[HN Gopher] Are Electric Vehicles Better or Worse for the Enviro...
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Are Electric Vehicles Better or Worse for the Environment?
Author : cm_silva
Score : 13 points
Date : 2023-05-28 19:29 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.extremetech.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.extremetech.com)
| Kudos wrote:
| Apart from anything else, it's great for the environment the EVs
| are operated in. I live in Ireland, and shittily maintained cars
| constantly spew awful pollution into the air around me as I walk
| around Dublin.
| beezlewax wrote:
| As someone whos lived in Dublin and a more car centric city
| like Barcelona the air in Dublin is hundreds of times cleaner
| than the air in Barcelona.
| sanp wrote:
| Barcelona is a car-centric city? I guess it's all relative.
| neovialogistics wrote:
| I copied this from a climatologist's twitter last year but can no
| longer find the source, I suspect they've deleted their account:
|
| > All other things being identical, if an EV made from metals
| that were processed with green electricity only has one (1) order
| of magnitude less emissions than a petrol engined vehicle of the
| same size over the vehicle's lifetime, the equivalent EV where
| the metals were smelted with coal is one order of magnitude
| worse.
|
| I don't know if the claim is correct but I hope the industry can
| do better than that.
| Dah00n wrote:
| What I miss the most in the EV vs ICE talk is road noise levels.
| EV's are not necessarily less noisy at city speeds, unlike what
| seems logical, they are louder at above ~30km/h. Here's an
| example (PDF warning):
|
| https://www.vejdirektoratet.dk/sites/default/files/publicati...
| sylware wrote:
| Wrong question, the right one is: How to make 10 billion people
| live with decent life standards and comfort without destroying
| the planet?
| netsharc wrote:
| The standards probably have to be really lowered...
|
| If we believe this data[1], one would have to live like a
| resident of Sri Lanka, Jamaica or Myanmar so that 1 earth is
| enough per year (other countries are available).
|
| Pessimistically, with the planet we currently have, not all 10
| billion can live decently, and the minority who control the
| weapons would probably rather resort to violence rather than
| share things equally (just look at the borders of the EU and
| USA - and yeah even left-leaning governments are probably
| "helpless", they know if they let in too many refugees, they'll
| be voted out of office as soon as possible).
|
| [1] https://www.overshootday.org/how-many-earths-or-countries-
| do...
| sylware wrote:
| "First, we can be nice to everybody, then will come a time we
| will have to content ourselves to try to be fair... finally,
| we will have to choose: their children or ours."
|
| Dilemmas...
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| I read those three reasons and see: weight, weight, and weight!
|
| Of course a 9000lb hummer EV is going to require more raw
| materials and work to build, more energy to move down the road,
| and more effort to dispose of... But all that diminishes in favor
| of the EV if the EV is built less like a Decepticon land yacht
| and more like a minimalistic car.
|
| Combustion cars have more of a static mass from the drivetrain
| they have to haul around with a pretty light gas tank (hence
| manufacturers have loaded them with luxury stuff without blowing
| up the drivetrain's mass), but EVs scale down very nicely because
| the battery dominates the car's weight. Its like the tyranny of
| the rocket equation: the more weight they carry, they more weight
| they need to carry that weight around, and so on.
| guerby wrote:
| Fossil fuel lobbyists are really smart: for EV everyone is
| talking about weight and no one is talking about energy
| efficiency aka joule per distance.
| NBJack wrote:
| FWIW, it doesn't have to be a land yacht to look like an angry
| Decepticon.
|
| Just look at the rear design of the BMW i3:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_i3#/media/File:2021_BMW_i3...
|
| I'm still at a loss on why they designed it that way.
| tempfortwitt90 wrote:
| I'm basically a non global warming type. I think the earth is big
| enough to deal with what we do, and I think we're smart enough to
| support life. Heck, people want to make mars livable. I think
| whatever happens to Oregon due to global warming, it'll still be
| a lot easier to make livable compared to mars.
|
| Also, I love cars. However, when a muscle car or an old car is
| near me, I can not help but gag on the fumes. I will take any
| detour needed to get away from that car. I cant IMAGINE what the
| air in a busy town was like when EVERY car was like that. So,
| while I hate climate alarmists, those smelly cars make me
| appreciate modern emissions laws.
| epolanski wrote:
| > I'm basically a non global warming type
|
| This is nonsense, global warming is real and it's implications
| are visible already.
|
| Whether we are smart is irrelevant when we are lazy, selfish
| and greedy.
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