[throwaway894345]

That’s an interesting observation that I hadn’t considered. My enthusiasm for EVs has been pretty unmitigated previously. I still think climate is important enough that dealing with the safety stuff is probably tractable and also the lesser evil, but it’s good to have line of sight on it.

[vanilla_nut]

Unmitigated? Are you not worried about the infrastructure impact of doubling the weight of most classes of vehicle?

[josephcsible]

A Tesla Model 3 weighs 3,582 lbs. Even if you chose a Smart Fortwo (1,984lb) as your comparison instead of an equivalent-size ICE vehicle, it's still not doubling the weight.

[vanilla_nut]

That is the lightest variant of the Model 3. Every other Tesla, save the Roadster, weighs over 4,000 lbs: https://electrek.co/2021/08/02/how-much-does-a-tesla-weigh-c... Many are over 5,000, for a sedan/compact SUV.

My compact SUV is 3,000 lbs. The sedan I used before that was less than 2,500 lbs.

And it's not like Teslas are exceptionally large vehicles. The Cybertruck is probably going to clock in at 7,000 lbs or so.

[josephcsible]

None of Tesla's sedans or compact SUVs are over 5,000lbs. Their only vehicle over 5,000lbs is the Model X, their big SUV. The only ICE vehicle you mentioned that weighs less than half of that was a sedan. And the Cybertruck is going to be in the same class as the F-250, the lightest of which is 5,677lbs.

[colinmhayes]

I'm not really. The vast majority of infrastructure degradation is because of trucks which weigh 100 times as much as cars. Their weight will be decreasing by a much smaller factor.

[throwaway894345]

No, because it's still going to be negligible compared to the wear done by trucks. The average 18-wheeler weighs ~80-90,000 lbs, and the relationship between wear and weight is exponential, not linear. So while 25 Teslas weigh the same as a single 18 wheeler, the 18 wheeler contributes a lot more to road wear than those 25 Teslas. And in any case, infrastructure costs are going to be a rounding error to the economic costs associated with climate change.

[qqqwerty]

My e-bike weighs a lot less then the car it replaced.

[namecheapTA]

Heck, even the safety aspect. And the mining of materials. The recycling aspect (or lack there of), or the disposability of the vehicles if the battery/charging system bricks itself. The Chevy Volt forums are full of people losing thousands of dollars because their low miles car worth about $10k, needs a $10k battery module or two.

[throwaway894345]

Well, we're talking about the safety aspect right now. I'm not particularly worried about the mining of materials or even the disposability because (1) those are tractable problems and (2) ICE cars do many orders of magnitude more damage to the environment even ignoring their associated manufacture and disposal costs.