Electric cars do not address any of the main issues cars bring to our society, which are:
Pollution – Cars are responsible for a significant amount of global and local pollution (microplastic waste, brake dust, embodiment emissions, tailpipe emissions, and noise pollution). Electric cars eliminate tailpipe emissions, but the other pollution-related problems largely remain.
Infrastructure (Costs. An Unsustainable Pattern of Development) – Cars create an unwanted economic burden on their communities. The infrastructure for cars is expensive to maintain and the maintenance burden for local communities is expected to increase with the adoption of more electric and (someday) fully self-driving cars. This is partly due to the increased weight of the vehicles and also the increased traffic of autonomous vehicles.
Infrastructure (Land Usage & Induced Demand) – Cities allocate a vast amount of space to cars. This is space that could be used more effectively for other things such as parks, schools, businesses, homes, and so on. We miss out on these things and are forced to pile on additional sprawl when we build vast parking lots and widen roads and highways. This creates part of what is called induced demand. This effect means that the more capacity for cars we add, the more cars we’ll get, and then the more capacity we’ll need to add.
Independence and Community Access – Cars are not accessible to everyone. Simply put, many people either can’t drive or don’t want to drive. Car-centric city planning is an obstacle for these groups, to name a few: children and teenagers, parents who must chauffeur children to and from all forms of childhood activities, people who can’t afford a car, and many other people who are unable to drive. Imagine the challenge of giving up your car in the late stages of your life. In car-centric areas, you face a great loss of independence.
Safety – Cars are dangerous to both occupants and non-occupants, but especially the non-occupants. As time goes on cars admittedly become better at protecting the people inside them, but they remain hazardous to the people not inside them. For people walking, riding, or otherwise trying to exercise some form of car-free liberty cars are a constant threat. In car-centric areas, streets and roads are optimized to move cars fast and efficiently rather than protect other road users and pedestrians.
Social Isolation – A combination of the issues above produces the additional effect of social isolation. There are fewer opportunities for serendipitous interactions with other members of the public. Although there may be many people sharing the road with you (a public space), there are some obvious limitations to the quality of interaction one can have through metal, glass, and plastic boxes.
(Batantly copypasted from the pinned thread on r/fuckcars)
(Batantly copypasted from the pinned thread on r/fuckcars)
Please don’t do that. I have no problem with this kind of content in that echo chamber, but presenting it as objective truth calls into question huge portions of this that are either purely subjective to blatantly wrong.
Well it’s baffling to me to have “pollution” as the first point of that list. It’s just beyond my comprehension how one could state that a non-combustion car doesn’t help with pollution problems. Yes alright, there’s still microplastics… But hey, please visit a city like Beijing and tell me again that EVs don’t combat pollution on a massive scale.
It’s nice to be critical and yes, cars are shit for our society. Nevertheless our society has been built around them and people will drive cars. They might do so less in 50 years but right here right now with the way society is organised EVs do definitely play an important part in reducing emissions. Change takes time. And people like the ones protesting against the Gigafactory prefer to ignore this context. To me this line of thinking is naive to say the least and can also be seen as self-righteous and delusional by those for whom no alternative is available now. Lecturing people about their lifestyle is not going to change anything.
Car tires are literally the main contributor of micro plastics in oceans, and by an overwhelming factor. There’s also the brake dust which is a huge issue. Both of those problems are not just not going away with EVs, they’re actually increasing. It’s because the way we build EVs increases their weight to ridiculous levels, even compared to the already obese ICE cars. All while we actually know how to make EVs that would actually reduce those problems. Just because there’s places where it is worse, often also due to the lacking regulations, doesn’t mean we should accept those issues.
Nevertheless our society has been built around them and people will drive cars.
Yeah, because people constantly make those type of excuses, ultimately accepting all the bad instead of fighting back. That’s what communities like them do.
Car tires account for a third of microplastics emissions in Germany. Cars are a major source of pollution, especially compared with alternatives like Bikes or Public transport.
And that is purely talking about operational emissions. The production and disposal of EVs is another huge source of pollution and GHG emissions.
Electric cars do not address any of the main issues cars bring to our society, which are:
Pollution – Cars are responsible for a significant amount of global and local pollution (microplastic waste, brake dust, embodiment emissions, tailpipe emissions, and noise pollution). Electric cars eliminate tailpipe emissions, but the other pollution-related problems largely remain.
Infrastructure (Costs. An Unsustainable Pattern of Development) – Cars create an unwanted economic burden on their communities. The infrastructure for cars is expensive to maintain and the maintenance burden for local communities is expected to increase with the adoption of more electric and (someday) fully self-driving cars. This is partly due to the increased weight of the vehicles and also the increased traffic of autonomous vehicles.
Infrastructure (Land Usage & Induced Demand) – Cities allocate a vast amount of space to cars. This is space that could be used more effectively for other things such as parks, schools, businesses, homes, and so on. We miss out on these things and are forced to pile on additional sprawl when we build vast parking lots and widen roads and highways. This creates part of what is called induced demand. This effect means that the more capacity for cars we add, the more cars we’ll get, and then the more capacity we’ll need to add.
Independence and Community Access – Cars are not accessible to everyone. Simply put, many people either can’t drive or don’t want to drive. Car-centric city planning is an obstacle for these groups, to name a few: children and teenagers, parents who must chauffeur children to and from all forms of childhood activities, people who can’t afford a car, and many other people who are unable to drive. Imagine the challenge of giving up your car in the late stages of your life. In car-centric areas, you face a great loss of independence.
Safety – Cars are dangerous to both occupants and non-occupants, but especially the non-occupants. As time goes on cars admittedly become better at protecting the people inside them, but they remain hazardous to the people not inside them. For people walking, riding, or otherwise trying to exercise some form of car-free liberty cars are a constant threat. In car-centric areas, streets and roads are optimized to move cars fast and efficiently rather than protect other road users and pedestrians.
Social Isolation – A combination of the issues above produces the additional effect of social isolation. There are fewer opportunities for serendipitous interactions with other members of the public. Although there may be many people sharing the road with you (a public space), there are some obvious limitations to the quality of interaction one can have through metal, glass, and plastic boxes.
(Batantly copypasted from the pinned thread on r/fuckcars)
Please don’t do that. I have no problem with this kind of content in that echo chamber, but presenting it as objective truth calls into question huge portions of this that are either purely subjective to blatantly wrong.
Just because you don’t like the message, doesn’t mean they’re wrong.
Well it’s baffling to me to have “pollution” as the first point of that list. It’s just beyond my comprehension how one could state that a non-combustion car doesn’t help with pollution problems. Yes alright, there’s still microplastics… But hey, please visit a city like Beijing and tell me again that EVs don’t combat pollution on a massive scale.
It’s nice to be critical and yes, cars are shit for our society. Nevertheless our society has been built around them and people will drive cars. They might do so less in 50 years but right here right now with the way society is organised EVs do definitely play an important part in reducing emissions. Change takes time. And people like the ones protesting against the Gigafactory prefer to ignore this context. To me this line of thinking is naive to say the least and can also be seen as self-righteous and delusional by those for whom no alternative is available now. Lecturing people about their lifestyle is not going to change anything.
Car tires are literally the main contributor of micro plastics in oceans, and by an overwhelming factor. There’s also the brake dust which is a huge issue. Both of those problems are not just not going away with EVs, they’re actually increasing. It’s because the way we build EVs increases their weight to ridiculous levels, even compared to the already obese ICE cars. All while we actually know how to make EVs that would actually reduce those problems. Just because there’s places where it is worse, often also due to the lacking regulations, doesn’t mean we should accept those issues.
Yeah, because people constantly make those type of excuses, ultimately accepting all the bad instead of fighting back. That’s what communities like them do.
Car tires account for a third of microplastics emissions in Germany. Cars are a major source of pollution, especially compared with alternatives like Bikes or Public transport.
And that is purely talking about operational emissions. The production and disposal of EVs is another huge source of pollution and GHG emissions.