There is no doubt that electric vehicles are the future, as the way we get around and produce electricity is transitioning away from fossil fuels, and towards cleaner and greener alternatives. The entire transport sector accounts for 21% of total CO2 emissions and road travel alone accounts for 15% of total CO2 emissions so getting electric vehicles onto the roads is definitely a priority in tackling the climate crisis. However, they’re not perfect, and they are faced with obstacles that are stopping them from becoming mainstream.
Using a vehicle, electrical or with a combustion engine, that weights 1500-2000kg to carry a 80kg person is a very stupid idea. Certainly with over a billion cars registered worldwide and counting. The local air pollution will decrease with electrical cars which is good but the energy must be generated somewhere. Not to mention the environmental costs of the production and scrap of the cars. I vote for a total paradigm shift and use light weight (electrical) vehicles like bicycles.
The usual answer to this is putting amenities closer to the people who need them. Paris was designed in the 19th century to be a 15min city. You can walk to everything you need in 15min. Nowdays, apartment blocks are built with shops and offices in the same complex. If there needs to exist an out-of-town superstore, it should have a bus connection to the town, and do delivery.
With these changes, you don’t have to tell anyone to trade cars for bikes, or incentivise them or ban cars - people will switch by themselves.
In addition to this I suggest that the natural hierarchy in the streets needs to be flipped and pedestrians and bicyclists need to become the dominant user of the street, while motorists must act as “guests”. Impossible you say? Certain countries and cities lead the way here and demonstrate that this is possible. As an example I mention the city of Ghent that had a pretty hopeless traffic situation. This was turned around in a decade. https://www.eltis.org/sites/default/files/c1_scheirs_mobility_policy_ghent.pdf. Or the Netherlands where the bicycle street, a street where bicycle traffic is superior to motor vehicles, is a huge success and has become a nation wide phenomenon. https://beyondtheautomobile.com/2020/10/21/what-is-a-bicycle-street/
Yes all of this.
Critical mass. Once there are enough bicycles on the roads, motorists are forced to adapt. And there are things city councils and governments can do to help, too.
That’s completely true for cities and therefore for the majority of people, but for those that need to go to rural areas you need some alternative.
In the end the only valid point there is infrastructure. If you want more electric cars you need to build the infrastructure. Look at Norway, for example. Electric cars are mainstream there.
Agreed. I am driving a fully electric car in the German countryside. While some cities may have enough infrastructure to make driving electric cars useful and fun, here, it’s far from being the most pleasant experience. Charging at home is pretty much your only option. Some supermarkets actually offer free charging, but that number is rather small. Long(er) trips are basically impossible (however my car isn’t built for this purpose and I’m not using it for this purpose, so this might not be as problematic to people that have access to Superchargers, etc.)
A lot of statements and second to no sources of science quoted. To me the whole article reads like text book green-washing bull.
Everyone knows it’s the Stonecutters.
This article should not be in /c/Science because it’s not a scientific piece. It’s a piece of propaganda for the tech industry.
What’s stopping electric cars? While not exactly a blocker (thanks to official propaganda), there are very good chances that electric cars pollute A LOT more than their mechanical counterparts. How is that, you may wonder?
Well the base structure of the car is the same. Except instead of feeding your car gasoline, you feed it electricity. This has two consequences:
- you need a lithium battery to store this electricity, which are highly polluting to produce, have to be changed regularly (that’s why the car-making company eg. Renault usually owns the battery not you), and are super heavy to carry around for the car
- you need a recurring source of electricity to charge the battery: instead of reusing a well-established mutualized logistics chain (petrol stations), you now need strong sources of electricity everywhere (new infra)… and where does this electricity come from? either gasoline, coal or nuclear, all three of which are terribly polluting and very inefficient to turn into electricity in a central plant to carry over long distances to bring to you so you can charge your car
Electric cars are not a solution by any means. Unless you run a bike to charge them (or use a nearby water stream), they’re by far even more polluting than traditional cars.
You second point is completely wrong for many areas. My area, for example, 70% of my electricity comes from hydroelectric dams, 20% renewables (wind, solar), 5% nuclear, and 5% methane (some of which comes from reclamation from farms). I don’t think there is a large scale gasoline generator in the country, same story for coal.
not to mention they’re more efficient, watt for watt
You second point is completely wrong for many areas.
Not sure about “many”. Most of the world doesn’t run on any form of renewable energy. And what you call “renewable” (in official statistics) is far from pollution-free: for example massive wind turbines (compared to smaller ones producing more local, but less electricity) are a pollution nightmare… how many gallons of gasoline does it take to produce a single wind turbine? ;)
