[DannyBee]

That's California for you:

The people who use the lanes, by and large, don't need them[1], and simultaneously, California subsidizes and encourages electric car driving while having, by far, the absolute worst electrical infrastructure in the country, with no real plan to improve it[2]

Don't worry, somehow, they are saving the environment in all this, despite the fact that most cars these days probably put out less emissions than a family that ate too many beans.

[1] They are pretty much rich people lanes. None of the very large number of day laborers, etc, could afford an electric car (and there are no electric trucks they could use), but also probably spend significantly more away from their families than people who do use them.

[2] Yes, the math says that if everyone in california drove an electric car, we'd be in trouble. Even if they only charge off peak. The same is even more true of the US, I did the math out in an earlier HN post, IIRC it comes out to something ridiculous like double or triple all current residential electric usage on a yearly basis.

[dfabulich]

> Don't worry, somehow, they are saving the environment in all this, despite the fact that most cars these days probably put out less emissions than a family that ate too many beans.

First, this comparison is wrong. Cars generate roughly 5,000 liters of of CO2 per gallon. A human passes about one liter of gas per day, maybe two.

But even if you were right, what's the point of this comparison? We can eliminate the CO2 emissions from cars, but we can't do that to people, and we really need to cut these emissions a lot, or the earth will cook.

https://ollilaasanen.wordpress.com/2011/10/08/humans-cows-me... Humans pass 1L per day

https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-t... Cars generate ~9kg CO2/gallon

http://www.aqua-calc.com/calculate/volume-to-weight/substanc... CO2 is 1.8 grams per liter

[dlgeek]

Furthermore, human CO2 emissions come from plants as part of the normal carbon cycle - they're not an ecological problem. It's carbon-from-the-ground that's a problem.

[wyager]

CO2 is fungible.

[sadface]

Yes, but surface-level biology is pretty much carbon neutral. All of the carbon you exhale to the atmosphere comes from the food you eat, which gets its carbon from the atmosphere via photosynthesis.

Obviously there are edge cases, but by and large Global Warming is happening because we're pulling carbon out of the ground and putting it in the sky.

[schiffern]

The catch is, modern agriculture isn't limited to "surface-level biology."

>All of the carbon you exhale to the atmosphere comes from the food you eat, which gets its carbon from the atmosphere via photosynthesis.

This is true, but also misleading. When you include the nitrous oxide, methane, diesel fuel, and loss of soil carbon, agriculture is actually net CO2e positive.

>Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use (24% of 2010 global greenhouse gas emissions): Greenhouse gas emissions from this sector come mostly from agriculture (cultivation of crops and livestock) and deforestation. This estimate does not include the CO2 that ecosystems remove from the atmosphere by sequestering carbon in biomass, dead organic matter, and soils, which offset approximately 20% of emissions from this sector.

So in other words, globally our agriculture emits 5 units of CO2e for every 1 unit sequestered by photosynthesis.

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...

https://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/ghg_report/ghg_nit...

When you include the entire supply chain from field-to-fork (agriculture, transport, refrigeration, processing, preparation) the general rule of thumb is that 10 kilocalories of fossil fuel energy go into making 1 kilocalorie of food.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/10-calories-...

[sadface]

Great information here. This is well understood on my end. I just wanted to make a quick point because the topic was on food consumption and I don't think many people ever truly connect the dots between carbon atoms in the atmosphere -> carbon atoms in their salad -> carbon atoms in their breath (atmosphere).

[Godel_unicode]

So you agree that engine emissions are the problem then, good.

[DannyBee]

"Cars generate roughly 5,000 liters of of CO2 per gallon."

That is a typical passenger vehicle, which is also quite old. Not a current vehicle. SEe the calculations, which explicitly states: "This is representative of the light duty passenger vehicle fleet as a whole, including both new and existing vehicles. "

I'm kind of uninterested in participating in this global hate fest further, but let me quantify this for real for you:

I have a lab certified co and co2 monitor i use as part of a supplied air system (For spraying wood coatings that contain isocyanate).

If i take a car from the late 80's or early 90's, put it in the garage with the monitor, and start it, the monitor will go off in few minutes telling me it's unsafe.

If i take a car produced today, and put it in the garage, and start it, it takes many hours before that happens. In fact, depending how well sealed the garage is, it won't happen at all.

(as an aside, this also means it's become much harder for people to commit car based suicide unless they have a very well sealed car, etc)

So i'm going to go with "This statistic is true but grossly misleading". It tells you nothing about what converting a newer car to an electric car does in terms of emissions.

Worse, given that it is mostly caused by existing vehicles, and even there, it is mostly caused precisely by the vehicles this subsidizing will do nothing to replace. It is precisely the people i talked about you need to get to drive electric cars. Not the rich people driving very up to date low-emissions vehicles anyway.

So you can cite this kind of stuff all you want. It doesn't make the plan of rich people lanes any better for the environment.

(Which is why people go for these very silly proxy and indirect support arguments to make themselves feel better).

"But even if you were right, what's the point of this comparison? We can eliminate the CO2 emissions from cars, but we can't do that to people, and we really need to cut these emissions a lot, or the earth will cook. "

I actually completely agree, but that's completely irrelevant to giving special treatment in HOV lanes to people who mostly owned cars that were not the problem anyway!

IE you'd be much better off saying "if you trade in your car from 1970 for an electric car, you get a sticker", instead of "if you trade your 2016 PZEV for a 2017 tesla, you get a sticker".

[prostoalex]

For context, after converting 50,000,000 vehicles from internal combustion to electric, the effect would be similar to eliminating 1 container ship (likely used to cargo all the materials and components necessary to build those cars). https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/09/shipping...

[webnrrd2k]

I don't think this is a fair comparison. The article you reference specifically mentions "one giant container ship can emit almost the same amount of cancer and asthma-causing chemicals as 50m cars", but it doesn't seem to mention any comparison to Co2. The parent was talking about CO2.

It's fair to say that removing 50 million vehicles is equal to removing one container ship in terms of sulphur dioxide, or other pollutants, though

[gcb0]

congrats on winning the didn't-get-the-joke award!

his point was that hov lane is elitist, only to help car companies and rich ppl. not to fight pollution.

instead you researched if not eating beans would offset your hummer co2. geez.

[greenyoda]

"The same is even more true of the US, I did the math out in an earlier HN post, IIRC it comes out to something ridiculous like double or triple all current residential electric usage on a yearly basis."

In NYC, we get uncomfortably close to peak electrical capacity on hot summer days, to the point where the utilities beg us to reduce consumption (e.g., e-mails at work saying the power company is asking us to turn off computers and lights that we aren't using). Even at night, people are running their air conditioners full blast. When we've maxed out the nuclear and gas power plants, we fire up the dirty, old oil-fired power plants as the generators of last resort.

I can't imagine NYC being able to convert a significant number of cars to electric with the existing power infrastructure.

[imron]

> we fire up the dirty, old oil-fired power plants as the generators of last resort.

But it's probably still a net win if that extra electricity is going to power electric cars, because a power plant is more efficient than thousands of internal combustion engines.

See: https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/06/how-tesla-will-change-your-li...

[greenyoda]

It's not just a question of thermodynamic efficiency. Cars have emission control systems (catalytic converters, etc.) that mitigate some of the pollutants, and perhaps most importantly, use a much cleaner fuel (the heavy fuel oil burned in power plants produces soot, sulfur compounds, etc. which the more highly refined hydrocarbons in gasoline do not).

[sqeaky]

I don't think he was talking about thermodynamic efficiency. But filtering efficiency. Filtering one big power plant is easier than filtering many independently owned cars. Also the power plants filter is stationary and the cars filters must move.

[mcv]

Cars are not as dirty as they used to be, but the internal combustion engine is still incredibly inefficient, and has only a narrow band where it runs at optimal efficiency.

It is of course possible to make power plants even dirtier and less efficient, but it's also possible to make them cleaner and more efficient, which is of course what we should be doing.

[mowenz]

Good lord that is a long-winded post. Not just in scope, but the writing style rambles and opines endlessly.

For the record, I'm excited for the Model 3, and would buy a Model S if I could afford it.

That said, the claim in that reference is problematic for many reasons, which I didn't notice were addressed: 1) Thermal efficiency in a vehicle is converted directly to mechanical energy. A power plant must convert thermal energy into electrical energy (losses involved), transmit it long distances across an energy grid (more losses involved), store it in a battery (more losses), and convert it back to mechanical energy (even more losses). 2) EVs like the Model S lug around as much as >1,000s of lbs of batteries. That's monstrously inefficient when specifically compared to the energy density of gasoline. 3) Some power generators may emit more pollution than modern cars-1

From a public policy perspective, the low-hanging fruits in the fight for cleaner emissions are to get people in gas guzzlers into Civics and Accords, not to get people in Civics and Accords in to EVs. That, and public transportation, bicycling infrastructure, and raising the price of carbon to align with the public cost of it.

1-https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/electric-cars-are...

[mowenz]

If someone downvote, can you point out what is incorrect? It feels like saying anything negative about Tesla/EVs on HN is just downvoted without regard for merit.

[foota]

If demand substantially increases then more baseload capacity will likely be built.

And it looks like New York peaks at around 4-5pm, with a drop off around 8-10pm. EVs will likely charge at night, meaning they won't have as much impact on the peak.

Edit: source for load http://mis.nyiso.com/public/htm/isolf/20170705isolf.htm

[jjeaff]

They will have to setup some kind of timer or incentive to charge off peak, because otherwise, most cars are going to be plugged in around 5 to 6 right when people pull into their garage.

[maxsilver]

Most cars already do this. In a Chevy Volt and Ford C-MAX Energi, for instance, you tell it what time you leave for work in the morning (say 7:00am), and then it automatically waits to charge until the middle of the night to ensure the battery is full when you leave the next morning.

Even if you plug it in right at 5pm, it doesn't actually start drawing electricity until later at night.

This feature it set just one time only, and works automatically forever afterwards. It's been common on most electric cars since 2013.

[jjeaff]

Yes, I assumed that the option existed, but I think you are going to see a lot of people who want their car to start charging right when they get home in case they plan to take the car out again that evening or even for emergency issues like what if a child gets sick in the night and the car hasn't started charging yet. Obviously won't be the case for everyone but I can see it being a reason to charge immediately.

[foota]

That's true. If they wanted, Tesla could easily add this functionality.

I'm not too familiar with ny in particular, but there are systems that allow for metering based on peak/off peak usage. Looks like coned allows this.

[nicoburns]

Seems like a perfect situation for Photo Voltaics...

[maxsilver]

> None of the very large number of day laborers, etc, could afford an electric car

Used Nissan LEAF's start around $7k, even in the Bay Area. With $0 down, that works out to about $125/month car payment. For the vast majority of drivers -- if you can afford a regular car, you can easily afford an electric one instead.

> Yes, the math says that if everyone in california drove an electric car, we'd be in trouble. Even if they only charge off peak.

An electric car can charge on power draws all the way down to 1.4kW (that's a standard 15amp 3-prong US household outlet). An electric car charging likely uses less electricity per second than the Air Conditioner or Clothing Dryer you already have in your home.

There is no doomsday scenario for the electric grid. Electric Cars simply don't draw enough power to do any of the things you've described. Especially once you factor in that their charging mostly happens off-peak anyway.

[prawn]

I don't have an issue with them being supposed "rich people lanes" if it's how companies gradually bring EVs to market and eventually to lower price points.

[Animats]

LA already has "rich people lanes".[1] There are paid toll transponders that let cars drive in the express lane. Price is about $1/mile.

[1] https://www.metroexpresslanes.net/en/home/index.shtml

[alasdair_]

Seattle also has these. Dynamic pricing based on congestion charges between 50c and $7.50. After that price it's HOV only.

[s0rce]

Yes, they are rich people lanes, although cars like the leaf and the bolt make them more accessible to "middle" class people compared to a tesla for most people an electric car isn't practical and would have to be a secondary vehicle for only commuting which again makes it for rich people. Although, like many laws in California, it seems like a good idea to promote electric cars, allowing them to use the carpool infrastructure just doesn't seem like a good plan.

[gonehome]

The Fiat 500e is extremely cheap to lease ($87/month). Last year there was even a point where it was $1500 down, since you get a $2500 incentive check from California if you got that deal you were basically being paid to take it.

Most people would be fine with an EV given how much they actually drive, it's not just for rich people.

[Pica_soO]

Maintainenace bill on a EV? There is near nothing in them. Battery. Check. 4 E-Motors. Check. End of List.

[Cookingboy]

I didn't realize that EVs no longer use tires, brakes, brake fluids.

Tesla recommends a $700/yr maintenance package, this "EV doesn't require maintenance" myth needs to die.

Pretty much the only routine you save from ICE is the oil change per 10k miles.

[secabeen]

Actually, the wear on the brakes is significantly less because most braking is done by regeneration from the motor(s). There's no transmission fluid, no belts, no fuel air, or oil filters to replace. It is a significantly less complicated system.

[prostoalex]

> Tesla recommends a $700/yr maintenance package, this "EV doesn't require maintenance" myth needs to die.

You need to know the context and back story of this before claiming that it's something Tesla "recommends". Tesla did not offer maintenance initially, and it was not in the books until it became a top-requested and top-discussed subject on owner message boards. The company then reluctantly admitted that fear of not finding a suitable repair shop drove buyers' decisions towards not buying and started offering the plan.

The year 1 service, for example, includes such onerous tasks as "Key fob battery replacement" and "Wiper blade set replacement". If you want to save money or for whatever reason refuse to set a foot inside a Tesla Service Center, you don't really need to. Until year 4, looks like.

https://www.tesla.com/support/maintenance-plans?redirect=no

[matthewowen]

The link you posted directly contradicts your post.

The year 2 service is almost identical to year 4, and year 1 includes a fluid service that isn't covered in later years.

[davexunit]

Here is the Chevy Bolt maintenance schedule from GM: https://my.chevrolet.com/content/dam/gmownercenter/gmna/dyna...

Tire rotations, cabin air filter replacement every so often, and a coolant fluid replacement at 150k miles.

Nearly all braking is done via regenerative braking and not friction brakes so brake maintenance won't be needed for a very long time.

[seanmcdirmid]

Electric cars leverage heavily regenerative braking, which substantially reduces wear and tear on the friction brake system. So the brake pads and fluid will require a lot less maintenance.

You are still right about the tires though.

[wyager]

Steering system, suspension, tires, wiring, brakes, boots, joints, etc...

There's more to a car than the engine. Electric vehicles shave off engine, transmission(?), and fuel system, but add batteries, high-power electronics, and electric motors (presumably with either a transmission or some way to adjust back-EMF).

The majority of the time inspecting a car is spent elsewhere than the engine. Most shops just plug into the OBD and give a visual inspection of timing belt, fan belt, etc. and look at maintenance stickers.

[DrScump]

For whatever reason, those extreme subsidy deals don't reach Northern California.

[gcb0]

and then you ignore that a cheap ev can't be the only car for a person, specially out of san fran.

so now you have two insurances. two garages or live well enough to have two street parking. two maintenance bills. etc. etc.

[AshleyGrant]

Why can't a cheap EV be the only car for a person? Most people drive <100 miles each day. When/if you need to drive further than that, there's plenty of companies very willing to rent you an ICE vehicle.

I drive a four door sedan currently. It doesn't handle 100% of my motoring needs, that doesn't mean I need to own a moving van for that 0.1% of the time I need it. I just go rent it. It also isn't able to be checked as luggage when I travel, and so I rent a car when I arrive at my destination (if needed). I don't pay someone to transport the car to wherever I'm going.

This argument that EVs need to support 100% of all driving needs before they are acceptable is ridiculous. No vehicle handles 100% of driving needs.

My current car is a BMW M3, but I'm replacing it with a 530e (plugin hybrid). The 530e can't do everything the M3 could do from a performance standpoint, but it will be able to handle 80-90% of my driving needs in 100% electric mode. I'm 100% confident that my fiance's next car will be a pure electric vehicle (likely a next-gen Nissan Leaf or Chevy Bolt) that will handle 100% of her average daily driving needs. The only time we'll need to rent a car for her is when she needs to go on drives longer than 200 miles or so. That only happens 3 or 4 times a year, so we're not too worried about it as Enterprise will "pick us up."

[gcb0]

we both know you never used any of the m3 performance features. ever. even that one time when you think you did when you stepped on the gas after the red light.

m3 has such tight bearings that all it does outside of a track is break internal engine parts 80% earlier than any other consumer car.

now, even if you think renting a car that one time a month you need more than 100 miles, for most people it's a hassle they want to avoid more than you want to spend money.

and lastly, buying a new 530e will keep you carbon negative for two decades at least. not buying a new car is infinitely better than even buying electric.

[AshleyGrant]

Well, first off, you're wrong regarding my use of the M3's performance features. I did European delivery, and did 900+ miles of Autobahn driving in the car, most of which was spent cruising at 140 mph+, including three or four runs up to 165 mph+. Also, when I had the chance, I would take it to the mountains of North Georgia/Western North Carolina to push the car to my limits. Having both done multi-day performance driving schools with BMW's own driving instructors up in Spartanburg, SC, as well as having done hot laps with those same instructors on the Daytona road course, I know the car is capable of performing beyond my own limits, but I am capable of pushing it to about 9/10ths on a track and 8/10ths on a suitable mountain road.

So yeah, I used the performance features of the M3 on many occasions.

That being said, I live in Florida, and the car was, frankly, boring to drive on Florida roads. Driving fast in a straight line at speeds that won't result in my arrest aren't a stretch for the car, and driving the car at my limits makes me a threat to the safety of other people sharing the road with me when I find corners. There is a sweeping right hander on the Interstate off ramp near my house that I could take at 110 mph without the car, or me, breaking a sweat.

Moving on...

You might be right that renting a car once a month is a hassle for people. But I don't think most people go on 100+ mile drives every month (or at least average one trip like that each month).

And I always love how people talk about how much better it is for the environment it is to buy a used car rather than a new car, as if used cars just appear out of the ether. The people who buy my off-lease cars share in the carbon footprint of producing the car.

And even ignoring that, the lifetime carbon footprint of an EV, PHEV, or even just a non-plugin HEV is going to be lower than that of a ICE-only equivalent vehicle.

[concede_pluto]

You can't street park an EV, you have to run a 220V outlet to your garage if you plan to drive it two days in a row. Which means nobody in an apartment can use one.

[ido]

Why can't a cheap ev be a person's only car in SF?

[taneq]

But what about the one time per decade that they decide to make a road trip to Miami?

[ido]

rent a car?

[ghouse]

> while having, by far, the absolute worst electrical infrastructure in the country

Source please?