I bought a new Bolt EUV two months ago. I genuinely love it. It’s an amazing car with quite the feature set (wireless CarPlay, adaptive cruise control, heated AND cooled seats, etc.) After tax...
I bought a new Bolt EUV two months ago. I genuinely love it. It’s an amazing car with quite the feature set (wireless CarPlay, adaptive cruise control, heated AND cooled seats, etc.) After tax credits, it will cost me less than $30,000. It feels like I’m driving a way more expensive car than I actually am.
It’s also the only EV in that price range that I, as a decently tall person, can fit comfortably in. The cabin height on the Kona, for example, is simply not enough. Even with the driver’s seat at its lowest, my head is still in the ceiling.
GM announcing that they’re killing CarPlay, and, now, the whole Bolt line is baffling to me. The demand is clearly there. You can go on r/BoltEV and find plenty of people waiting months to get theirs. I ordered mine last June and only got it this past February.
This is my take away too. We need an EV for the honda civic/toyota corolla market. One that is affordable and appeals to people whose situation requires them to do the calculous on cost of gas....
The fact that GM is killing it off in favor of larger, more expensive vehicles that are easier to market and show off in dealer lots is a grim preview of what’s to come. Yes, we should have EVs that cater to the wants of Americans that demand bigger, showier, faster cars. But we are also going to need a lot more cars like the Bolt if we want people to adopt EVs faster than they are now.
This is my take away too. We need an EV for the honda civic/toyota corolla market. One that is affordable and appeals to people whose situation requires them to do the calculous on cost of gas. Small margins lead to small marketing numbers so let's just scrap it and sell more electrified monster trucks. What a bummer.
I feel like the cheap compact market is better served by hybrids currently. The majority of this market would be more likely to be renting, and the majority of rentals are likely apartment...
I feel like the cheap compact market is better served by hybrids currently. The majority of this market would be more likely to be renting, and the majority of rentals are likely apartment dwellers or houses that can't install their own chargers (110/220 volt charging is a thing but slow IIRC), so charging becomes very inconvenient. But nobody has done an affordable (sub-$20k) hybrid either, it seems. I have this complaint, by the way, as somebody who would be particularly interested in a tiny little hybrid.
110V charging can take over a day to charge for larger EVs. Even my Chevy Volt can take overnight on a 110V wall charger. If you're in an apartment complex, you probably don't have access to a...
110V charging can take over a day to charge for larger EVs. Even my Chevy Volt can take overnight on a 110V wall charger.
If you're in an apartment complex, you probably don't have access to a plug to even charge your car while it's in the parking lot.
I'm guessing that in the future, more and more apartment complexes will start offering vehicle charging as an amenity to lure in new tenants. Obviously it'll start off in higher end places, but maybe it'll filter down to other complexes as well.
Yep- you can already see this in places that use underground parking (very common in Seattle) - some places ask you to pay a little extra for parking and will cover the energy, others will add it...
Yep- you can already see this in places that use underground parking (very common in Seattle) - some places ask you to pay a little extra for parking and will cover the energy, others will add it to your energy bill at the end of the month. They typically have 2 or more ChargePoint Level 2 stations.
The wall charge was more for the house renting crowd, maybe apartments with garages, which are rare. With California mandating cars that aren't primarily internal combustion by 2035 we had better...
The wall charge was more for the house renting crowd, maybe apartments with garages, which are rare. With California mandating cars that aren't primarily internal combustion by 2035 we had better make this happen.
It's not just GM, but no we don't have access to most of those cars. We have a few from Hyundai, like the Ionic and the Kona (which is still a small SUV), the Kia has a few small eSUVs as well...
It's not just GM, but no we don't have access to most of those cars. We have a few from Hyundai, like the Ionic and the Kona (which is still a small SUV), the Kia has a few small eSUVs as well like the Nero or Soul, the Nissan Leaf which may just be the most ubiquitous EV here other than Tesla. Otherwise companies are mostly focusing on the SUV, luxury, or truck market.
Hyundai and Kia can't seem to keep Ionics or EVs in stock. Everywhere I look near me there's a $5k+ dealer markup and only the top trim-levels available. That takes it from the lower end of just...
Hyundai and Kia can't seem to keep Ionics or EVs in stock. Everywhere I look near me there's a $5k+ dealer markup and only the top trim-levels available. That takes it from the lower end of just outside "affordable" to well into "not affordable" range.
All I want is an EV that's basically a Honda Accord in performance, size, fitment/build quality, and price. But the car market seems determined not to provide me one.
I can't help but wonder if the American car market having to be run through dealerships, which are more like parasitic moneylending scams that use their monopoly on car sales to get you into a debt treadmill with them, is responsible for the car market here being like this. Everything is too big, too flashy, too expensive. . . And if you want something that's not like that it's compromised as hell. The middle of the market for people who just want something reliable and nice is being hollowed out.
Preach! That is my experience as well. Take this with a grain of salt because I remember reading about it ages ago and now can't even find a whiff of it, but I remember hearing the benefit of...
All I want is an EV that's basically a Honda Accord in performance, size, fitment/build quality, and price. But the car market seems determined not to provide me one.
Preach! That is my experience as well.
I can't help but wonder if the American car market having to be run through dealerships, which are more like parasitic moneylending scams that use their monopoly on car sales to get you into a debt treadmill with them, is responsible for the car market here being like this.
Take this with a grain of salt because I remember reading about it ages ago and now can't even find a whiff of it, but I remember hearing the benefit of dealerships is that car manufacturers have to have localized places where cars can be worked on (rather than sending back to a domestic hub), without monopolistic price gouging (i.e. dealerships compete), and most importantly ensures that cars can be worked on without the need for purposely specialized parts (so mechanics can work on them as well). That said, everything I read and watched tonight trying to find any of those points pretty much pointed to corrupt laws and lobbying so I could be completely off base.
The middle of the market for people who just want something reliable and nice is being hollowed out.
I think this could be said of all markets at the moment. Housing, cars, etc... It's pretty depressing.
Here are the current US options. I did a quick glance and it looks like the Mazda MX-30 from your list is the only one available here, and even then it’s only sold in California. A majority of the...
Here are the current US options. I did a quick glance and it looks like the Mazda MX-30 from your list is the only one available here, and even then it’s only sold in California.
A majority of the US models are luxury vehicles that many (most?) people are priced out of. Also stock is hard to come by. Despite being “available” in the US, I waited eight months to get my Bolt EUV.
Wow, that's a depressingly long list of horribly expensive and mostly very boring and same-looking vehicles. There are a couple of smaller things on there - the Nissan Leaf and the smaller...
Wow, that's a depressingly long list of horribly expensive and mostly very boring and same-looking vehicles. There are a couple of smaller things on there - the Nissan Leaf and the smaller Hyundais/Kias - but it's pretty slim pickings.
I mean when your alternative is to pay $10k more for a different EV a janky Amazon dongle to get CarPlay on the screen or just using a phone mount (considered by quite a few to be superior anyway)...
I mean when your alternative is to pay $10k more for a different EV a janky Amazon dongle to get CarPlay on the screen or just using a phone mount (considered by quite a few to be superior anyway) probably seems like a pretty reasonable solution.
Phone mounts are terrible compared to CarPlay. My phone is smaller than the screen in my car. The home screen and apps are not laid out to be used safely while driving. I'll never give up CarPlay....
Phone mounts are terrible compared to CarPlay. My phone is smaller than the screen in my car. The home screen and apps are not laid out to be used safely while driving.
I'll never give up CarPlay. It's the only infotainment system I've used that doesn't make me hate everything. I'll sooner keep buying old cars and retrofitting CarPlay compatible head units in them than buy something new that doesn't support it. I hate the idea of losing CarPlay so much that I'll keep driving my gas car for another 10 years if I have to.
My 2003 Hyundai Elantra with around 125k miles on it has been flashing engine lights at me lately (along with a host of other minor-nuisance old vehicle problems), which prompted me to start...
My 2003 Hyundai Elantra with around 125k miles on it has been flashing engine lights at me lately (along with a host of other minor-nuisance old vehicle problems), which prompted me to start researching cheap, smaller EVs that I could potentially replace it with. Very disappointed by how few options there are, even before learning of this news--the Bolt was one of the leading contenders.
I don't understand why so many people want to drive tank-sized vehicles. When I have to drive my wife's hybrid Santa Fe I feel like I'm practically driving blind with how high up I am and how poor visibility is in all directions. I guess I can kind of understand wanting more storage space with the back seats folded down if you actually have a regular need for it, but I don't have a need for it--especially not when we already have one SUV.
Been eying the Mini Cooper SE, mostly out of the desire to show support for smaller EVs and because I don't drive often or far enough that the shorter range would be a problem, but I also might just stick with the old Elantra a while longer.
Man, EV-1 all over again. wikipedia But let me rant here for a moment against electric cars as a solution to our problems. It's simply not a viable option to replace all the cars on the road with...
But let me rant here for a moment against electric cars as a solution to our problems. It's simply not a viable option to replace all the cars on the road with electrics for the foreseeable future, due to lack of electric infrastructure. Think about the number of gas stations out there. It wouldn't be enough just to replace every pump with a charger. You'd have to at least triple the number due to the charging time required (vs. how long it takes to fill up with liquid fuel).[Edited per @rtrevkaiser. However, as pointed out elsewhere in the thread, this applies only to those in single family housing.] And that's a crapload of electric load. We don't have near enough generation or distribution to support that, anywhere. And then there's the batteries-those things are toxic nightmares at every stage of their lifecycle, from raw material extraction, through manufacture, and disposal.
All this while there are better alternatives. We already have a fluid fuel distribution and delivery network, and biodiesal is awesome. It can be sourced from very easy to grow plants like miscanthus. It can burn very clean, provides way higher mpgs. It's also less dangerous to haul, store, and process. Hydrogen, when it burns, creates. . .water. And that's it. It's got some safety issues to be sure, and distribution issues, etc., but there's a lot of it and it works well.
Regardless of the energy source, we need obviously to step down size of cars and frequency of their use. Seriously, we have a horrible failure of self-organization and leadership at every scale except a few localities.
I'm not entirely disagreeing, but as far as I'm aware you can charge an EV at home, but virtually no one has a gas pump at home. If I used an EV the way I use my ICE car, then it would be mostly...
I'm not entirely disagreeing, but as far as I'm aware you can charge an EV at home, but virtually no one has a gas pump at home. If I used an EV the way I use my ICE car, then it would be mostly for short trips around town - to go to work, the grocery store, take the kids to after school activities, etc. I could probably accomplish most of those sorts of trips without needing to recharge away from my house. The times when I would need to recharge in public would be on longer drives, which for me happen very infrequently.
I use my EV in almost exactly the way you describe. I haven't used a commercial charger for... months, not since we drove cross-country to visit some parents for christmas. The car is plugged in...
I use my EV in almost exactly the way you describe. I haven't used a commercial charger for... months, not since we drove cross-country to visit some parents for christmas. The car is plugged in overnight to use cheap night power and also helps balance the grid a bit.
I'm starting to be of the opinion that with current-gen cars (and certainly next-gen) you might not even need home charging. If you can charge at work you almost definitely don't. But a modern EV will do 300-ish miles on a charge and for me that would mean charging for maybe 45 minutes every couple of weeks, most of the time. I could quite easily plug in while doing my shopping (several local supermarkets have chargers now) and that would be that. Several nice pubs near me have chargers now too, "having" to go and have a quiet drink, albeit non-alcoholic, every couple of weeks to charge the car would not be terrible by any means.
Fair point, but it only applies to those who live in a home into which they can plug their EV, as pointed out elsewhere. In the US, that is in fact most people for better or worse. Additionally,...
Fair point, but it only applies to those who live in a home into which they can plug their EV, as pointed out elsewhere. In the US, that is in fact most people for better or worse.
Additionally, this truth only address endpoints. There's still a lot of load created, for which there must be more generation and distribution.
Yeah, I agree that EVs aren't a magic bullet. But even with the challenges I think they could be a major improvement over the current status quo in my part of the country.
Yeah, I agree that EVs aren't a magic bullet. But even with the challenges I think they could be a major improvement over the current status quo in my part of the country.
And that's the key. No alternative to the status quo is perfect, but considering the status quo is very very imperfect then even EVs are a big step forward.
And that's the key. No alternative to the status quo is perfect, but considering the status quo is very very imperfect then even EVs are a big step forward.
That. It's also making less and less sense to buy combustion tech cars these days, because we will want to divest completely there. Hydrogen is a complete non-starter imo; it's too inefficient...
That. It's also making less and less sense to buy combustion tech cars these days, because we will want to divest completely there.
Hydrogen is a complete non-starter imo; it's too inefficient compared to batteries. Bio fuels, I'm not as informed as I'd like to be, but I'd assume that the ecological impact of farming that much biomass is... undesirable. A solar panel, the grid, a battery and an electric motor certainly have a better joint energy efficiency than a plant (with all the agricultural energy and labor invested), a bio diesel refinery, a physical distribution network and a ICE. So I'd have to be convinced we can actually scale this up to meet demand.
Battery improvements that reduce their footprint massively seem to be right around the corner, with big players making big moves.
I mean, I think we can all agree that individual transportation should be massively reduced. Better to not even use the car. But we can also agree that in many places, that is impossible, and in most places it's extremely inconvenient.
There are benefits to battery EVs that many don't consider. If you charge them at home, you can control when they charge, preferably doing that when renewable generation exceeds demand. You can also use them as backup to prop up the grid, or your own home. Quick bit of math says a fully charged chevy bolt could power the electric side of my apartment (heating not included, and I don't have an AC) for 1.3 weeks.
They are certainly not the only solution we need. But I don't think we should let perfect be the enemy of good enough here. Considering I don't see a better alternative that can be deployed right now.
Yeah, I see folks on the left saying this type of thing all the time and it frustrates me to no end. I mean, I would love to live in a place where I could bike or walk to the grocery store, or to...
I mean, I think we can all agree that individual transportation should be massively reduced. Better to not even use the car. But we can also agree that in many places, that is impossible, and in most places it's extremely inconvenient.
Yeah, I see folks on the left saying this type of thing all the time and it frustrates me to no end.
I mean, I would love to live in a place where I could bike or walk to the grocery store, or to work, or to restaurants etc. But I live in the Southeastern US and that's just not possible. Our towns and cities are as far from walkable as you can get, they're almost actively hostile to pedestrians in a lot of places. I want that to change, but I don't really have any way to do that. It would take a massive shift in thinking, and we're still working on getting folks to be alright with minorities and women down here, the whole urban sprawl thing just isn't top of mind for most folks.
I've literally searched for places with a walkability index of over 50 and there's nothing (outside of very small pockets of extremely expensive downtown areas) within 300 miles of where I live.
ETA: I just realized this sounds like I'm arguing with you, but I want to make it clear that I'm agreeing. What frustrates me is folks saying "we need to move away from individual transportation" without acknowledging the monumental effort that would take in many places.
The thinking part is only the beginning. The timescales on which we build infrastructure is enormous, many objects are intended to last many decades. So that's roughly the timescales at which...
It would take a massive shift in thinking
The thinking part is only the beginning. The timescales on which we build infrastructure is enormous, many objects are intended to last many decades. So that's roughly the timescales at which replacements for those objects are due. So absent clever ways of repurposing infrastructure to be walkable, you're looking at either waiting a long time until you have to rebuild it anyways, or you rebuild it early, eating the extra cost.
And that's nothing to say of the sheer amount of public transit you need to match car comfort levels. I live in an urban area in Germany. Availability is great here, in relative terms. It still takes forever and a day to get around the city, and it's a lot more taxing than being in charge of your own transportation. And it gets worse if your destination is outside of an urban area. Even to a relative's place I visit occasionally: 30 minutes by car. ~1h40m by public transit, leaving once per hour roughly. Sounds tolerable? That destination is the next small town over from a 40k town. If you want that to be competitive, you gotta step up the transit game.
Ha, yeah it's hard to imagine that happening here, which is ironic in a town that is most famous for a bus boycott during the civil rights movement. In fact, I suspect that the undermining of...
If you want that to be competitive, you gotta step up the transit game.
Ha, yeah it's hard to imagine that happening here, which is ironic in a town that is most famous for a bus boycott during the civil rights movement. In fact, I suspect that the undermining of public transportation in my area is probably directly and indirectly a result of those civil rights victories. White flight from the city center into suburbs and even satellite towns means that it's mostly the poor who don't have other options that use the buses, fewer taxpayers paying into the system to support and upgrade it, and an increasingly sprawling city to cover with that already inadequate funding. It sucks.
I've been pondering for a few year what you could do about any of this. Obviously, you're not going to be able to magically create desirable, high density housing around a downtown that is barely surviving. Nobody would want to live in it, and the retail and services don't exist to serve residents anyways. I don't really see a way to reverse the sprawl, it's not like you can just magic away all of the big, sprawling housing developments. I've daydreamed about the possibility of revitalizing the cities dying malls along the lines of the original vision of the father of the modern mall, with a high density mixed use area surrounding what would basically be a small, contained downtown. But that would require changes in zoning and a lot of expensive development with no guarantee of a return. It's a pipe dream but I can't think of anything else that is even inside the realm of impossibility.
One of the malls that had completely closed here was recently partially converted to a school. The other is barely clinging to life. Converting the mall to housing doesn't really solve the issue...
One of the malls that had completely closed here was recently partially converted to a school. The other is barely clinging to life.
Converting the mall to housing doesn't really solve the issue of having a walkable, mixed use area though. It just creates new housing (which is good if you live in a place with not enough housing). The problem here is sprawl and pedestrian hostile development. If you could build dense housing around malls and you have businesses that are needed to support daily life in or near the mall, then you essentially create a small downtown community around that walkable space, without entirely redesigning the whole city. That mix of high density housing around a walkable, pleasant retail space was Victor Gruens original conception for his first mall, but after building the mall itself, developers opted to create single family homes around it rather than the higher density housing that he had envisioned.
One idea is to partially convert to housing with some stores still there, so that's closer to mixed-use when there are stores that serve the residents. Also, the place I'm thinking of is on a busy...
One idea is to partially convert to housing with some stores still there, so that's closer to mixed-use when there are stores that serve the residents.
Also, the place I'm thinking of is on a busy parkway where Walmart and other stores moved into a new shopping center nearby. It's a pretty car-choked area, not really walkable, but at least some stores can be walked to.
How do they do this? With malls shaped the way they are I feel like you'd need to have a bunch of units or rooms within units having no windows or access to the outside. A school or office...
How do they do this? With malls shaped the way they are I feel like you'd need to have a bunch of units or rooms within units having no windows or access to the outside.
A school or office building I can see. Even a prison. But decent housing seems like a stretch unless it's an outdoor mall or the central atrium is open-air.
They built new apartment buildings in the parking lot. Some stores are still there but they don't need as much parking. Also, the one I'm thinking of was actually an older shopping center rather...
They built new apartment buildings in the parking lot. Some stores are still there but they don't need as much parking.
Also, the one I'm thinking of was actually an older shopping center rather than a mall, not fully enclosed.
First, think about the fact that a bolt (the smallest, most efficient US ev) requires 1.3 weeks worth household electricity to charge its batteries. That is a lot of load. If every car is suddenly...
First, think about the fact that a bolt (the smallest, most efficient US ev) requires 1.3 weeks worth household electricity to charge its batteries. That is a lot of load. If every car is suddenly electric, we suddenly need at least an order of magnitude more electrical availability. Nevermind the distribution infrastucture required (do you want to see 10 times as many electrical wires outside your apartment?), solar and wind aren't going to provide 10x the power in any useful timeframe. I'm not sure we could put the necessary nuclear plants online, but do you want 10x the number of nuclear accidents?
Hydrogen (and I'm speaking directly to H2 combustion engines, although apparently H2 Fuel Cell technology is similar in some ways) has issues, but can cost less (in terms of global environmental impact) than electricity when you factor both generation and storage. I know people are teasing fancy new battery tech, I'll believe it when I see it, because we've been trying for a long time, and one of the best techs is the same one in use 150 years ago.
Biofuel has the advantage of capturing CO2 during the generation process. There are ag solutions that are very low impact and can operate on marginal land without huge inputs like water and soil amendments. It can also be done in a distributed, low-volume way with only slight cost increase, which greatly decreases fuel transport cost. Biodiesel especially really should be a part of a comprehensive solution. And most importantly when compared to other solutions, very few distribution upgrades are needed.
In the SE, biodiesel is really the awesomest solution. Rednecks already love their diesel trucks, and our soil is crap but grows hemp really well, which makes an excellent feedstock. We have lots of open land to build digesters and refiners (which can be shaded with PV cells, lowering cooling costs and feeding the obstinate sob's who have bought the utility industry's lobbying claims ;-p ). It doesn't take much to retool gasser lines to produce diesel motors. We're already using it in trains and trucks and big boats.
In line with avoiding perfectionism, simply because it's hard to convert us from sprawling megalopolises to a better organized 15 minute walkable communities, doesn't mean we should expends some of our goodwill trying. I know the resistance is high. But short term slightly better should not be allowed to impede long term, necessary and significant change.
Also, the south at its best is better at racial integration than anywhere else on the planet that I know about, and definitely better than places like Boston (a city I love dearly), NYC, Chicago and much of desirable CA. There is nowhere in ATL or Durham you won't find all kinds races represented.
No we don't. You're assuming a full battery charge every single day. Unless you have a very long commute, that is not how most people use their car. Or if they do, they should rethink that anyway,...
First, think about the fact that a bolt (the smallest, most efficient US ev) requires 1.3 weeks worth household electricity to charge its batteries. That is a lot of load. If every car is suddenly electric, we suddenly need at least an order of magnitude more electrical availability.
No we don't. You're assuming a full battery charge every single day. Unless you have a very long commute, that is not how most people use their car. Or if they do, they should rethink that anyway, because it is extremely resource hungry no matter what tech you use. If you have a 1h commute, you might draw a quarter of that. But even that, I'd argue, is unsustainable to be driving in a single-occupant car.
You're also extrapolating from my 2-person apartment's electricity needs. I don't use a lot. Germany's total electricity production divided by its population (so the per-capita use if you include industry and public use and don't account for exports) is 7500kWh/a. Broken down per person, my household uses 1250kWh/a.
The average car trip in Germany is 10km. That's 1/40 of the battery. Drive a few of those and you're still not close to my home's electricity needs, let alone an average German one.
Biofuel has the advantage of capturing CO2 during the generation process.
That is correct, but irrelevant so long as you're burning it. It means it's theoretically (!) carbon neutral, just as a battery EV, and in contrast to fossil fuels.
As for hydrogen, my understanding is that the ecological impact (lifecycle assessment, all that jazz) of H2 cars is worse than BEVs. The core drivers are the relatively low efficiency of H2 generation and the difficulties of storing and transporting hydrogen. Go read about the storage options for hydrogen in a car - not one is pretty. High-pressure tanks are quite resource hungry, considering their simplicity, and you have to put in a lot of work to compress the H2 sufficiently. Cryogenic storage will leak hydrogen with time. Alternatives such as chemically adsorbing the H2 into another substance are... well, we're working on them, but it's kinda not looking great either.
Biodiesel especially really should be a part of a comprehensive solution.
I mean, biomass in its various forms certainly should be part of the solution. Personally I'm fond of using low-intensity uses of otherwise unproductive land, e.g. in Agri-PV-combinations. Though I'm more inclined to use the resulting biomass in other ways. Biomethane (+ gas power plants) as long-term power storage to stabilize the grid, for example. Or as a carbon source for carbon sequestration, if we have to go there.
I wish the avg US driver’s daily distance was so low! Here it’s over 55km. But it’s a valid point, although overly rosy in your calculation. Especially when you consider is will no longer have a...
I wish the avg US driver’s daily distance was so low! Here it’s over 55km. But it’s a valid point, although overly rosy in your calculation. Especially when you consider is will no longer have a small ev option. The kwh/km only goes up as the ev gets bigger (and heavier).
Regardless of the details, it’s a lot more generation, distribution, and endpoints, with a concomitant increase of harms from other directions.
I’m skeptical of your claim about lifetime ecological harm h2 v bev. It’s a really hard thing to calculate in a comparative way, because the harms are different. And, there’s also social harms. What could the availability of ev’s be in places like sub saharan Africa, se asia, etc? They have even way less electric infrastructure. And we have done a superb job exporting all the toxic wast there, I’m sure batteries will be no different.
I get passionate about this issue because I fear this is an electric utility driven greenwash. In the US, most utilities are investor owned, they stand to make zillions from the transition. I certainly do not trust them to make the transition with an eue toward anything but profit.
Same, except I can see biodiesel as a ploy to keep ICEs relevant for longer (driven by oil companies and some car manufacturers). It's easier to sell ICE vehicles now, with the promise of making...
I get passionate about this issue because I fear this is an electric utility driven greenwash.
Same, except I can see biodiesel as a ploy to keep ICEs relevant for longer (driven by oil companies and some car manufacturers). It's easier to sell ICE vehicles now, with the promise of making them green with biodiesel in the future. When that eventually turns out (I claim) to be a pipe dream, you've successfully delayed the end of fossil fuels for a bit longer.
We're having a similar non-discussion here in Germany around power-to-fuel ("E-fuels"). I.e. fully synthetic fuels from CO2, water and electricity. It's kind of ridiculous. On the one side you have the neo-liberal FDP transport minister, Porsche (and other car manufacturers I presume), and ICE enthusiasts, claiming this is the thing we're going to use to decarbonize cars. On the other side of the aisle: Everyone with a lick of common sense. Oh, and the first google result when looking into this: e-fuels.de, which is brought to you by: "UNITI Federal Association of Medium-sized Oil Companies e.V." .... huh, funny that. Lies and half-truths as much as you want on that site.
Granted, E-fuels and biodiesel are way different things.
In the US, most utilities are investor owned, they stand to make zillions from the transition. I certainly do not trust them to make the transition with an eue toward anything but profit.
Let me put it like this: Over here, we seem to agree that it's going to be BEVs, and electric utilities are frequently (but not always) government owned, while oil&gas and car industries are predominantly for-profit companies. So if the discussion here is being swayed for the wrong reasons, I don't think it's towards BEVs, considering our car companies kinda dropped the ball on that one.
Believe me, I'd be over the moon to live in a walkable community. I can see it happening in a few places in the South. ATL seems possible, and some places like the Research Triangle as well as...
Believe me, I'd be over the moon to live in a walkable community. I can see it happening in a few places in the South. ATL seems possible, and some places like the Research Triangle as well as cities like Savannah and Charleston which already have very walkable downtowns seem to be close to that ideal, although my understanding is that essentials like groceries are still a problem in those places since the downtowns are so tourism oriented. Also, housing prices are a huge problem in all of those areas (I'm less sure about Raleigh/Durham since I'm not as familiar with that area). Here in Alabama, though, I don't see much of an easy path to denser development. The overriding impulse here seems to still be white flight. Middle/upper class white folks are fleeing cities for suburbs or rural areas in large numbers.
Also, I've heard similar comments to your about racial integration in cities in the south vs cities in the north or on the coasts, but I don't have much experience with that myself. I do feel like ATL is a bit of an exception when it comes to talking about the southeast. My experience is that you find black and white, but people often largely self-segregate. There's not a lot of issues with overt racism, because people have learned better, but systemic racism is still a huge problem here and a lot of folks really don't want to talk about it. I do think things are getting better, but it's slow.
ETA: re your comments about biodiesel. I have to admit I don't know much about biodiesel. I'll have to dig into this more. I don't know how it relates to ethanol blends, but I know there's a sizable portion of folks around here who look for ethanol free gas regardless of how much more expensive it is. I dunno if any of those concerns are related to biodiesel though, and I'm not sure what compatibility is like for older diesel engines with biodiesel.
Biodiesel has it's plus points for sure but it's pretty bad for kerbside emissions, even with exhaust scrubbing systems. EVs are already improving air quality and respiratory health Biodiesel...
Biodiesel would be a good short-term fill-in for dinosaur juice but ultimately EVs have too many advantages to not see significant uptake. It's not just about the power needed to run them (and that really is a very short-term problem which is already being solved) - they're cheaper to build and run in mechanical terms, more reliable and considerably more pleasant to drive as well.
There’s a tendency to talk about whether new transportation technologies will replace previous ones, maybe because of how cars became dominant historically. I think it makes more sense to think of...
There’s a tendency to talk about whether new transportation technologies will replace previous ones, maybe because of how cars became dominant historically. I think it makes more sense to think of them as additional and complementary, serving people in different situations. Electric cars might serve a lot of people who live in single-family homes and have solar panels, even if apartment-dwellers don’t use them as much and they’re harder to use on some trips. Driverless cars might eventually find a niche for taxi service in cities without being used much in rural areas.
Longer trips often require multiple forms of transportation to be chained together, so public transportation and cars (particularly as taxis) aren’t necessarily in competition.
I haven’t heard much about biodiesel in years. Is it finding a niche?
I live in an apartment and I’m able to charge my Volt at level 1 speeds at home and level 2 at work and in parking garages. So some apartment setups are here that are EV friendly.
I live in an apartment and I’m able to charge my Volt at level 1 speeds at home and level 2 at work and in parking garages. So some apartment setups are here that are EV friendly.
I bought a new Bolt EUV two months ago. I genuinely love it. It’s an amazing car with quite the feature set (wireless CarPlay, adaptive cruise control, heated AND cooled seats, etc.) After tax credits, it will cost me less than $30,000. It feels like I’m driving a way more expensive car than I actually am.
It’s also the only EV in that price range that I, as a decently tall person, can fit comfortably in. The cabin height on the Kona, for example, is simply not enough. Even with the driver’s seat at its lowest, my head is still in the ceiling.
GM announcing that they’re killing CarPlay, and, now, the whole Bolt line is baffling to me. The demand is clearly there. You can go on r/BoltEV and find plenty of people waiting months to get theirs. I ordered mine last June and only got it this past February.
This is my take away too. We need an EV for the honda civic/toyota corolla market. One that is affordable and appeals to people whose situation requires them to do the calculous on cost of gas. Small margins lead to small marketing numbers so let's just scrap it and sell more electrified monster trucks. What a bummer.
I feel like the cheap compact market is better served by hybrids currently. The majority of this market would be more likely to be renting, and the majority of rentals are likely apartment dwellers or houses that can't install their own chargers (110/220 volt charging is a thing but slow IIRC), so charging becomes very inconvenient. But nobody has done an affordable (sub-$20k) hybrid either, it seems. I have this complaint, by the way, as somebody who would be particularly interested in a tiny little hybrid.
110V charging can take over a day to charge for larger EVs. Even my Chevy Volt can take overnight on a 110V wall charger.
If you're in an apartment complex, you probably don't have access to a plug to even charge your car while it's in the parking lot.
I'm guessing that in the future, more and more apartment complexes will start offering vehicle charging as an amenity to lure in new tenants. Obviously it'll start off in higher end places, but maybe it'll filter down to other complexes as well.
Yep- you can already see this in places that use underground parking (very common in Seattle) - some places ask you to pay a little extra for parking and will cover the energy, others will add it to your energy bill at the end of the month. They typically have 2 or more ChargePoint Level 2 stations.
The wall charge was more for the house renting crowd, maybe apartments with garages, which are rare. With California mandating cars that aren't primarily internal combustion by 2035 we had better make this happen.
Does America not get any of these small EVs? (and the rest)
Is GM literally the only player over there? Because that's shitty if so..
We have the Mini Electric in select markets and may get the Fiat 500 Electric...the rest of these? Nope. Not getting any of them in the US.
It's not just GM, but no we don't have access to most of those cars. We have a few from Hyundai, like the Ionic and the Kona (which is still a small SUV), the Kia has a few small eSUVs as well like the Nero or Soul, the Nissan Leaf which may just be the most ubiquitous EV here other than Tesla. Otherwise companies are mostly focusing on the SUV, luxury, or truck market.
Hyundai and Kia can't seem to keep Ionics or EVs in stock. Everywhere I look near me there's a $5k+ dealer markup and only the top trim-levels available. That takes it from the lower end of just outside "affordable" to well into "not affordable" range.
All I want is an EV that's basically a Honda Accord in performance, size, fitment/build quality, and price. But the car market seems determined not to provide me one.
I can't help but wonder if the American car market having to be run through dealerships, which are more like parasitic moneylending scams that use their monopoly on car sales to get you into a debt treadmill with them, is responsible for the car market here being like this. Everything is too big, too flashy, too expensive. . . And if you want something that's not like that it's compromised as hell. The middle of the market for people who just want something reliable and nice is being hollowed out.
Preach! That is my experience as well.
Take this with a grain of salt because I remember reading about it ages ago and now can't even find a whiff of it, but I remember hearing the benefit of dealerships is that car manufacturers have to have localized places where cars can be worked on (rather than sending back to a domestic hub), without monopolistic price gouging (i.e. dealerships compete), and most importantly ensures that cars can be worked on without the need for purposely specialized parts (so mechanics can work on them as well). That said, everything I read and watched tonight trying to find any of those points pretty much pointed to corrupt laws and lobbying so I could be completely off base.
I think this could be said of all markets at the moment. Housing, cars, etc... It's pretty depressing.
Here are the current US options. I did a quick glance and it looks like the Mazda MX-30 from your list is the only one available here, and even then it’s only sold in California.
A majority of the US models are luxury vehicles that many (most?) people are priced out of. Also stock is hard to come by. Despite being “available” in the US, I waited eight months to get my Bolt EUV.
Wow, that's a depressingly long list of horribly expensive and mostly very boring and same-looking vehicles. There are a couple of smaller things on there - the Nissan Leaf and the smaller Hyundais/Kias - but it's pretty slim pickings.
Well it's not like a new Bolt would be worth driving anyways now that GM is dropping Apple Carplay from all their electric vehicles.
I mean when your alternative is to pay $10k more for a different EV a janky Amazon dongle to get CarPlay on the screen or just using a phone mount (considered by quite a few to be superior anyway) probably seems like a pretty reasonable solution.
Phone mounts are terrible compared to CarPlay. My phone is smaller than the screen in my car. The home screen and apps are not laid out to be used safely while driving.
I'll never give up CarPlay. It's the only infotainment system I've used that doesn't make me hate everything. I'll sooner keep buying old cars and retrofitting CarPlay compatible head units in them than buy something new that doesn't support it. I hate the idea of losing CarPlay so much that I'll keep driving my gas car for another 10 years if I have to.
My 2003 Hyundai Elantra with around 125k miles on it has been flashing engine lights at me lately (along with a host of other minor-nuisance old vehicle problems), which prompted me to start researching cheap, smaller EVs that I could potentially replace it with. Very disappointed by how few options there are, even before learning of this news--the Bolt was one of the leading contenders.
I don't understand why so many people want to drive tank-sized vehicles. When I have to drive my wife's hybrid Santa Fe I feel like I'm practically driving blind with how high up I am and how poor visibility is in all directions. I guess I can kind of understand wanting more storage space with the back seats folded down if you actually have a regular need for it, but I don't have a need for it--especially not when we already have one SUV.
Been eying the Mini Cooper SE, mostly out of the desire to show support for smaller EVs and because I don't drive often or far enough that the shorter range would be a problem, but I also might just stick with the old Elantra a while longer.
Man, EV-1 all over again. wikipedia
But let me rant here for a moment against electric cars as a solution to our problems. It's simply not a viable option to replace all the cars on the road with electrics for the foreseeable future, due to lack of electric infrastructure. Think about the number of gas stations out there. It wouldn't be enough just to replace every pump with a charger.
You'd have to at least triple the number due to the charging time required (vs. how long it takes to fill up with liquid fuel).[Edited per @rtrevkaiser. However, as pointed out elsewhere in the thread, this applies only to those in single family housing.] And that's a crapload of electric load. We don't have near enough generation or distribution to support that, anywhere. And then there's the batteries-those things are toxic nightmares at every stage of their lifecycle, from raw material extraction, through manufacture, and disposal.All this while there are better alternatives. We already have a fluid fuel distribution and delivery network, and biodiesal is awesome. It can be sourced from very easy to grow plants like miscanthus. It can burn very clean, provides way higher mpgs. It's also less dangerous to haul, store, and process. Hydrogen, when it burns, creates. . .water. And that's it. It's got some safety issues to be sure, and distribution issues, etc., but there's a lot of it and it works well.
Regardless of the energy source, we need obviously to step down size of cars and frequency of their use. Seriously, we have a horrible failure of self-organization and leadership at every scale except a few localities.
Thank you for attending my TED talk.
I'm not entirely disagreeing, but as far as I'm aware you can charge an EV at home, but virtually no one has a gas pump at home. If I used an EV the way I use my ICE car, then it would be mostly for short trips around town - to go to work, the grocery store, take the kids to after school activities, etc. I could probably accomplish most of those sorts of trips without needing to recharge away from my house. The times when I would need to recharge in public would be on longer drives, which for me happen very infrequently.
I use my EV in almost exactly the way you describe. I haven't used a commercial charger for... months, not since we drove cross-country to visit some parents for christmas. The car is plugged in overnight to use cheap night power and also helps balance the grid a bit.
I'm starting to be of the opinion that with current-gen cars (and certainly next-gen) you might not even need home charging. If you can charge at work you almost definitely don't. But a modern EV will do 300-ish miles on a charge and for me that would mean charging for maybe 45 minutes every couple of weeks, most of the time. I could quite easily plug in while doing my shopping (several local supermarkets have chargers now) and that would be that. Several nice pubs near me have chargers now too, "having" to go and have a quiet drink, albeit non-alcoholic, every couple of weeks to charge the car would not be terrible by any means.
Fair point, but it only applies to those who live in a home into which they can plug their EV, as pointed out elsewhere. In the US, that is in fact most people for better or worse.
Additionally, this truth only address endpoints. There's still a lot of load created, for which there must be more generation and distribution.
Yeah, I agree that EVs aren't a magic bullet. But even with the challenges I think they could be a major improvement over the current status quo in my part of the country.
And that's the key. No alternative to the status quo is perfect, but considering the status quo is very very imperfect then even EVs are a big step forward.
That. It's also making less and less sense to buy combustion tech cars these days, because we will want to divest completely there.
Hydrogen is a complete non-starter imo; it's too inefficient compared to batteries. Bio fuels, I'm not as informed as I'd like to be, but I'd assume that the ecological impact of farming that much biomass is... undesirable. A solar panel, the grid, a battery and an electric motor certainly have a better joint energy efficiency than a plant (with all the agricultural energy and labor invested), a bio diesel refinery, a physical distribution network and a ICE. So I'd have to be convinced we can actually scale this up to meet demand.
Battery improvements that reduce their footprint massively seem to be right around the corner, with big players making big moves.
I mean, I think we can all agree that individual transportation should be massively reduced. Better to not even use the car. But we can also agree that in many places, that is impossible, and in most places it's extremely inconvenient.
There are benefits to battery EVs that many don't consider. If you charge them at home, you can control when they charge, preferably doing that when renewable generation exceeds demand. You can also use them as backup to prop up the grid, or your own home. Quick bit of math says a fully charged chevy bolt could power the electric side of my apartment (heating not included, and I don't have an AC) for 1.3 weeks.
They are certainly not the only solution we need. But I don't think we should let perfect be the enemy of good enough here. Considering I don't see a better alternative that can be deployed right now.
Yeah, I see folks on the left saying this type of thing all the time and it frustrates me to no end.
I mean, I would love to live in a place where I could bike or walk to the grocery store, or to work, or to restaurants etc. But I live in the Southeastern US and that's just not possible. Our towns and cities are as far from walkable as you can get, they're almost actively hostile to pedestrians in a lot of places. I want that to change, but I don't really have any way to do that. It would take a massive shift in thinking, and we're still working on getting folks to be alright with minorities and women down here, the whole urban sprawl thing just isn't top of mind for most folks.
I've literally searched for places with a walkability index of over 50 and there's nothing (outside of very small pockets of extremely expensive downtown areas) within 300 miles of where I live.
ETA: I just realized this sounds like I'm arguing with you, but I want to make it clear that I'm agreeing. What frustrates me is folks saying "we need to move away from individual transportation" without acknowledging the monumental effort that would take in many places.
The thinking part is only the beginning. The timescales on which we build infrastructure is enormous, many objects are intended to last many decades. So that's roughly the timescales at which replacements for those objects are due. So absent clever ways of repurposing infrastructure to be walkable, you're looking at either waiting a long time until you have to rebuild it anyways, or you rebuild it early, eating the extra cost.
And that's nothing to say of the sheer amount of public transit you need to match car comfort levels. I live in an urban area in Germany. Availability is great here, in relative terms. It still takes forever and a day to get around the city, and it's a lot more taxing than being in charge of your own transportation. And it gets worse if your destination is outside of an urban area. Even to a relative's place I visit occasionally: 30 minutes by car. ~1h40m by public transit, leaving once per hour roughly. Sounds tolerable? That destination is the next small town over from a 40k town. If you want that to be competitive, you gotta step up the transit game.
Ha, yeah it's hard to imagine that happening here, which is ironic in a town that is most famous for a bus boycott during the civil rights movement. In fact, I suspect that the undermining of public transportation in my area is probably directly and indirectly a result of those civil rights victories. White flight from the city center into suburbs and even satellite towns means that it's mostly the poor who don't have other options that use the buses, fewer taxpayers paying into the system to support and upgrade it, and an increasingly sprawling city to cover with that already inadequate funding. It sucks.
I've been pondering for a few year what you could do about any of this. Obviously, you're not going to be able to magically create desirable, high density housing around a downtown that is barely surviving. Nobody would want to live in it, and the retail and services don't exist to serve residents anyways. I don't really see a way to reverse the sprawl, it's not like you can just magic away all of the big, sprawling housing developments. I've daydreamed about the possibility of revitalizing the cities dying malls along the lines of the original vision of the father of the modern mall, with a high density mixed use area surrounding what would basically be a small, contained downtown. But that would require changes in zoning and a lot of expensive development with no guarantee of a return. It's a pipe dream but I can't think of anything else that is even inside the realm of impossibility.
There are some places where underused ghost malls were partly converted to housing. I guess not where you live?
One of the malls that had completely closed here was recently partially converted to a school. The other is barely clinging to life.
Converting the mall to housing doesn't really solve the issue of having a walkable, mixed use area though. It just creates new housing (which is good if you live in a place with not enough housing). The problem here is sprawl and pedestrian hostile development. If you could build dense housing around malls and you have businesses that are needed to support daily life in or near the mall, then you essentially create a small downtown community around that walkable space, without entirely redesigning the whole city. That mix of high density housing around a walkable, pleasant retail space was Victor Gruens original conception for his first mall, but after building the mall itself, developers opted to create single family homes around it rather than the higher density housing that he had envisioned.
One idea is to partially convert to housing with some stores still there, so that's closer to mixed-use when there are stores that serve the residents.
Also, the place I'm thinking of is on a busy parkway where Walmart and other stores moved into a new shopping center nearby. It's a pretty car-choked area, not really walkable, but at least some stores can be walked to.
How do they do this? With malls shaped the way they are I feel like you'd need to have a bunch of units or rooms within units having no windows or access to the outside.
A school or office building I can see. Even a prison. But decent housing seems like a stretch unless it's an outdoor mall or the central atrium is open-air.
They built new apartment buildings in the parking lot. Some stores are still there but they don't need as much parking.
Also, the one I'm thinking of was actually an older shopping center rather than a mall, not fully enclosed.
First, think about the fact that a bolt (the smallest, most efficient US ev) requires 1.3 weeks worth household electricity to charge its batteries. That is a lot of load. If every car is suddenly electric, we suddenly need at least an order of magnitude more electrical availability. Nevermind the distribution infrastucture required (do you want to see 10 times as many electrical wires outside your apartment?), solar and wind aren't going to provide 10x the power in any useful timeframe. I'm not sure we could put the necessary nuclear plants online, but do you want 10x the number of nuclear accidents?
Hydrogen (and I'm speaking directly to H2 combustion engines, although apparently H2 Fuel Cell technology is similar in some ways) has issues, but can cost less (in terms of global environmental impact) than electricity when you factor both generation and storage. I know people are teasing fancy new battery tech, I'll believe it when I see it, because we've been trying for a long time, and one of the best techs is the same one in use 150 years ago.
Biofuel has the advantage of capturing CO2 during the generation process. There are ag solutions that are very low impact and can operate on marginal land without huge inputs like water and soil amendments. It can also be done in a distributed, low-volume way with only slight cost increase, which greatly decreases fuel transport cost. Biodiesel especially really should be a part of a comprehensive solution. And most importantly when compared to other solutions, very few distribution upgrades are needed.
To @theRtRevKaisers objections below:
In the SE, biodiesel is really the awesomest solution. Rednecks already love their diesel trucks, and our soil is crap but grows hemp really well, which makes an excellent feedstock. We have lots of open land to build digesters and refiners (which can be shaded with PV cells, lowering cooling costs and feeding the obstinate sob's who have bought the utility industry's lobbying claims ;-p ). It doesn't take much to retool gasser lines to produce diesel motors. We're already using it in trains and trucks and big boats.
In line with avoiding perfectionism, simply because it's hard to convert us from sprawling megalopolises to a better organized 15 minute walkable communities, doesn't mean we should expends some of our goodwill trying. I know the resistance is high. But short term slightly better should not be allowed to impede long term, necessary and significant change.
Also, the south at its best is better at racial integration than anywhere else on the planet that I know about, and definitely better than places like Boston (a city I love dearly), NYC, Chicago and much of desirable CA. There is nowhere in ATL or Durham you won't find all kinds races represented.
No we don't. You're assuming a full battery charge every single day. Unless you have a very long commute, that is not how most people use their car. Or if they do, they should rethink that anyway, because it is extremely resource hungry no matter what tech you use. If you have a 1h commute, you might draw a quarter of that. But even that, I'd argue, is unsustainable to be driving in a single-occupant car.
You're also extrapolating from my 2-person apartment's electricity needs. I don't use a lot. Germany's total electricity production divided by its population (so the per-capita use if you include industry and public use and don't account for exports) is 7500kWh/a. Broken down per person, my household uses 1250kWh/a.
The average car trip in Germany is 10km. That's 1/40 of the battery. Drive a few of those and you're still not close to my home's electricity needs, let alone an average German one.
That is correct, but irrelevant so long as you're burning it. It means it's theoretically (!) carbon neutral, just as a battery EV, and in contrast to fossil fuels.
As for hydrogen, my understanding is that the ecological impact (lifecycle assessment, all that jazz) of H2 cars is worse than BEVs. The core drivers are the relatively low efficiency of H2 generation and the difficulties of storing and transporting hydrogen. Go read about the storage options for hydrogen in a car - not one is pretty. High-pressure tanks are quite resource hungry, considering their simplicity, and you have to put in a lot of work to compress the H2 sufficiently. Cryogenic storage will leak hydrogen with time. Alternatives such as chemically adsorbing the H2 into another substance are... well, we're working on them, but it's kinda not looking great either.
I mean, biomass in its various forms certainly should be part of the solution. Personally I'm fond of using low-intensity uses of otherwise unproductive land, e.g. in Agri-PV-combinations. Though I'm more inclined to use the resulting biomass in other ways. Biomethane (+ gas power plants) as long-term power storage to stabilize the grid, for example. Or as a carbon source for carbon sequestration, if we have to go there.
I wish the avg US driver’s daily distance was so low! Here it’s over 55km. But it’s a valid point, although overly rosy in your calculation. Especially when you consider is will no longer have a small ev option. The kwh/km only goes up as the ev gets bigger (and heavier).
Regardless of the details, it’s a lot more generation, distribution, and endpoints, with a concomitant increase of harms from other directions.
I’m skeptical of your claim about lifetime ecological harm h2 v bev. It’s a really hard thing to calculate in a comparative way, because the harms are different. And, there’s also social harms. What could the availability of ev’s be in places like sub saharan Africa, se asia, etc? They have even way less electric infrastructure. And we have done a superb job exporting all the toxic wast there, I’m sure batteries will be no different.
I get passionate about this issue because I fear this is an electric utility driven greenwash. In the US, most utilities are investor owned, they stand to make zillions from the transition. I certainly do not trust them to make the transition with an eue toward anything but profit.
Same, except I can see biodiesel as a ploy to keep ICEs relevant for longer (driven by oil companies and some car manufacturers). It's easier to sell ICE vehicles now, with the promise of making them green with biodiesel in the future. When that eventually turns out (I claim) to be a pipe dream, you've successfully delayed the end of fossil fuels for a bit longer.
We're having a similar non-discussion here in Germany around power-to-fuel ("E-fuels"). I.e. fully synthetic fuels from CO2, water and electricity. It's kind of ridiculous. On the one side you have the neo-liberal FDP transport minister, Porsche (and other car manufacturers I presume), and ICE enthusiasts, claiming this is the thing we're going to use to decarbonize cars. On the other side of the aisle: Everyone with a lick of common sense. Oh, and the first google result when looking into this: e-fuels.de, which is brought to you by: "UNITI Federal Association of Medium-sized Oil Companies e.V." .... huh, funny that. Lies and half-truths as much as you want on that site.
Granted, E-fuels and biodiesel are way different things.
Let me put it like this: Over here, we seem to agree that it's going to be BEVs, and electric utilities are frequently (but not always) government owned, while oil&gas and car industries are predominantly for-profit companies. So if the discussion here is being swayed for the wrong reasons, I don't think it's towards BEVs, considering our car companies kinda dropped the ball on that one.
Believe me, I'd be over the moon to live in a walkable community. I can see it happening in a few places in the South. ATL seems possible, and some places like the Research Triangle as well as cities like Savannah and Charleston which already have very walkable downtowns seem to be close to that ideal, although my understanding is that essentials like groceries are still a problem in those places since the downtowns are so tourism oriented. Also, housing prices are a huge problem in all of those areas (I'm less sure about Raleigh/Durham since I'm not as familiar with that area). Here in Alabama, though, I don't see much of an easy path to denser development. The overriding impulse here seems to still be white flight. Middle/upper class white folks are fleeing cities for suburbs or rural areas in large numbers.
Also, I've heard similar comments to your about racial integration in cities in the south vs cities in the north or on the coasts, but I don't have much experience with that myself. I do feel like ATL is a bit of an exception when it comes to talking about the southeast. My experience is that you find black and white, but people often largely self-segregate. There's not a lot of issues with overt racism, because people have learned better, but systemic racism is still a huge problem here and a lot of folks really don't want to talk about it. I do think things are getting better, but it's slow.
ETA: re your comments about biodiesel. I have to admit I don't know much about biodiesel. I'll have to dig into this more. I don't know how it relates to ethanol blends, but I know there's a sizable portion of folks around here who look for ethanol free gas regardless of how much more expensive it is. I dunno if any of those concerns are related to biodiesel though, and I'm not sure what compatibility is like for older diesel engines with biodiesel.
Biodiesel has it's plus points for sure but it's pretty bad for kerbside emissions, even with exhaust scrubbing systems. EVs are already improving air quality and respiratory health
Biodiesel would be a good short-term fill-in for dinosaur juice but ultimately EVs have too many advantages to not see significant uptake. It's not just about the power needed to run them (and that really is a very short-term problem which is already being solved) - they're cheaper to build and run in mechanical terms, more reliable and considerably more pleasant to drive as well.
There’s a tendency to talk about whether new transportation technologies will replace previous ones, maybe because of how cars became dominant historically. I think it makes more sense to think of them as additional and complementary, serving people in different situations. Electric cars might serve a lot of people who live in single-family homes and have solar panels, even if apartment-dwellers don’t use them as much and they’re harder to use on some trips. Driverless cars might eventually find a niche for taxi service in cities without being used much in rural areas.
Longer trips often require multiple forms of transportation to be chained together, so public transportation and cars (particularly as taxis) aren’t necessarily in competition.
I haven’t heard much about biodiesel in years. Is it finding a niche?
I live in an apartment and I’m able to charge my Volt at level 1 speeds at home and level 2 at work and in parking garages. So some apartment setups are here that are EV friendly.