this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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Although I like big public transportation options, cars are also awesome and won’t be going anywhere for the foreseeable future. I’d rather have electric cars than gas cars as we can generate renewable electricity but not renewable gas.
I’ve seen your argument a few times now. In San Francisco, some folk are protesting self driving cars with cones because they want more public transportation infrastructure. Again, I’m sympathetic—I love public infrastructure. But improving public transportation doesn’t have to be antithetical to EVs.
the problem with cars is still like 30-50% of usable area is converted into roads and parking, which means things are 30-50% further apart, which means it takes at least 30%+ longer for people to complete a transportation loop, which creates 30%+ more traffic while putting more people out of walking distance.
This compounding effect of parking really means cities without alternatives to cars result in higher housing costs, more wasted space, and more congestion than cities with less dedicated car infrastructure, and it raises agricultural prices as farmers compete with suburbs for land.
Its one of the deep inefficiencies of the american "cars only" system of transit.
Edit: This isnt even getting into things like the safe area of travel for kids has been reduced by like 95% from like 100 years ago and the many other problems resulting from society having to sacrifice monstrous amounts of safety and community protections to make cars just barely work in most cities.
What about sustainable fuels for ICEs? I know little about them but isn't that a more reasonable option due to it being able to be used on current cars?
The problem with sustainable fuels is that they also cost a lot of resources. Those resources can come from farm land that could be put to better use instead. The energy required to create these alternative fuels also has to come from somewhere, which usually isn't mostly renewable either.
Furthermore the biofuels and efuels may be better for CO2 emissions, but still dump a lot of pollution in the air.
Until people start to rely less on their cars, the uptick of EV's will lessen fossil fuel usage. For many people car sharing would also be a good option for when they need a car. That cuts down on resource usage.
The best EV's in my opinion are human/electric hybrids, aka electric bicycles. They help people choose a bicycle over another motorized form of transportation, because it's often just a convenient and cheap option that gets you from where you are to where you want to go, when you want to go there... Something public transport isn't very good at outside cities, unless combined with (e)bikes or scooters for example for the last miles.
It is not in any way a more reasonable option. Mass-produced energy is always going to be cleaner and more efficient than "alternative fuels" - which don't actually exist at present.
Not sure how someone can think they have a leg to stand on being opposed to EVs
If we had an infinite supply of sustainable fuels that might make sense, but we don't. So we will have to use them wherever they are most efficient or where we do not have good alternatives.
Electric cars today are already a viable alternative to those with ICEs. So there is no need to use our limited supply there. In the same way it wouldn't make sense to use them for something like heating, as the production of those fuels wastes energy and we have viable solutions like heat pumps that do not require them.
There are on the other hand areas that have different requirements. For example in the airline industry energy densitiy is way more important, so until we have batteries that can match fossil/sustainable fuels those are much better used there. Another example are industries that actually use them as resources beyond just as a source of energy, like steel or fertilizer production.