I think this concern has to be balanced against the billions of dollars promoting the status quo. A lot of people want to believe that all we need to do is buy electric cars, and there are multiple industries pushing that since it’s good for business while politicians like not having to tell people that lifestyle changes are necessary.
Literally every time I see anything about "green transportation" from federal, state, or local government and non-profits the talk starts with and ends with electric vehicles.
The feds talk some talk about alternative transit, and some cities are leaning heavily into alternate transit...but at my county and local level there's basically zero interest in public transit, walking, or biking infrastructure.
Advocating for walkable cities and being anti-automobile is all the rage nowadays, but that doesn’t translate well to real world action. As much as we want to, and should, redesign cities, that is a monumental undertaking that will necessarily require several decades worth of effort and billions of dollars.
Switching to electric vehicles, meanwhile, does not require eminent domain and does not ask citizens to change their mobility standards. It is also something local governments don’t have to pay for.
That challenge was to find ways to contribute in your own sphere.
Converting one car to an EV (and accepting the resulting compromises) is more realistically in that spirit than something like “knock down your house and build a mid-rise on your lot” would be.
Collective action and sacrifice will be necessary to change density. Still that doesn't prevent us from adapting to more sustainable transportation modes, both collectively and personally.
I was addressing the fear that governments have of disrupting current mobility 'standards'.
What I really don't understand is why don't Shell, Exxon, Chevron and their ilk get into the EV game and start setting up DC fast chargers at all of their gas stations? They profit, and EV range anxiety becomes a thing of the past by having chargers literally everywhere.
> What I really don't understand is why don't Shell, Exxon, Chevron and their ilk get into the EV game and start setting up DC fast chargers at all of their gas stations?
At least in Canada, there has definitely been a push in this direction. Both Petro-Can[1] and Irving[2] have set up fast charging networks at their stations. Many of the Tesla Superchargers in Canada[3] are also located at various gas stations and truck stops (that specifically benefit from more restaurant customers when they use the charger).
I'm guessing for the same reason innovation rarely happens within companies that are printing money by maintaining the status quo. The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen is a good book on this, and the iPhone is another good example that had to come from outside the telecom industry.
Plus, there's an impedance mismatch between EV charging times and the retail store model, in that retail stores want customers in and out ASAP.
Gas stations are usually franchised and the gas companies make good profit from that arrangement. The problem with supporting electric, is that most EV users don’t visit gas stations at all - they charge at home overnight.
It’ll happen but it requires reversing half a century spent pouring money into marketing the idea that climate change isn’t real, won’t be much, etc. They’ll need to reconsider the space usage but one nice thing about EVs is that non-toxic fuel means you can safely spread out through the entire parking lot.
Where I live those big petroleum companies own very few gas stations. Personally I almost always fill up at convenience store chains or truck stop chains--and almost none of those I use are owned by a petroleum producing company.
> A lot of people want to believe that all we need to do is buy electric cars, and there are multiple industries pushing that
Um... who? I think it's rather the opposite: I see a "lot of people" in "multiple industries" making strawman arguments like this. Essentially, it's a deflection from "EVs are better than cars" (a clear truth that can't reasonably be argued with) to "EV proponents don't have all the answers either" (a winnable argument that feels like it's related even though it isn't).
Buy the EV. Also move closer to the urban core, WFH, and otherwise reduce your dependence on the suburban road networks. But buy the EV if you need a car.
The automobile industry is huge. They desperately want the way we deal with climate change to be buying EVs at the same price as ICEs rather than investing in transit, density, biking, or electric low-speed vehicles (one electric SUV needs a battery large enough to power tens of those or hundreds of e-bikes).
Agriculture uses a ton of fossil fuels, and they have the same interest: electric trucks aren’t a threat the way eating less beef or not shipping food halfway around the planet is.
Repeat for hospitality & travel, etc.
My point isn’t that EVs are terrible or that we shouldn’t buy them but that we have to guard against complacency. Remember how city governments jumped at Uber & Tesla’s marketing because it gave them the chance to say self-driving cars would solve travel & therefore they didn’t need to invest in transit or bike infrastructure, wasting a decade? The same dynamic will unfold here if we treat EVs as the primary thing we need to change rather than a necessary but far from sufficient step.
Even leaving aside your dubious claim about what can and cannot be argued with, your conclusion about what choices people should make is pie in the sky for a significant part of even the developed world.
Economic and logistic reasons mean that carbon fuel cars are still the best transport option for most (?) people outside of urban centres and well-paid jobs.
Upvoted, as I see you were downsmashed because you spoke of realities, not "where we want to be".
What you say is true. I find "everyone EV now!" proponents, often just use handwavy platitudes when given "I can't" info. For example, for many, many people ... range is a vital, and sadly an electric EV preventive thing.
When told this, EV absolutists often blather on about why a person is wrong, and do so while ignoring that person's reality.
The same is valid for cost. If you are poor, and can barely afford a truck for work, telling someone to spend 2x or 3x for a EV variant is exceptionally unfeeling, unrealistic, and elitist.
What we need to do, is be open to solutions to help people switch. One is H2, which has multiple cars with extensive range on the road, yet EV absolutists will start going on about green or not h2.
While at the same time ignoring that all excess power in the US, currently comes from fossil fuel!
Until the last fossil fuel shuts down, that is excess kept running by EV needs.
But you see, the goal is not where the battery charge, or h2 comes from, it is where it can come from!
We can 100% make green h2, just as we can eventually fully purge fossil fuels from our electric grid.
And it takes decades to move cars and transport from fossil to alternative options. We are doing it in parallel. So that one day, when we are free of fossil use, all our cars will already be fossil free!
Including poor people driving 20 year old cars!
It’s not 2-3 times more for an EV: the average American truck buyer dropped $46k last year. You can buy a Leaf or Bolt for half that much and you’ll save many thousands of dollars in maintenance and fuel over the life of the vehicle. Yeah, perhaps 10-20% of truck buyers do something those vehicles can’t but most of the sales are fashion accessories for men who like to cosplay as ranchers. Given how much of the population lives in non-rural areas and doesn’t haul cattle for a living, switching to EVs buys a lot of time to find solutions for the hardest use cases.
Similarly, the reason hydrogen isn’t talked about more comes down to two reasons: it’s not competitive and it costs a lot more. Right now a huge number of people can buy an EV and charge it at home - if your commute is the American average or less, you don’t even need a 240V plug for that. If you want to buy a hydrogen powered car, you’re paying twice as much just to get started and you can refuel at a total of 60 places in the entire U.S. and Canada, most of them in California.
That might be worth thinking about but for the other problem: most hydrogen is made from fossil fuels. This is why there’s so much astroturf presenting it as a good future choice: the hydrocarbon industry can profit now while claiming that green sources will happen real soon now.
Yes, you can envision that we’d have solar powered H2 plants or something but that still hits a lot of incompletely solved logistical problems—it’s hard to contain and ship—and immediately runs into the question of why you wouldn’t instead have that solar power charging the much greater number of EVs which are much easier to support.
Here we are again. People "don't need" that truck, so buy a small ev, it is cheaper!
Meanwhile, I specifically referenced prople buying trucks for work.
And if they do not, a small gas powered is far cheaper that a small ev. Remember, I referenced poor, which means save NOW!, or where do you think all that well known credit card debt comes from.
Planning for future maintenance costs takes a back seat, when poor.
And so here we show an elitist, hand wavy response. Telling the person referenced as "need a truck for work", no, you don't!
Yes, I’m aware. It’s still true that most people do not need a truck for work, even if you look exclusively at the subset of people who buy a truck for work. One of the interesting things about getting out of affluent areas is that you see far fewer trucks – go somewhere poor and it’s a lot more small cars because they cost less to buy, maintain, and use half as much fuel.
Again, it’s not that _nobody_ uses one but that it’s a much smaller fraction of the total market. We can reduce emissions considerably without inconveniencing anyone and over time all of the used EVs on the market will improve the low-cost options.
