They are symbols. Far more carbon would be saved if people instead bought solar panels for thier houses and drove a smaller IC car rather than an EV tank. But you cannot flaunt solar panels like you can a fancy car.
Angle grinder wins against any lock. Maybe you're not the easiest bike to steal by having your very expensive lock, but in certain areas (NYC being a big one) that basically doesn't matter. And insurance claims from the bike locks still suck, since you have to deal a lost bike and an insurance claim every time that happens...
Note how infrequently iPhones are stolen since apple got serious about preventing it.
It works pretty well although there is some maintenance cost when bits pack up. It's quite easy to find similar on facebook market.
And the choice isn't "smaller ICE car" and "EV tank". There are many EV hatchbacks, sedans, and compact cars available, arguably more models than ICE vehicles in North America. Most ICE drivers are the ones who buy tanks anyway.
Yeah this is what bothers me about all the EV haters.
"But but what about the tire dust"
"But but what about the battery fires"
blah blah. It's like a pathological hatred of anything anyone else might do that you think maybe makes them "better" than you in some way.
For people who use leases to get a new car (average lease is 36 months) they’d be doing more harm to the environment, but for people who hold onto their cars longer, they’d be reducing CO2e.
Those are just rough generalizations, and of course it depends on driving distance, grid emissions, etc. For example, if you get your electricity primarily from coal, the break even is closer to 12 years. But as others have said, the EV market tends towards the type of people who don’t hold on to cars very long.
>expensive to repair would be the easy environmental improvement that would also save money.
This line of thinking seems to miss the financial reality of the vast majority of Americans. Most people aren’t choosing between an $1800 repair vs a $50k new EV for environmental reasons, it’s because they can only afford one of those options.