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Comment by dfhgfhgfhgfhjk | Hacker News Reader

This whole charade is so ill conceived. Honestly, the top 20 developed nations are literally THE problem. It's a demand side problem not a supply side one. We need to stop buying container loads of virtually disposable electronics from China every week, stop driving to the shops, stop running energy intensive appliances, you get the drift. Of course if people actually did this it would tank our developed economies.

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If there was a better and cheaper option to replace fossil fuels for transportation and energy, the transition would naturally happen. Why would anyone buy a gas car if electric was better and cheaper in every way? Maybe a few petrolhead enthusiasts but everyone would switch if it was cheaper and better and the infrastructure was in place.

But instead of doing the work (infrastructure) and making the technology better and cheaper, a strategy of carrots and sticks was employed ($ incentives and taxation) that haven’t progressed the technology.

The reason we burn gas in our cars is because it was better and cheaper than the previous fuels.

Maybe because it's not that simple? A new technology and a new infrastructure will be more expensive initially, until it reaches a critical mass. So, to reach that critical mass you need early adopters who take the hit, and to help sweeten the hit, you give them money under the form of incentives to buy the new EV or create the charging infrastructure. That's one of the main duties of a welfare state.

IMO: as an answer to your question of why:

Inertia, Investment, (existing) Infrastructure, and greed.

Investment and profit to be made off of it also relate to lobbying, laws, and further investment.

Some related issues for electric vehicles are the increased load on power grid/supply, how Internal Combustion Engines provide (relatively) free heat in cold climates, and that cold snaps require vehicles with batteries to self-heat.

They're issues that have some solutions, but it's not wave a wand at things and they're fixed. The problem also reminds me of connectivity in houses, where by now we should have at least gigabit ports in every room, but increasingly consumers see houses barely suitable for wifi and cell connections.

There are things the market just won't self select despite the good involved for consumers. Maybe if we vote for non-idiots there will eventually be regulation to help.

Why is it so hard to admit or understand that the transition hasn’t happened yet at critical mass scale because the technology is more expensive and not equal or better than ICE for consumers?

When a product is better and cheaper, inertia is overcome and consumers switch!

Go look up the historical transitions of fuel sources!

This only works if all externalities (e.g. global costs of greenhouse gas production, pollution,...) are correctly priced in.

By that logic also, everyone would by expensive razors and cheap razor blades because they would see that it costs less in the long term than cheap razors and expensive blades.

the simple solutions from clueless people are always very entertaining. They got all the fixes for the world’s problems, if only these damn politicians did their work!1!1

Yeah, the hundreds of billions of dollars that the oil economy spends every year is not what creates this distortion, sure. Let’s just wait for the market forces to fix it.

You mean you don't believe in the power of "they should just..."? ;)

The oil lobby did not force Germany to close it's nuclear reactors and start importing Russian gas instead to power their whole country. The oil producers did not lobby the EU to add a 25% tariff on EVs from China.

Finally, the oil lobby is not responsible for the horrendous EU electricity prices which is making it literally impossible for some people to warm their homes in the winter months let alone charge and EV.

I am happy to blame the oil lobby for a lot of things but the politicians have to share this blame as well.

Personally for me a big thing is how finicky EVs are.

If there is no electricity you are out, if it's snowing too much you are out and so on. I don't want to buy something that stops working when anything isn't optimal.

ICE vehicles can be finicky as well (but the technology has matured over a century) but yes, they aren’t quite totally better in every way.

They certainly work in the snow though, but there is range penalties in the cold. Gas cars stop working when they aren’t in their optimal conditions as well than includes having enough fuel.

I think requiring reliable electric infrastructure for charging cars is a good investment in the future because reliable power is good for more than just cars.

That is way too polarised. In a world just introducing ICE cars, gas stations once where rare too—without those, you’d be short of luck as well. Give it a bit of time, and you’ll have a reliable charging grid.

Additionally, much of the fear of running out of electricity has been instilled by the oil and car lobby. The problem is hugely inflated over the actual experience of driving an EV in reality.

And in terms of finickiness, there are SO many ways an ICE can break, so many replacement parts, maintenance requirements, and complexity compared to an electric engine. You’re just used to those in ICEs.

> Additionally, much of the fear of running out of electricity has been instilled by the oil and car lobby. The problem is hugely inflated over the actual experience of driving an EV in reality.

True, but i want to still be able to use my car when shit hits the fan, like in a storm or even in a war, there were photos of teslas left out in the cold in ukraine.

While with an ICE car all you need is just a gallon of gas.

> And in terms of finickiness, there are SO many ways an ICE can break, so many replacement parts, maintenance requirements, and complexity compared to an electric engine. You’re just used to those in ICEs.

The difference is for EVs they are finicky to use, while ICE vehicles are finicky mechanically, which doesn't seem to be an issue in day to day driving.

I wish they (COP crowd) would talk about TFR and do rollouts under worst case scenario.

Low TFR countries should continue to shrink. But high TFR countries are likely to get less poor. They are the problem. If people are truly fungible like they say, migrating low consumption people to high consumption states despite local resistance is the worst idea ever. I wish they would focus on these points.

> I wish they (COP crowd) would talk about TFR and do rollouts under worst case scenario.

I wish you had defined TFR so we can understand if you are attacking poor countries or defending the riches

TFR is total fertility rate. GP is saying "the problem is not the overconsumption in the rich countries with low TFR, it's the poor countries with high TFR getting richer and consuming more and people migrating to countries where they consume more".

Which falls apart looking at the map of highest ghg emissions https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-ghg-emissions vs the negative impact caused by climate change and the ability to mitigate https://gain-new.crc.nd.edu/ranking .

curtailing migration without massive reduction in the overconsumption by the rich countries amounts to having the poorer nations pay bills (via enduring disasters) for damage they didn't cause, which I find an injustice. Doing that and limiting economic growth and thus limiting the capability of dealing with the disasters would just be cruelty.

If you want to reduce migration without injustice or cruelty, you need to make sure other countries remain livable and thrive, hence the OPs hook.

By the tone I could imagine GP was being xenophobic, thanks for clarifying. Checking his comments history is nauseating. HN has such a specific kind of troll that makes one lose hope for humanity a bit.

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