Nature Are electric cars really a better idea?

Angela

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I just saw that German car production is way down, and one suggested cause is all the Tesla sales.

Does that make sense?

Are electric cars really better for the environment if the effects of generating the electricity are considered?
 
It has been pointed out that it is more environmentally sound to keep your old high emissions clunker than it is to buy a new, efficient car due to the impacts of manufacturing a new product, starting with mining the raw materials . . .
 
I would opt for electric car, if I had money, because they are silent and free from poisonous emissions (diesel cars are really bad for us - influencing diabetes, strokes, underdeveloped brain, allergies, etc., even higher violent crime rates..., unbelievable, isn't it? ) Somehow, people are not in a habit of weighting the harmful effects of traffic pollution especially of diesel cars...

I already imagine how cool it would be to live in a world without traffic noise and smog... and when cars will be go where you wanted without having to drive it yourself:)

regarding production costs - yes, it is true that it would be wise to stop being consumers and start re-using things that we already have or using items in a long term.
For instance, I red a story a famous Lithuanian historian who lived in the 19th century, he came from a poor family and had two coats during his entire life. So, this is the right approach, but currently all our economy is based on fashion, advertising - without consumption and GDP growth the whole economy would collapse, so it is unlikely that people can stop consuming in a short term.

So, people would be still buying new cars (like new coats), so it is better that those new ones are less harmful for the environment and people. The issue is how to make that new one serve a long time, instead of being designed to serve 3 or 5 years and then having to replace it with again a new one (which could be the case with Tesla cars, I am not sure)


The long term use of anything is such a challenge now - I get attached to my jeans but the material completely wore out in half a year ... I suppose there is somewhat conspiracy among producers of household appliances like washing machines, etc, because they break after several years (when the warrantee expires), instead of serving for 20 or 40 years, as they could. Again, the reason is that our economy is fuelled by consumption!

Any ideas how to deal with that?
 
I just saw that German car production is way down, and one suggested cause is all the Tesla sales.

Does that make sense?

Are electric cars really better for the environment if the effects of generating the electricity are considered?

As far as whether they have been affected by sales of electric cars that can be found out by the sales numbers. For millennials at least in the US, they tend to want to live downtown which means they don't need a car. They can take the bus or take an Uber.

As far as whether they are more better for the environment overall, it depends on whether the electricity's generated by coal, natural gas or renewables.

The batteries that are in the Teslas when they reach 80% battery life are recycled into Tesla Powerwalls storage units where they can be used for another 10-15 years. Then the lithium can be recycled further.
 
Here's where electric cars may have an effect on employment. An electric car has about 10,000 parts, a conventional car about 30-35,000. The more parts the more employment broadly speaking. Less parts to assemble, less employment, although with robotic factories it might not make much difference. Less parts to break, less maintenance, less employment.

But I will take a silent car that's less polluting anytime.

But the major change will come when long distance trucks are either replaced by electric ones or their loads are transferred via rail to the end city and then picked up by local electric trucks.

I don't know what to do about ships and airplanes. Local manufacture of products? Teleconference for business travel?
 
I just saw that German car production is way down, and one suggested cause is all the Tesla sales.

Does that make sense?

Are electric cars really better for the environment if the effects of generating the electricity are considered?
Wind and solar electricity is 100% clean. The only thing with electric cars is high cost of batteries! The cheapest electric car is about $50 000 without subsidies. That is a problem.
 
As far as whether they have been affected by sales of electric cars that can be found out by the sales numbers. For millennials at least in the US, they tend to want to live downtown which means they don't need a car. They can take the bus or take an Uber.

As far as whether they are more better for the environment overall, it depends on whether the electricity's generated by coal, natural gas or renewables.

The batteries that are in the Teslas when they reach 80% battery life are recycled into Tesla Powerwalls storage units where they can be used for another 10-15 years. Then the lithium can be recycled further.

Is it solar energy generated electricity which is fueling these cars now, though? Or is it oil and gas?

I lived in Manhattan for about ten years and loved it. Wouldn't do it now, though; I want green grass and trees outside my door and windows, and the neighbors not too close, and not visible, and blessed quiet. :) So, a car is a necessity. I love a road trip too.

My worry is for those people it would put out of work. Not everyone is college material and the good paying jobs, of which trucking is one, are going to disappear.
 
car sales are dropping here
politicians interfere without any clear strategy nor knowledge
what they subsidise today, they tax tomorrow
nobody knows what kind of car they should buy
so they postpone and keep driving their old cars
 
car sales are dropping here
politicians interfere without any clear strategy nor knowledge
what they subsidise today, they tax tomorrow
nobody knows what kind of car they should buy
so they postpone and keep driving their old cars

This is my problem with the whole climate change debate. It's not based on reason and information.

If the Tesla's are being run on electricity produced by oil and gas plants than what the hell is the point???

Maybe in France they're run by nuclear power? That certainly produces fewer greenhouse gases, but even Japan with all its technology had a huge problem.

A country like Italy could never do it. A map of the seismic faults looks like a crumpled piece of paper.

Until those electric cars are powered by solar energy and the cost to "power them up" is in a reasonable range, count me out.

Not that you would ever listen to them, but Hollywood types or celebrities of any type should not be looked to for advice. They should stick to acting and singing, and leave such discussions to people who are actually educated in these matters. There will still be bias and disagreement, but at least it will be informed disagreement.

I've had enough of them flying around on private jets while lecturing me on climate change.

Plus, who is kidding who??? We have nowhere near the impact on climate change that China and India have and will increasingly have. Why doesn't that European girl go protest in front of "their" embassies. Go home and figure out how the world works.
 
I have to agree with Angela on this. You still have to produce the electricity to power your car and I think it will be a very long time before the batteries can be sufficient for people that don't live in cities and drive 100 miles each day doing their daily activities/work. And the deal with the Hollywood types is even worse if you consider that California can't even produce enough electricity to supply their own state and have to rely on other states to supply them. And the reason they don't? It's because they don't want that 'pollution' in their state.
 
This is my problem with the whole climate change debate. It's not based on reason and information.

agree with the hypocrisy that is going on. imo we will never actually do something effective. in the end people just try to make money with it again no matter if their products are usefull or not.

but what do you mean with the climate change debate not beeing based on reason and information? what is your opinion on climate change? do you think climate change is real? if so, do you have an idea what people should do? did you change your own life a bit? like for example using the car as little as possible or not using the airplane or eating less meat?
 
The debate isn't based on reason because people don't even factor in the fact that the electricity is being produced the same old way it always was for the most part, or perhaps by nuclear power, which has its own huge issues. The same people against oil and gas and coal are usually also against nuclear power, at least here. Even if you're for nuclear power, as things stand now you're probably not polluting less than someone driving a low emissions gas powered vehicle.

The U.S. isn't Europe. It's vast, and people are very mobile. I thought nothing of driving close to 200 miles each way every weekend to go see my parents after I moved away. Driving 30 miles each way to work is common.

As for climate change itself, yes, I believe fossil fuels are impacting it, but I have no idea to what extent it's worse than it would be anyway because the data doesn't exist back far enough. What I do know is that we've had climate fluctuations before the massive population the planet now sustains and cars and factories and massive herds of cows, and I'm not talking about the ones thousands and thousands of years ago. We had a "mini" one in the Middle Ages.

Plus, from what I've been able to glean as a "lay person", we're overdue for an ice age. What if the "warming" is staving it off? An ice age would be a lot bigger problem than losing some shoreline.

Until the scientists stop massaging the data either for leftist think tanks or oil and gas companies and try to give us some objective data, I don't know what to think.

I know it's hard to imagine a life so dissimilar to life in Europe, but the closest supermarket to me is about 2 miles away. How can I load up on the weekly grocery shopping on foot? I suppose I could get a few staples using the granny cart, but that's about it. :) The elementary school is perhaps a mile away, but the middle school and high school much further. Same goes for regular shops. There is no functioning without your car.

Yes, I carpooled for the trip into NYC and back for work and I often take the train for going in for entertainment purposes, but I can't carpool for the other things. Plus, most American cities are new, created after the age of the automobile, and don't have trains or public transit of any kind. NYC is better in that way, but those kinds of solutions won't work for most Americans. San Francisco doesn't even have taxis roaming around, which is damn inconvenient if you didn't drive in. Plus, there's no place to park. Maybe with uber it's more convenient.

No, I haven't given up using airplanes. How could I get to San Francisco if not by plane, or even Boston or Washington, D.C.? Our distances are vast. A person with two or three weeks vacation a year doesn't have ten days to drive one way from N.Y. to S.F. spend a few days there and then ten days back, nor, frankly, the desire to drive hours and hours each day for days on end. I don't even drive from N.Y. to Florida, although I'd like to because then I don't have to rent a car down there. My son has done it twice but stopped because it's two days of constant driving each way. It makes no sense if you have seven days off. I can't do that anymore period. For the only train service where I can bring my car, I have to drive five hours plus to Washington D.C. and then drive 3 hours from Orlando to my condo. Plus, you're sleeping in a train seat the whole night. I tried it once. My back didn't thank me. We're not all in our early twenties.

That young girl pontificating about climate change just irritated the hell out of me. I was a teenager and a twenty something too, arrogant in my certainty that I knew exactly how everything worked. Now I'm only arrogant about my certainty that if you have any brains you should be certain of almost nothing. :)
 
@ailchu-I do believe in climate change. Are cow's causing it? Then did dinosaurs cause it too? Our climate has been changing for centuries and I don't think it was from airplanes long ago. Could humans be adding to it now? yes, they could be. But do we destroy half the human population? Land mass movement also causes the climate to change in areas that move north or south. Tsunami's also cause the earth to shift on it's axis. None of these things are ever discussed in our country. And like Angela commented, it seems only to apply to us lowly peons that don't own private jets or have access to them to fly around the world.
 
@ailchu-I do believe in climate change. Are cow's causing it? Then did dinosaurs cause it too? Our climate has been changing for centuries and I don't think it was from airplanes long ago. Could humans be adding to it now? yes, they could be. But do we destroy half the human population? Land mass movement also causes the climate to change in areas that move north or south. Tsunami's also cause the earth to shift on it's axis. None of these things are ever discussed in our country. And like Angela commented, it seems only to apply to us lowly peons that don't own private jets or have access to them to fly around the world.

what i get from your text is, that what is happening now is normal to some extent and that we shouldn't care that much about it. is that your argument? if that's the case why would you even care about grey engergy of electric cars? they have other benefits like making no noise, no smell or dirt that people have to breath.

i know that the climate changed naturally throughout earths history. but we know that it is happening faster than it would normally happen, we know that it is caused by us, we know that it is endangering many animal species, we know that many human populations will get problems too. and yet we don't care.
when the people are flying around the globe in private jets are critizised it is exactly many of those lowly peons that defend them. those people are popular because most people don't care about their wrong doings.
 
what i get from your text is, that what is happening now is normal to some extent and that we shouldn't care that much about it. is that your argument? if that's the case why would you even care about grey engergy of electric cars? they have other benefits like making no noise, no smell or dirt that people have to breath.

i know that the climate changed naturally throughout earths history. but we know that it is happening faster than it would normally happen, we know that it is caused by us, we know that it is endangering many animal species, we know that many human populations will get problems too. and yet we don't care.
when the people are flying around the globe in private jets are critizised it is exactly many of those lowly peons that defend them. those people are popular because most people don't care about their wrong doings.

the changes that are happening now are not abnormal and are not faster than changes that happened before
the younger dryas and 8,2 ka climate change happened much faster
during the Eemian, sea level was 8 meter higher than today
a problem today is that people have invested in infrastructure and real estate - much of it along the sea shores - and can't move any more
some areas may become problematic, but others more north offer new opportunities
it is now possible to grow tomatoes in greenhouses in Greenland, where never before fresh vegetables were available and land prices in Greenland are rising
another major problem is population growth, 7,5 billion people on earth today, an explosion since the industrial revolution

however I agree that there is an imbalance in CO2 concentration caused by human activity and that it will cause extreme conditions on the long run if we don't restore this imbalance
the solutions have to come from technological innovations which we don't have yet
I don't think electric cars are the solution
nuclear energy or hydrogen fuel technology might bring the solution

those climate alarmists talking about extreme situations already happening today are irritating me
they don't bring any solution whatsoever
 
Electric cars are a better idea than internal combustion machines. It's not that all problems implementing a new system are already resolved, but a global change in mass transportation is only at its dawn, there is still plenty left to learn and develop.

Experts recently said that only question about recycling batteries is still widely open. It's sort of chicken and egg problem, as for any recycling you need industrial-scale production first to be economical. And different battery technologies are heavily researched still, so it's hard to work on recycling technologies without knowing, which battery chemistry will prevail in the future.

We mustn't forget all the implications, which are hidden in the oil economy. Especially global politics. I think that I would be even prepared to take inferior transportation system, just to get rid of oil from international politics.

The real issue is, of course, consumer society. Maybe this transformation of mass transport will be one small step toward a way out of it. It's not small thing changing so deeply entrenched habits.
 
the changes that are happening now are not abnormal and are not faster than changes that happened before
the younger dryas and 8,2 ka climate change happened much faster
during the Eemian, sea level was 8 meter higher than today
a problem today is that people have invested in infrastructure and real estate - much of it along the sea shores - and can't move any more
some areas may become problematic, but others more north offer new opportunities
it is now possible to grow tomatoes in greenhouses in Greenland, where never before fresh vegetables were available and land prices in Greenland are rising
another major problem is population growth, 7,5 billion people on earth today, an explosion since the industrial revolution

however I agree that there is an imbalance in CO2 concentration caused by human activity and that it will cause extreme conditions on the long run if we don't restore this imbalance
the solutions have to come from technological innovations which we don't have yet
I don't think electric cars are the solution
nuclear energy or hydrogen fuel technology might bring the solution

those climate alarmists talking about extreme situations already happening today are irritating me
they don't bring any solution whatsoever

can you give me a source for the comment that the changes now are not abnormal and are not faster than before? and if there were such changes in the past already could it be that they were also tied to sudden increases in the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and could these sudden changes in temperature also have lead to massextinctions?

during the eemian there were also hippos living at the rhine. if the worst case prognoses are correct we might reach temperature levels close to those of the eemian in 2050. we already reached similar CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere in 2015. but the increase of the surface temperature is delayed.

not only people close to the shores will have problems, also people who live in dry regions like certain places in africa or the mediterranean.

the population growth might not be such a big problem in the future. it's more our way of living. the global population growth seems to be slowing down and migth hit a maximum soon. a decrease of the population size would certainly not hurt though.
 
can you give me a source for the comment that the changes now are not abnormal and are not faster than before? and if there were such changes in the past already could it be that they were also tied to sudden increases in the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and could these sudden changes in temperature also have lead to massextinctions?

during the eemian there were also hippos living at the rhine. if the worst case prognoses are correct we might reach temperature levels close to those of the eemian in 2050. we already reached similar CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere in 2015. but the increase of the surface temperature is delayed.

not only people close to the shores will have problems, also people who live in dry regions like certain places in africa or the mediterranean.

the population growth might not be such a big problem in the future. it's more our way of living. the global population growth seems to be slowing down and migth hit a maximum soon. a decrease of the population size would certainly not hurt though.

the younger dryas was a temperature drop of 2-3° C in 1 or 2 decades

I don't know whether the Eemian hippos where from the same branch as those in Africa today and what climate they thrived in

yes some areas will become problematic, as has been in the past too
since the end of the LGM we have benefited from a very favourable climate which is one of the reasons of the population growth
a new temperature drop would be more dramatic for life on earth than the temperature rise that is expected now

another reason for population growth is human inventiveness and technology which eliminated many diseases and made life very comfortable
if we hadn't had the explosion in population growth CO2 concentrations would be much easier to handle
nevertheless I belive in human inventiveness and technology to overcome this challenge too

I acknowledge there is a problem and it is good that people become aware of it but I reject alarmism and measures inspired by panic
none of the projections of Al Gores movie became reality
the sole purpose was creating panic and putting himself in the spotlight
it will take several decades before we find a final solution, but these kind of actions could remove the credibility of the alarmists even before that time
 
the younger dryas was a temperature drop of 2-3° C in 1 or 2 decades

can we or should we even used this for comparison? it was not a global temperature decrease, some areas got colder others got warmer and certainly some areas were not really affected.
anyways what is the point to make comparisons? that we can see what massive effects those changes have on the ecosystems? we know modern climat change is human made or don't we?

yes some areas will become problematic, as has been in the past too
since the end of the LGM we have benefited from a very favourable climate which is one of the reasons of the population growth
a new temperature drop would be more dramatic for life on earth than the temperature rise that is expected now
depends on how the temperature is going to change
another reason for population growth is human inventiveness and technology which eliminated many diseases and made life very comfortable
if we hadn't had the explosion in population growth CO2 concentrations would be much easier to handle
nevertheless I belive in human inventiveness and technology to overcome this challenge too
sure if it didn't happen it would be easier but it happened and it might continue for a bit now. but that's just how it is now. you can't tell people to not have children, i mean i still have the opinion that there is no reason to have children, but people need to get to this conclusion themselves. it has been shown that with the increase in education of the women the number of births decreases on all continents. so in the future the population might not get much bigger than it is now. and even if, with the right technologies and politics the population might be able to be way bigger in the future without any problems. the challenge will be to distribute people especially when certain regions might become uninhabitable.

I acknowledge there is a problem and it is good that people become aware of it but I reject alarmism and measures inspired by panic
none of the projections of Al Gores movie became reality
the sole purpose was creating panic and putting himself in the spotlight
it will take several decades before we find a final solution, but these kind of actions could remove the credibility of the alarmists even before that time
which measures against climate change are inspired by panic and alarmism in your opinion? and which measures are reasonable for you? are there any that should or should not be taken now?
 

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