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Comment by pge | Hacker News Reader

For mitigating climate change, reducing GHGs (in this case CO2) is the most important factor.

If you are looking instead at air pollution, ie particulate matter, then tires are a larger contributor than exhaust, and EVs due to weight are often worse than ICE cars.

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Is this really that significant? Seems like a model 3 and 3 series bmw weigh about the same.

It's a bigger factor for small cars than for large ones, naturally. A Peugeot e208 EV weighs ~50% more than an ICE Peugeot 208 (1560 kg Vs 1065 kg).

It's 2030, sales of gasoline-powered passenger cars have been banned in California because of their immeasurable impact on the global climate. You've been tasked with replacing them:

1. Make cars, but powered by electric batteries! Don't mind me, just driving my 2000 lbs of batteries to the store and back! If I hit someone they'll suffer grave injury, I require monopoly access to city roadways, a parking lot that dwarfs the land use of the building I'm visiting, direct regular contact with the government for licensing, and a long list of negative externalities. Check it out though, less CO2 maybe?

2. Anything else?

2. Update zoning laws to favor foot and bike traffic rather than passenger cars

3. Increase availability and production of electric bikes

4. I don't really care how we get there. We do not have a choice in the matter.

What happened to mass transit?

Right so these are orthogonal problems. We could solve the transport element of carbon emissions while solve none of the other problems of personal vehicular transport. Or we could solve multiple of those problems.

But it makes no sense to critique a solution to problem A by saying it is not ALSO a solution to problem B.

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