[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.