[gr1zzlybe4r]

EVs are the biggest false solution out there. We are looking at decimating larger and larger portions of the planet just to preserve our stubborn dependence on automobiles.

I like automobiles and don't want them banned, but the real problem that we have is that we're dependent on an unscalable transportation solution: cars.

[simondotau]

It might seem that way today, but scaling up the EV adoption looks very different to scaling up fossil fuel consumption. It won’t be long before demand for battery minerals is mostly satisfied by recycling — and the need for ongoing mining of virgin material is mostly eliminated.

Furthermore, lithium is an extremely abundant mineral. It's available pretty much everywhere, including the deserts of Nevada and Australia. The idea that we have to destroy rare ecosystems to get it is ridiculous.

[Retric]

Yes, Lithium is roughly as abundant in earths crust as Lead. A normal car’s lead acid battery has ~9kg of Lead, while a 100kWh battery pack needs ~16kg of Lithium which currently costs around 1,100$.

It’s not that Lithium is actually going to be in short supply, it simply collects in different areas.

[pkphilip]

The difference is that it takes very little lead to make a lead acid battery because the entire car is not powered only by that battery.. that is not the case with EVs. It is estimated that it takes 500,000lbs of ore needs to be mined to get enough material for a single EV car's battery

[celtain]

https://qz.com/2156463/why-elon-musk-wants-tesla-to-start-mi...

>the average electric vehicle battery requires around 10 kg of [lithium]. In turn, 5.3 tons of lithium carbonate ore yield one ton of lithium

This would suggest that 53kg of ore would be enough to provide one car's worth of lithium.

[RugnirViking]

thats wild, the idea you could fairly easily lift the ore needed to make a lithium battery. I thought electric cars were significantly heavier than ICE cars because of the battery? maybe its other minerals that make up the rest of the battery?

[simondotau]

Yes, the bulk of the weight are metals like nickel and manganese. Lithium is a critical component but isn’t the dominant component of the battery’s mass.

[cantaloupe]

Do you have a source for that estimate? Seems truly absurd. I found a source that you are perhaps misquoting: 400,000 gallons of water are used produce 1 ton of lithium from brine [1]. It also apparently takes 8 kilograms for an EV battery [2]. So 3500 gallons per vehicle.

[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/mining-lithium-for...

[2] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/electric-vehicles-wor...

[plantain]

You don't have to make lithium from brine. In Australia it's mined out of the rock, it's only South America that it's from brine.

[Sponge5]

Brines are being used in Silver Peak, NV. [1]

[1]: https://desertfog.org/aerial-of-silver-peak-nev-lithium-mini...]

[Fatnino]

The vast majority of lead used today is recycled. The rest is mined incidentally while extracting silver.

I could see this happening for lithium also. Get the quantity in global circulation to the level we need and then live off that for the future.

[mburee]

The volume of a kg of lead and lithium is also just vastly different

[elevaet]

In cas anyone else was curious, I just looked it up: Lead has about 21.3x the density of lithium.

[xhevahir]

I don't know. There are lots of other places where you can get tin and zinc and so on, but that hasn't stopped people from wrecking lots of Bolivia in order to mine them. If the demand is there some poor and/or corrupt countries are probably going to supply the metals regardless of the risks to the environment.

[simondotau]

Completely agree. My point is only that it isn’t necessary. And frankly it should be up to governments to provide leadership when there is a stark ethical choice that’s so many steps removed from consumer choice.

[sbaiddn]

Abundance doesnt mean its easy or clean to mine. Al is one the most abundant elements in the Earth's crust, but extracting it is brutally destructive.

Now, you can say the same thing for oil. Sure. But EVs are bad for the environment and its not obvious they're even a net good.

[shiftpgdn]

Destructive extraction of lithium is completely a myth. There is currently enough lithium in Texas oil wells that were capped because they were full of salt water that’s easily extracted and evap pooled to satisfy global lithium demand for 100 years.

[sbaiddn]

Im skeptical, so Ill need a reference, but consider:

- You're commenting on a thread about a collapsing water table due to Li extraction.

- Li's price has risen and projected to continue to do so for quite some time.

- You post that Li extraction is cheap, clean and widely available in TX (perhaps the most covetous state of the Union?). Money is literally in a capped oil well and Texans are too lazy to pick it up.

Perhaps Li isn't as easy and clean to extract as you were led to believe?

[simondotau]

The limiting factor on lithium isn't raw material availability or extraction, it's refinement. Approximately 80% of the world's lithium refinery capacity is located in China. Nobody is refining lithium at scale in North America, so I'd say it's obvious why nobody's rushing to pay American-level salaries to suck it out of wells in Texas.

Tesla has expressed interest in developing a lithium refinery in Texas, so we might see some hoses drinking from those old wells soon enough.

[shiftpgdn]

https://www.csx.com/index.cfm/customers/piedmont-lithium-cho...

Brine has to be pumped to evap pools and then refined.

[TrapLord_Rhodo]

From your article.

>Piedmont Lithium .. will establish a lithium hydroxide processing, refining and manufacturing facility in Southeast Tennessee

I don't think Piedmont is getting into the ore, or brine extraction. They are processing the salts into hydroxide.

Funny enough, soon after this announcement, elon announced his intention to do the same with Tesla.

[scythe]

We extract way, way more aluminum than we ever will — or could — lithium. Annual aluminum production is about 64 million tons. Total lithium resources — the sum of all known economically viable deposits — are 86 million tons.

>its not obvious they're even a net good.

It is extremely obvious. Even if the relevant region of the Andes is completely desertified (which I would prefer not happen) the scale of impact is a pittance next to global warming.

[wiredfool]

That's about the numbers that I've seen - https://climateminerals.org/data-snapshot/lithium (disclaimer, I worked on this app)

For the most part, Countries are currently mining/producing about 1% of their reserves per year (roughly), and that's a fraction of the resources (which is the 86 MT number).

From the data though -- Reserves seem to be climbing over time, so while there is a dramatic uptick in lithium mining, it doesn't seem like we've hit peak reserve/resources yet.

[sbaiddn]

"Even if the relevant region of the Andes is completely desertified (which I would prefer not happen)"

My dad comes from that region so I really appreciate that you'd rather the area not become a desert just so some SV bro can virtue signal with a Tesla.

Personally, Id rather Californians used their own water to extract their own Li to power their own Teslas.

As to the obviousness of the net good, actually it isn't. Thats why studies are done. Even if it's a net environmental benefit (comparing different types of pollution is a massive value judgement, btw) it doesn't follow its ethically a benefit for the reason outlines above - why should by father's family become environmental refugees?

[scythe]

>As to the obviousness of the net good, actually it isn't.

You're comparing losing a small part of the Andes to half the Mediterranean basin (desertification), a third of the Amazon, the whole world's coastline below 2 meters AMSL, and we don't even know what to expect from the effects of heat stress on wildlife, but we can expect it to kill plenty of people directly. And that's just what I can fit in a sentence.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-what-climate-models-te...

Damage to the environment of the subtropical Andes is probably avoidable and should be avoided. There are other ways to get lithium. There are also alternatives to evaporation ponds that could let you put water back in the ground. But it's annoying when everyone thinks their pet issue is as important as the worst environmental threat humanity has faced in recorded history.

[Victerius]

> Furthermore, lithium is an extremely abundant mineral. The idea that we have to destroy rare ecosystems to get it is ridiculous.

1880 AD: Furthermore, oil is an extremely abundant resource. The idea that we have to destroy rare ecosystems to get it is ridiculous.

142 years later: Look how they massacred my boy

[smileysteve]

16kg of lithium lasts ~2000 (*200 miles) recharges and can be recycled into a new battery pack with little lithium loss and a some energy input.

16kg of gasoline lasts 1 "cycle" for 18-45 miles. The output requires significant energy input to capture and convert the co2 and H2O back into a fuel.

[lostlogin]

Are you saying you get 18-45 miles from 16kgs of gasoline? If so, that’s amazingly bad.

[smileysteve]

Good call-out, multiply by 4

[jjoonathan]

EVs don't work by burning lithium into the atmosphere.

[simondotau]

Equating a single-use combustion fuel with the metals/minerals in a reusable and very highly recyclable battery is ridiculous.

[leesec]

Pretending like the largest economy in the world can just snap it's fingers and implement trains and public transit across a huge landmass is the biggest false solution out there.

[TaylorAlexander]

Who said anything about snapping our fingers? The scale of mobilization required to replace our cars with EVs is staggering. While we’re making all these changes it’s a great time to look at how we can improve our cities for other forms of transport. Most people aren’t going across “a huge landmass” they’re going from the outskirts of a metro area to the center and back. A combination of transport, bike lanes and public ebike programs, and sound zoning laws and building incentives are absolutely worth discussing.

There is a chasm between “EVs are a false solution” and “we can snap out fingers and implement transit”.

[_ph_]

How is the switch to electric cars a "staggering scale"? It is done as part of the natural renewal. Cars are driven for 10-15 years until they are scrapped and replaced with a new car. This should be electric the next time around. So the effort to build them is about the same as to build the next ICE car you would have bought otherwise. Yes, it requires retooling in the factories, but partially that also happens between car generations.

I am all for reducing the share of cars in traffic, but that will take quite some time and not replace all cars. So we need more environment friendly cars and those would be electric.

[TaylorAlexander]

The system to build ICE cars has been around for decades. Building ICE cars at the replacement rate represents the status quo. But now all of a sudden we have huge demand for resources not previously required - lithium, cobalt, manganese, and graphite. This means new mining operations spinning up all over the world. At the same time, this new market opportunity has led to a whole bunch of new EV companies making new factories, and major retooling efforts for existing factories.

These changes are tied to the demand for a resource intensive new product in a way which barely compares to the established production of ICE vehicles using supply chains that are decades old. With all that this requires, we can certainly spend a little time thinking about painting bike lanes and subsidizing ebikes. You can make 80-100 ebike batteries or you can make a single electric car battery. We should really consider how diversifying our transport infrastructure could facilitate a faster change to electric transport while reducing our impact on the natural world.

Note that I agree with you - if we are going to have cars then they should ideally be electric. But some people see EVs as kind of an ultimate solution, and those people are mistaken. Which is why I and many others are screaming about the need to look at transportation in a holistic way rather than a one size fits all "replace ICE with EVs" approach. Cars were never ideal to begin with, lets not perpetuate old mistakes with a new resource intensive type of car.

[flakeoil]

I believe self-driving cars will partly solve this. Instead of waiting for a bus that leaves every 15 minutes, there is a car leaving every 30 seconds.

Instead of buying a car, you pay for a subscription. Instead of taking your own car you call a car to come at your house and pick you up.

Less cars standing parked at the parking lots at the office 8-10 hours a day. Less cars parked at the grocery stores. Less cars parked at home.

Less cars needed to be built to transport the same amount of people as today.

[lostlogin]

I’m imagining the dirty, smelly, damaged car that I get blamed for breaking which was actually ruined by the previous user. It turned up late as there were too few in my area due to an event across town. My ‘moderate user’ plan wasn’t a ’plus’ plan for priority access and anyway, I’ve been down ranked due to the damage I didn’t cause.

Customer service is non-existent and I can’t afford to pay to remove the down rank event.

[TaylorAlexander]

You can build 80 ebike batteries for the same material cost as one electric car battery. If we focus purely on cars, we are seriously shooting ourselves in the foot compared to a diversified transport strategy. We still need electric cars, but I am saying we cannot view electric cars as the single one size fits all solution.

Also it is hard to imaging taking a car to the grocery store, shopping for ten minutes, and then waiting for a new car versus hiring the car to stay waiting.

[quonn]

It would be useful to look outside the US for both the opportunities as well as the limitations. I was recently downvoted for defending cars (EVs) and I was talking from a european perspective where public transport is very developed. Nevertheless there are limitations and always will be.

[wahern]

The population-weighted density of the U.S. is approximately the same as Europe, especially Central and Northern Europe. Standard density, the measure which leads people to believe the U.S. to be sparsely populated, is a useless metric, only suitable for questions like how much uninhabited land exists per capita.

However, similar density (standard or population-weighted) alone doesn't automatically make public transit any more politically or socially viable. According to an early paper on COVID-19 death rates, population-weight density (but not standard density) could explain cross-country variance in the initial rate of spread of COVID-19, but not the subsequent evolution of the pandemic. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2005.01167.pdf For the latter, the researchers needed to turn to the Hofstede cross-cultural measure of individualism to explain country variance.

That points to the more likely reason the U.S. has trouble with public transit--not because we live sparsely (we don't), but because of our highly individualistic culture. IOW, we don't like it. Indeed, as COVID-19 has arguably shown, as compared to many other countries, we would literally prefer to die than to be more pro-social.

[socialismisok]

Only because we haven't tried. We could absolutely lay electrified track between our population centers. We choose not to, because the automobile is so built into our collective culture.

Should we move to EVs while we're building trains? Of course. Have we started moving to EVs without any movement on trains? Sadly, yes.

[s1artibartfast]

California Tried. They spent more than the transportation budget of most European countries and have very little to show for it besides higher taxes.

[alamortsubite]

California is trying. It was only yesterday that they eliminated minimum parking requirements, which stand in direct opposition to improvements to public transportation.

You may not realize it, but California's GDP is many times "most European countries." They have a way to go to catch up.

[s1artibartfast]

In case it wasn't clear, I am talk specifically about California high speed rail. The parent was we have tried to connect urban centers with rail.

This is because the US is no longer capable of infrastructure projects. There are number of reasons why and good articles on the topic if you are interested.

[socialismisok]

California is bigger in both geography and income than most European countries, so I'd expect them to spend more than most European countries.

And higher taxes usually come before the results.

Also, California has Elon Musk doing everything he can to avoid hearing the word "train".

[munk-a]

In the 1970s Amsterdam looked like pretty much any American city - it may have taken a few decades but changing the transportation focus of a city is an extremely accomplishable goal.

[aeyes]

Amsterdam never looked like American cities, central Amsterdam doesn't even have roads where cars would fit.

Since 150 years an extensive tram network existed, with horse carriages like in many other European cities before it was electrified.

Every part of the city is walkable and always has been.

Few cities in the US are comparable, maybe New York but it's not really desirable to live there for a lot of reasons - being full of cars in a place where none should be being one of them.

[Moru]

The european cities have a problem with roads not broad enough for cars. In a city that have broad roads that fits more than four car lanes, you can easily split one lane off physically from the car road and make it into a two-way bike lane.

When the population are used to this and the car trafic goes down, the bike lane will be too crowded to be a two-way. Then you do the same on the other side of the street and make them both one-way roads with car lanes in the middle.

In our town they are rebuilding the bus stops on streets so if two busses stop, they will block the whole road for car traffic. The bikes can pass on the separate bike lanes though. This by design so people will choose bike instead of car. Not quite thought through though since this will also block blue-light traffic...

[lostlogin]

So there is more space in US cities, but it can’t be done?

[aeyes]

Population density is too low because cities were designed with cars in mind. 50% of the population lives in the suburbs where it is just too far to walk anywhere and even if you look at more densely populated places everything is still quite far away. Nobody wants to walk 20 minutes just to get from their house to the bus stop and even if they did, you can't make low intervals for bus routes work - much less outside of peak hours. But to replace cars by public transportation you need it to be reachable, high interval and ideally available around the clock.

Labor cost and cost of living is so high that it prohibits the existence of small neighborhood stores. I live in South America and have lived in many different places here, you can buy everything within walking distance wherever you are. In my neighborhood probably 5% of the houses have a small shop. Twice per week the streets turn into a market in different parts of the city. Even in the big cities you have small convenience stores operated by families in every corner. Public transportation is probably the best in the world, you can go anywhere without a car for very low prices - even for our income levels.

Europe is somewhat in the middle between these two. Public transportation doesn't get you everywhere and its expensive. Most small stores which existed 30 years ago are dead because of supermarkets and online stores. You still won't see extreme examples of a car-centered culture like public high schools with 5000 students and you can usually get to a smaller supermarket within 15 minutes. But having higher labor cost lead to more centralization.

Also keep in mind that the first thing people buy once they have money is a car, even if public transportation works. You see this in places like China. We won't get rid of cars anytime soon. The best outcome we can hope for within the next 50 years is driverless ridesharing.

[epistasis]

Of course we could, the problem isn't the size of the landmass, the problem is the stubbornness of our brain mass.

We radically modified our country for cars in a very short amount of time. We can do the san with cheaper and more efficient transit methods in a shorter amount of time, for at least a core that covers 60% of people in very little time, if that is what we wanted.

Instead we have public processes that take five years to decide on installing a bike lane. We took all the inefficiency of centra planning, then took away the only advantage, speed of decisions.

[helloooooooo]

The second largest economy did it in the span of 2 decades.

[davidw]

It's not finger snapping, it's incremental changes like this:

https://cayimby.org/california-yimby-statement-on-governor-s...

[whazor]

Electric bikes and cargo bikes are having a very big growth world wide. They are ideal for taking over small trips under eight miles.

Whereas self-driving cars have the potential for taking over the bigger trips. A self-driving car does not need to park, so ideally it drops you of at a 'bus' stop nearby and you walk the part yourself. This also separates the cars from the urban centres and makes the self driving problem much less hard.

[rhplus]

Most cars (and car batteries) are idle for 22+ hours a day. Mass transit isn’t the only optimization. We could gain efficiencies by making better use of the cars that are already sitting on our city streets through automation and on-demand car sharing.

[nightfly]

Yet somehow things like Uber have worked out to be more expensive for consumers than taxis or private car ownership. Plus most people need vehicles during the same blocks of time, you can't load balance them (easily)

[Ekaros]

Rush hours are a thing... There shouldn't be such time if the demand was evenly spread, and that should be entirely possible after all nothing stops everyone from freely choosing their time of use of road when there is less users...

[mod]

"somehow" is because Uber isn't car sharing.

With minimal effort I could align my schedule to share my car with almost anyone, if I didn't have to drive it.

[cpursley]

Why not? The largest country in the world with even more difficult terrain and smaller population has.

[lm28469]

I mean you can snap your finger and throw 2+ trillion dollars to go fuck up the middle east.

Train tracks are much much much easier and cheaper to build than your planes and bombs, albeit less profitable

[Victerius]

We've tried nothing, and we're out of ideas.

I'm looking forward to revisit this comment when we run out of raw materials for EVs and all the tooling and expertise to make ICE cars is long gone. Should be fun.

[wolfram74]

I'm assuming this statement is about the shortage of battery components and that over generational time scales we'll run out of the parts for that, since otherwise it's very similar components between ICE vs EV.

Lead acid batteries are recycled at a rate of ~99%[0], is there a good argument for why we won't end in a similar regulatory environment for other transport scale batteries?

I'm a big fan of non-car solutions (I just biked back from my neighborhood grocery store), but if someone's gonna buy a car, I'd rather it not be combusting continuously to run.

[0]https://www.energy-storage.news/lead-acid-batteries-are-us-m...

[danielheath]

Lead acid batteries have an energy density about 1/10th that of lithium ion.

Perhaps enough for some uses, but challenging for most cars.

[_huayra_]

> We've tried nothing, and we're out of ideas.

I'm gonna use this line whenever my pro-car cheems mindset [0] family complain about new bike lanes getting installed :D

[0] https://normielisation.substack.com/p/cheems-mindset

[klabb3]

Let me guess, they're against bike lanes while simultaneously complaining about too much traffic?

[_huayra_]

Indeed, and god forbid separate bike paths / infrastructure. The main complaint is that bikes don't pay tax / registration, but usually after I get them to agree that vehicles should pay in proportion to the damage (and commensurate repair costs) they inflict on the infrastructure and then show them this chart [0], they usually end up just resorting to insulting my "libtard values" or something. Cubic functions are not something I think they remember from school...

[0] https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weigh...

[klabb3]

That's hilarious (and sad), thanks for sharing. IIRC driving a 9 ton big rig is a constitutional right.

[hibikir]

I'd much prefer that high density world myself, but this is a complicated problem. Rezoning as to make denser building possible, and even preferable by most people, would be great. But limiting ourselves for that solution isn't going to be enough.

Many American cities could be 1/4th of the size they currently are while still being full of single family residential + townhouses. We could be even denser if we wanted to. It'd, however, make the current homes of 3/4ths of the homeowners basically worthless. The world might be a lot better if the latest ring of single family exurbs didn't exist, but it does, and people are not going to be happy to abandon their new houses. Do we give people their money back from their now unsellable houses? Are we happy with the fact that the lucky winners that are the real targets of rezoning becoming very rich, as their land is now going to house more the families than before? How many construction workers, and construction materials, are we going to get to increase our homebuilding speed by orders of magnitude? That's a lot of materials in exchange for abandoned houses.

In practice, a change like this has to take 30-40 years minimum, and we sure shouldn't we waiting that long with gas cars. It's not a case of true solutions and false solutions: The problem is large enough that we'll have to apply many solutions at once.

[clairity]

> "Are we happy with the fact that the lucky winners that are the real targets of rezoning becoming very rich, as their land is now going to house more the families than before?"

there's a potential fix for that that's being tried in australia: rezoning windfall taxes (https://www.prosper.org.au/rezoning-windfalls/ ; posted here too https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32957896)

[gpm]

Eh, we're always going to need a fair number of vehicles as a society in an industrial and commercial capacity. EVs are by far the best solution for those vehicles. I don't think it's fair to call them a false solution, they're just not a solution to all our problems, only some of them.

They're also a huge financial enabler for us scaling our battery production, and the grid scale battery technology that is resulting is hugely useful in terms of transitioning away from fossil fuel electricity production.

[sbaiddn]

"EVs are by far the best solution for those vehicles."

Thats not obvious to me. Why is that the case?

What are the assumptions in your assertion?

are you assuming continuous innovations in mtls science?

Are you assuming a certain electrical grid and generstion mix that may or may not exist?

For example, large ships certainly fall under "commercial" vehicles, but any electrical energy storage (even inexistent ones) would be hard pressed to compete on CO2 emissions with our current grid make up. 50% thermal efficiency is really good!

Well the same can be said about tractor trailers. Their engines aren't 50% efficient, but they're pretty darned good! Id be surprised if an EV drivetrain can beat them on CO2 emissions.

And if ships and trucks diesel engines are made to run NG (LNG tankers already do) Forget it. EV's are a CO2 environmental disaster by comparison.

So, again, what are your assumptions?

[ZeroGravitas]

Cargo ships can use batteries.

See: Rapid battery cost declines accelerate the prospects of all-electric interregional container shipping

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-022-01065-y

> Modeling 5 to 10 GWh electrified containerships, researchers find that 40% of routes today could be electrified in an economically viable manner, before considering environmental costs.

Electric Semi trucks are already happening.

[sbaiddn]

I never argued that some researcher hasnt tried it out. I argued that electric ships and semis are not good solutions. Certainly not with the current grid.

The reason is straightforward, the grid has a certain thermal efficiency, one that ships basically match and semis approach.

[ZeroGravitas]

I'm not sure what specific grid you are talking about, but yeah, we should decarbonise our grids too. That's happening.

Almost certainly already better in most of the world, and anyway if you're building ship charging stations you can buy new renewable PPAs at the same time to supply power.

[adrianN]

The obvious assumption in an all-ev-future is that the grid is carbon neutral.

[sbaiddn]

Is that assumption viable?

[adrianN]

Of course it is.

[sbaiddn]

"Obvious assumption"

"Of course it is"

"Of course it is" is not science. It might pass muster in CS, but in engineering with heavy objects "of course it <>" is the mother of all f-ups.

[socialismisok]

They aren't a solution to transportation at large. They are a solution to some issues, of course.

[great_tankard]

Yes. I've often wondered about how previous generations got certain things so wrong, but this is the first time I've been fully aware of a revolution taking place right under my nose and I feel mostly powerless to do anything about it.

Even if mining all of the lithium and copper weren't such a disastrously extractive and exploitative process, big personal steel boxes would still be an awful mode of transportation for most people. Our insistence on building infrastructure such that cars are the only truly viable method of getting around diminishes my enthusiasm about what is otherwise amazing technological progress.

[bottlepalm]

False solution? Why because mining isn't being done responsibly in some part of the world?

You could say the same thing about literally anything as no supply chain is perfect. But if there's a problem somewhere, like with mining, you zero in and fix it. The fact that a problem exists doesn't invalidate the entire system.

First principles approach - there's no shortage of materials in the crust, no shortage of energy from the sun, and no problem with cars. Your argument is that they're 'unscalable' well they don't need to be because the population will soon be declining.

[scythe]

The cornerstone of all public transit systems is the bus. Only the densest parts of major cities can put a train line near everyone. The electrification of buses has only just begun, but the advantages of electric buses are significant: there are no jerky gear shifts; there is no near-field diesel exhaust; there is potentially a longer vehicle lifetime; there is a reduction in the exposure of transit budgets to fuel price swings and consequent debt financing.

[peter422]

I think the current assumption that every electrical car needs to have 300+ mile range is going to eventually break and stop this false line of thinking.

In the future there will be a variety of cheaper EVs with shorter ranges which will both lower demand for battery resources while also achieving climate change goals.

Car batteries will also undoubtedly be critical parts of the electrical grid in 5-10 years, so they'll be doing double duty.

[olyjohn]

There already are cheaper EVs with shorter ranges. They have been around for years.

* Nissan Leaf * Fiat 500e * Honda E * Ford Focus EV * VW Golf e-something * BMW i3

These are all fine cars that get you from A->B as well as any of the $100,000+ EVs that seems to be all over the road. They all have ranges that will get 95% of the population to work.

[ekianjo]

Larger portions of the planet? Humans activities actually cover very little land overall, and also most of what we do is just scratching the surface of the crust. The planet is much bigger than what you see with your eyes.

[ergl]

> Human activities actually cover very little land

51% of all habitable land is not "very little": https://ourworldindata.org/land-use#half-of-the-world-s-habi...

[ajross]

That seems 100% backwards to me. The industry required for electric VEHICLES is largely independent of their implementation as passenger cars. The battery industry right now is, indeed, being driven by FAANG employees' insatiable demand for Teslas. But it's going to be available for buses and freight and everything else too. But getting investment in infrastructure only works well if there are high margins, which means that you have to sell the Teslas first.

But pretending that somehow we don't need a giant lithium battery industry because we'll just eliminate vehicles of all kinds seems horrifyingly wrong.

[socialismisok]

Moving freight by truck the way we do is wildly inefficient. We should be slamming our hands on the table for electrified freight rail, with trucks being a last mile (or in some cases, using rail spurs to warehouses like we used to).

[Ekaros]

Actually trucks are quite balanced solution. We could for example have them use many times more smaller cars... With increased costs and worse fuel efficiency.

[dmitriid]

And then you have the problem of freight trains competing with passenger trains for the same track.

[socialismisok]

In some corridors, that's true. But we currently have rail companies that fight tooth and nail to prevent passenger rail from existing.

Personally, I'd love to see the post office running freight rail for the country, investing in electrification of rail, and focusing on moving as much freight as possible by train.

[dmitriid]

It's the opposite problem in Sweden. Priority is given to passenger trains and freigh suffers. They are locked in to decisions made decades ago (for example, single not double tracks in most places) and expanding the tracks is extremely costly and extremely slow (the bane of any modern development).

[aeharding]

We already have electric powered busses, and they don’t have dirty and heavy batteries. It’s called a trolley bus.

[quickthrower2]

Streetcars are not as versatile. They are mainly for inner city. And changing routes will be expensive.

[lm28469]

Nah bro you're wrong, I swear to god this is the last time we do that, we'll find a solution _in the future_ (maybe) /s

[fny]

Did everyone forget about hybrid vehicles so quickly?

[dieselgate]

You said it very well. I’ve personally found biodiesel to be the best stopgap solution for relying on a car - ymmv