Edinburgh, Scotland makes it illegal to advertise SUVs
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
From the proposed amendment that this WaPo story cites (https://democracy.edinburgh.gov.uk/documents/s70730/9.1%20Po...), this is what kind of ads are banned, along with the comments regarding these things:
Airlines and airports:
all advertising by airports and airlines which might reasonably be deemed to promote more flying
There are no low carbon options for commercial air travel available currently or for the foreseeable future, so air travel per se should be treated as high carbon.
Fossil fuel companies:
all firms and associated sub brands or lobbying organisations that extract, refine, produce, supply, distribute, or sell any fossil fuels
This includes, regardless of the companies’ potential sustainability commitments advertising or sponsorship:
• showing fossil fuel products, energy from coal or hydrogen
• showing petrol stations, and any ads promoting the price of petrol/diesel
Cars:
exclude all advertising and promotions for petrol, diesel and hybrid vehicles and Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV)
Advertising for Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) and hydrogen fuelled vehicles are still permitted if these are not Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs). PHEVs have been shown not to yield meaningful emissions savings over conventional vehicles.
Cruise holidays:
Cruise ships emit more carbon per passenger kilometre than flying. They also generate black carbon and produce a lot of waste which is often discharged into the sea. Their engines run 24/7, often even at port which has damaging impacts on air quality.
What about all the secondary products of refining? Things like plastics, waxes, etc? Seems like they should include those too.
Most rides are under 50 miles, which means emission-free rides on most occasions. They don't hound chargers and need smaller batteries. Win-win if you ask me.
If cell manufacturing is the supply constraint, continue to scale up.
It hasn’t been for few years now
If I remember right, then tire-wear [1] is the primary contributor to particulate emissions and a signifcant portion of vehicular pollution comes from the existence of the vehicle itself. (manufacturing, road maintenence)
https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/features/phev-owners-not...
https://blog.ucsusa.org/dave-reichmuth/plug-in-hybrids-are-t...
This is a very strong prior, and with a little digging you can find out that these cars are being bought by tax credits, and then used by people who do not have access to chargers. Either because it is a rental or because it is a company car. If it is a company car, the reimbursement process for gas is easier, and why would I go through the hassle if I'm not the one saving money?
The case for PHEVs is very strong, it is a much more economical use of lithium battery capacity, is cheaper to operate, produces less CO2, and can be operated like an ICE vehicle in a pinch.
They strategically dominate EVs. Its absurd to suggest otherwise
It doesn’t matter how strong the case is for PHEVs if the data doesn’t conclusively demonstrate they’re being used appropriately to minimize emissions. That’s just hope, and hope is not a strategy. Frankly, PHEV tax credits should be something like revenue you have to recognize over time, only provided when proven they’re being used in the manner desired (versus at time of purchase, after which you might not ever even plug the vehicle in).
PHEVs are lighter than full EVs, and incentivize the manufacturer to build a smaller car. (EVs are longer because the batteries take up lots of horizontal space). If Mazda's experiments pay off, then a wankel [1] engine PHEV will be space efficient and sustainable. Now not everyone needs to tow, but EVs are horrible at towing. A PHEV is an ideal long-term alternative to petrol for heavy-hauling use cases.
I firmly believe fully emissions-free vehicles will be the future. But the powergrid & charging infrastructure for 100% EV are at least 10-20 years away. Until then, PHEVs should be encouraged as a stopgap, especially for countries without easy ways to generate renewable energy.
Of course this is based on our car usage patterns so its really subjective.
I agree with you on the powergrid and charging infrastructure. A counterpoint i rarely see is if everyone would switch to EVs or PHEVs in 5 years, the electrical infra would collapse. And the electricity price world skyrocket and it would not be this cheap as it is now. So we should keep that in mind when we calculate the savings.
Electricity grids are massively overbuilt and underutilized because they need to deal with a big spike of power usage in the early evenings. So if grids became strained by EVs, it would be relatively easy to fix this: just encourage or mandate time of day tariffs.
The price signal would encourage people to charge outside of peak times. The improved utilization of the grid may even reduce distribution costs per kWh.
Through regenerative braking, so you get the benfits of a Hybrid. You can charge your PHEV at home during the week, and avoid the inconvienences of an EV when on a road trip.
Not if this is just in service of an overarching goal of banning cars entirely.
Can you say or link to more about this? My family borrowed a PHEV Prius Prime for about six weeks. Our fuel economy over that time was ~210mpg, nearly an order of magnitude better than the sedan it temporarily replaced.
???
Even just being a regular hybrid should offer meaningful emissions savings over standard ICE cars, due to the increased fuel efficiency, let alone a plug-in.
I'd be very curious to see the data/calculations on this, because it certainly sounds like bullshit.
IIRC all new cruise ships run on LNG, so air quality issue is a moot.
Every ship I see in port is still belching clouds of black smoke from bunker fuel. Never heard of a LNG ship.
This lists 21 out of ~300 total cruise ships are LNG.
This says most new passenger ships are LNG:
https://www.cruisemapper.com/wiki/752-cruise-ship-engine-pro...
Obviously depends on cruise company and the tail is pretty long of smaller companies who aren't building new ones.
If I lived in an urban area, I think it would be difficult and annoying to own a larger vehicle. Traffic, parking, narrow lanes, bikes, peds, etc would all make it pretty inconvenient. Many cities are charging vehicles to enter (like NYC). Maybe they could charge considerably more for larger vehicles or make it very low cost for small, compact cars?
We just need to close the SUV mileage loophole. A lot of modern SUVs and crossovers actually have poor capacities relative to their size.
And I’ve looked at those options: the storage, seating and safety is just not the same as a large SUV.
If you are using the word “safety” to mean safety for peds and bicyclists, I would likely agree with you that smaller cars are better for that. There are many blind spots on larger SUVs.
Part of the reason why people are dogpiling into SUVs is that they destroy other cars in collisions, and so to remain safe in a road that is filling up with SUVs you must also be in one.
For car drivers probably too, because today there is an "arms race" dynamic playing:
while self.car < other.car:
feel(unsafe)
new_car = buy(car if car >= other.car)
self.car = new_car
feel(safe)
smash(pedestrian)
smash(cyclist)
smash(other.car)
Generally speaking though, there are a couple ways in which SUVs are less safe in certain conditions:
* SUVs sit higher and have a taller center of gravity than station wagons and are more susceptible to rollovers: https://www.avrek.com/blog/how-does-a-rollover-happen-and-wh...
* SUVs are more dangerous to other road users because of how tall they are. If you are a pedestrian, cyclist, or sitting in a lower car, then the main part of an SUV is aimed higher at your torso or head. This also creates a self-fulfilling cycle where the only way to be safe against an SUV is to be in an SUV yourself.
Road fatality rates have stalled in the US while in other countries they are decreasing, and a big portion of that is that pedestrian fatalities have increased by 68% since 2011. https://smartgrowthamerica.org/pedestrian-fatalities-at-hist...
SUVs represent a oversized proportion of the vehicles striking and killing pedestrians. https://www.codot.gov/safety/shift-into-safe-news/2022/augus...
(You need an SUV for poorly maintained roads, or towing trailers.)
Compare the exterior size, interior size, and weight of an 80s corolla and one today. You'll find the door panels are much thicker, the car weighs about 20% more, the exterior dimensions have grown slightly, and it feels more cramped inside.
Eg, it's not that we don't see small cars anymore. It's that small cars have gotten larger, heavier, and feel less spacious.
We designed our roads to be dangerous and now they're dangerous.
Some 40,000 people die from traffic fatalities in the US every year, and it's one of the top killers for children.
Fatalities per 100k inhabitants:
South Korea - 5.3
Japan - 2.1
Italy - 5.2
UK - 2.9
Germany - 3.7
France - 5.0
Canada - 5.3
# USA - 12.9
The US actually does about the same as Mexico (12.8) despite being enormously richer and generally more developed: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic...
Part of the problem in the US is precisely that the transportation system compels people to drive so much, and looking at fatalities per distance traveled obscures that danger.
I don’t buy this hyperbole that people feel “unsafe” in the streets. I walk the streets with SUVs around me all the time and never feel unsafe. The chance of you having an injury is very low, and it would be illogical to worry about this possibility. If you really care about such low probability events, you might as well just live in a bubble all the time.
Like for instance how China banned single serving plastic usage.
edit: After rereading I realized I misinterpreted your post. I read "enact" to mean "enact and enforce" but in a sense you are correct that only governments can enact legislation. I see now you made no claims about ability to design enforceable policy.
Those who are opposed to that approach on the basis of criticisms of enclosures acts and the end of traditional commons have many arguments on their side, but the general effectiveness of privatisation in that particular case is not amongst them.
(Hardin is also pointedly arguing about a far larger problem, including of commons which are less readily closed such as ocean fisheries, and of the total global human population of Earth, in which privatisation might not hold, or for which other approaches, some of which are strongly criticised today, might be applied.)
The one dynamic which solving a tragedy of the commons requires is that it not be possible to privatise gains whilst socialising costs, which drives the entire logic of the tragedy. How that is arrived at still leaves multiple options.
Later laws were changed to recognize SUV as a separate class, but the standards are still just a gradual improvement over truck standards, and not near where car requirements are.
While the loophole isn't going away completely, the tougher rules may cause some manufacturers to rethink trends and add more small cars to their lineups.
However, it's more likely that the opposite will happen. Americans love SUVs and trucks; even pandemic pricing didn't convince many shoppers to switch to a smaller car. Instead, we've seen manufacturers building even larger electric vehicles
Skirting emissions laws only works as a complete explanation if it can account for consumer behavior.
My sense from talking to people who own them is that they chose them because they could function as a truck or as a minivan depending on what they need to do at the time, without having to own both. That's a much less exciting explanation than yours, but it does account for both consumer behavior and manufacturer behavior. Emissions laws may very well have increased manufacturer margins on these vehicles, but they're filling a real need in people's lives.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40699325
This isn't a diamond ring situation where someone created demand out of nothing.
So what are we to conclude? Yes, the majority of US car buyers will literally buy the biggest gas guzzling pollution spewer they can afford. Call it revealed preferences, although it's hardly obscured - hell, a large number of people vote on the premise that gas must be $5 forever.
This would be a sufficient explanation if and only if SUVs were cheaper than trucks. They're not, so the rising popularity of SUVs cannot be because skirting emissions regulations allowed selling a cheaper gas guzzler.
(This is aside from the fact that is referenced by another comment further up [0] that most modern SUVs aren't actually significantly less fuel efficient than traditional vehicles.)
For us, we wanted a vehicle that could tow a Camper Trailer, and one that could hold my daughter’s wheelchair easily, as well as her friends. A minivan would have fulfilled the wheelchair requirement, but it’s my wife’s dream vehicle, and I really want my youngest daughter to get the same camping trip experiences despite having special needs (like water and a sterile environment to wash up and catheter her, so a camper is a necessity if we want to “camp”).
Something like the Cybertruck wasn’t even a consideration, because it can haul maybe 90 miles for a camper trailer, based on what I’ve seen in testing.
In substantial parts of the US, the geography and climate recommend an AWD with high ground clearance. Most modern SUVs are not built on truck frames and have fuel efficiency similar to sedans. Decades ago this market was originally met either by modifying a 4WD truck to make it passenger friendly (e.g. "true SUV" like the Ford Bronco) or a handful of low-cost Japanese cars, notably Subaru. There was a vast market gap between these two options.
Most modern SUVs don't resemble either but instead split the difference. They are essentially sedans modified to support AWD and high ground clearance. The 2WD versions are essentially a minivan without the sliding doors. A "true" SUV has 4WD and a frame built more like a truck but these are relatively rare in the SUV market.
There are still no electric cars that address the old Subaru market, so in the US we will be stuck with SUVs for quite some time.
Sales for true "SUVs" (ie. cars that are built on top of a truck platform) have stayed relatively stable, and most of the "SUVs" you see are actually crossovers[1]. This might seem like a pointless distinction, but crossovers are closer to cars than SUVs, and aren't as bad for the environment as you think. The best selling crossover is the Toyota RAV4[2], which gets 30 mpg. The best selling sedan (Toyota Camry) gets 32 mpg, or 6.7% more.
[1] https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/research/the-rise-of-th...
[2] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g43553191/bestselling-cars...
My 1998 SC2 Weighed ~2400 pounds and got MPG in the low 30s (35+ on the highway).
> NOx emissions
Managing that often impacts fuel economy. Ask VW group =)
Hybrids are great, but it is sidestepping the point that the poster was trying to make.
Even that probably isn't sensible. Banning single-use plastic leads to a shift to single-use paper, single-use wood, or single-use metal - all of which are even worse for the environment. The problem isn't the "plastic" part, the problem is the "single-use" part.
For example, we already know that plastics form a lot of the trash in the ocean; but now we also know that these plastics shed microplastics pervasively as well.
The history of negative-externalities-generating industries --- lead, asbestos, tobacco, alcohol, CFCs, amongst others --- suggests that this may not be the case.
https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-scienc...
Short term global warming seems far bigger issue than plastic waste (which is manageable)
Sedans/minivans are held to more stringent fuel efficiency standards, particularly after the Obama-era EPA regulations. [1] This has promoted the sale of larger vehicles/trucks.
[1] https://newrepublic.com/article/180044/epa-small-cars-sedan-...
It is not that clear cut in that case.
> In fact, life-cycle assessments on items such as single-use plastic bags have shown that there is a discrepancy between actual re-use rates of alternative bags and the re-use rate to break even on environmental grounds. Paper bags need to be re-used four times, LDPE bags five times, non-woven PP bags 14 times and cotton bags 173 times. Their actual re-use rates are about half that, making them less sustainable than single-use plastic bags, which may also be used by consumers as bin liners.
https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/3620887-would...
1. It's an opinion piece, not evidence-based and peer-reviewed research.
2. It's written by a lobbyist who's parent organization gets funding in part from neo-reactionaries, including the Charles G. Koch Foundation.
3. The same author argues elsewhere for Europe and the U.S. to "put all their climate ambitions in the back burner, refine more oil and cooperate to deliver it quickly and effectively"; cf. https://web.archive.org/web/20220908091610/https://la-chroni....
4. The opinion piece cites another opinion piece written by the same author for Newsmax, a non-credible far-right media company.
5. It also cites "Five Misperceptions Surrounding the Environmental Impacts of Single-Use Plastic," published in _Environmental Science and Technology_, an impactful peer-reviewed scientific journal, but the article is not without its detractors and must be read critically as well; cf. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.0c07842.
6. The opinion piece redundantly cites a web page written by the author of "Five Misperceptions...". Said web page makes the same arguments as the ES&T article.
7. The opinion piece quotes a number of unrelated facts and figures.
1. Opinion pieces can cite evidence-based and peer-reviewed research
2. Ad hominem
3. Ad hominem
4. Ad hominem
5. Ad hominem and Straw Man:
6. and 7. Straw man
This is not sensible and has a negligible impact on the environment - it almost always is worse, actually.
Kinda like how single use plastic bags are better for the environment than a single reusable cotton bag purely because reusable bags would need to be used for a decade to break even with 10,000 single use plastic bags, which almost never happens.
https://www.campaignlive.com/article/ad-industry-bodies-crit...
>Councillors voted 15-2 yesterday in favour of a ban on ads for [...] cars (except electric and hydrogen vehicles), all SUVs
However, the houses there are often old/historic, with very inefficient heating systems (some even use electricity to heat up a bunch of bricks, which then emits the heat to keep warm) - shocking! Also, windows are not normally with double or triple glass, and sometimes it is not permissible to change these because many buildings are protected.
https://electrek.co/2022/01/05/these-new-affordable-electric...
- Conversion of input energy to thermal energy. Fuel-based or electric resistance heating are both less efficient than heat pumps. The later can deliver several times the heat energy as is used to move it from elsewhere (outside air, the ground).
- Any emissive losses. The electric + brick heat systems seem to be similar to a masonry stove or similar design. If the bricks are on an interior wall, any heat leakage should be into the living space. If on an exterior wall, it's quite possible that much of the heat is radiated to the exterior. Even where placement is central, a wall may leak heat vertically and through the ceiling to the outside.
- Cost of fuels. The electric + brick design would seem to rely on cheaper off-peak electric rates. A more efficient system which more closely follows other electric loads (and hence, uses more high-cost electricity) could cost more whilst utilising fewer kWh of actual electrical energy, for example. Similarly, heat pumps with fallback to electric resistance heat might see similar high-cost patterns during extremely cold weather.
Yeah, they do:
1) Heat that's present when people aren't is unnecessary heat.
2) Heat that leaks out of the building is wasted heat.
So isolate the building better...? Yes, of course... But you can never isolate 100%. And heat that's present while people aren't -- see 1) above -- is heat that can (and, to some extent, will!) leak out before ever warming anyone.
Also it’s not like they’re banning existing SUVs or SUV sales altogether, just looking to reduce visibility a bit. They and anyone who knows they really need an SUV can still go buy one.
Do I have freedom of speech? How about Joe Smith?
Assuming that the answer is yes, why do Joe and I acting together/cooperating not have freedom of speech?
I ask because a company is people acting together/cooperating.
Also, what about unions and public advocacy organizations?
If a company is just "people acting together/cooperating", then there is no company -- it's not a person, nor even a thing; it's just something people do. ("Acting together" and "cooperating" are both verbs.)
This "free speech for companies" malarkey is what "companies" (= (usually rich) people) hide behind when "the company" does bad shit. Granting "companies" legal personhood is one of the bigger reasons the USA are as fucked up as they are.