We need to go to net zero somehow. With carbon capture or carbon offset technologies near non existing, we have to make the switch sooner or later
Note that "need" here is in the context of meeting the climate goals we've chosen to impose on ourselves. I'm not going to debate the wisdom of that choice here.
It’s still worth doing but we should understand the true cost.
ICE never will.
Ditch your car.
Ok, how?
In Americas case you might aswell shout yourself. As you cannot live without a car.
Saying Ditch your car is as good solution as 'Just stop breathing in pollution'.
I specifically point out that rapid adoption of EVs at the expense of hybrids given limited batteries is slowing the decarbonization of the transportation sector even if we assume EVs run on fairies' farts
This is because an EV has many many times more batteries than a hybrid, so (if you do the math) it ends up being much worse to run EVs even assuming their energy doesnt come from anywhere than it is to replace regular cars with hybrids.
The smart money is on perishing.
It's tempting to imagine they could all run on electricity, but it's probably hard, as many routes go through hundreds of miles of rugged nothingness. This is quite different from rail transport in Europe.
http://www.geni.org/globalenergy/library/national_energy_gri...
They follow the same valleys around heavy terrain etc. Feel free to superimpose the grid map and the rail map.
So it's a matter of electric locomotives, poles, contact wires and transformers, no small feat but what can you do.
They have been looking into battery electric locomotives which don't make any sense except for switching yards. I read recently that there are electric and diesel locomotives which can use overhead power where available and switch to diesel when it isn't. That has the advantage that they can electrify lines incrementally.
(Disclaimer: Non-expert, but Tesla owner since Q1 2018) I think EV trucks, as a concept is fine, but battery-swapping makes much more sense than using a nonremovable battery-pack that's 5-10x the size of a sedan-sized battery-pack.
Are you aware that the US has the largest rail network of any country in the world, almost the size of the next two (both of whom are geographically larger than the US) combined?
Well of course, the US is a big country - but the overall density of rail (both freight and passenger rail) is lacking compared to Europe (and China too, I think?). I live in the Seattle metro area where the major cities (Everett, Seattle, and Tacoma) do have adequate freight rail accessibility, but none of the smaller and medium sized towns and cities elsewhere in the metro have any kind of rail connection to that main west-coast rail corridor, so they're reliant on road trucks to move goods in/out of those larger cities.
...whereas my part of the north-west of the UK (where I try to spend a good chunk of the year, where-possible) has rail connections between practically every small town, even many (most?) hamlets. Even local supermarkets use the rail network: https://www.railfreight.com/railfreight/2022/01/21/tesco-and...
The rail companies have not been looking after their infrastructure since they are cutting costs heavily. I read that one reason for Amtrak's poor performance is that freight railroads have single-tracked lines and removed passing sections leading to passenger trains stuck by freight trains.
Meanwhile, US road freight was about 3.6 trillion tkm, and EU road freight 2 trillion tkm.
So not only does the US do about 5x the rail freight of the EU, US rail is about 38% of freight, compared to 17% in the EU.
As I've said in the past, the only cities of the 50 largest in the US that are unquestionably out of HSR range are Denver and Salt Lake City, with Memphis, Birmingham, and Oklahoma City on the fringes of viability (from most to least viable). The other 45 cities? Totally viable.
I worked on a SAE HEV Challenge car back in the 1990's.
There is no such thing as a zero-emissions transportation solution.
Let's say you managed to make a solar-powered skateboard navigate existing sidewalks and deliver packages. (Which is not going to happen.) You would still need to build the solar cells and computer boards, which are NOT zero-emissions processes.
If an electric car is zero-emissions when running on battery power, my pickup is zero-emissions if I turn off the engine and coast down hill. Zero-emissions is nonsense.
We can reduce emissions by reducing, reusing, and recycling. The problem is that our EPA overlords hate reusing. If they wanted to reduce emissions, they would not pull old vehicles off the road. Instead they would find low-use situations where they could replace newer vehicles. Instead they destroyed the oldest, most useful trucks in Junker-Clunker.
This reminds me of a coworker / boss at a university I taught at about 10-15 years ago. She had a shiny new Lexus thing that got 15 MPG with a huge engine and an (I think) 8-speed automatic transmission when I had never seen such a thing before. (I know they are common now, but at the time that was odd.) She made fun of my old 1990's Chevy S10 pickup truck that got 25 MPG every time I drove 90 minutes each way to take 1,000 lbs of computer equipment to a recycling center. I only took in for recycling the stuff I could not reuse. Enviromentalism is all about looks. It has nothing to do with reducing emissions.
If anyone believed the claims of the enviromentalists, they would be calling for the executions of the scum who cheat on fake carbon credits. Instead they are buying ocean front properties while selling books about rising sea levels.
Easiest way to slash CO2 emissions literally overnight? Enforce speed limits, fuel consumption per trip scales (in the countryside) as v^2.
EVs? A nasty joke anyone able to grasp opportunity cost can understand.
If we really wanted to slash CO2 consumption we'd:
- lower speed limits
- Encourage delivery and contractor vehicles to go hybrid
- Since we've slashed vehicle speeds, lower safety standards
- Encourage motorcycle licensing (and promote motorcycle EVs. The only EVs that make sense)
- Force manufacturers to provide information, tooling and parts to keep vehicles on the road longer
- Encourage CNG LPG conversions
Etc.