Good luck convincing people who live outside dense population zones to bike 3 hours to work. And "just move" is not an option. Think rents and home prices are bad now? If everyone moved to cities imagine the price gouging.

E: for the record I'm all about public transportation, it's just unrealistic to think we completely ditch cars. They are too useful so EVs make sense going forward

People who say EVs do nothing just want to complain for the sake of complaining a lot of the time. EVs aren't ideal, but they are better and more crucially they shift the consumer thinking away from ICE cars and towards alternatives.

Buying an electric vehicle does not make the world a better place, but buying and using a gas vehicle makes the world worse by a bigger margin, so if you're buying a vehicle, an electric vehicle is probably better.

It is the nuclear power vs fossil fuels vs renewables debate all over again. Nuclear is much greener than fossil fuels but comes with its own challenges regarding cost, safety and waste disposal. Renewable energy like solar, wind and hydro are better than nuclear but the point is that nuclear and renewables are not enemies rather they are allies who have to band together to beat fossil fuels.

Public transport is like renewables, the best solution but one which needs time because years of underdevelopment and under-funding means that they are not as developed as they should be.

EVs are like nuclear. Not the perfect solution but have the capability to serve areas and use cases that public transport (renewables) can't. There are issues like them costing more than the alternatives and that the disposal of waste produced by both is a problem with an unsatisfactory solution.

ICE vehicles are like fossil fuel energy plants. The worst of the worst with regards to their effect on the planet. Their only advantage is that they offer convenience.

So I think we should stop the narrative that EVs(nuclear) are bad because the are not the best solution at hand but rather combine increasing adoption of both EV(nuclear) and public transport (renewables) to combat the true threat that is ICE(fossil fuel energy plants).

First priority is to get rid of cars in general. Try to use bicycles and public transportation. If you don't need a car to get to work, consider a car share service to replace your private car/private parking space.

EVs probably have around 1/10th the lifetime emissions of a gas car, which is still really significant.

#1 - Burning fossil fuels (automobiles, specifically) kills 250,000 Americans a year. It causes a TREMENDOUS amount of pollution that is hugely impactful to health and quality of life

#2 - The only way to make our energy usage sustainable is to centralize production - ie you have to make all automobiles electric to start before the transition of the grid to renewables has a more dramatic effect. BTW, 40% of energy production of the US in 2023 was renewable. So our grid is getting cleaner and cleaner by the day.

#3 - Climate change. It is the most existential threat to our survival in our lifetime, bar none. We should do everything we can to leave the planet better than when we came. And right now we are failing miserably.

FYI, for all the naysayers saying EVs are "as" or "more" polluting than their ICE counterparts, this has long been debunked. Please do not listen to the Russian/Chinese propaganda or the comments of idiots that have no ability to analyze data.

EVs are good for the environment overall but you are not going to fix climate changing by buying more things.

Most of the criticism towards EVs comes from the idea that buying the shiny new thing is a net positive when it's actually less harmful than buying a traditional car.

Tldr: if you are going to buy a car, buy an EV, but don't just buy a new car just to switch to EV if you don't need it.

I like to think of it as "better than".

They're not perfect, but they're better than what people might do instead.
I could swap my older car for a second hand EV, which would be an environmental improvement.
The current car does 50-ish MPG, about 1.5 miles per KWH. An electric would do 4+miles per KWH, which going in reverse is 100+MPG.

A bigger improvement might come from me getting the bus/train/bike everywhere, which is where the fuck cars argument comes from.
But I am disorganised, a bit lazy, and I don't want to shepherd 4 people onto the train, paying £150 to go 100 miles.

So for me, slightly better is better than no improvement at all.
The energy used can be green, depending on what the national grid is up to that day. But it's always more green than burning dinosaurs.
And the reduction in brake dust is always a nice plus.

EVs are much better for the environment than ICE vehicles. Mass transportation is much better still.

In case you missed it, co2 is causing global warming, which has the ability to extinct mankind in the future. EV don't produce any co2. Some idiots will talk about indirect emissions, but the point is moot. You don't remove indirect emissions by removing EV, you remove them by cleaning power grid and logistic lines.

EV are a necessity on a short term basis. Developing public transports and alternative to cars are also a necessity.

Even looking only at the healthcare costs of the exhaust-induced unhealth, you see massive economic benefit.

It's the old star-topology vs decentralized-mesh-topology question...

It is much more efficient to have 1 giant windmill, rather-than a zillion little ones.

It is much more efficient to have electric-trams than the number of cars required to move the same number of people.

As for electric-cars vs internal-combustion-engine-cars, the relocation-of-cost from always buying gasoline, to just plugging-in at night, is something that many people have openly adored.

The Engineering Explained yt channel bluntly stated that if you're in the city, it's a no-brainer.

Rurally, or in the arctic, you can be screwed, however.

I've no idea what the equation is for how much exhaust per mile-driven is produced, between

• star-topology fuel-burning electric-grid powered cars
• mesh/distributed-topology of the same number of I.C.E. cars

but it wouldn't surprise me if it is significantly more efficient, just due to getting the maintenance up to industrial standards.

( sloppy maintenance costs, and some companies push sloppy maintenance, not changing oil frequently enough, e.g. in order to produce engine-wear, forcing required-replacement.

Some yt mechanics call-out this practice. )

_ /\ _

No product is good for the environment.

But an EV is a hell of a lot better than an ICE.

Here's what the Union of Concerned Scientists has to say about electric vehicles. In short, they're a win.

https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/electric-vehicles-are-cleaner

The cynical take is that EV's don't exist to save the world, they exist to save the car industry.

The more neutral take is that between an EV and an ICE car, the former is preferable.

Fact of the matter is that in order for many people to use a private car to go from anywhere to anywhere, you need a shocking amount of space and resources to make that work, especially if you compare that to expecting most people take those journeys by mass means, by bicycle or by foot.
So if you propose electric cars as the silver bullet solution for climate change, in a place where walking, cycling and transit are systemically kneecapped and held back, and nothing is done to solve the latter part, then the environmental impact of EV's is a drop on a hot plate.

They're better than ICE cars so provide a path for improvement on the existing installed base for transportation whilst not requiring people to significantly change their habits or large public investment.

However they're not the environmentally best solution for transportation in urban and even sub-urban settings: walking, cycling and public transportation (depending on distance) are vastly superior realistic solutions from an environmental point of view in those areas (they're seldom very realistic in the countryside, hence why I'm being very explicity about it being for urban and sub-urban areas).

However making cities and, worse, suburbia, appropriate for those better alternatives requires public investment (and we're in the late ultra-capitalist max-tax-evasion neoliberal era, so it's very much "screw collecting taxes and spending that public money for the public good"), time and even changes in housing density in many places (US-style suburbia is pretty shit at the population density and travel distance levels for realistic commuting by bicycle or public transport).

So Electric Cars are a pragmatic environmental improvement in such areas (and pretty much the only realistic solution outside them) and one where the economic elites don't have to pay taxes like everybody else since unlike for public transportation the cost of upgrading is entirelly born by consumers.

Yes. Shifts power source to the grid. Grid can use different sources for energy production.

EV power trains are much more simple to maintain, and will last longer once we stop anchoring them with disposable components and features. I’m looking forward to the EV “Corolla” with hand crank windows.

other than limiting exhaust, or is that it?

Gee, when you say it like that, it makes extinction-level events sound not so bad! It is That Bad, so that would be the most direct answer.

The important thing to note is that even though some electricity is generated from fossil fuels, EVs eliminate the path-dependency that ties transportation to fossil fuels.

The best solution is 0 cars anywhere.
A more realistic solution, is to replace planet-murdering cars with planet-kicking cars.

The math that I have seen on when an EV becomes better for the planet compared to an ICE is kinda all over the place, mostly due to how the power is generated.

Where I live, with a high amount of coal, buying a used ICE vehicle makes more sense than buying a new EV. If we drove more than just our weekly grocery trip, it might make more sense.

They are two separate solutions for different phases of the problem.

1. Buying electric vehicles over internal combustion engines now is practical because most of us don't live in a reasonable commuting distance to our jobs.

2. Vote for politicians that support pedestrian friendly zoning practices, remote work, and mass transit for the future so that less people are stuck in that situation in 20 years.

Doing only one of them doesn't fully solve the problem, you either continue to pollute now or you are stuck polluting, albeit less, forever.

I'm sure it annoys people that both are necessary and if you happen to live in a situation where the first is unnecessary for you, it can look like it's not necessary for everyone. But most Americans live at least 20 miles from their workplace so the vast majority of us can't just wait for policy solutions.

It's the same thing with recycling, companies trying to sell the idea that climate change is a personal failing of every single person even though said companies are responsible for like 90% of carbon emissions.

The problem with EVs is that we already have a better fix for this: public transit. Like trams and trains are both electric and would solve the microplastics caused by tires. Car companies are just pushing EVs to make a profit as always, the percentage of adoption required to effect climate changes isn't happening in the next several decades so just fix the issue centrally with proper public transit and actually effect climate change before we all die.

Doing "pretty much nothing for the climate" is hyperbole, I think. It's hard to say what the net climate benefit EVs might have, because our system is so complex. The numbers I found show that electricity and heating accounted for the highest, single category of CO~2~ emissions, at around 15 billion tons annually in 2020. Transportation came in second at around 7 billion tons. If we could wave a magic wand, and instantly do a 1:1 replacement of ICE cars with EVs, it would put a big dent in that category's emissions. It would also spike the electricity and heating category. Would the increase be less than the savings in the transportation category? LIkely, and the benefit would increase as more renewable electricity sources come online.

But even if we further used that magic wand to instantly get all of that new electricity for EVs from renewable sources, that still wouldn't touch the vast majority of emissions, in which car-centric lifestyles play a large role, e.g. manufacturing, construction, land use, even electricity and heating. So saying that EVs will do pretty much nothing for the climate is inaccurate, but so is saying that they're a big part of the solution. They're just incrementally better, and the size of the increment is arguable.

I think the push-back is mainly directed at that line of magical thinking that says that all we need to do is switch to EVs to drive to the grocery store, bring re-usable bags, and get Starbucks coffee in compostable cups, and the environment will be saved.

A lot of good answers here. One made me think about the good aspects, not just the game reduction aspects.

Electric cars are creating additional sources of funding for battery research, improvement of the electrical grid (there was a movement to get rid of central power generating and just use generators at each house), and electric generation smoothing.

Better batteries faster will help humans to make better use of the minerals we pull from the earth and the electrons we set in motion. (Imagine a battery peaking plant with 1980's batteries.)

Improvement of the electric grid could limit wildfires caused by them.

Smoothing electric grid drawls moves generation from peaking with natural gas to more base load, hopefully with something better than coal.

In terms of Carbon, they produce about one third of the damage which an equivalent internal combustion engine car would.

There's a lot of factors that go into the final figures, like the specifics of the vehicle and the source of the energy used to charge it.

It's a bit like vaping instead of smoking. Neither are good for you but one is clearly worse than the other.

If they want more people to switch to EVs specifically, they absolutely need to try to make some changes if they can.

Chargers: In a world where many people are living in old apartment buildings and condos, people are going to need public chargers. I don't just mean enough for 20 people. If we want a big societal switch, we need to be able to assure people that they won't encounter what happened in Texas recently. 60 chargers is still pretty rough if your city has half a million people in it.

Cost: MANY people can only afford used vehicles. This is not only because of the up-front cost. Parts for repairs can become a massive factor when deciding what type of car to buy. Even if you can get a used car for 6K, you might not go for it if you know that certain important repairs will cost you up to 20K.

Design: There are concerns for a lot of people with things being too screen-based. Some people like knobs that you can change without having to look away from the road. How many functions will be stuck behind a subscription? Will an update brick your car? Is it ok to tow normally, or will it sometimes require a special flatbed that most people can't afford? Do we have the battery fire thing under full control yet?

If every single car eventually becomes too expensive, driving will either become a "caste" thing, or people will put things together at home that might be even worse for the environment. Shoddy DIY repairs can also count for this.