the driving experience is even better than today, because the alternative is even better than an improved driving experience. That's how you achieve support.
If you tell them they should stop using cars, they're going to ignore you, because there's no better alternative or even remotely equivalent alternative. If you actually try implementing it without making a better alternative, they're going to resent you and your goal.
If you attack the fastest, safest, and most convenient method without providing an alternative that is even better, you will face resentment. If you can provide an alternative that is even better while making driving better too, you'll probably get enough real support to make it reality.
Quote: "FCVs continue to find it difficult to compete with BEVs on cost and popularity and are unlikely to gain market share in the passenger vehicle segment."
[1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/clean-hydrogen-ladder-v40-mic...
I assume the primary counterargument would be that hydrogen production can be either onsite or local so in practice that wouldn't be the result.
I don't really have any favorites, but it seems like this stuff changes over time.
[1] https://www.euronews.com/next/amp/2021/09/28/china-s-carmake...
Thing with BEVs is that the moment you want something what is at least close to parameters of current ICE vehicles, you are getting back to 50k USD territory. And it does not matter if it is made in China, USA or Europe.
But those same market conditions are also encouraging manufacturers to target the high end first. As conditions evolve, budget (electric) vehicles should become more available.
Having too much EV battery capacity available to support grid energy storage seems like a very nice problem to have and should further boost investments in wind and solar. I hope that bidirectional charging ports become a requirement on all high-priced future housing.
On a side note, I found many of the graphs difficult to differentiate.
I guess if you stretch the definition rules sufficiently my 25-year-old 4.6 litre V8 4x4 is a "Negative-Emission Vehicle" because it actively reduces the amount of toxic pollution in the air, when you take it down some of the more polluted roads. Drive it in a bus lane and the exhaust gases are cleaner than the air it's sucking in - it's warm carbon dioxide and water vapour, with all the HC, CO and particulates stripped out.
The car itself is zero-emission by the definition posted. You are hypothesizing that the electricity used to charge the car comes from a dirty source, but that has nothing to do with the car itself, and in Texas for example, it's easily to choose a "100% renewable" energy provider. I just checked PowerToChoose[0] and found 26 "100% Renewable" plans available from companies like CleanSky[1].