getting more people on electric scooters would do a lot of good too, if there was safe infrastructure to ride without getting hit by an oversized pickup. The city of Paris is doing the right thing here:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2020/10/20/paris-ma...
Note that your source is very outdated. Paris just opted to ban electric rental scooters effective September.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/parisians-vote-ban-e-sc...
When someone personally owns an object, it's far less likely to be found laying across a public footpath or at the bottom of a canal.
This then makes it feasible to build public transit between these areas and start building things up along those transit lines.
Encouraging tiny cars for the masses may also encourage a Japan-style demographic time-bomb.
Most of the time, bikes are better. Sometimes, I use the truck. We shouldn't require use of the truck, which we do in 95% of the urban areas of this country. I'd rather just put my kid on a bike like they do in NL.
This needs some explaining.
I'd absolutely believe that car-dependence has played some measurable role in suppressing birthrates, by causing step increases in transportation costs at certain counts of kids. 1 or 2 is no problem with almost any car, but 3 means at least a large sedan, and 4-5 means a van or SUV. More than 5 and you're looking at a fullsize van or a minivan with dual bench seats or something.
Cracking this chicken-egg will require forcing huge-ass vehicle ownership down first, and good luck with that in the US. :-(
2nd seat leg and head room is great, but possibly the seat size is a bit small for US fat people.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3665046
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/c4daDbQD398BmW5k5/on-car-sea...
That seems pretty far fetched. I bet you could see an effect from the size of laundry machines too.
They're just not as popular as SUVs and trucks in the USA. People want big cars, so companies manufacture big cars too.
Electric scooters would work for 5 months of the year where I live (and we have and use them when we can).
I am an automotive EE that was on before 2008… there is no much irony in your post that hurt feelings by Californians be damned I’m going to explain it to you.
Thank Obama for large cars.
When he came in and you saw the “all cars will have xx MPG by 2025” or whatever year seemed like a lifetime away, the car mfgs said ”ok, but unless you reinvent the stoichiometric ratios of gasoline, this can’t be done”.
And they were right. There are some truths to ICE vehicles that until we have drastically different tires, and roads, and aluminum or composites are way cheaper (the latter not recyclable at all btw), some of these climate change proposals and dreams are just PR bullshit for the people that want to see it.
Now… what happened next was the car manufacturers explained, they came to a compromise. Between CARB and CAFE and NITSA and etc, the administration agreed that they would judge on footprint of vehicle.
Actual quote from one of these closed doors discussions: ”If you are going to grade us on footprint, we’re going to give you footprint”.
A single car going down the road today in CAFE eyes, is not one car. It might be 1.3 cars, because its footprint is 1.3x a 2008 comparable vehicle.
It’s not just footprint though! It’s drivetrain, weight, exemptions, regulation workarounds, class.
Chrysler, erm Fiat, erm Stellanis sell Jeep Wranglers 2dr electrics, so they can sell more diesel trucks. Among 20 other examples.
I don’t know the future with what is about to happen here. But I FUCKING PROMISE YOU this isn’t what it seems and the Biden Admin knows it already. If I had to guess, I would expect the mfgs to push a lot of basically disposable EVs that will last 50k miles and have batteries destined for landfills to make up for the vehicles they want to sell.
Recycling lithium is not currently cheaper than mining new, and I do not expect that to change soon. If you ask me, I would rather a steel car that lasts 300k be made over vehicles that won’t make it to 100k and are just trashed. But… I don’t get a say.
EDIT: As a nearly non-sequitur anecdote, I did cause a guy recently to have an ideological breakdown. He is a city planner complaining that a 9’x20’ parking space is killing him, and cars are only getting larger. I explained in detail the history and he had a lot of trouble coming to terms with it. He thought “his side” could do bo wrong.
Car batteries have high reuse value for letting lots of us cases.
Recycling is irrelevant because the amount of batteries going offline is a tiny pitence compared to what is produced knew. There are actually not enough batteries for all the companies wanting to do recycling.
Eventually recycling will make sense but it will be quite a while from now.
You assertion that all EV fail after 50k is disproved by ever analysis on repair cost.
But you are right lobbying and bad choices led to larger cars. However the solution was to force those under the same law and only allow very targeted exception with special licences.
> You assertion that all EV fail after 50k is disproved by ever analysis on repair cost.
Never said either of those things. There is more to an EV than the battery.
But OK, I respect your opinion that these don't go to landfills vs my watching 10k Fiat EV batteries go to a landfill, which wasn't some spectacular event, but basically a Thursday.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/08/gm-recalls-every-chevy-...
You want to bet what happened to these 100-150k batteries with bad chemistry? They went to the landfill homie.
>But you are right lobbying and bad choices led to larger cars. However the solution was to force those under the same law and only allow very targeted exception with special licenses.
I can not agree that the problem with regulation/legislation/lobbying is just double more harder.
(It's really hard as someone who has seen automotive mfging scale explain it to people who haven't)
Do you have evidence?
Also, whatever happened in that case, there are industry statistics about battery materials and they clearly show that most batteries do not end up in landfils.
> I can not agree that the problem with regulation/legislation/lobbying is just double more harder.
Setting regulation as such it gets you the outcome you need, is not doing it harder, its doing it correctly.
20+ years in this industry. That you don't believe it is just so far away from reality that I can't help you.
Do you want a CNN article that a PR paid for to say "Yea! We're throwing hundreds of thousands of batteries away!!" because we/they don't typically pay for you to see things like that.