If it’s a mistake it’s one there is no other choice but to make. There is a better chance of the US and EU deciding to nuke Africa to solve the industrialization problem then packing the population from the suburbs into cities before EVs are common in the EU and North America.
Mod note: No mention has been made about killing and this seems awfully close to a personal attack. No warning.
That’s patently not true. We can see the other choice being made all over the place. Most of Europe is not the car-centric urban sprawl that America is.
And American sprawl is actually only a part of the problem. It’s the export of that model to the next loci of growth that would be even worse. You just have to look at China’s current congestion nightmare to see that. Making those cars EVs won’t solve that.
I appreciate this is hyperbole, but that’s a telling example you chose there.
I mean, Africans already know where we stand in the West’s eyes, but it’s good to have it out in the open like that. African lives << a big yard, got it.
Most of Europe was built centuries before the car was invented. Which of course has nothing to do with changing our urban infrastructure. 31% of the US population lives in Urban Counties and 14% lives in rural counties which then leaves you wanting to relocate 55% of the US population. What method do you think is actually practical to relocate 180mm people and building all of the infrastructure they require.
Sure, preventing the next country from developing in the American model is easier then rebuilding currently built environments but you’re working against human nature to tell people with means that they still have to be crammed together with all of the local assholes.
What do you think would do more for the environment removing 1.2 billion people or forcing people to move into urban areas? If the decision is based on the rest of the human race surviving or not why wouldn’t you take the biggest step possible?
Well that’s strange because you seemed to reject my assertion that other choices were already being made. Most of Europe remains rural with hundreds of millions dependent on personal transport and high levels of car ownership and that is unlikely to change.
It is almost like it is possible for millions of people to live in other ways isn’t it?
Comparing everything to the USA seems a strange choice. You are assuming that continuing to push EV’s will mean countries will do exactly what the USA has done, and that the only way to counteract that is to force people, one way or another, into large, tightly packed cities.
That restriction of choice isn’t remotely feasible nor ethical.
Carrot + stick. Build better, human-centric cities, and simultaneously stop providing car-centric infrastructure in the sprawl suburbs.
Why do you talk like sustainable urban living mean Kowloon Walled City?
Urbanization, because 1.2 billion people is a temporary fix, they will be replaced (or will the genocide be an ongoing effort? Asia next, then South America… ), whereas changing lifestyles can be permanent.
Well, I have a conscience, for one thing…
Why do you talk like the only option for rural living is unsustainable urban sprawl?
You say that and yet from your comments in this thread you seem to believe that it is acceptable to designate people’s choice of life location as “unnecessary” and force people to live in ways that you find acceptable but that they may not.
You are about a denial of choice and a limiting of human flourishing based on a limited and blinkered view of what is and is not sustainable.
That does not sound like a conscience that is human-centered, more like ideological dogma.
I say let all options flourish. Make the cities welcoming and sustainable with public transport for all. Those that are atracted to that will come.
Also make the rural societies sustainable, build better, build greener. Include public transport links where possible and encourage EV’s to fill the needs that public transport can’t.
Those that then choose such a life can do so sustainably as well.
To bring this back round to the question in point.
EV’s are here and will dominate faster than even I suspected.
They will end up providing cheap, green public and private transport for all and massive side-benefits for green energy storage.
Throw in a decent degree of battery recycling, reclaimation and re-use and there is very little not to love about it.
I see people moving away from nice human-centric cities because they can work from home, and can move to a place with more space without needing to regularly commute.
This is absolutely what I’ve seen over the last 18 months.
I live in a very rural location but with excellent public transport links into London. The demand for housing in our area has grown with people wanting to escape the cities.
That, to me at least, suggests that given other options and ways of living people will not all voluntarily choose city-life. That being the case they will still need personal transport and EV’s fit the bill very nicely.
Because I’ve lived in Seoul, LA, Houston, and Denver and spent large amount of time in Sydney, Munic, and Frankfurt and in the end cities are just about being crammed together with hundreds of assholes.
Personally, I’m never living with a density of greater than 1,000 people/sqmile again it’s basically hell.
I think looking to the US or Europe for how things are going to develop is a mistake. There is a lot of inertia because it is difficult and expensive change existing city layouts and transport systems. You can also add the countries that have economies that have developed over the past fifty years.
China has quite recently built new cities and moved millions of the people from the countryside to these huge metropolises. They have also embraced EVs without being held back by the Big Auto manufacturers keen to defend their enormous investments in factories based around ICE drive trains. This has given China a free hand to create an EV manufacturing industry that will become highly competitive.
However, it could be argued that that even the latest urban planning is already quite out of date. If we have learned one thing from the Covid lockdowns that the madness of moving millions of people in and out of city center offices, is wasteful and expensive. Working from home or from nearby small offices has a lot of benefits for both businesses and their employees. The technology to do this has been around for a while now and there are plenty of people who really don’t want to go back to enduring the commuting Hell that was regarded as a ‘normal’ working lifestyle.
But that, I guess, is a bigger question. Simply replacing ICE drive trains with EV equivalents to do exactly the same pattern of driving simply requires waiting around until the market category you prefer is covered and the charging infrastructure develops to make it a smooth transition. If you end up spending the same amount of time bumper to bumper on the same tedious journey each day, that would be not be much of an advance. No matter how many benefits the auto makers, with their expensive advertising, seek to persuade us that the next new model will change our lives for the better.
I am wondering if we are near to reaching ‘peak car’?
Well in many western nations you are at the point of 1 car for every two people (including children of course) so indeed we may not see any huge expansion past this point.
Replacing a fair proportion of those vehicles with EV’s is going to be good for the environment but not act as an incentive for further car use.
I hope we aren’t at ‘peak car’, because EVs move people around with less energy than anything else - including public transit.
It’s not just the old urban planning (or 'new urbanism) that is behind the times, it’s the entire concept of public transportation as an environmental good. It may still be a social good for poor people or people living in crowded areas without easy car availability, but in terms of energy it’s a big loser. A city bus can be ten times worse than an EV per passenger mile. The most efficient trains in the world are at least twice as bad as an EV.
The whole idea of cities being more efficient than the country is being turned upside down by EVs. And also by the work-at-home trend.
Maybe we are actually at ‘peak city’. They are becoming less livable by the day.
The buses on my local bus route are now EV. Made by the Chinese company BYD, I believe. They don’t look ultra modern, I believe they used an existing body intended for a diesel engine and they seem to have packed the batteries in the roof. Most motor manufacturers seem to be taking the same sort of short cut to get a product on to the market as soon as possible. I guess they will have more refined models in the pipeline and they will come to market over the next few years.
Says here that the new policy in London is to order only zero-emission buses from now on.
The entire London fleet is about 9000 and 3800 of these are hybrid and 485 electric.
I expect many cities are making similar plans.
China leads the way on this and Shenzhen is the best example with 16,000 electric buses and 22,000 electric taxis all centrally managed.
Electric cars get all the glamour, but I think fleets of buses and commercial delivery vehicles of various shapes and sizes operating out of depots will do more to change the air in cities for the better. They account for big part of the road traffic.
Sad to say the dramatic increase in home deliveries during lockdown has led to a huge demand for delivery vehicles and the bulk of these are diesel and petrol driven. Electric delivery vehicles are just not yet available at a competitive cost and performance, especially for small companies.
So maybe the air quality will get will get worse before its gets better.
The Hertz deal with Tesla for 100,000 cars is a sign of the times. All the delivery big fleet operators must be making the same sort of cold, hard calculations.
Buses are a very flexible form of public transport, and there is a great potential for efficiency gains. Routes can be planned and changed according to passenger demand and road conditions. A depot full of buses also has the potential to provide huge battery capacity to the electricity grid and even out some of the variability of renewables. Same with delivery fleets. For home delivery there is talk of local delivery hubs, maybe the last leg done by someone on a cargo bike? So maybe less vehicles on the road?
There are a lot of opportunities, the whole business of logistics and passenger transport at a city and local level is being shaken up. Cities may become more liveable instead a hollowed out congested mess. I live in hope.
The real problem with buses is that they don’t run full very much - generally around rush hours. And because they have to provide access in evenings as well, buses often run nearly empty for hours. And buses are heavy, so they use lots of power.
Electrifying them helps, and makes them more efficient, but they still can’t beat an EV car.
A Tesla model 3 uses approximately 15 kWh per 100k. A typical electric 18 meter bus uses 165. So an electtic bus needs to have 11 people in it, not including the driver, before it can beat a Tesla with a single person for passenger efficiency, and 44 people before it can beat a Tesla with four seats filled. That’s on average. Every hour a bus drives around with no passengers or just a couple of passengers needs to be made up by an hour where the bus is completely full.
Light rail transit is similar, and high speed trains are much worse (and not electric).
A city the size of London has about 1.1million commuters moving in an out of the center each day and those journeys are concentrated in the morning and evening peak hours. The public transport system is designed to accommodate that peak traffic. Before the Covid lockdowns there was a constant debate about overcrowding at these times and how the various rail and bus authorities should lay on more services or longer trains. It is pretty much the same on the roads and more buses do not help much when the congestion slows traffic to a crawl. This is a problem that affects many cities around the world. Some without a rail infrastructure have it far worse, blighted by constantly gridlocked roads.
There are efficiencies that can be gained by integrating different forms of public transport and controlling them centrally. That Shenzen system controlling Electric buses and EV taxi shows the potential.
But the point that has been made during the lockdowns is that many of these passenger journeys are not essential in a modern service oriented economy where the employees spend most of their time at work typing at a computer, sending emails and having meetings. There are considerable advantages to working from home (or locally) for both employer and employee if it is managed well. The 9 to 5 work pattern commuting into central business districts looks very much like a relic from a time before we computers and fast internet. So perhaps this diurnal tide of humanity sweeping in and out of city centres will be no longer needed in the future? What then, will we do with all the roads and railways and for that matter all the small apartments and bolt holes for those who need to live close to their place of work?
These, I think, are some pretty big issues that question whether journeys are necessary and will have far more impact than changing the drive train on vehicles from ICE to EV.
I am sure many businesses and politicians really want the lockdowns to be over and everyone go back to work as they did before Covid changed the world. I think this is like an ostrich sticking its head in the ground to avoid seeing an uncomfortable reality.
There is an opportunity to make our cities far better places to live. it would be a fine thing if motoring became an occasional pleasure rather than a tedious part of the daily grind. I still twitch when I remember hideous commutes I did across a congested city. Would an EV make the bumper to bumper crawl any better?
Is that a modern electric bus, or an ICE one? I can’t tell from your numbers in the other post.
How does this work? How does an electric train (e.g. DC Metro) moving several hundred people use more energy for the same trip than several hundred individual EVs in stop-and-go traffic?