The end is nigh for gas-powered cars | Hacker News Reader

The end is nigh for gas-powered cars

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16 pointsrntn13 comments

Funny to see that quote "This requires a massive, 100-year change [..] to the way Americans drive" when this has no real effect on a century of autocentric land use in the US and only represents an even heavier subsidization program. Even if the motors change this is entirely aligned with the way Americans drive/live.

> 100 Year Change

This seems off by a matter of scale; 100 years ago, the average car was the Model T; and in 1929 (94 years ago) 20% of Americans owned a car - 1 car per household.

The highway act didn't pass until 1956 (67 years ago), much less was it constructed.

Finally, we have the internationalization of the automobile and other manufactures being bigger than the US, and 100k mile cars; starting in the 70s, but Toyota didn't produce more than GM until 2021.

That quote is an auto industry representative saying the transition to electric vehicles will take longer than the federal government is urging (which is to say, it'll take another 100 years by their measures). On my end I meant the 20th century rather than an exact 100 year period.

Yes, the changes to the transport alignment you referred to in the original comment are likely to be on a much larger scale than a century, absent some far more intrusive infrastructure changes than the EV..

Consider the Roman and Medieval patterns that still persist in much of the European cityscape.. Ironically, these make for a much less expensive return to non motorized personal transportation (which was never a good fit for cities designed around animal powered vehicles). The design decisions that were common sense in the America of the Highway Act era - which are still being built out - are likely to have huge impact on future transport infrastructure decisions for much longer than a single century.

The only way I can imagine an EV being a "huge change to how I drive" is that I have to consider where I charge it. Which is a real problem today but has potential future solutions.

I'm sure ham-fisted top-down mandates will have zero unintended consequences. Especially since we can't even generate enough base load power now, let alone manage the resources needed to make batteries and motors at scale. Yippie!

Of course there will be unintended consequences. The question is how likely they are to make this policy net negative. The answer is not very.

In an urban setting, maybe.

In places away from the cities, the ICE vehicles will remain for a long time. Mainly because the infrastructure of the electrical grid would need to be upgraded first, and that is probably too expensive per unit. (Lots of long-run high-tension cables to service very few customers = big bikkies.)

You're probably right, but, from what I am learning while reading up on whole house battery / solar systems, future EVs could be an important part of rural residential electrical resiliency. In the southern Appalachians, ice storms result in power outages that can last for days to weeks and, at least for my personal situation, an EV battery would be an attractive second storage option (with power coming from the utility when available and solar backed by a generator on propane otherwise).

Poor rural areas are going to get a lot poorer.

When it comes to infrastructure, the suburbs are subsidizing everyone else. As (if?) they transition, it will get a lot more expensive to reliably serve other areas. The wealthy rural denizens will be fine, and will likely transition to EV-dominated transportation. Large farming concerns will have no problem whatsoever getting fuel delivered.

And everyone else is screwed. The time to start adaptation is now. I’m reminded of when I was growing up. None of the kids I knew living on farms drove F-150s and Silverados as daily drivers. They all had fuel-efficient vehicles as runabouts. Like it or not, that’s going to have to come back. For a lot of rural people, the next car they buy is going to be the one they’re stuck driving when gas gets permanently expensive (and slightly harder to get).

Yes, this is true. In this area, there are huge rural gated communities, usually centered on a golf course (or courses) with some approaching ten thousand acres in size and with development going back more than 50 years.. There is possibly a wider chasm between these kinds of rural areas and the rest of the rural south than exists in American cities..

There are huge issues with the suburbanization approach to rural areas as you allude to.

In the area of electric infrastructure, there is a strong tradition of rural co-ops, who originally electrified many remote rural areas, but most of them have now become reliant on the large monopoly energy providers. There is a discussion of the issue here:

https://appvoices.org/energydemocracy/

> When it comes to infrastructure, the suburbs are subsidizing everyone else.

My understanding was that suburbs are subsidised by everyone else. Here is an infographic that came up when I searched to see if I was wrong: https://i.imgur.com/2rgkaOZ.jpg

... but not before the climate change 'crisis' -- in the integrity of how scientific research is conducted and presented in this field -- mints a few more Elon Musks.

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