Do you really want me to go point by point? Fine.
Let’s break this down. So many unverified, regurgitated strawman arguments.
You literally spent the rest of your comment claiming I said things I very obviously did not.
The arguments work so well because it will take me 20 times as long to respond to your gish gallop.
I made four claims, total:
- Electric cars are heavy and this causes road wear. You made a more specific claim that EVs are 20% heavier than comparable fossil fuel vehicles.
- Car tyres shed microplastics. You literally said the exact same thing in your “rebuttal”.
- It’s not green if your electricity source isn’t green. This shouldn’t be controversial, we’ll cover your attempt at a rebuttal later.
- From a “helping the environment” perspective, non-car transport and infrastructure is superior to electric cars. You ignored this point.
It’s not about “loving cars” when clearly, we’re talking about making a personal choice to do what one can.
An actually reasonable point among the bullshit. You obviously can’t access alternatives that don’t exist.
“EVs are naturally heavy”. Modern cars are “naturally” heavy with safety devices, stronger crash structures, and more luxury devices. EVs are only about 20% heavier when you compare them to something within their actual class.
This means not ignoring the Nissan Leaf as an EV. This means comparing a Model S to a Mercedes E450 as a quiet, feature-rich luxury car at a high price point. This means comparing the Hummer to a Ford F-450 as both are hulking slabs that have no reason to be daily driven. While we’re here, may as well dip into the part where EVs are “expensive”. Again, compare them to the proper class competitors and stop pretending the used car market doesn’t exist and doesn’t have EVs for cheaper already.
[Scored out everything irrelevant because, as you said, “regurgitated strawman arguments” and “gish gallop”]
You agree with my claim.
“cause significant road wear”. They don’t. They’re not special. The additional roadwear is not significant because none of these cars, EV or not, are doing anywhere near the damage caused by commercial trucks. I bet your residential roads don’t have rutting unless they haven’t been repaved in 40 years. Rain/snow/UV degrades non-commercial roads faster than any normal personal traffic can.
Partially true. Commercial trucks are heavier than EVs and cause more wear and “intense” freezing cycles can reduce road lifespan by up to 20%, but residential roads are repaved “every 15 to 30 years” (potentially unreliable source, they sell concrete) but cycle/footpaths need repaved so infrequently it’s difficult to find anything more specific than “as needed”/“when damaged” in a 5 minute search.
“shed microplastics” not significantly more than any other car, especially since most EVs come with hard eco tires that last longer. All tires shed microplastics.
This is you agreeing with what I said.
" are only clean if their electricity source is clean". Not only is this false from a “only research as far as I can touch”, […]
No, this is true from a “I have more than one braincell” perspective. Non-clean energy source = non-clean energy use.
[…] this entirely ignores the energy used and pollution created for gasoline production and distribution.
10 years ago, in the US, a Model S charged by the dirtiest coal factory was responsible for emissions per mile comparable to a car that got about 35mpg. That was better than typical highway efficiency. That is still better than current city driving efficiency. Wanna guess what the comparable emissions ate was for if it was charged in the purely hydropower Niagara region? 260mpg equivalent. Grid power generators are far, far more efficient than a gas car. The power company doesn’t enjoy wasting money, so they’re tuned to run at specific generation levels as efficiently as possible for money’s sake. It doesn’t just apply to the grid, either. A personal generator, again, tuned to run a specific output, exceeds the efficiency of a gas engine revving all over the place to shift gears and move the car it’s attached to. That disingenuous meme picture of the ev charging by diesel generator in the Australian outback was completely false in every aspect (wattage, fuel consumption, and obviously resultant mpg). How do we know? Because it was taken by a bunch of EV nerds that were specifically testing it. They netted about 50mpg on diesel with a personal generator. Again, economy of scale will outperform that further.
[Scored out everything irrelevant because, as you said, “regurgitated strawman arguments” and “gish gallop”]
This is absolute nonsense. Saying that non-green energy sources make your end product non-green is the exact opposite of ignoring fossil fuels, fossil fuels are a non-green energy source. If you’re burning fossil fuels you are by definition not using clean energy.
“only clean if … infrastructure is clean”. You’re implying the current petroleum infrastructure is clean.
Here you just outright lied.
Your implying oil wells don’t leak and spill, they they don’t burn off waste products, that the product is shipped without use of energy and fuel for pumps and trucks, that it’s distributed from the pump without energy, and that gas stations are naturally-occurring geological formations. I specifically ignored this part in the prior section because, through and through, with a hands-on-only investigation, EVs were still more efficient on a per-mile basis than a gas car. They only get better when you’d actor in all the expenditure of fuel for petroleum distribution. For another tangent, this applies to the claims about how dirty lithium mines are. That only makes sense if you pretend we don’t have continuous petroleum disasters and “acceptable levels” of spills and runoff.
And now you’re building a narrative around your lie, nice one.
“electric cars are to save car companies”. Great, that’s capitalism. EVs only “save” car companies if people buy them. People are. Any vehicle they make is to “save” the company because if they don’t sell, they don’t profit, they don’t survive. That argument makes no sense. They’re not donating the majority of their gas cars.
I have no idea what point you’re trying to make here but it seems like you’re agreeing with me? Electric cars are to save car companies because their greenwashing gets them sales. People moving away from fossil fuels would use public transport or alternative infrastructure, putting pressure on local governing bodies to improve that infrastructure, making cars less appealing, leading to a death spiral. EVs let the car companies claim to be green so people keep buying their cars. That is, indeed, capitalism.
Your comment is “controversial” because you made baseless claims.
You did not provide a single source and everyone can see just by reading one post up that you’re making shit up.
You pushed the propaganda of conservative groups,
Please point me to any conservative group which promotes public transport and proper pedestrian or cycling infrastructure. I can see “EVs are greenwashing” being an oil lobby talking point but they’d push in the opposite direction. I’m not in the US so the only prominent US-based pro-EV activist I know is Musk, correct me if I’m wrong but I’m fairly certain they’re very right-wing.
notorious for making arguments that affirm feelings, without asking for facts, based on what their group can experience directly.You’re attacking individuals who do not have the power to suddenly rebuild a town into a pedestrian dream. You’re making it a class war between car drivers satisfied with the status quo and car drivers who support change when they’re both the same class. You’re making the argument that since a little change only helps a little, no one should do anything at all. That attitude keeps us in the same place. Forever.
Again, that only happened in your head. My claim, which I for some reason have to have to restate once again, was that public transport and walking/cycling are far better than EVs from an environmental perspective. I did not attack anyone, I did not call anyone out (except people claiming that EVs are helping the environment), I didn’t even say you should never use an EV if your only choice is to use a car. I simply stated the fact that alternative modes of transport are better.
I also believe you’re wrong when you say individuals don’t have the power to pedestrianise a town, though that does seem to be an honest mistake rather than the bullshit you’re spewing in the rest of your comment. A small number of activists is more than enough to push for pedestrianisation, and while it might not be instant (neither was ripping all that infrastructure out, which I believe happened in the US around the 1960s?) it can be done relatively quickly. Paris is the most recent posterchild for this transformation, I think, they’ve been phasing out cars for about a decade and recently voted to pedestrianise 500 streets with a timescale of 3-4 years. Pretty fast for a change in infrastrcture imo, and definitely shorter than EVs have been trying to get a foothold.
Edit: For completeness, here’s a definition for Gish Gallop, everyone can judge for themselves whether that applies more to my single paragraph or your novel you demanded I respond to point-by-point. I literally had to cut out your final paragraph because I hit comment size limits.
It’s also potatoes.