[palata]

Heavy electric cars and rockets are making the biggest problems of this century worse.

We don't need more rockets or space tourism. And instead of building heavy EVs, Tesla should help the US build public transports. That is, if they want to help humanity.

[Uzza]

> Heavy electric cars

Electric cars being heavier have an impact in that it causes more wear and tear on roads. But they're absolutely dwarfed by the wear semis cause. Even when the electricity comes entirely from coal, electric vehicles are more efficient than ICE vehicles, so every EV deployed reduces greenhouse gas emissions.

> and rockets

Rockets impact on emissions is a rounding error on the global scale. The number of launched would have to increase by 1000 times to start approaching the airline industry, and with the move to methane fueled rockets it's possible to synthesize the fuel from CO2 in the atmosphere using carbon free energy, creating a closed loop.

> Tesla should help the US build public transports

It doesn't work like that. You can't just say "let's build more public transport" and it will magically happen tomorrow. There are a ton of barriers to expanding many forms of public transport, primarily public funding, which they do not control. And when it comes to thing like rail, that's compounded even more by right of way. The fact of the matter is that the US is a car heavy society, and building EVs is the fastest way to reduce transport emissions without (ignoring incentives) directly having to rely on public funding.

As an added bonus, building up an EV production line allows you to relatively easily export them to other markets around the world. You can't export a rail line to another place.

[palata]

> Electric cars being heavier have an impact in that

In that moving a heavier weight takes more energy. We don't need to slightly reduce our energy consumption, we need to drastically reduce it. Meaning that in any country that did not make the same mistake as the US (being to build their society around individual cars), heavy EV are clearly not enough. We need to use public transports, (e-)bikes, and small EVs for those who don't really have a choice. As far as I understand, a Tesla is basically a sports car. There is no place for sports cars where we are going. Of course I understand it is harder for the US, both because of culture (SUVs are the norm, right?) and infrastructure.

Still it's never too late to start building better infrastructures, I suppose.

> Even when the electricity comes entirely from coal, electric vehicles are more efficient than ICE vehicles

What do you mean by "more efficient"? That a Tesla produces less CO2 using electricity made from coal than a small ICE vehicle? How in the world did you get to that conclusion?

> so every EV deployed reduces greenhouse gas emissions.

It's more complicated than that. If you throw away a recent, small ICE vehicle in order to deploy an EV, I am pretty sure it doesn't reduce much. You have to consider the entire life of the vehicle (and seriously, coal?).

> The number of launched would have to increase by 1000 times to start approaching the airline industry

Which is the goal of SpaceX and every other company going in the space business, right?

> it's possible to synthesize the fuel from CO2 in the atmosphere using carbon free energy, creating a closed loop.

At scale, I very much doubt it remotely adds up. And all the carbon free energy you use to do that, you don't use it to replace fossil fuels elsewhere. It just doesn't work.

> It doesn't work like that. You can't just say "let's build more public transport" and it will magically happen tomorrow.

Fair enough. On the one hand you need less companies like Tesla and SpaceX, and more public investment into transport infrastructure.

> As an added bonus, building up an EV production line allows you to relatively easily export them to other markets around the world. You can't export a rail line to another place.

That is an interesting, US-centered approach. First, all the countries that have good public transports should just not import Teslas. Because those countries don't depend that much on cars, they can just improve their public transport infrastructures.

Maybe the US could learn a bit from those countries when they look into their public transports ;-).