Electric cars are not THE solution.
I’ve been saying this for a while. Not only that, but electric cars are substantially heavier than their ICE-powered equivalents, meaning both tires and roads wear out more quickly. Plus, there’s a ton of pollution and other environmental damage caused by battery production that at least partly offsets the lack of tailpipe emissions.
As loathe as I am to admit, because I’m a car enthusiast and I enjoy driving, cars cannot be the default mode of transportation everywhere indefinitely; they will always need to exist, but should mostly be for small centres with no capacity to implement transit infrastructure and last mile type of things.
Plus, there’s a ton of pollution and other environmental damage caused by battery production that at least partly offsets the lack of tailpipe emissions.
The battery production pollution is an issue, however one thing to keep in mind is that once the minerals are out of the ground they can be recycled, unlike drilling for oil. When looked at on a long timeline the battery for an electric vehicle is a lot cleaner than everything needed to power an ICE vehicle.
That said, there’s always room for improvement and we should never get complacent. But we don’t avoid innovation just because it isn’t perfect.
It’s not just tailpipe emissions, though - there’s an entire supply chain of extraction, shipping, refining, delivery that’s needed to get fuel to your local gas station.
The fossil fuel industry always wants to compare the total environmental damage of an EV with just what comes out of the tailpipe of an internal combustion vehicle. Don’t fall for it.
Does anyone know of another efficient mode of transportation that has near-zero surface friction?
Because that would be a gamechanger
There are some vehicles that go on iron wheels, on a special kind of iron road that are very efficient. Only bad parts are costly initial investment and difficulties to scale up if the existing network gets overloaded (such as the Swedish rail system who has been over “maximum” capacity for a long time which has put needed maintenance on hold at many places)
Maglev?
Hyperloop theoretically, practically who knows.
Well the was this idea of propelling trains through a vacuum tube system.
Unfortunately it’s being developed by a shithead and misappropriated by the car industry to hamper railway development in the us
The solution is fewer and lighter vehicles. Everyone purchasing oversized EVs is the exact opposite of the solution.
Mass Transit (trains and light rail) Pushbikes, e-bikes, Subcompact, and micro/Kei cars are the answer.
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It would be funny though if some environmentalist managed to make the tax properly technology agnostic though. Mostly if you can keep them from being exempted anything that hurts EVs goes double for pickups.
Of course we both know gas cars get exempted whenever this sort of thing passes because it’s never actually about vehicle weight and road wear so much as how can we slow the decline in gasoline demand for a few years, but it’s nice to imagine that silver lining.
Electric cars are not THE solution.
This is why I raised the topic of airless tires a while back. They’re not the solution, but they last longer than traditional tires. Initially they were rated to last a lifetime, but that’s not profitable so they put an end to that.
That does not address the issue at all. The problem is that tires wear, and the particles of tire rubber that are shed are the microplastics.
Tires are a part of life. We can make small changes until we improve public transport infrastructure across the world or we can continue as we have done and drive this planet to extinction.
I ride motorcycles and tires have always been a major issue with riders because of cost. Bike tires wear out fast even though it’s a lighter vehicle and tends to put on less mileage.
The main culprit that most industry insiders have suggested is that motorcycle tires are purposely designed to not last as long because its so easy to market crappy tires to the vast majority of riders. All you need is have marketing campaign of racers and racing tires and then stamp the name on a tire and sell it to young guys who want to ride as fast as possible … they’ll pay hundreds year after year for tires that only last one season but supposedly give them great performance.
I ride moderately on a 1998 BMW K1200, a fast sport touring bike and I put on moderate mileage every summer … I’m not a long distance rider … yet I have to change my tires just about every year.
Fortnine, a Youtube channel dedicated to motorcycle riding did a great description of this …
The giveaway is that you could put a small car tire on a motorcycle and it would last ten times longer … whereas you place a motorcycle tire on a motorcycle tire and it will last for a far shorter time.
Motorcycle tires are designed to not last as long … fast riders can argue that better tires do not last as long and I agree with them … but for moderate riders or just Sunday riders with low mileage, there is no need to have motorcycle tires last for such a short period of time. It’s all meant to sell as many tires as possible for no reason other than to make someone money.
Is it not because they have so little contact area compared to passenger vehicle tires?
The contact area compared to the weight ratio is not that different from any other vehicle … a bike weighs less so it has less contact … a car weighs more and so needs more contact with the road … a truck weighs a lot and needs even more contact with the road.
The end result is always the same … the technology is there to make a motorcycle tire last far longer and the same with car tires … the problem is is that there is no financial incentive to make a long lasting tire that would be better for the environment.
I know motorcycle tires need replacing fairly frequently, but I had no idea it was a racket. Although, I’d think they’d generally need to be softer for maximum traction on two wheels.
The whole traction debate only makes sense if you start getting into racing speeds and riding on a fast race track. For the average rider, we’re only riding at normal highway speed (at least we are supposed to) and guys like me like our riding lifestyle enough to never get into crazy speeds because we baby our bikes, we don’t want to create any more variables to put our lives at risk and we’re cheap and don’t want to wear out our tires.
If I knew of a manufacturer that produced a cheap $100 tire that could last four or five season of my light moderate riding … it would be the only tire I would buy. But there are so many manufacturers, types, subtypes, models, years, design, material of tires out there that’s it’s a constant science to try to figure out what is real and what isn’t. I usually don’t have the time to research it all nor do I have the resources that I just end up buying the same Metzeler tires because I don’t want to order the wrong tire and I definitely don’t want to install the wrong tire either.
fuckcars
How can you not own a car while living in a city with >1m population, are you mad? /s
Ohh almost as if everyones been saying how electric cars arent the solution…
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