Are Electric Cars the biggest con on the planet?
Discussion
SteveKTMer said:
Given the driving ability of half the population, the number of vehicles on the road and the poor condition of the roads, I'm absolutely waiting for a full autonomous car - this is the ideal in the current climate for commuting and general travel.
Imagine the convenience of being able to summon or book a car by an app, having it arrive at a time in the morning that the AI predicts will get you to the office on time, you jump aboard the autonomous pod with your coffee and iPad, read the news and listen to Today as you're driven door to door by a brain that won't ask you anything about your life or try to engage in light conversation.
Once you've been dropped off it will navigate to a charging station and re-charge and await the next booking.
For shopping, commuting, school runs, even business trips, this is the ideal. Probably covers 80% of car usage.
Autonomous cars sound good on paper and there are many marketing stories written about how life will change. As with all significant new technology, we just don't know how it will organically impact the world and daily habits and culture of people. Imagine the convenience of being able to summon or book a car by an app, having it arrive at a time in the morning that the AI predicts will get you to the office on time, you jump aboard the autonomous pod with your coffee and iPad, read the news and listen to Today as you're driven door to door by a brain that won't ask you anything about your life or try to engage in light conversation.
Once you've been dropped off it will navigate to a charging station and re-charge and await the next booking.
For shopping, commuting, school runs, even business trips, this is the ideal. Probably covers 80% of car usage.
A car to a large extent is an extension of our homes. It's a personal space, which even has 'furniture' like your belongings or modifications. A publicly shared autonomous vehicle is more like a bus or train. Will people want to give up their personal space?
Even people who get chauferred around prefer the chauffeur to use their personal vehicle. Otherwise it's just a fancy taxi. People will always want to own things or have exclusive access to use them.
Will we even travel as much in the future? Millions of road miles no longer happen due to a shift in working from home culture. Apart from truck drivers that may go extinct, why do we need shared autonomous cars?
Motion sickness is a real thing with autonomous cars.
It's all speculative what the future will bring.
whirlybird said:
And now for something completely different:
Having watched with great amusement the Citroen Ami falling over in Monaco, ( And yes ICE cars fall over too) 1/ What re
tard even thought what a great form of transport that was ???? and 2/ how about a pre Monaco F1 Race in them .
I'd rather see a McMurtry Spéirling at Monaco. Having watched with great amusement the Citroen Ami falling over in Monaco, ( And yes ICE cars fall over too) 1/ What re
tard even thought what a great form of transport that was ???? and 2/ how about a pre Monaco F1 Race in them .Do you remember the Isetta 3wheeler? My Mum had one, used to take me to school when it was too wet to cycle. I think there is now an electric version.
Regarding autonomous cars, will they detect pot holes? As there's one large one near me on a NSL road right on the near side driving line and I can almost guarantee that 2 out of three times I pass it there is a car parked up afterwards with a nearside front puncture. If they don't detect it I foresee many more punctures in the future.
silent ninja said:
...stuff...
I agree with your point about personal space. When Musk was trying to hype his hoax "robotaxi" concept in order to pump the Tesla share price, this argument raged on the "Telsa going bust" thread on here. The Musk fanbois were adamant that they would happily send their cars off to earn for them while they worked or slept. Others, including me, argued that cleaning vomit (or other bodily fluids) out of the car before commuting to work was not what we'd ever want to do. Nor would we want our car at the other side of the city at the exact moment we needed it unexpectedly. Nor would we want the wear and tear, slashed upholstery, scuffs and dents. I can see that one might buy a Tesla (or a fleet) only to send it off to work but not one's personal car.NortonES2 said:
Regarding autonomous cars, will they detect pot holes? As there's one large one near me on a NSL road right on the near side driving line and I can almost guarantee that 2 out of three times I pass it there is a car parked up afterwards with a nearside front puncture. If they don't detect it I foresee many more punctures in the future.
They will detect whatever the software is designed to detect so absolutely no reason why they would not avoid one just like any other obstruction. AstonZagato said:
I'm not belittling the problem but I would point out that, oddly, the anti EV bingo crowd haven't had a problem with this extraction for the decades of exploitation and pollution to create smartphone and laptop batteries. It would appear to be a convenient stick with which to beat EVs rather than a passionately held position against the practice. And it ignores the counter which is the pollution of extracting the oil and refining it.
Thankfully the EV industry is trying moving away from these commodities.
Not forgetting, and probably more important in the long run, the near 100% recyclability of these materials.Thankfully the EV industry is trying moving away from these commodities.
In essence, once a nation has sufficient material to electrify their passenger car fleet, the mining for that fleet stops forever after.
And the carbon footprint for the production of second gen batteries is cut in half.
AstonZagato said:
I agree with your point about personal space. When Musk was trying to hype his hoax "robotaxi" concept in order to pump the Tesla share price, this argument raged on the "Telsa going bust" thread on here. The Musk fanbois were adamant that they would happily send their cars off to earn for them while they worked or slept. Others, including me, argued that cleaning vomit (or other bodily fluids) out of the car before commuting to work was not what we'd ever want to do. Nor would we want our car at the other side of the city at the exact moment we needed it unexpectedly. Nor would we want the wear and tear, slashed upholstery, scuffs and dents. I can see that one might buy a Tesla (or a fleet) only to send it off to work but not one's personal car.
I suspect there will be a business model that rents cars to those people who join a certain club. Much like we do now in boating. `The largely overcomes the antisocial behavioural types as they get penalised and banned. There is an app I used in the USA whereby one can hire cars personally owned. I've used it and it works really well. It's good for specialist cars. Obviously as a member one would have to accept that your car is not available when rented.
None of this is EV specific though but enabled by modern technology and apps.
Nomme de Plum said:
whirlybird said:
And now for something completely different:
Having watched with great amusement the Citroen Ami falling over in Monaco, ( And yes ICE cars fall over too) 1/ What retard even thought what a great form of transport that was ???? and 2/ how about a pre Monaco F1 Race in them .
I'd rather see a McMurtry Spéirling at Monaco. Having watched with great amusement the Citroen Ami falling over in Monaco, ( And yes ICE cars fall over too) 1/ What re
tard even thought what a great form of transport that was ???? and 2/ how about a pre Monaco F1 Race in them .Do you remember the Isetta 3wheeler? My Mum had one, used to take me to school when it was too wet to cycle. I think there is now an electric version.
raspy said:
That is most concerning.
I am curious, are those who are pausing to examine the dark side of EV supply chains also applying the same level of examination to all of their consumer choices in their daily lives?
For some reason there is a lot of focus on EV supply chains and CO2 and what not, whereas nobody has ever cared before. Maybe other than fracking? As you say, we have happily raped the planet for a long time. A funny thing as well is that the people who do mining, perhaps particularly in the western world, don't tend to mind there being more opportunity around it. It's usually very profitable to dig stuff out of the ground. I am curious, are those who are pausing to examine the dark side of EV supply chains also applying the same level of examination to all of their consumer choices in their daily lives?
I can safely say that I'm not concerned about it. It's part of the modern world.
GT9 said:
AstonZagato said:
I'm not belittling the problem but I would point out that, oddly, the anti EV bingo crowd haven't had a problem with this extraction for the decades of exploitation and pollution to create smartphone and laptop batteries. It would appear to be a convenient stick with which to beat EVs rather than a passionately held position against the practice. And it ignores the counter which is the pollution of extracting the oil and refining it.
Thankfully the EV industry is trying moving away from these commodities.
Not forgetting, and probably more important in the long run, the near 100% recyclability of these materials.Thankfully the EV industry is trying moving away from these commodities.
In essence, once a nation has sufficient material to electrify their passenger car fleet, the mining for that fleet stops forever after.
And the carbon footprint for the production of second gen batteries is cut in half.
I don't think the mining will ever stop, despite more economic and efficient methods of recycling being developed, there will evolve a multi tier battery market, cheap cars with what we use now and more expensive with the newer tech, as is always the way.
DMZ said:
For some reason there is a lot of focus on EV supply chains and CO2 and what not, whereas nobody has ever cared before. Maybe other than fracking? As you say, we have happily raped the planet for a long time. A funny thing as well is that the people who do mining, perhaps particularly in the western world, don't tend to mind there being more opportunity around it. It's usually very profitable to dig stuff out of the ground.
I can safely say that I'm not concerned about it. It's part of the modern world.
I can safely say that I'm not concerned about it. It's part of the modern world.
The whole ICE vs EV 'battle' is a ridiculous construct brought about by people soaking themselves in the toxicity of social and other media.
Take a deep breath, step back and look at in a different light I say.
Establish the fact from there fiction, and stop believing the fiction.
This is a battle of humans vs nature and the laws that govern it.
Electric propulsion is an opportunity to help in that battle, not to beat ICEs, but to support them.
silent ninja said:
Autonomous cars sound good on paper and there are many marketing stories written about how life will change. As with all significant new technology, we just don't know how it will organically impact the world and daily habits and culture of people.
The changes would be monumental.No need for drivers licenses, so the DVLC will downsize.
No need for insurance, so many car insurance companies will downsize, or go out of business.
No more traffic offenses, so many PH members will get their wish as the police can concentrate on 'real' crimes, and the courts will have their traffic offense backlogs removed.
No need to have a personal car maintained, so many small and medium garages would close.
There's lots of other suppositions and guesses, but things would undoubtedly change, some for the better, some for the worse.
"May you live in interesting times"
Old Chinese curse.
DMZ said:
I can safely say that I'm not concerned about it. It's part of the modern world.
It's not part of the modern world I want to live in, it's attrocious and degrading. We used to send children up chimneys years ago, we don't do that anymore. We also don't use mining technology which regularly buries people. Under the north sea off the North East coast are a couple of massive potash mines, very safe, highly mechanised and with regular inspections. Very interesting to visit, being driven a mile or so under the sea in a pick up truck. And that's just for fertiliser !If we, as in the west, the USA, EU etc insisted these mines were safe before we bought the material then they would make them safe. It's just greed and disregard for others that means we continue to buy from the cheapest sources.
Some advances have been made in this area and Apple are pretty well advanced due to the beating they received from in part the anti-apple brigade. https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/...
Tesla are trying but as this report makes clear, it's not easy. https://investingnews.com/where-does-tesla-get-lit... DRC government set up a company to control the small scale mining of Cobalt but it meant the workers received no better protection but the price went up with another hand in the till. We could stop this but we choose not to.
DMZ said:
For some reason there is a lot of focus on EV supply chains and CO2 and what not, whereas nobody has ever cared before. Maybe other than fracking? As you say, we have happily raped the planet for a long time. A funny thing as well is that the people who do mining, perhaps particularly in the western world, don't tend to mind there being more opportunity around it. It's usually very profitable to dig stuff out of the ground.
I can safely say that I'm not concerned about it. It's part of the modern world.
It is really important that whatever materials we extract, mine or manufacture that we do this as sustainably as possible and not leave any residue that negatively impacts our planet. I can safely say that I'm not concerned about it. It's part of the modern world.
However the extraction of coal and other minerals like tin previously, then oil have had many negative impacts on the people working in those industries, the localities and environment more generally. Maybe a number of posters are too young to remember some really bad disasters and also life shortening illnesses caused by these industries.
We understand more now so there is little excuse to carry on without taking sustainability into account. We cannot allow ourselves to be selective on which evidence we choose to believe.
I believe on the evidence so far EV's are more sustainable than ICEs but this should not be taken for granted. However we must not allow the fossil fuel industry to behave like the tobacco industry did decades ago.
GT9 said:
The whole ICE vs EV 'battle' is a ridiculous construct brought about by people soaking themselves in the toxicity of social and other media.
In the same way diesel is being phased out pretty quickly for cars, which is great, it had its day, its time is over.
It's just progress.
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