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The Hyperloop was never meant to be built. Elon Musk admitted it was all about fueling opposition to California’s high-speed rail project so it would get canceled.
He never planned to improve transportation; he just wants to keep people trapped in cars.
https://newrepublic.com/article/174089/big-tech-watching-drive
#tech #transport #elonmusk #transportation #hyperloop #trains
I think EV credits are a good thing for society because of the lower environmental cost than gasoline vehicles.
I would think so too if the second part was true. While the emission cost of an EV indeed about 30% lower (data for Germany, probably worse in the US), that means it’s still 70% as bad as an ICE. That’s an amazing relative efficiency gain and super interesting technologically but it’s still pretty shit in absolute terms.
The future of transport is not cars everywhere but with electric engines; that’s still not sustainable (far from it).
What actually needs subsidies are alternatives to cars:
Trains are incredibly efficient compared to EVs and viable for any distance greater than ~1km. The US has basically none and most places with better trains aren’t that amazing either.
Walking can be incredibly convenient with no special infrastructure required other than a relatively well paved path. No looking for parking spots or whatever; just walk out of your home, around a corner and into the shop.
Pretty much requires the absence of heavy and/or fast vehicles and needs attractive locations nearby. If you have to cross busy roads or have nothing of interest within 1km or so, walking just doesn’t really work (see: Walkable cities).
Cycling is efficient, healthy and fast for ranges of up to a few kilometres. Similar to walking, it requires separation from cars but is slightly more compatible with cars due to it’s higher speed which means not so busy streets (as in: destinations, 30km/h max.) can often be shared.
Bicycles do need a bit more infrastructure than walking however: Well-paved paths (ideally separate from pedestrians) and racks to lock them to. This isn’t nearly as bad as cars but even this very efficient form of individual vehicle can reach limits at some point (see: Bike racks near train stations in the Netherlands).
Which state you live in has a huge impact on EV emissions. For my state (Idaho), emissions are hyper low due to the amount of hydro power.
Even then, emissions are tricky to exactly calculate. The majority of EV manufacturing emissions comes from the battery manufacturing process. And, it seems pretty likely that EV batteries will see a second life after their first life in the EV. Batteries are too valuable to just throw away. We aren’t seeing a ton of that ATM primarily because most of the current generation of EVs are still on the road!
Now, I have seen some pretty bad numbers usually from fossil fuel powered publications against EVs. Usually they’ll take the absolute worst case scenarios for an EV “Imagine all your power is coming from coal that’s being transmitted 6000 miles and from 1000 year old plants with 5% efficiency. See, EVs are just as dirty as ICE!” Those articles universally ignore the fact that we have a mixed generation grid with renewables growing rapidly.
I agree those other solutions are good, but cars will still be needed for at least 50 years, and subsidies don’t take away from those other efforts.
As for emissions, a car has a lower carbon footprint in the US after 1 to 5 years conservatively, and after that is 61% less carbon dioxide per mile with average US energy mix. That will get even better as the grid becomes more green.
Unfortunately, I think you’re right. I think they’ll be needed much longer even and I do think the future of transport contains a few cars for i.e. places too far away to sensibly connect with rail. That’ll hopefully only amount to a rather negligible fraction of transport.
subsidies don’t take away from those other efforts.
I don’t think that’s true. EV subsidies just reek of greenwashing. “Oh look how progressive we are, we’re spending billions to support EVs!” while showing next to no actual support for sensible alternatives.
EV sales make their cronies’ pockets grow larger, cycle paths don’t.
As for emissions, a car has a lower carbon footprint in the US after 1 to 5 years conservatively
Lower than what?
after that is 61% less carbon dioxide per mile with average US energy mix.
That’d be nice but it fully ignores the cost of the vehicle itself.
It also ignores the cost of the vehicle itself (only a note without concrete numbers at the bottom)
“light duty vehicles” does not sound representative of the average US car which (to my knowledge) is usually large&heavy in order to circumvent regulations (SUVs, pick-ups, …)
Smells a bit like a lie tbh.
1. is especially problematic because it massively skews percentages. If you leave out the cost of producing just the vehicle (even without battery), you make BEVs look much better because you only consider the one factor on which BEVs are actually better while ignoring the significant factors in car emissions that BEVs don’t improve on or even worsen.
According to my source, the production of the battery and the base vehicle combined produce about as many emissions as the electricity generation the entire lifetime of a BEV.
By omitting that, you ignore about half of the BEVs lifetime emissions but only 10-20% of an ICE’s. Do you see how that’s not really a valid way of measuring the BEV advantage when absolute terms matter?
You can read it without knowing German: “Benzin” means “petrol”, brown/orange are fuel emissions, green is vehicle production, gray is battery production and greenish-yellow is electricity production (in Germany, mind you). Y-axis is emissions per kilometre.
(The graph to the right is the same but a projection for 2030 when some amount of batteries are (supposedly) going to be produced in the EU under stricter emissions standards and better electricity mix (seems veery optimistic though IMHO).)
I think you misunderstood my information. The carbon cost of the EV (especially the battery) compared to a gasoline vehicle is overcome within 1 to 5 years. That’s when it breaks even. After that, an EV emits 61% less than a gasoline vehicle on average US grid power.
Light duty vehicles are anything that aren’t commercial trucks. It includes SUVs and huge personal trucks if I’m not mistaken.
I would think so too if the second part was true. While the emission cost of an EV indeed about 30% lower (data for Germany, probably worse in the US), that means it’s still 70% as bad as an ICE. That’s an amazing relative efficiency gain and super interesting technologically but it’s still pretty shit in absolute terms.
The future of transport is not cars everywhere but with electric engines; that’s still not sustainable (far from it).
What actually needs subsidies are alternatives to cars:
Pretty much requires the absence of heavy and/or fast vehicles and needs attractive locations nearby. If you have to cross busy roads or have nothing of interest within 1km or so, walking just doesn’t really work (see: Walkable cities).
Bicycles do need a bit more infrastructure than walking however: Well-paved paths (ideally separate from pedestrians) and racks to lock them to. This isn’t nearly as bad as cars but even this very efficient form of individual vehicle can reach limits at some point (see: Bike racks near train stations in the Netherlands).
I’ve never seen this number. The numbers I’ve seen generally paint EV emissions as fairly low with most of them occurring at manufacturing (see, https://afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/electric_emissions.html ).
Which state you live in has a huge impact on EV emissions. For my state (Idaho), emissions are hyper low due to the amount of hydro power.
Even then, emissions are tricky to exactly calculate. The majority of EV manufacturing emissions comes from the battery manufacturing process. And, it seems pretty likely that EV batteries will see a second life after their first life in the EV. Batteries are too valuable to just throw away. We aren’t seeing a ton of that ATM primarily because most of the current generation of EVs are still on the road!
Now, I have seen some pretty bad numbers usually from fossil fuel powered publications against EVs. Usually they’ll take the absolute worst case scenarios for an EV “Imagine all your power is coming from coal that’s being transmitted 6000 miles and from 1000 year old plants with 5% efficiency. See, EVs are just as dirty as ICE!” Those articles universally ignore the fact that we have a mixed generation grid with renewables growing rapidly.
I agree those other solutions are good, but cars will still be needed for at least 50 years, and subsidies don’t take away from those other efforts.
As for emissions, a car has a lower carbon footprint in the US after 1 to 5 years conservatively, and after that is 61% less carbon dioxide per mile with average US energy mix. That will get even better as the grid becomes more green.
https://youtu.be/6RhtiPefVzM https://afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/electric_emissions.html#wheel
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/6RhtiPefVzM
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Unfortunately, I think you’re right. I think they’ll be needed much longer even and I do think the future of transport contains a few cars for i.e. places too far away to sensibly connect with rail. That’ll hopefully only amount to a rather negligible fraction of transport.
I don’t think that’s true. EV subsidies just reek of greenwashing. “Oh look how progressive we are, we’re spending billions to support EVs!” while showing next to no actual support for sensible alternatives.
EV sales make their cronies’ pockets grow larger, cycle paths don’t.
Lower than what?
That’d be nice but it fully ignores the cost of the vehicle itself.
I have two issues with that data:
Smells a bit like a lie tbh.
1. is especially problematic because it massively skews percentages. If you leave out the cost of producing just the vehicle (even without battery), you make BEVs look much better because you only consider the one factor on which BEVs are actually better while ignoring the significant factors in car emissions that BEVs don’t improve on or even worsen.
According to my source, the production of the battery and the base vehicle combined produce about as many emissions as the electricity generation the entire lifetime of a BEV.
By omitting that, you ignore about half of the BEVs lifetime emissions but only 10-20% of an ICE’s. Do you see how that’s not really a valid way of measuring the BEV advantage when absolute terms matter?
Take a look at the left graph on page 3: https://www.bmuv.de/fileadmin/Daten_BMU/Download_PDF/Verkehr/emob_klimabilanz_bf.pdf
You can read it without knowing German: “Benzin” means “petrol”, brown/orange are fuel emissions, green is vehicle production, gray is battery production and greenish-yellow is electricity production (in Germany, mind you). Y-axis is emissions per kilometre.
(The graph to the right is the same but a projection for 2030 when some amount of batteries are (supposedly) going to be produced in the EU under stricter emissions standards and better electricity mix (seems veery optimistic though IMHO).)
I think you misunderstood my information. The carbon cost of the EV (especially the battery) compared to a gasoline vehicle is overcome within 1 to 5 years. That’s when it breaks even. After that, an EV emits 61% less than a gasoline vehicle on average US grid power.
Light duty vehicles are anything that aren’t commercial trucks. It includes SUVs and huge personal trucks if I’m not mistaken.