Very disappointing. Corporate reluctance to invest in affordable options (whether directly through production or indirectly through more research to make production possible) can be reliably and...
Very disappointing. Corporate reluctance to invest in affordable options (whether directly through production or indirectly through more research to make production possible) can be reliably and rapidly solved by only one thing: regulation banning the production of gasoline-powered vehicles.
Frankly I see very little reason why the gas-powered vehicles need to be permitted anywhere when PHEVs (plug-in hybrid electric vehicles) offer all of the reliability and range advantages of the status quo while also being significantly more environmentally sustainable. There are fairly affordable ($20–30k) PHEVs of different classes already, including the Chevy Volt on the smaller side and something like the Subaru Crosstrek or the Ford Escape on the larger side. If more competition in this space existed, prices would drop further.
I see little reason for the government to incentivize the purchase of gas vehicles at this point. People looove to talk about the "pull" factors ("if only transit in my city were a little better, I wouldn't drive so much" or "if only there were charging stations on literally all 3 billion parking spaces in the country"), which is part of the discussion, but immediate changes in behavior are kickstarted by "push" factors, especially economic ones. These don't have to be sharp: just an annual increase in taxes for producers or registration for consumers of non-PHEV ICE vehicles. The message gets across pretty quickly. Once it becomes more expensive for automakers to manufacture and sell ICEs than to focus on PHEVs and BEVs, they will pivot. Until then, they just don't have an incentive to do so.
(Research, by the way, is very clear that a mix of incentives for good decisions and de-incentives for bad decisions in transportation is the way to go: not one or the other. And right now, we're only doing #1, and barely.)
I do not believe that "economies of scale" or magical improvements to battery technology are going to naturally solve the issue of affordability, at least not by 2035 or whatever the targets are. I see plenty of potential for new technology to make PHEVs and BEVs inherently more economically competitive, but little incentive for that technology to be adopted by automakers at a remotely sufficient rate. Regulators have to be seriously involved in the process if we're going to reduce transportation emissions in a reasonable timeframe.
I've been an open critic of PHEVs here on Tildes, but I have to say that I agree with you on every point. I do wish that there were more of a focus on public transportation and walkable town...
I've been an open critic of PHEVs here on Tildes, but I have to say that I agree with you on every point. I do wish that there were more of a focus on public transportation and walkable town centers being built (and there is, in some places), but trading ICE cars with PHEV is a nonzero improvement.
I've realized for a while that there's absolutely nothing stopping us from making a change in how our society works except for lack of interest. And one of the big obstacles to many industrial improvements is the perverse incentives that corporations give to the people who are in charge of policy in the form of lobbying and donations. We keep making ICE cars largely because it's profitable for the auto industry, and the auto industry doesn't face government pressure because they exert their own pressure on the government. In many ways we are living in a world built upon a status quo exerted upon us by industry and corporations.
Incentives are important, but I don’t see why they were insufficient. GM is investing in next-generation battery tech so that can build affordable electric cars and win market share from other...
Incentives are important, but I don’t see why they were insufficient. GM is investing in next-generation battery tech so that can build affordable electric cars and win market share from other companies like Tesla. Do you think they have incentive to fail? Honda is hedging their bets because GM’s battery tech isn’t working well, and maybe something else will work. But do you think they wanted the partnership to fail?
I don’t know why this partnership didn’t work out, but it’s reasonable to assume they got disappointing results because next-generation battery innovation is actually hard, and they were overly optimistic. Incentives don’t determine what works; it’s physics, chemistry, and engineering.
More generally: economists often talk up the power of incentives, but I think people have over-learned that lesson and try to reason from incentives alone. If you stop paying attention to other factors then you end up concluding that projects fail because the people involved weren’t motivated enough. There are other possibilities to consider.
(Also, banning gasoline cars seems likely to make electric cars more expensive due to higher demand.)
I got a B+ in high school chemistry so I can't really speak to the engineering challenges involved in battery tech. Evidently there are hurdles or we would already have better batteries. :/ But...
I got a B+ in high school chemistry so I can't really speak to the engineering challenges involved in battery tech. Evidently there are hurdles or we would already have better batteries. :/ But research is very much the kind of thing that can be financially incentivized by a government entity. You are right that incentives are not everything though, especially because they aren't realistically going to be implemented to a theoretical max that an economist might envision.
But do you think they wanted the partnership to fail?
I lack the business intrigue to give a neat answer. :P I'm not sure it was malicious necessarily: it probably wasn't. But my suspicion is, yes, some portion of corporate leadership was at least passively hoping it would fail; or more likely they were ambivalent about its success. Presumably some other portion of leadership has a different opinion or they wouldn't have tried it. (I don't think they're playing 4D chess. I think there is just internal disagreement about what strategy to take.)
I've remarked once or twice that Japanese auto companies are probably kind of uninterested in BEV tech in particular because Japan, their home market, has a terrible electrical grid. Perhaps I'm being uncharitable but the fact that it is so regional, running at different frequencies and different voltages in different regions, means that it is difficult to transport power from one area to another. Any heavy load increase in one region cannot be fixed by importing power from another region. This makes the grid vulnerable to overload. Additionally, Japan's auto market has very few international imports. Based on sales data, the majority of auto purchases in Japan are all from domestic companies: Toyota, Suzuki, Daihatsu, Honda, Nissan, Mazda, Subaru, and Mitsubishi. I think that auto companies are very tuned into this predictable user experience issue. Even though the grid is not their sector per se, it's the government's, they know that it's a bad look to sell a product that relies on a fuel source subject to shortages from infrastructure overload. (Observe how much effort Toyota and other Japanese companies have made in developing hydrogen fuel cell cars, which notably do not directly rely on the grid's electricity. Probably not a coincidence!)
Just speculating. I have a superficial understanding of Japanese infrastructure. I simply imagine there is some reluctance to invest in products that have limited domestic application. Foreign markets are subject to interference and there is a lot of competition. I think any reluctance on the part of American manufacturers to invest in EVs exists for different reasons.
In my opinion the fact that Chinese automakers have so aggressively and successfully manufactured and sold BEVs in their domestic market demonstrates that it is mostly not a matter of physics or chemistry to make the transition and primarily a matter of incentive (not willpower, but money).
Also, banning gasoline cars seems likely to make electric cars more expensive due to higher demand.
I must disclaim: I'm just a person on the internet. You are probably right if a ban happens all at once, which it shouldn't. This can't be an overnight switch for reasons of infrastructure, supply chains, etc. A 10+ year phased tax increase on non-PHEV gas-powered cars, if strong enough, will be gradual enough not to unduly thwart supply chains while also providing a very clear timeline for automakers to halt production of the worst kinds of vehicles. This is sort of what California's Gavin Newsom did in Executive Order N-79-20 by banning the production of gas cars by 2035, but there isn't officially a specific phase-out timeline in the order itself, just an arbitrary end date 12 years from now. (My understanding is that various memorandums of understanding [MOUs] clarify the phase-out process, but an MOU is not really the same thing as a tax. It is usually not legally binding, and there isn't necessarily much oversight.) [Edit: see note below about Advanced Clean Cars II.]
Thinking beyond PHEVs, while there are many technical challenges involved in creating more efficient batteries, my (entirely laic) understanding is not that we've hit the physical limits yet nor that we've run out of options for alternatives to dominant tech, just that there exist more expensive problems than there is funding available to solve those problems on an extremely rapid timescale. Yet "available funding" is dynamic and can shift if that is what our society wants to prioritize. Energy density is a Big Problem: this is only a budding industry. I also recognize that any increase in demand for batteries, including in PHEVs, places pressure on supply chains, but it wouldn't have to look like the overcorrections of the pandemic. I think regulation phasing out PHEVs in favor of 100% BEVs will probably have to look a little different, but the same principle holds.
This isn't really any different than emissions regulations of decades past, both in the automobile sector and the railroad sector. Those regulations have been enormously successful in controlling what kinds of engines and vehicles/locomotives companies have manufactured.
I am conscious of the theoretical possibility of over-regulation, that an environmental policy that's out-of-touch with the physical state of the tech (or the infrastructure) will cause automakers to shutter operations entirely. Something comparable happened to the railroads. I think the difference is that there is literally no way car-addled Americans will accept their beloved auto companies going entirely out of business. I think politicians, even in California, are extremely aware of this and would absolutely never allow it to happen. They would sooner scale back an over-aggressive regulation than double down.
In general I am not super bothered by the possibility that electric cars gradually become more expensive, as long as fully gas-powered cars are illegal to produce. Fewer people should own or at least regularly drive cars of any sort to begin with. It is a poor and dangerous form of transportation, harmful both to the natural environment and to the built environment, and EVs are no exception. And once gas-powered cars become illegal I find it hard to believe that most governments would go back if prices of PHEVs/BEVs are only gradually increasing. After all, consumers have already accepted gradually increasing car prices for decades. And the supply chains for batteries will be more mature by that point.
That is all to say that incentives aren't the whole picture, but as with most things it's a matter of whether enough funding exists for relevant projects, not whether they are possible. I am no expert, but I don't think more efficient battery tech is so unsolvable a problem that a 10 or 15-year phase-out of gas cars is unrealistic if funding is sufficient. Humanity has done more in less time; relatively speaking the leap from "current battery tech/supply chains" to "great battery tech/supply chains" is not orders of magnitude harder than harnessing atomic energy, developing advanced microprocessors, or creating rockets that can go to the moon.
Edit: my statement about Executive Order N-79-20 is misleading. The California Air Resources Board's Advanced Clean Cars II regulation has a very specific phase-out timeline for gas-powered vehicles. Starting in 2026, annual ZEV and PHEV production share must increase by 8% annually; then by 6% annually starting in 2031 to reach 100% compliance by 2035. This is an extremely achievable timeline considering PHEVs can contribute to that figure.
I don't like to see people taking "cars are bad" as axiomatic. There are bad things about cars but they're not inherent. Electric cars don't have a fossil fuel dependency. There are ways to...
I don't like to see people taking "cars are bad" as axiomatic. There are bad things about cars but they're not inherent. Electric cars don't have a fossil fuel dependency. There are ways to improve safety and I'm optimistic about self-driving cars. Many criticisms of cars hardly apply at all in rural areas.
My hope is that future transportations systems will see many modes of transportation working smoothly together, each doing what they do best, and none quite as dominant as cars have been. But cars will have their place. Even somewhere like New York City, where would we be without taxis and trucks?
There may be some people who could fairly be described as "car-addled" but that's mostly just name-calling. There's no support for ending cars everywhere because why would we support something so self-destructive?
I didn’t say cars shouldn’t exist. There just shouldn’t be so many of them. I would be fine with a “rural tax credit” or something if you have a use-case that requires a personal vehicle. It’s not...
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I didn’t say cars shouldn’t exist. There just shouldn’t be so many of them. I would be fine with a “rural tax credit” or something if you have a use-case that requires a personal vehicle.
There are bad things about cars but they're not inherent. Electric cars don't have a fossil fuel dependency. There are ways to improve safety and I'm optimistic about self-driving cars.
It’s not true that EVs are “environmentally sustainable”—they are just less worse than gas-powered cars. Automobile production still has an emission factor, and the production of any form of electricity does too. Extraction and refinement of rare earth metals is incredibly destructive and will probably never not be.
Personal vehicles are an inherently inefficient way to transport people. You can fit very few people in a car relative to the amount of material used to build it. By contrast a train or bus, though larger, is capable of much higher capacity. This inefficiency is inextricable. For the social benefit those modes offer—transport that is both efficient and, as generally implemented, public—which is something we probably do not want to eliminate, their environmental externalities are as minimal as we can make them.
EVs still emit a large amount of tire particle debris, which gets into the air and seeps into nearby soils and groundwater. Rubber on asphalt involves a lot of friction—tire treads don’t just wear down for no reason. The environmental impact of automobile tires is orders of magnitude higher than bicycle tires due to the weight of the vehicle—because, again, they involve a lot of material to build.
Externalities associated with roadways and highways specifically have significant localized environmental impact and can severely damage native ecosystems. Continuing to maintain a high capacity for automobiles on our roads (because EVs are automobiles) means more roads covered in salt to melt snow, which means more localized damage. I find it unlikely that we are going to find an alternative to salt considering how cheap it is. While some amount of salt is necessary for many surfaces, trains generally remove snow mechanically with rotary snowplows (no salt) and sidewalk salt can be applied more judiciously given the smaller footprint of pedestrians.
That is not to mention the localized impact and carbon emissions associated with asphalt roadways in general. The land footprint of a highway is extremely high—generally at least twice as high as a railway of comparable capacity. The construction emissions of such a project are unbelievable. Concrete and asphalt are extremely carbon-intensive applications. While there is research into limiting this, I would not expect the industry to go net-zero possibly ever.
I agree that self-driving car tech might make roads safer, but we are decades away from that at best. I question whether self-driving cars can really become clever enough to get us to near-zero car-induced fatalities. Streetscapes are extremely complicated. And I seriously doubt humans will stop driving manually, interfering with auto-driving, or otherwise contributing to collisions—especially when alcohol is involved. I don’t think people would put up with having a breathalyzer in their car even though it would save lives. What car-centric and government-skeptical society would agree to that? Not the United States—and certainly not rural populations who drive the most.
Because cars are inherently too large for the number of people they transport, an urban transportation system which largely relies on them will essentially always be subject to high levels of traffic. There is not enough physical room in cities for everyone, or even “most people,” to drive a car and not have traffic. The lost social and economic benefits from sitting around in traffic instead of being productive or doing something enjoyable are immense. These are inherent to automobiles.
Even somewhere like New York City, where would we be without taxis and trucks?
The majority of long-distance and short-distance shipping can and should occur via rail. This includes all shipping to regional factories, warehouses, and even large individual businesses. There is no technical reason companies cannot build rail reception infrastructure the way they’ve built it for trucks. (In fact, many large-scale operations already do this.) Freight trains can carry almost every kind of material, object, or heavy equipment you can imagine, including raw materials like sand, gravel, and soil; fuels and other liquids; cars and trucks; radioactive materials; and heavy industrial equipment. And they do so at a far greater level of safety.
There is absolutely zero need for heavy trucks, including for delivery purposes, within urban areas. Virtually all urban last-mile shipping should occur with electric cargo bikes and small form factor electric vehicles. These are becoming common in European cities; American cities simply have not gotten the memo yet. The extremely rare case that someone needs to transport a grand piano may need to be handled by a larger vehicle, but this is such an impossibly insignificant aspect of personal mobility that it’s almost not worth mentioning. Streets will always be designed to accommodate emergency vehicles, so they can accommodate an otherwise excessive moving truck to get the piano across town, sure. But the use of large and heavy trucks in an urban area is typically not necessary in any way.
Taxis are not a kind of transportation that needs to exist in remotely large quantities in built-up areas of New York City, especially Manhattan. The subway is extensive and runs 24/7. Bus service is similarly extensive. While the network could use more subway connectivity between the outer boroughs, it does have plenty of bus service, and plans exist to improve access further. Our goal should be to eliminate cars from highly urban areas to the greatest extent possible, with very few exceptions.
The question shouldn’t be, “Where would we be without taxis and trucks?” It should be ”Where would we be if we hadn’t dismantled our extensive and effective rail infrastructure to prioritize taxis and trucks?”
There may be some people who could fairly be described as "car-addled" but that's mostly just name-calling.
Sure it is. But a facetious remark about Americans’ psychological dependence on automobiles does not change the fact that most of them cannot even comprehend a world in which cars are not dominant, which is reflected in our politicians’ reluctance to change the status quo—that was my point. The idea that public transportation can be extensive and frequent enough in populated areas to effectively eliminate automobiles—“pipe dream.” Restoring heavy or light rail to places it was torn up—“antiquated.” Delivering local goods in anything other than a giant truck—“impractical.” Reimagining scale and place in our communities, architecture, and signage on the level of the pedestrian instead of just the automobile—“unheard of.” None of these beliefs are true.
I think cars are inherently bad when considering the issue mathematically and at a more macro level. You can get 6-12 times more throughput on a 3.5m wide road filled with cyclists, or 45-90 times...
I think cars are inherently bad when considering the issue mathematically and at a more macro level. You can get 6-12 times more throughput on a 3.5m wide road filled with cyclists, or 45-90 times more throughput using light rail. With much reduced carbon emissions to boot.
If you want a nice city without urban sprawl it's really hard to get this without a lot of commuter rail, walkability, busses and cycling infrastructure.
Maybe for rural areas cars are good but in western countries very few (<20%) people live in rural areas. Urban transport requirents are in a totally different league to rural ones.
It's not okay to ignore the transportation needs of about 60 million people (in the US). That's over six times the size of New York City, and we don't go around writing off entire cities.
Maybe for rural areas cars are good but in western countries very few (<20%) people live in rural areas.
It's not okay to ignore the transportation needs of about 60 million people (in the US). That's over six times the size of New York City, and we don't go around writing off entire cities.
The overwhelming prevalence of automobiles in cities is the equivalent to “writing off entire cities,” and we’ve been doing it for 75 years. American society and government were content to let...
The overwhelming prevalence of automobiles in cities is the equivalent to “writing off entire cities,” and we’ve been doing it for 75 years. American society and government were content to let cities rot in the 1960s through 1980s, including (especially) New York: they had their nice suburbs where all the fine members of society lived.
You are right that it’s important to find solutions that work for rural populations though. Automobiles will probably always be one of the primary modes of transportation in low-density, agricultural regions. They also have a terrible environmental and safety impact on those places, it’s just that they’re more of a “necessary evil” than in urban areas, where they are mostly an “unnecessary evil.”
Rural lifestyles have a high per-capita emissions footprint because they are so inefficient—resources are harder to get to these places and transportation is far more laborious, usually individual. So it would be in our collective interest to find ways to gradually encourage denser populations and minimize rural populations. That’s out of scope and I don’t know what the answer is.
"Necessary evil" is still taking cars as inherently evil. That's just dumb comic-book morality. Cars are not inherently possessed by demons from hell. If they're better than the alternatives in a...
"Necessary evil" is still taking cars as inherently evil. That's just dumb comic-book morality. Cars are not inherently possessed by demons from hell. If they're better than the alternatives in a given situation then they're not "evil" at all, they're an appropriate use.
Although energy use is pretty good, I don't buy the notion that city living is more efficient, in general. If it were efficient, why do cities have the highest costs of living? It's not the efficiency that gets people to move to the city, it's the jobs.
That's only a rough estimate, though. Rural lifestyles probably would be more expensive with an appropriate carbon tax. I'd like to see carbon taxes in place so that prices are better.
It's true that some very remote wilderness areas are quite expensive, though. Small-town living could probably be made pretty efficient.
These are two different metrics. Cities have high density, and broadly speaking higher density is more efficient than lower density. This is just the nature of resource allocation: it is why...
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Although energy use is pretty good, I don't buy the notion that city living is more efficient, in general. If it were efficient, why do cities have the highest costs of living?
These are two different metrics. Cities have high density, and broadly speaking higher density is more efficient than lower density. This is just the nature of resource allocation: it is why public transportation is effective in cities and less so in rural areas: because people are closer together, so a vehicle can use fewer resources to transport more people. Goods can be shipped to fewer disparate locations, reducing freight costs. Waste management can be centralized and streamlined; pollution control as well. Research is pretty clear about this. Models are complicated in specific use-cases of cities built in inefficient ways, and in inefficient places, but as a rule, a relatively high-density community in a given location has lower per-capita carbon emissions than a low-density community in that same location.
At the city level, we find that denser cities show lower emissions per capita. We also find evidence for the importance of the spatial structure of the city, with polycentricity being associated with lower emissions in the largest urban areas, while monocentricity being more beneficial for smaller cities. In sum, our results suggest that the size and structure of urban areas matters when studying the density-emissions relationship. This is reinforced by results using our country-level data where we find that higher density in urban areas is associated with lower emissions per capita.
Inter-city emissions analysis on the country level is more complex. Some research proposes that an optimal design pattern for resource allocation relies on a spatially dispersed network of dense cities rather than a massive population polarization in one particular area (like England vs. Iceland). But these decentralized cities must still be dense in order to minimize emissions—even this research is clear that per-capita emissions on the intra-city level are almost always lower in dense places. Some details are country-dependent.
In absolute terms, an agricultural economy becoming an urbanized one under capitalistic methods of production and waste results in higher emissions because industrial output increases and people consume more material objects and services. There are many ways to more complexly characterize urban areas’ outsized impact, depending on how you distinguish between production-based and consumption-based metrics—and focusing on some of these metrics over others paints a different picture, especially if an urban area happens to use an inefficient method of energy generation, such as coal. But in a developed economy, an individual’s choice to live a lifestyle at a particular income level in an urban area is typically less resource-intensive than in a rural area.
There are physical limits to urbanization efficiency. A population living in high-rise skyscrapers relies on complex and expensive construction techniques that may or may not be less efficient than living in medium-rise housing. It is at least less expensive to construct the mid-rise buildings themselves, though their resultant emissions may or may not be more efficient based on transportation patterns. You can possibly think of this as the intra-city application of the theory presented in the inter-city research I referred to earlier; and in the idea of intra-city polycentricity quoted. But again, this is complicated by various factors and typologies. For example, minimum parking requirements represent a massive increase in cost to high-rises (and a massive reduction in efficiency), because car storage is ridiculously space-intensive and specifically decreases the available space for housing in a particular building.
My personal understanding of theoretically ideal density in most places is closer to Brooklyn than Manhattan, but there are probably still net-positive applications for denser structures. They require different passive heating/cooling strategies than mid-rises, and in most cases should not heavily or excessively incorporate unproductive and carbon-intensive land uses like parking into their design. Significantly more research is necessary to optimize high-rise structures for energy efficiency.
It's not the efficiency that gets people to move to the city, it's the jobs.
Cities are expensive because there is demand for them. They are not expensive because resources are necessarily hard to allocate in cities. Jobs are present in cities because it is less costly (less resource-intensive) for businesses to operate in a place where workers live nearby and where supply chains are abundant. High demand for housing is a separate factor mostly controlled by local zoning regulations.
Truly efficient small-town living is mostly a function of density. It requires the majority of people in a rural area to live and work in a dense central core, minimizing resource allocation and transportation across long distances. Specifically, the quotation above suggests a monocentric density model on the intra-city level for smaller communities. This is a model that Strong Towns advocates for.
That's good information, but I think we need to think more about what efficiency means, from a philosophical perspective. Efficiency considerations seem kind of tricky because they're about...
That's good information, but I think we need to think more about what efficiency means, from a philosophical perspective.
Efficiency considerations seem kind of tricky because they're about lowering resource consumption per unit, and what is that unit?
One way to do it is that the unit is a person (that is, a per-capita measurement). People in cities do live in smaller apartments, so if we're talking square feet per person then city dwellers use space more efficiently.
But it still seems like that paying more for stuff than you need to is a sign of inefficiency. So, for example, it doesn't make sense to retire to Manhattan if you have no particular ties to New York City. There are plenty of other nice places to live that are much cheaper and nicer, and that space could be better used by someone else with better reasons to be there. High prices are a signal that it's something to be conserved, so think twice and use only what you need.
If you pay less and you get more square footage, is that an efficient or inefficient use of space? You're using cheaper space and that should count for something. Certainly it would for a business. People don't build warehouses or farms in Manhattan. There are cheaper places for such things, and that's more efficient.
In some sense, the people who use Manhattan real estate most efficiently are the people who aren't there at all. Their consumption of Manhattan real estate is zero. They've entirely substituted cheaper space.
From this point of view, using square footage per person as a measure of space efficiency is very misleading because costs differ so much depending on where you live. Small apartments in expensive places are less virtuous than you think.
But I'm also wary of using reduced cost alone as a measure of virtue. Dead people use no energy. Any metric that makes dead people more virtuous than the living has something a little funny about it.
I suppose it comes down to this philosophical question: "How does the ideal society maximize quality of life while minimizing destructive externalities?" The reason I have been somewhat...
I suppose it comes down to this philosophical question: "How does the ideal society maximize quality of life while minimizing destructive externalities?"
The reason I have been somewhat intractably focused on what I have termed "efficiency," or a statistical individual's rate of resource use, is because that rate of consumption on a collective scale is the ultimate determinant of anthropogenic climate change. I take it as axiomatic that the existence of humanity is desirable (and I do not care to discuss otherwise). Thus a policy of resource use that induces rapid climate change is an undesirable existential threat which must be avoided.
You may recognize that my approach to social welfare, including public transit, is primarily utilitarian. I'm not comfortable saying that it is only utilitarian. As you remark, it is easy for us to robotically take a goal like "reduce greenhouse gas emissions" to unreasonable extremes, like not having any humans to produce emissions. I find it important to abide by systems or rules which are "good," but that is mainly because I know humans to be individually fallible (by simple humility), not necessarily because I know any system or rule to be good in itself. My sense of virtue ethics is vague at best. I have an intuitive sense of right or wrong which informs my personal behavior, but when it comes to social and economic policy I am almost exclusively interested in the consequentialist view. In this discussion, the consequence of a "high-emissions" lifestyle is more negative than the consequence of a "low-emissions" lifestyle because it contributes to the destruction of the climate that humanity requires to exist. I find a net-zero lifestyle to be the baseline; anything else is self-destructive and contradicts my axiomatic goal. Clearly the process I would like to take to reach collective net-zero is tempered by my preference for human quality of life; there shall be no return to monke. Beyond that existential goal, I would identify "the flourishing of the human spirit" or "the maximization of general and continued human happiness" to be the primary motivators for any instrument I support or belief I hold in regard to social welfare. I think my approach here is still utilitarian or consequentialist or teleological and I don't find that it contradicts a net-zero goal. I do not believe modern lifestyles to be aligned with either the existential axiom described, nor my goals to maximize human quality of life. This is why I propose changes to modern lifestyles.
Forgive my word-mush. It has been a long time since I formally studied logic or philosophy. I do not possess the wherewithal to construct an entirely consistent theory of morality.
that space could be better used by someone else with better reasons to be there [...] Small apartments in expensive places are less virtuous than you think.
You pose a daunting question. I do not have a satisfying answer for you.
Is it necessarily virtuous for all of human existence to resemble Lower Manhattan, with all associated problems? I would say no. I have great appreciation for diversity in lifestyle because the ideas, perspectives, and art that result from different structural experiences enhance the collective human spirit. But I still find it more virtuous for humans to minimize their own destruction by living, in a per-capita sense, in relatively dense patterns rather than maximizing their own destruction by living in relatively sparse patterns. Resource efficiency underpins everything because resources are finite and their misuse is an existential problem.
I find it reasonable to suppose that a place like Manhattan is expensive primarily because there is a dearth of other places like Manhattan. Some of its costs are related to the fact that it is so dense, like the cost of construction, and so desirable, like the cost of housing. That is, density in the region is relatively polarized. Were regional density more polycentric, then the inefficiency (in the cost-based paradigm you describe) of living in Manhattan would be reduced because demand for it would be likewise reduced. In other words, were the medium-density boroughs and unusually low-density suburbs surrounding New York City somewhat and significantly denser, respectively; and Manhattan slightly denser, about as dense, or potentially a little less dense (I do not know which); you could probably find an optimal or at least acceptable per-capita emissions output while minimizing the financial cost of square footage or other cost-based resources.
It is worth noting that some of the expense of an expensive place is induced by human preference (or greed) and not strictly related to resources. Manhattan is desirable not just because it is efficient but also because, qualitatively, many people find it a nice place to live for reasons that cannot be explained by numbers. They like the culture or the lifestyle or the history or the traditions. They might feel more safe there, or more welcomed. In the real world, away from this discussion of philosophical righteousness, density only motivates so much.
Is it virtuous to possess an apartment in Manhattan when there exists someone else who could "make better use of it"? (However that's defined.) In a strictly utilitarian sense, possibly not: your possession is inefficient in achieving whatever we define as the "optimal use." But seeing as I am interested not just in identifying virtue but also implementing it, I am not sure it is a question I care to consider especially deeply. On a generalized social level, sure: what constitutes a "good (efficient and/or virtuous) land use" or a "bad (inefficient and/or non-virtuous) land use" is something I think about often. On a case-by-case basis, it is relatively straightforward to identify good land uses when considering environmental impact. It is a little harder to do so generally, though I sometimes do this in cases where I find there to be sufficient evidence, like identifying surface parking lots as relatively poor land uses in highly dense and high-demand locations ("as a rule"). I find it easier to do this for parking specifically because I find the presence of car-centric infrastructure in an urban area to violate my axiomatic/existential environmental principles stated above. But even that always requires a bunch of qualification. It is quite challenging when the problem statement becomes less well-defined than "reducing emissions." So as for most other land uses, I cannot really say. Which is better, a golf course or a mini-golf course? A library or a restaurant? In the real world, I am reluctant to attempt most such comparisons because I know my perspective of "inherent value" to be deeply flawed. It's not that I can't make a judgment call. It's just not easy. (Except for automobile parking. In that case, with a bit of information about the area, it's usually pretty easy.)
But I have extremely limited interest in considering who (which person) utilizes a particular resource, if the question is simply a matter of which single person does so. I don't really care who lives where, who does what, or exactly what exists or happens exactly where. I care about equality and equity as general principles, but whether John or Mary would "make better use" of a particular 750 sqft apartment in Manhattan is not a question I am really interested in answering. That is someone else's problem. As far as I am concerned, their status as human beings is about as in-depth as I find useful. The very furthest I would venture into this fraught space is some preference to ensure high-demand places remain accessible to those individuals who represent groups without resources; the poor or the elderly or the infirm or the young, perhaps. But I really could not offer a particular set of guidelines for this. I find it to be mostly a cultural matter. One could convincingly argue that the "optimal" resident for an apartment near a prestigious music conservatory is a student at that conservatory—even though the student is possibly or probably more privileged than the homeless person sleeping outside its gates—because society values music. That is certainly not a prerequisite for existence; it is a social decision which I don't care to micromanage.
When I was younger I identified the guiding principle of my life: be a net positive on the world. I do not think I have obtained that yet, though I believe I'm getting closer. I think about that a few ways, including my personal carbon footprint (and anything I've done, including activism, to offset it), my use of capital and social resources, and my effect on my community. Everything I do is, in theory, eventually pursuant to that principle, including discussions I have on this website. To some extent I am interested in effecting change in others by conversing but also in informing my own actions, within reasonable parameters.
When I was younger I was bewildered by the urban identity. I looked down on it. I considered myself more "in touch," worldly, or wise than those people who never ventured from the city; those people who could not sleep on the ground, under the stars; who could not navigate a world except when it was a well-labeled grid; who knew only the artificiality and hedonism of society. Today, I think I still carry some of that, but I have tried to be more understanding. When I moved into a city I began to understand what people meant by perspective.
When I was less young I determined that the prerequisites for the nourishment of the human spirit and the continued fulfillment and happiness of society are probably mostly immaterial. I hold relatively little stock in a philosophy of human existence which is organized around the acquisition of many objects. My understanding of social fairness is not rooted in material wealth.
I'm sorry for being quite a difficult conversationalist. I have a very specific worldview. While it is always open to revision, most of the grand themes were carved into stone long ago. I am not very good at defining my axioms or conveying my goals to others. I know also that I can be intractable, domineering, overzealous, and distasteful. So my apologies, now and later, for that.
Thanks engaging with my pesky philosophical questions. I think being indifferent about who lives in expensive cities is reasonable. People can make their own choices. They are rather personal and...
Thanks engaging with my pesky philosophical questions.
I think being indifferent about who lives in expensive cities is reasonable. People can make their own choices. They are rather personal and they will have better ideas about whether it's worth it.
We can also ask whether more high-density neighborhoods should exist, and given the demand for them, that seems pretty reasonable too? More mixed-use housing near transit in walkable neighborhoods seems like a fine thing.
The part I get cranky about is when the preferences of people who make different choices are dismissed as bad or irrelevant. Anti-car rhetoric often implicitly assumes everyone should have the same preferences and live in high-density places. There's little sympathy for people who live in rural areas and often an assumption that they're living extravagantly.
It's quite reasonable to advocate for more and better high-density places that don't need a car without making the leap to "having a car is bad."
Every time I hear about the "benefits" of living in an urban area, it makes me want to live in one less and less. I live in a suburb and it's perfect for me - my own space with no shared walls,...
Every time I hear about the "benefits" of living in an urban area, it makes me want to live in one less and less. I live in a suburb and it's perfect for me - my own space with no shared walls, and pretty much anything I want to do within a 20 minute drive. If I had to be kicked out of my suburb, I'd move to a rural area before an urban one. There's just no way that I want to trade in my private, quiet lifestyle for sharing walls with neighbors in tiny apartments and having to live my whole life within walking or biking distance.
Yeah, I know it's more "efficient" or whatever. But I'd rather have my personal space and peace and quiet.
That's OK. Systemically, a more carbon-intensive lifestyle should be de-incentivized at a rate corresponding to its negative environmental impact. If you want to live a lifestyle which is harmful...
That's OK. Systemically, a more carbon-intensive lifestyle should be de-incentivized at a rate corresponding to its negative environmental impact. If you want to live a lifestyle which is harmful to the environment—and therefore harmful to the collective state of humanity—then I think you need to make up for that somehow. The best way I can think of is taxation on carbon-intensive lifestyle choices, like driving a gas car; proceeds can serve the public interest, probably devoted toward projects or research that addresses climate issues.
Strictly speaking, quietness and privacy are not exclusive to suburban development patterns, as I think we've talked about. And there is no part about living in a city that requires you to stay there for your whole life. I absolutely don't.
Suburban lifestyles are probably less carbon-intensive than rural ones on a per-capita basis, at least to the extent that planners can design relatively walkable and transit-friendly suburbs. There are better ways to reduce environmental impact than mass migration, starting with adopting transit-oriented development patterns to discourage rather than explicitly ban harmful behaviors. The goal just can't be to continue sprawling endlessly outward or else there will be no livable earth to sprawl upon.
How is arguing that cars should have no place in urban areas "writing off" people in rural areas? Aside: in most countries people in rural areas have disproportionately many votes and are wined...
How is arguing that cars should have no place in urban areas "writing off" people in rural areas?
Aside: in most countries people in rural areas have disproportionately many votes and are wined and dined by politicians in a way that urban voters never are.
Yes, you did say that too. I see it as a contradiction. "Inherently bad" means nobody should have cars. If you think it's okay for many millions of people to own cars (and I agree), then they're...
Yes, you did say that too.
I see it as a contradiction. "Inherently bad" means nobody should have cars. If you think it's okay for many millions of people to own cars (and I agree), then they're not inherently bad. It all depends on the circumstances.
Yes, you're right, and additionally I routinely confuse the Volt and the Bolt. A friend has a Volt so it's the one that sticks in my mind. You can still find some lightly used Volts on the cheap....
Yes, you're right, and additionally I routinely confuse the Volt and the Bolt. A friend has a Volt so it's the one that sticks in my mind. You can still find some lightly used Volts on the cheap.
In any case there are a couple relatively affordable PHEV cars in production which are roughly in the Volt's size class, like the Toyota Prius Prime.
It's unfortunate that the vast majority of PHEVs on the market are SUVs. There are just too many SUVs in general. They are fuel-inefficient and dangerous and shouldn't be incentivized.
I don't think that's entirely the case. It's well-known that these larger cars have less regulation on them, so car companies are pushing them heavily in marketing, tricking buyers into thinking...
I don't think that's entirely the case. It's well-known that these larger cars have less regulation on them, so car companies are pushing them heavily in marketing, tricking buyers into thinking that those are their best options, but more and more people I talk to want smaller, more compact cars, ideally like they see on the streets in Europe. I'm also one of them. The only reason we opted for the bigger car is because all of the other cars around us are so large I was constantly nearly hit because larger cars just didn't see me.
Indeed, though automakers are also incentivized to sell more light trucks and SUVs to skirt environmental regulations and because realistic profit margins are higher, respectively, among other...
Indeed, though automakers are also incentivized to sell more light trucks and SUVs to skirt environmental regulations and because realistic profit margins are higher, respectively, among other reasons.
Whether or not the public wants to drive SUVs, they are so problematic in so many different ways (emissions, safety, urban planning) that they should effectively not be permitted to, either passively through higher vehicle prices or actively through stricter licensing requirements, or both.
I also wish that instead of retooling the production from the Bolt to an EV truck, they instead retooled another gas-powered model factory for a smaller-more cost conscious EV.
I also wish that instead of retooling the production from the Bolt to an EV truck, they instead retooled another gas-powered model factory for a smaller-more cost conscious EV.
While I see the benefit of a PHEV, after owning an EV and many ICE vehicles I really dont want to buy a PHEV. The main benefit of my EV is that its practically zero maintenance. I dont really care...
While I see the benefit of a PHEV, after owning an EV and many ICE vehicles I really dont want to buy a PHEV.
The main benefit of my EV is that its practically zero maintenance. I dont really care that its non polluting or quiet, or has great acceleration, I love the fact that I just plug it in and drive it without any concern about oil changes, exhaust systems, engine coolant leaks, transmission repairs, tune ups or all the other regular maintenance I have to do on my ICE cars. But a PHEV has BOTH systems which means Im likely saving money on the short commutes, yes, but I still have to do all the maintenance on the ICE side too, and if either system breaks down Im left with a complicated system to repair. I'd take one or the other, but not both together.
I also strongly disagree with incentives for buying EVs. They are inherently expensive and its not up to my neighbors to fund my choice of cars. If I cant afford it I shouldn't buy it and incentives are just a way of charging poorer people for richer people's choices which isn't fair.
Lastly, we dont have to 'incentivize' purchases that are logical and appealing to anyone who sees them as superior. No one had to incentivize us to buy smart phones and abandon our flip phones, even though smart phones are now $1000 choice while we had flips for a hundred bucks. They are so superior that people were willing to pay MUCH more for their smart phone. Not so with EVs. They have some advantages but not NEARLY enough to make people want to dump their ICE cars in favor of an EV and the whole "they will save the earth" argument is so thin that its only convincing the few with lots of disposable income who want an EV to signal their virtue.
Hundreds of thousands of annual deaths caused by ICE tailpipe emissions aren't "fair" either. :/ It sounds like what convinced you to switch to an EV wasn't the environmental angle but rather the...
incentives are just a way of charging poorer people for richer people's choices which isn't fair
Hundreds of thousands of annual deaths caused by ICE tailpipe emissions aren't "fair" either. :/
It sounds like what convinced you to switch to an EV wasn't the environmental angle but rather the financial benefit of the car: the simplicity of operating and maintaining a simple machine rather than a complex one.
That's the kind of incentive that convinces most people. Even the early adopters needed an incentive to make it worthwhile: charging infrastructure. They might've desired an EV because it has low emissions, but they chose it because it could literally function as a vehicle. When the externalities of ICEs are 400k lives per year, we simply have to make the collective shift toward alternatives. The way we make that happen on an individual level is through incentives: moral ones matter to some people, but finances matter to everyone.
Research investments make it easier to develop efficient, low-cost net-zero vehicles. Targeted carbon taxes make it less profitable for corporations to continue producing ICEs. Tax credits for EV purchases and charging infrastructure to support refueling make the switch easier for individuals. These incentives save hundreds of thousands of lives annually.
The "400k lives a year" is a weak argument as there is no direct correlation between driving an ICE and people dying from pollution. Considering their study cites 2010 studies - just as DEF,...
The "400k lives a year" is a weak argument as there is no direct correlation between driving an ICE and people dying from pollution. Considering their study cites 2010 studies - just as DEF, Diesel Exhaust Fluid was being mandated for all diesel vehicles in North America - its a wild estimate that ignores the fact that its much more logical to decrease the particulate from diesel in a country like China or India and save thousands of lives, then it is to convince people to buy an expensive EV and build infrastructure. Gas cars get cleaner all the time too - we no longer use leaded gas; all gas cars now use catalytic converters and advanced electronic controls to reduce pollution; smaller, more fuel efficient engines are common, even in big pickups.
Ive been selling cars on and off for over 40 years and I can tell you the most common buying factors: People want to know about maintenance, reliability, features, seating, handling, style, color, fit and finish and even the number of cupholders. The LAST thing on the list is going to be 'is this car going to be better for humankind' and honestly, Ive never heard a buyer express that as important to them. Its a philosophical argument, but that's very very rarely how people choose what car to buy - it only matters if the car already checks all the other boxes they're looking for.
This statement is false and perpetuating it is socially harmful. Are you being serious? The scientific literature is extremely clear that automobile exhaust contributes to a high number of...
The "400k lives a year" is a weak argument as there is no direct correlation between driving an ICE and people dying from pollution.
This statement is false and perpetuating it is socially harmful. Are you being serious? The scientific literature is extremely clear that automobile exhaust contributes to a high number of negative health effects annually. These include hundreds of thousands of deaths, significantly higher rates of asthma, and various other cardiovascular conditions which severely hamper individual health and wellness. The economic cost of these health impacts are immense. Your tax dollars are funding the unnecessary hospital bills of everyone whose lungs and hearts are negatively impacted by auto emissions.
The negative health effects of ICE exhaust are well-documented. Brugge et al. write in the chapter "Pollutants from Vehicle Exhaust Near Highways" of Environmental Health: Indoor Exposures, Assessments and Interventions (2013):
Short-term exposure to fine particulate pollution exacerbates existing pulmonary and cardiovascular disease and long-term repeated exposures increases the risk of cardiovascular disease and death.
Several studies show that exposure to PM varies spatially within a city, and finer spatial analyses show higher risks to individuals living in close proximity to heavily trafficked roads.
We note that evidence beyond the epidemiological literature support the contention that PM2.5 and UFP (a sub-fraction of PM2.5) have adverse cardiovascular effects. PM2.5 appears to be a risk factor for cardiovascular disease via mechanisms that likely include pulmonary and systemic inflammation, accelerated atherosclerosis and altered cardiac autonomic function. Uptake of particles or particle constituents in the blood can affect the autonomic control of the heart and circulatory system. [...] Chronically elevated UFP levels such as those to which residents living near heavily trafficked roadways are likely exposed can lead to long-term or repeated increases in systemic inflammation that promote arteriosclerosis.
All of these studies have found statistically significant associations between the prevalence of asthma or wheezing and living very close to high volume vehicle roadways. [...] Studies that rely on general area monitoring of ambient pollution and assess regional pollution on a scale orders of magnitude greater than the near-roadway gradients have also found associations between traffic generated pollution (CO and NOx) and prevalence of asthma or hospital admission from asthma.
By the way, this book is focused on a large number of studies most or all of which took place in the United States. It is categorically incorrect to suppose that negative health outcomes of auto emissions are localized in China and India.
If you want a study from the last few years, also from North America, see Shamsi et al. 2021:
Fossil fuel vehicles, emitting air toxics [sic] into the atmosphere, impose a heavy burden on the economy through additional health care expenses and ecological degradation. Air pollution is responsible for millions of deaths and chronic and acute health problems every year, such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The fossil-fuel-based transportation system releases tons of toxic gases into the atmosphere putting human health at risk, especially in urban areas.
Despite Canada having some of the cleanest air globally and ranking amongst the lowest levels of pollution emissions in fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations, Health Canada found that approximately 14,600 Canadians died prematurely due to air pollution in 2015 [1]. The trends show that the amount of PM2.5 being emitted in Canada is on the rise. The number of Canadians succumbing to poor air quality continues to rise while the air quality is worsening. Action to reduce the amount of pollution in the most affected areas must be taken to prevent the unnecessary loss of life. The air quality is worst in highly populated urban areas, such as the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) [2]. This decrease in air quality can be attributed to fossil-fuel-powered Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles (ICEV) [3]. These ICEVs cause the increased concentration of harmful products in the air, including CO, O3, NO2, and PM2.5 which are known to cause acute and chronic medical problems such as asthma, bronchiolitis, and also lung cancer [4]. However, the penetration of zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) into Canada’s traffic mix can alleviate this problem by eliminating these harmful exhaust products [5].
In Canada, the risk of human health impacts from air pollution is continually increasing. When samples were collected to predict PM2.5 and ozone levels in the city of Toronto, along with health data of 2360 subjects, it was found that there was a 17% increase in mortality and a 40% increase in circulatory-related mortality when exposed to 4 ppb NO2 or higher [11]. Further research has examined the relationship between premature mortality and harmful air pollutants across 11 Canadian cities [12]. The findings show that NO2 increased the risk of mortality by 4.1%, followed by ozone (1.8%), SO2 (1.4%), and CO (0.9%) [...] [13].
Emphasis mine. It is misleading and irresponsible to deny, downplay, or otherwise deflect the empirical findings that ICE emissions cause death and injury.
its much more logical to decrease the particulate from diesel in a country like China or India and save thousands of lives, then it is to convince people to buy an expensive EV and build infrastructure
This argument distracts from the obvious reality that the United States cannot magically decrease diesel particulate from another sovereign state, especially one with which it is currently feuding.
As respectfully as I can say this, the idea that "It's not our fault, just make China and India change their behavior" is an utterly unreasonable and counterproductive perspective. Yes, obviously, those nations also need to reduce emissions. But China in particular is doing a very good job at switching to EVs, far better than the United States. This year, 31% of light vehicle sales in China have been electric compared to only about 7% in the United States. China is also a leader in high-speed rail, which is electric and has very few emissions relative to automobiles, whether ICE or EV. While China's energy makeup is too reliant on coal, they are also leaders in renewable energy generation. For example, globally, 55% of new solar power capacity has been in China this year. The American market share lags far behind. Chinese investment in renewable energy in 2022 was $184 billion, more than the entire European Union combined, and almost twice as much as the United States. Obviously more can and should be done on every nation's part: but your implication that China is not doing its part is wrong.
Just because your country is not the only country contributing to a significant global health crisis does not mean that it is somehow reasonable to ignore all social responsibility for... your country's contribution to the crisis.
Ive never heard a buyer express that as important to them
Yes, I think I stated very clearly that we can only successfully motivate individuals to purchase EVs by appealing to things like cost and operational simplicity. The reason it is important for us to shift away from ICEs in general (via policy, which is not the same thing as individual decision) is because of all the research I provided above: ICEs are harmful to health. Plus all the research I haven't quoted here, but which is very much true, that shows how environmentally destructive ICEs are: consider greenhouse gas emissions and future costs induced by anthropogenic climate change.
I think it might be good to lower the stakes a bit. Someone saying the wrong thing on Tildes might be important to some of us who hang out here, but the "social harm" is pretty small, because this...
I think it might be good to lower the stakes a bit. Someone saying the wrong thing on Tildes might be important to some of us who hang out here, but the "social harm" is pretty small, because this is just another forum on the Internet and we have little influence.
We sometimes discuss serious issues from a zoomed-out perspective, but that doesn't mean a discussion on Tildes is as important as whatever is being discussed. We can work things out without treating it like a grave error.
Yes, you are right. It is “socially harmful” for me to ascribe bad faith to these discussions. I regret my severe tone. I have always been too uptight. @gowestyoungman I apologize for being so...
Yes, you are right. It is “socially harmful” for me to ascribe bad faith to these discussions. I regret my severe tone. I have always been too uptight.
@gowestyoungman I apologize for being so critical in what should not have been a particularly emotional discussion.
The joint project, which was announced in April 2022, was supposed to develop a new platform for use in lower-cost EVs for North America, South America, and China, with cars appearing in 2027. But on Thursday, the two companies revealed that the plan is no more.
"After extensive studies and analysis, we have come to a mutual decision to discontinue the program. Each company remains committed to affordability in the EV market," Honda and GM said in a joint statement.
...
The now-canceled platform was supposed to use GM's Ultium batteries. GM debuted Ultium in 2020 as its third-generation lithium-ion cell, developed together with LG Chem. At the time, GM CEO Mary Barra said that Ultium cells would drop below the $100/kWh barrier "early in the platform's life." In 2022, the first Ultium-based EVs went into production—the GMC Hummer EV, the Cadillac Lyriq, and the BrightDrop Zevo 600.
Ultium cells were supposedly ready for mass production, but GM and LG Chem are struggling to make that a reality. In July, GM had to idle BrightDrop's production line in Canada due to a shortage of battery cells, and Kelly Blue Book's sales data for the first three quarters of 2023 show that just 6,920 Ultium-based EVs (which include the Chevrolet Blazer and Silverado EV, as well as the Hummer, Lyriq, and BrightDrop van) were delivered to customers.
...
By contrast, Chevrolet sold 49,494 Bolts, which use an older and more expensive battery chemistry, during the same nine months. GM had said it was ending Bolt production this year at its plant in Orion Township, Michigan, so that it could retool and start building electric trucks beginning in 2024. Last week, though, it emerged that EV truck production has been pushed back to late 2025. (Before anyone gets their hopes up, Ars does not believe this signals a reprieve for the Bolt.)
GM has blamed the Ultium bottleneck on an unspecified "automation equipment supplier."
Regarding that last quoted paragraph (the part about Bolt production ending), I saw this other article: Why GM is reviving the Bolt, the best-selling EV it almost discontinued
To be clear, the Bolt will be on hiatus for a while. GM still plans to end production of the current Bolt at its Michigan factory at the end of this year, and it hasn’t yet said when the revamped model will go on sale — or where it’ll be made. The Bolt’s current factory in Michigan will be retooled to make electric versions of GM’s Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickup trucks.
I haven't been following this partnership in detail, but it's surprising to me because I'd read about GM's BEV3 platform with Ultium batteries back in 2021 and how Honda was already teasing an EV...
I haven't been following this partnership in detail, but it's surprising to me because I'd read about GM's BEV3 platform with Ultium batteries back in 2021 and how Honda was already teasing an EV called the Prologue (a play on the Prelude, perhaps?) based on the shared platform. An article from just last year claimed the Prologue was scheduled for a 2024 release. But if they're having difficulty with parts suppliers then that's all there is to it. Now Honda is saying that their e:Architecture platform is being pushed forward, but we won't see it until 2025. That may give the German manufacturers (and Stellantis) a chance to catch up. They have some really interesting battery tech and vehicles slated for around the same time.
For folks curious about why the bigger auto manufacturers haven't chosen to move faster on transitioning to EVs, part of it comes down to parts suppliers. It's a very similar situation to when the original iPhone came out -- a lot of the supply of screens had already been purchased by one company and that supply was paid for and committed. Manufacturers of those parts simply couldn't turn around and ramp up more production for other companies who wanted to compete with Apple just because they were having money thrown at them.
Yes, it's a play on the Prelude, which they just revealed a concept of at the Tokyo Auto Show, that looks surprisingly complete for a concept (aka close to production spec). The Prologue info has...
called the Prologue (a play on the Prelude, perhaps?)
Yes, it's a play on the Prelude, which they just revealed a concept of at the Tokyo Auto Show, that looks surprisingly complete for a concept (aka close to production spec).
The Prologue info has been ramping up of late with a walkaround by Honda released a month ago and news ramping up that it'll be out early next year.
"Fantasy land mode" is an apt description. I'm in the market for a new car to replace a decade-old Honda Accord, but will hold out until prices come down to Earth. I look around my kid's school...
"Fantasy land mode" is an apt description. I'm in the market for a new car to replace a decade-old Honda Accord, but will hold out until prices come down to Earth. I look around my kid's school pick-up line and see too many of these oversized, "luxury" monstrosities and wonder where their owners are getting their Monopoly money from. There are some sane choices in the Bolt EV and hopefully the 2024 VW ID.4 won't be too much, but even then that's still not many options and still too much money IMO since it requires the $7500 credit to be palatable.
A lot of this is based on memory that may be faulty, so take this with a grain of salt. There is one Chinese manufacturer who is selling vehicles in the US: Kandi. IIRC their American branch is...
A lot of this is based on memory that may be faulty, so take this with a grain of salt.
There is one Chinese manufacturer who is selling vehicles in the US: Kandi. IIRC their American branch is actually a partnership with GM. I can't seem to find anything about it at the moment, though.
You'll probably notice if you click that link that they are pushing golf carts.
There are two main problems with Chinese companies selling their cars to the US; safety and speed. China doesn't have as many safety regulations as the US, so their cars aren't legal to sell there without some significant alterations. They would have to make a custom US version car and that could be a rather big investment that may or may not take away from their efforts in the domestic market. But more importantly many of the Chinese EV's I've seen are designed for low speeds, especially the few that do make it to the US. Most of them are classified as NEVs which are a special category of low-speed car that you can't drive on most public roads. Kandi's top-performance EV tops off at 60mph, which makes it just barely safe to drive on the highways (and you'll probably get a bunch of angry honks from other drivers).
I'm actually a fan of NEV "kiddie cars" - I think they're neat - but I also don't own one. There's probably about 1 mile total of roads around my house that I would legally be allowed to drive them on and that just goes to houses; I couldn't even take it to the grocery store.
Where/when did you get that view? I always felt it was more of the woke crowd (before the word became the boogeyman) because it was people trying to be aware of injustices around the world. And I...
It also didn't help that being vehemently anti-China was mostly associated with conservatives on reddit
Where/when did you get that view? I always felt it was more of the woke crowd (before the word became the boogeyman) because it was people trying to be aware of injustices around the world. And I especially felt it was not associated with the Conservatives during the Hong Kong protests.
Oh, before 2016, there wasn't much anti-China stuff on reddit. In 2018/2019 there started to be a lot more and it was in all the "neutral" (aka left-leaning circlejerk) news/politics subreddits,...
Oh, before 2016, there wasn't much anti-China stuff on reddit. In 2018/2019 there started to be a lot more and it was in all the "neutral" (aka left-leaning circlejerk) news/politics subreddits, whereas the conservative ones were a bit more confusing because the authoritarian side loves supporting things China does, while the ethno-nationalist side hates them.
Very disappointing. Corporate reluctance to invest in affordable options (whether directly through production or indirectly through more research to make production possible) can be reliably and rapidly solved by only one thing: regulation banning the production of gasoline-powered vehicles.
Frankly I see very little reason why the gas-powered vehicles need to be permitted anywhere when PHEVs (plug-in hybrid electric vehicles) offer all of the reliability and range advantages of the status quo while also being significantly more environmentally sustainable. There are fairly affordable ($20–30k) PHEVs of different classes already, including the Chevy Volt on the smaller side and something like the Subaru Crosstrek or the Ford Escape on the larger side. If more competition in this space existed, prices would drop further.
I see little reason for the government to incentivize the purchase of gas vehicles at this point. People looove to talk about the "pull" factors ("if only transit in my city were a little better, I wouldn't drive so much" or "if only there were charging stations on literally all 3 billion parking spaces in the country"), which is part of the discussion, but immediate changes in behavior are kickstarted by "push" factors, especially economic ones. These don't have to be sharp: just an annual increase in taxes for producers or registration for consumers of non-PHEV ICE vehicles. The message gets across pretty quickly. Once it becomes more expensive for automakers to manufacture and sell ICEs than to focus on PHEVs and BEVs, they will pivot. Until then, they just don't have an incentive to do so.
(Research, by the way, is very clear that a mix of incentives for good decisions and de-incentives for bad decisions in transportation is the way to go: not one or the other. And right now, we're only doing #1, and barely.)
I do not believe that "economies of scale" or magical improvements to battery technology are going to naturally solve the issue of affordability, at least not by 2035 or whatever the targets are. I see plenty of potential for new technology to make PHEVs and BEVs inherently more economically competitive, but little incentive for that technology to be adopted by automakers at a remotely sufficient rate. Regulators have to be seriously involved in the process if we're going to reduce transportation emissions in a reasonable timeframe.
I've been an open critic of PHEVs here on Tildes, but I have to say that I agree with you on every point. I do wish that there were more of a focus on public transportation and walkable town centers being built (and there is, in some places), but trading ICE cars with PHEV is a nonzero improvement.
I've realized for a while that there's absolutely nothing stopping us from making a change in how our society works except for lack of interest. And one of the big obstacles to many industrial improvements is the perverse incentives that corporations give to the people who are in charge of policy in the form of lobbying and donations. We keep making ICE cars largely because it's profitable for the auto industry, and the auto industry doesn't face government pressure because they exert their own pressure on the government. In many ways we are living in a world built upon a status quo exerted upon us by industry and corporations.
Incentives are important, but I don’t see why they were insufficient. GM is investing in next-generation battery tech so that can build affordable electric cars and win market share from other companies like Tesla. Do you think they have incentive to fail? Honda is hedging their bets because GM’s battery tech isn’t working well, and maybe something else will work. But do you think they wanted the partnership to fail?
I don’t know why this partnership didn’t work out, but it’s reasonable to assume they got disappointing results because next-generation battery innovation is actually hard, and they were overly optimistic. Incentives don’t determine what works; it’s physics, chemistry, and engineering.
More generally: economists often talk up the power of incentives, but I think people have over-learned that lesson and try to reason from incentives alone. If you stop paying attention to other factors then you end up concluding that projects fail because the people involved weren’t motivated enough. There are other possibilities to consider.
(Also, banning gasoline cars seems likely to make electric cars more expensive due to higher demand.)
I got a B+ in high school chemistry so I can't really speak to the engineering challenges involved in battery tech. Evidently there are hurdles or we would already have better batteries. :/ But research is very much the kind of thing that can be financially incentivized by a government entity. You are right that incentives are not everything though, especially because they aren't realistically going to be implemented to a theoretical max that an economist might envision.
I lack the business intrigue to give a neat answer. :P I'm not sure it was malicious necessarily: it probably wasn't. But my suspicion is, yes, some portion of corporate leadership was at least passively hoping it would fail; or more likely they were ambivalent about its success. Presumably some other portion of leadership has a different opinion or they wouldn't have tried it. (I don't think they're playing 4D chess. I think there is just internal disagreement about what strategy to take.)
I've remarked once or twice that Japanese auto companies are probably kind of uninterested in BEV tech in particular because Japan, their home market, has a terrible electrical grid. Perhaps I'm being uncharitable but the fact that it is so regional, running at different frequencies and different voltages in different regions, means that it is difficult to transport power from one area to another. Any heavy load increase in one region cannot be fixed by importing power from another region. This makes the grid vulnerable to overload. Additionally, Japan's auto market has very few international imports. Based on sales data, the majority of auto purchases in Japan are all from domestic companies: Toyota, Suzuki, Daihatsu, Honda, Nissan, Mazda, Subaru, and Mitsubishi. I think that auto companies are very tuned into this predictable user experience issue. Even though the grid is not their sector per se, it's the government's, they know that it's a bad look to sell a product that relies on a fuel source subject to shortages from infrastructure overload. (Observe how much effort Toyota and other Japanese companies have made in developing hydrogen fuel cell cars, which notably do not directly rely on the grid's electricity. Probably not a coincidence!)
Just speculating. I have a superficial understanding of Japanese infrastructure. I simply imagine there is some reluctance to invest in products that have limited domestic application. Foreign markets are subject to interference and there is a lot of competition. I think any reluctance on the part of American manufacturers to invest in EVs exists for different reasons.
In my opinion the fact that Chinese automakers have so aggressively and successfully manufactured and sold BEVs in their domestic market demonstrates that it is mostly not a matter of physics or chemistry to make the transition and primarily a matter of incentive (not willpower, but money).
I must disclaim: I'm just a person on the internet. You are probably right if a ban happens all at once, which it shouldn't. This can't be an overnight switch for reasons of infrastructure, supply chains, etc. A 10+ year phased tax increase on non-PHEV gas-powered cars, if strong enough, will be gradual enough not to unduly thwart supply chains while also providing a very clear timeline for automakers to halt production of the worst kinds of vehicles. This is sort of what California's Gavin Newsom did in Executive Order N-79-20 by banning the production of gas cars by 2035, but there isn't officially a specific phase-out timeline in the order itself, just an arbitrary end date 12 years from now. (My understanding is that various memorandums of understanding [MOUs] clarify the phase-out process, but an MOU is not really the same thing as a tax. It is usually not legally binding, and there isn't necessarily much oversight.) [Edit: see note below about Advanced Clean Cars II.]
Thinking beyond PHEVs, while there are many technical challenges involved in creating more efficient batteries, my (entirely laic) understanding is not that we've hit the physical limits yet nor that we've run out of options for alternatives to dominant tech, just that there exist more expensive problems than there is funding available to solve those problems on an extremely rapid timescale. Yet "available funding" is dynamic and can shift if that is what our society wants to prioritize. Energy density is a Big Problem: this is only a budding industry. I also recognize that any increase in demand for batteries, including in PHEVs, places pressure on supply chains, but it wouldn't have to look like the overcorrections of the pandemic. I think regulation phasing out PHEVs in favor of 100% BEVs will probably have to look a little different, but the same principle holds.
This isn't really any different than emissions regulations of decades past, both in the automobile sector and the railroad sector. Those regulations have been enormously successful in controlling what kinds of engines and vehicles/locomotives companies have manufactured.
I am conscious of the theoretical possibility of over-regulation, that an environmental policy that's out-of-touch with the physical state of the tech (or the infrastructure) will cause automakers to shutter operations entirely. Something comparable happened to the railroads. I think the difference is that there is literally no way car-addled Americans will accept their beloved auto companies going entirely out of business. I think politicians, even in California, are extremely aware of this and would absolutely never allow it to happen. They would sooner scale back an over-aggressive regulation than double down.
In general I am not super bothered by the possibility that electric cars gradually become more expensive, as long as fully gas-powered cars are illegal to produce. Fewer people should own or at least regularly drive cars of any sort to begin with. It is a poor and dangerous form of transportation, harmful both to the natural environment and to the built environment, and EVs are no exception. And once gas-powered cars become illegal I find it hard to believe that most governments would go back if prices of PHEVs/BEVs are only gradually increasing. After all, consumers have already accepted gradually increasing car prices for decades. And the supply chains for batteries will be more mature by that point.
That is all to say that incentives aren't the whole picture, but as with most things it's a matter of whether enough funding exists for relevant projects, not whether they are possible. I am no expert, but I don't think more efficient battery tech is so unsolvable a problem that a 10 or 15-year phase-out of gas cars is unrealistic if funding is sufficient. Humanity has done more in less time; relatively speaking the leap from "current battery tech/supply chains" to "great battery tech/supply chains" is not orders of magnitude harder than harnessing atomic energy, developing advanced microprocessors, or creating rockets that can go to the moon.
Edit: my statement about Executive Order N-79-20 is misleading. The California Air Resources Board's Advanced Clean Cars II regulation has a very specific phase-out timeline for gas-powered vehicles. Starting in 2026, annual ZEV and PHEV production share must increase by 8% annually; then by 6% annually starting in 2031 to reach 100% compliance by 2035. This is an extremely achievable timeline considering PHEVs can contribute to that figure.
I don't like to see people taking "cars are bad" as axiomatic. There are bad things about cars but they're not inherent. Electric cars don't have a fossil fuel dependency. There are ways to improve safety and I'm optimistic about self-driving cars. Many criticisms of cars hardly apply at all in rural areas.
My hope is that future transportations systems will see many modes of transportation working smoothly together, each doing what they do best, and none quite as dominant as cars have been. But cars will have their place. Even somewhere like New York City, where would we be without taxis and trucks?
There may be some people who could fairly be described as "car-addled" but that's mostly just name-calling. There's no support for ending cars everywhere because why would we support something so self-destructive?
I didn’t say cars shouldn’t exist. There just shouldn’t be so many of them. I would be fine with a “rural tax credit” or something if you have a use-case that requires a personal vehicle.
It’s not true that EVs are “environmentally sustainable”—they are just less worse than gas-powered cars. Automobile production still has an emission factor, and the production of any form of electricity does too. Extraction and refinement of rare earth metals is incredibly destructive and will probably never not be.
Personal vehicles are an inherently inefficient way to transport people. You can fit very few people in a car relative to the amount of material used to build it. By contrast a train or bus, though larger, is capable of much higher capacity. This inefficiency is inextricable. For the social benefit those modes offer—transport that is both efficient and, as generally implemented, public—which is something we probably do not want to eliminate, their environmental externalities are as minimal as we can make them.
EVs still emit a large amount of tire particle debris, which gets into the air and seeps into nearby soils and groundwater. Rubber on asphalt involves a lot of friction—tire treads don’t just wear down for no reason. The environmental impact of automobile tires is orders of magnitude higher than bicycle tires due to the weight of the vehicle—because, again, they involve a lot of material to build.
Externalities associated with roadways and highways specifically have significant localized environmental impact and can severely damage native ecosystems. Continuing to maintain a high capacity for automobiles on our roads (because EVs are automobiles) means more roads covered in salt to melt snow, which means more localized damage. I find it unlikely that we are going to find an alternative to salt considering how cheap it is. While some amount of salt is necessary for many surfaces, trains generally remove snow mechanically with rotary snowplows (no salt) and sidewalk salt can be applied more judiciously given the smaller footprint of pedestrians.
That is not to mention the localized impact and carbon emissions associated with asphalt roadways in general. The land footprint of a highway is extremely high—generally at least twice as high as a railway of comparable capacity. The construction emissions of such a project are unbelievable. Concrete and asphalt are extremely carbon-intensive applications. While there is research into limiting this, I would not expect the industry to go net-zero possibly ever.
I agree that self-driving car tech might make roads safer, but we are decades away from that at best. I question whether self-driving cars can really become clever enough to get us to near-zero car-induced fatalities. Streetscapes are extremely complicated. And I seriously doubt humans will stop driving manually, interfering with auto-driving, or otherwise contributing to collisions—especially when alcohol is involved. I don’t think people would put up with having a breathalyzer in their car even though it would save lives. What car-centric and government-skeptical society would agree to that? Not the United States—and certainly not rural populations who drive the most.
Because cars are inherently too large for the number of people they transport, an urban transportation system which largely relies on them will essentially always be subject to high levels of traffic. There is not enough physical room in cities for everyone, or even “most people,” to drive a car and not have traffic. The lost social and economic benefits from sitting around in traffic instead of being productive or doing something enjoyable are immense. These are inherent to automobiles.
The majority of long-distance and short-distance shipping can and should occur via rail. This includes all shipping to regional factories, warehouses, and even large individual businesses. There is no technical reason companies cannot build rail reception infrastructure the way they’ve built it for trucks. (In fact, many large-scale operations already do this.) Freight trains can carry almost every kind of material, object, or heavy equipment you can imagine, including raw materials like sand, gravel, and soil; fuels and other liquids; cars and trucks; radioactive materials; and heavy industrial equipment. And they do so at a far greater level of safety.
There is absolutely zero need for heavy trucks, including for delivery purposes, within urban areas. Virtually all urban last-mile shipping should occur with electric cargo bikes and small form factor electric vehicles. These are becoming common in European cities; American cities simply have not gotten the memo yet. The extremely rare case that someone needs to transport a grand piano may need to be handled by a larger vehicle, but this is such an impossibly insignificant aspect of personal mobility that it’s almost not worth mentioning. Streets will always be designed to accommodate emergency vehicles, so they can accommodate an otherwise excessive moving truck to get the piano across town, sure. But the use of large and heavy trucks in an urban area is typically not necessary in any way.
Taxis are not a kind of transportation that needs to exist in remotely large quantities in built-up areas of New York City, especially Manhattan. The subway is extensive and runs 24/7. Bus service is similarly extensive. While the network could use more subway connectivity between the outer boroughs, it does have plenty of bus service, and plans exist to improve access further. Our goal should be to eliminate cars from highly urban areas to the greatest extent possible, with very few exceptions.
The question shouldn’t be, “Where would we be without taxis and trucks?” It should be ”Where would we be if we hadn’t dismantled our extensive and effective rail infrastructure to prioritize taxis and trucks?”
Sure it is. But a facetious remark about Americans’ psychological dependence on automobiles does not change the fact that most of them cannot even comprehend a world in which cars are not dominant, which is reflected in our politicians’ reluctance to change the status quo—that was my point. The idea that public transportation can be extensive and frequent enough in populated areas to effectively eliminate automobiles—“pipe dream.” Restoring heavy or light rail to places it was torn up—“antiquated.” Delivering local goods in anything other than a giant truck—“impractical.” Reimagining scale and place in our communities, architecture, and signage on the level of the pedestrian instead of just the automobile—“unheard of.” None of these beliefs are true.
I think cars are inherently bad when considering the issue mathematically and at a more macro level. You can get 6-12 times more throughput on a 3.5m wide road filled with cyclists, or 45-90 times more throughput using light rail. With much reduced carbon emissions to boot.
If you want a nice city without urban sprawl it's really hard to get this without a lot of commuter rail, walkability, busses and cycling infrastructure.
Maybe for rural areas cars are good but in western countries very few (<20%) people live in rural areas. Urban transport requirents are in a totally different league to rural ones.
Figures from https://transformative-mobility.org/multimedia/passenger-capacity-of-different-transport-modes/
It's not okay to ignore the transportation needs of about 60 million people (in the US). That's over six times the size of New York City, and we don't go around writing off entire cities.
The overwhelming prevalence of automobiles in cities is the equivalent to “writing off entire cities,” and we’ve been doing it for 75 years. American society and government were content to let cities rot in the 1960s through 1980s, including (especially) New York: they had their nice suburbs where all the fine members of society lived.
You are right that it’s important to find solutions that work for rural populations though. Automobiles will probably always be one of the primary modes of transportation in low-density, agricultural regions. They also have a terrible environmental and safety impact on those places, it’s just that they’re more of a “necessary evil” than in urban areas, where they are mostly an “unnecessary evil.”
Rural lifestyles have a high per-capita emissions footprint because they are so inefficient—resources are harder to get to these places and transportation is far more laborious, usually individual. So it would be in our collective interest to find ways to gradually encourage denser populations and minimize rural populations. That’s out of scope and I don’t know what the answer is.
"Necessary evil" is still taking cars as inherently evil. That's just dumb comic-book morality. Cars are not inherently possessed by demons from hell. If they're better than the alternatives in a given situation then they're not "evil" at all, they're an appropriate use.
Although energy use is pretty good, I don't buy the notion that city living is more efficient, in general. If it were efficient, why do cities have the highest costs of living? It's not the efficiency that gets people to move to the city, it's the jobs.
That's only a rough estimate, though. Rural lifestyles probably would be more expensive with an appropriate carbon tax. I'd like to see carbon taxes in place so that prices are better.
It's true that some very remote wilderness areas are quite expensive, though. Small-town living could probably be made pretty efficient.
These are two different metrics. Cities have high density, and broadly speaking higher density is more efficient than lower density. This is just the nature of resource allocation: it is why public transportation is effective in cities and less so in rural areas: because people are closer together, so a vehicle can use fewer resources to transport more people. Goods can be shipped to fewer disparate locations, reducing freight costs. Waste management can be centralized and streamlined; pollution control as well. Research is pretty clear about this. Models are complicated in specific use-cases of cities built in inefficient ways, and in inefficient places, but as a rule, a relatively high-density community in a given location has lower per-capita carbon emissions than a low-density community in that same location.
Castells-Quintana et al. 2021:
Inter-city emissions analysis on the country level is more complex. Some research proposes that an optimal design pattern for resource allocation relies on a spatially dispersed network of dense cities rather than a massive population polarization in one particular area (like England vs. Iceland). But these decentralized cities must still be dense in order to minimize emissions—even this research is clear that per-capita emissions on the intra-city level are almost always lower in dense places. Some details are country-dependent.
In absolute terms, an agricultural economy becoming an urbanized one under capitalistic methods of production and waste results in higher emissions because industrial output increases and people consume more material objects and services. There are many ways to more complexly characterize urban areas’ outsized impact, depending on how you distinguish between production-based and consumption-based metrics—and focusing on some of these metrics over others paints a different picture, especially if an urban area happens to use an inefficient method of energy generation, such as coal. But in a developed economy, an individual’s choice to live a lifestyle at a particular income level in an urban area is typically less resource-intensive than in a rural area.
There are physical limits to urbanization efficiency. A population living in high-rise skyscrapers relies on complex and expensive construction techniques that may or may not be less efficient than living in medium-rise housing. It is at least less expensive to construct the mid-rise buildings themselves, though their resultant emissions may or may not be more efficient based on transportation patterns. You can possibly think of this as the intra-city application of the theory presented in the inter-city research I referred to earlier; and in the idea of intra-city polycentricity quoted. But again, this is complicated by various factors and typologies. For example, minimum parking requirements represent a massive increase in cost to high-rises (and a massive reduction in efficiency), because car storage is ridiculously space-intensive and specifically decreases the available space for housing in a particular building.
My personal understanding of theoretically ideal density in most places is closer to Brooklyn than Manhattan, but there are probably still net-positive applications for denser structures. They require different passive heating/cooling strategies than mid-rises, and in most cases should not heavily or excessively incorporate unproductive and carbon-intensive land uses like parking into their design. Significantly more research is necessary to optimize high-rise structures for energy efficiency.
Cities are expensive because there is demand for them. They are not expensive because resources are necessarily hard to allocate in cities. Jobs are present in cities because it is less costly (less resource-intensive) for businesses to operate in a place where workers live nearby and where supply chains are abundant. High demand for housing is a separate factor mostly controlled by local zoning regulations.
Truly efficient small-town living is mostly a function of density. It requires the majority of people in a rural area to live and work in a dense central core, minimizing resource allocation and transportation across long distances. Specifically, the quotation above suggests a monocentric density model on the intra-city level for smaller communities. This is a model that Strong Towns advocates for.
That's good information, but I think we need to think more about what efficiency means, from a philosophical perspective.
Efficiency considerations seem kind of tricky because they're about lowering resource consumption per unit, and what is that unit?
One way to do it is that the unit is a person (that is, a per-capita measurement). People in cities do live in smaller apartments, so if we're talking square feet per person then city dwellers use space more efficiently.
But it still seems like that paying more for stuff than you need to is a sign of inefficiency. So, for example, it doesn't make sense to retire to Manhattan if you have no particular ties to New York City. There are plenty of other nice places to live that are much cheaper and nicer, and that space could be better used by someone else with better reasons to be there. High prices are a signal that it's something to be conserved, so think twice and use only what you need.
If you pay less and you get more square footage, is that an efficient or inefficient use of space? You're using cheaper space and that should count for something. Certainly it would for a business. People don't build warehouses or farms in Manhattan. There are cheaper places for such things, and that's more efficient.
In some sense, the people who use Manhattan real estate most efficiently are the people who aren't there at all. Their consumption of Manhattan real estate is zero. They've entirely substituted cheaper space.
From this point of view, using square footage per person as a measure of space efficiency is very misleading because costs differ so much depending on where you live. Small apartments in expensive places are less virtuous than you think.
But I'm also wary of using reduced cost alone as a measure of virtue. Dead people use no energy. Any metric that makes dead people more virtuous than the living has something a little funny about it.
I suppose it comes down to this philosophical question: "How does the ideal society maximize quality of life while minimizing destructive externalities?"
The reason I have been somewhat intractably focused on what I have termed "efficiency," or a statistical individual's rate of resource use, is because that rate of consumption on a collective scale is the ultimate determinant of anthropogenic climate change. I take it as axiomatic that the existence of humanity is desirable (and I do not care to discuss otherwise). Thus a policy of resource use that induces rapid climate change is an undesirable existential threat which must be avoided.
You may recognize that my approach to social welfare, including public transit, is primarily utilitarian. I'm not comfortable saying that it is only utilitarian. As you remark, it is easy for us to robotically take a goal like "reduce greenhouse gas emissions" to unreasonable extremes, like not having any humans to produce emissions. I find it important to abide by systems or rules which are "good," but that is mainly because I know humans to be individually fallible (by simple humility), not necessarily because I know any system or rule to be good in itself. My sense of virtue ethics is vague at best. I have an intuitive sense of right or wrong which informs my personal behavior, but when it comes to social and economic policy I am almost exclusively interested in the consequentialist view. In this discussion, the consequence of a "high-emissions" lifestyle is more negative than the consequence of a "low-emissions" lifestyle because it contributes to the destruction of the climate that humanity requires to exist. I find a net-zero lifestyle to be the baseline; anything else is self-destructive and contradicts my axiomatic goal. Clearly the process I would like to take to reach collective net-zero is tempered by my preference for human quality of life; there shall be no return to monke. Beyond that existential goal, I would identify "the flourishing of the human spirit" or "the maximization of general and continued human happiness" to be the primary motivators for any instrument I support or belief I hold in regard to social welfare. I think my approach here is still utilitarian or consequentialist or teleological and I don't find that it contradicts a net-zero goal. I do not believe modern lifestyles to be aligned with either the existential axiom described, nor my goals to maximize human quality of life. This is why I propose changes to modern lifestyles.
Forgive my word-mush. It has been a long time since I formally studied logic or philosophy. I do not possess the wherewithal to construct an entirely consistent theory of morality.
You pose a daunting question. I do not have a satisfying answer for you.
Is it necessarily virtuous for all of human existence to resemble Lower Manhattan, with all associated problems? I would say no. I have great appreciation for diversity in lifestyle because the ideas, perspectives, and art that result from different structural experiences enhance the collective human spirit. But I still find it more virtuous for humans to minimize their own destruction by living, in a per-capita sense, in relatively dense patterns rather than maximizing their own destruction by living in relatively sparse patterns. Resource efficiency underpins everything because resources are finite and their misuse is an existential problem.
I find it reasonable to suppose that a place like Manhattan is expensive primarily because there is a dearth of other places like Manhattan. Some of its costs are related to the fact that it is so dense, like the cost of construction, and so desirable, like the cost of housing. That is, density in the region is relatively polarized. Were regional density more polycentric, then the inefficiency (in the cost-based paradigm you describe) of living in Manhattan would be reduced because demand for it would be likewise reduced. In other words, were the medium-density boroughs and unusually low-density suburbs surrounding New York City somewhat and significantly denser, respectively; and Manhattan slightly denser, about as dense, or potentially a little less dense (I do not know which); you could probably find an optimal or at least acceptable per-capita emissions output while minimizing the financial cost of square footage or other cost-based resources.
It is worth noting that some of the expense of an expensive place is induced by human preference (or greed) and not strictly related to resources. Manhattan is desirable not just because it is efficient but also because, qualitatively, many people find it a nice place to live for reasons that cannot be explained by numbers. They like the culture or the lifestyle or the history or the traditions. They might feel more safe there, or more welcomed. In the real world, away from this discussion of philosophical righteousness, density only motivates so much.
Is it virtuous to possess an apartment in Manhattan when there exists someone else who could "make better use of it"? (However that's defined.) In a strictly utilitarian sense, possibly not: your possession is inefficient in achieving whatever we define as the "optimal use." But seeing as I am interested not just in identifying virtue but also implementing it, I am not sure it is a question I care to consider especially deeply. On a generalized social level, sure: what constitutes a "good (efficient and/or virtuous) land use" or a "bad (inefficient and/or non-virtuous) land use" is something I think about often. On a case-by-case basis, it is relatively straightforward to identify good land uses when considering environmental impact. It is a little harder to do so generally, though I sometimes do this in cases where I find there to be sufficient evidence, like identifying surface parking lots as relatively poor land uses in highly dense and high-demand locations ("as a rule"). I find it easier to do this for parking specifically because I find the presence of car-centric infrastructure in an urban area to violate my axiomatic/existential environmental principles stated above. But even that always requires a bunch of qualification. It is quite challenging when the problem statement becomes less well-defined than "reducing emissions." So as for most other land uses, I cannot really say. Which is better, a golf course or a mini-golf course? A library or a restaurant? In the real world, I am reluctant to attempt most such comparisons because I know my perspective of "inherent value" to be deeply flawed. It's not that I can't make a judgment call. It's just not easy. (Except for automobile parking. In that case, with a bit of information about the area, it's usually pretty easy.)
But I have extremely limited interest in considering who (which person) utilizes a particular resource, if the question is simply a matter of which single person does so. I don't really care who lives where, who does what, or exactly what exists or happens exactly where. I care about equality and equity as general principles, but whether John or Mary would "make better use" of a particular 750 sqft apartment in Manhattan is not a question I am really interested in answering. That is someone else's problem. As far as I am concerned, their status as human beings is about as in-depth as I find useful. The very furthest I would venture into this fraught space is some preference to ensure high-demand places remain accessible to those individuals who represent groups without resources; the poor or the elderly or the infirm or the young, perhaps. But I really could not offer a particular set of guidelines for this. I find it to be mostly a cultural matter. One could convincingly argue that the "optimal" resident for an apartment near a prestigious music conservatory is a student at that conservatory—even though the student is possibly or probably more privileged than the homeless person sleeping outside its gates—because society values music. That is certainly not a prerequisite for existence; it is a social decision which I don't care to micromanage.
When I was younger I identified the guiding principle of my life: be a net positive on the world. I do not think I have obtained that yet, though I believe I'm getting closer. I think about that a few ways, including my personal carbon footprint (and anything I've done, including activism, to offset it), my use of capital and social resources, and my effect on my community. Everything I do is, in theory, eventually pursuant to that principle, including discussions I have on this website. To some extent I am interested in effecting change in others by conversing but also in informing my own actions, within reasonable parameters.
When I was younger I was bewildered by the urban identity. I looked down on it. I considered myself more "in touch," worldly, or wise than those people who never ventured from the city; those people who could not sleep on the ground, under the stars; who could not navigate a world except when it was a well-labeled grid; who knew only the artificiality and hedonism of society. Today, I think I still carry some of that, but I have tried to be more understanding. When I moved into a city I began to understand what people meant by perspective.
When I was less young I determined that the prerequisites for the nourishment of the human spirit and the continued fulfillment and happiness of society are probably mostly immaterial. I hold relatively little stock in a philosophy of human existence which is organized around the acquisition of many objects. My understanding of social fairness is not rooted in material wealth.
I'm sorry for being quite a difficult conversationalist. I have a very specific worldview. While it is always open to revision, most of the grand themes were carved into stone long ago. I am not very good at defining my axioms or conveying my goals to others. I know also that I can be intractable, domineering, overzealous, and distasteful. So my apologies, now and later, for that.
Thanks engaging with my pesky philosophical questions.
I think being indifferent about who lives in expensive cities is reasonable. People can make their own choices. They are rather personal and they will have better ideas about whether it's worth it.
We can also ask whether more high-density neighborhoods should exist, and given the demand for them, that seems pretty reasonable too? More mixed-use housing near transit in walkable neighborhoods seems like a fine thing.
The part I get cranky about is when the preferences of people who make different choices are dismissed as bad or irrelevant. Anti-car rhetoric often implicitly assumes everyone should have the same preferences and live in high-density places. There's little sympathy for people who live in rural areas and often an assumption that they're living extravagantly.
It's quite reasonable to advocate for more and better high-density places that don't need a car without making the leap to "having a car is bad."
Every time I hear about the "benefits" of living in an urban area, it makes me want to live in one less and less. I live in a suburb and it's perfect for me - my own space with no shared walls, and pretty much anything I want to do within a 20 minute drive. If I had to be kicked out of my suburb, I'd move to a rural area before an urban one. There's just no way that I want to trade in my private, quiet lifestyle for sharing walls with neighbors in tiny apartments and having to live my whole life within walking or biking distance.
Yeah, I know it's more "efficient" or whatever. But I'd rather have my personal space and peace and quiet.
That's OK. Systemically, a more carbon-intensive lifestyle should be de-incentivized at a rate corresponding to its negative environmental impact. If you want to live a lifestyle which is harmful to the environment—and therefore harmful to the collective state of humanity—then I think you need to make up for that somehow. The best way I can think of is taxation on carbon-intensive lifestyle choices, like driving a gas car; proceeds can serve the public interest, probably devoted toward projects or research that addresses climate issues.
Strictly speaking, quietness and privacy are not exclusive to suburban development patterns, as I think we've talked about. And there is no part about living in a city that requires you to stay there for your whole life. I absolutely don't.
Suburban lifestyles are probably less carbon-intensive than rural ones on a per-capita basis, at least to the extent that planners can design relatively walkable and transit-friendly suburbs. There are better ways to reduce environmental impact than mass migration, starting with adopting transit-oriented development patterns to discourage rather than explicitly ban harmful behaviors. The goal just can't be to continue sprawling endlessly outward or else there will be no livable earth to sprawl upon.
As someone who does very much live in a rural area without the convenience of the big city, I agree with you.
How is arguing that cars should have no place in urban areas "writing off" people in rural areas?
Aside: in most countries people in rural areas have disproportionately many votes and are wined and dined by politicians in a way that urban voters never are.
You didn't argue they have no place just in urban areas, you said they're "inherently bad" meaning they're also bad in rural areas.
If you read the comment in full you'd see that I also said "Maybe for rural areas cars are good".
Yes, you did say that too.
I see it as a contradiction. "Inherently bad" means nobody should have cars. If you think it's okay for many millions of people to own cars (and I agree), then they're not inherently bad. It all depends on the circumstances.
Maybe you’re aware, but they discontinued the Volt years ago.
Yes, you're right, and additionally I routinely confuse the Volt and the Bolt. A friend has a Volt so it's the one that sticks in my mind. You can still find some lightly used Volts on the cheap.
In any case there are a couple relatively affordable PHEV cars in production which are roughly in the Volt's size class, like the Toyota Prius Prime.
It's unfortunate that the vast majority of PHEVs on the market are SUVs. There are just too many SUVs in general. They are fuel-inefficient and dangerous and shouldn't be incentivized.
It sucks but that seems to be what most of the car-buying public wants.
I don't think that's entirely the case. It's well-known that these larger cars have less regulation on them, so car companies are pushing them heavily in marketing, tricking buyers into thinking that those are their best options, but more and more people I talk to want smaller, more compact cars, ideally like they see on the streets in Europe. I'm also one of them. The only reason we opted for the bigger car is because all of the other cars around us are so large I was constantly nearly hit because larger cars just didn't see me.
Indeed, though automakers are also incentivized to sell more light trucks and SUVs to skirt environmental regulations and because realistic profit margins are higher, respectively, among other reasons.
Whether or not the public wants to drive SUVs, they are so problematic in so many different ways (emissions, safety, urban planning) that they should effectively not be permitted to, either passively through higher vehicle prices or actively through stricter licensing requirements, or both.
I also wish that instead of retooling the production from the Bolt to an EV truck, they instead retooled another gas-powered model factory for a smaller-more cost conscious EV.
While I see the benefit of a PHEV, after owning an EV and many ICE vehicles I really dont want to buy a PHEV.
The main benefit of my EV is that its practically zero maintenance. I dont really care that its non polluting or quiet, or has great acceleration, I love the fact that I just plug it in and drive it without any concern about oil changes, exhaust systems, engine coolant leaks, transmission repairs, tune ups or all the other regular maintenance I have to do on my ICE cars. But a PHEV has BOTH systems which means Im likely saving money on the short commutes, yes, but I still have to do all the maintenance on the ICE side too, and if either system breaks down Im left with a complicated system to repair. I'd take one or the other, but not both together.
I also strongly disagree with incentives for buying EVs. They are inherently expensive and its not up to my neighbors to fund my choice of cars. If I cant afford it I shouldn't buy it and incentives are just a way of charging poorer people for richer people's choices which isn't fair.
Lastly, we dont have to 'incentivize' purchases that are logical and appealing to anyone who sees them as superior. No one had to incentivize us to buy smart phones and abandon our flip phones, even though smart phones are now $1000 choice while we had flips for a hundred bucks. They are so superior that people were willing to pay MUCH more for their smart phone. Not so with EVs. They have some advantages but not NEARLY enough to make people want to dump their ICE cars in favor of an EV and the whole "they will save the earth" argument is so thin that its only convincing the few with lots of disposable income who want an EV to signal their virtue.
Hundreds of thousands of annual deaths caused by ICE tailpipe emissions aren't "fair" either. :/
It sounds like what convinced you to switch to an EV wasn't the environmental angle but rather the financial benefit of the car: the simplicity of operating and maintaining a simple machine rather than a complex one.
That's the kind of incentive that convinces most people. Even the early adopters needed an incentive to make it worthwhile: charging infrastructure. They might've desired an EV because it has low emissions, but they chose it because it could literally function as a vehicle. When the externalities of ICEs are 400k lives per year, we simply have to make the collective shift toward alternatives. The way we make that happen on an individual level is through incentives: moral ones matter to some people, but finances matter to everyone.
Research investments make it easier to develop efficient, low-cost net-zero vehicles. Targeted carbon taxes make it less profitable for corporations to continue producing ICEs. Tax credits for EV purchases and charging infrastructure to support refueling make the switch easier for individuals. These incentives save hundreds of thousands of lives annually.
The "400k lives a year" is a weak argument as there is no direct correlation between driving an ICE and people dying from pollution. Considering their study cites 2010 studies - just as DEF, Diesel Exhaust Fluid was being mandated for all diesel vehicles in North America - its a wild estimate that ignores the fact that its much more logical to decrease the particulate from diesel in a country like China or India and save thousands of lives, then it is to convince people to buy an expensive EV and build infrastructure. Gas cars get cleaner all the time too - we no longer use leaded gas; all gas cars now use catalytic converters and advanced electronic controls to reduce pollution; smaller, more fuel efficient engines are common, even in big pickups.
Ive been selling cars on and off for over 40 years and I can tell you the most common buying factors: People want to know about maintenance, reliability, features, seating, handling, style, color, fit and finish and even the number of cupholders. The LAST thing on the list is going to be 'is this car going to be better for humankind' and honestly, Ive never heard a buyer express that as important to them. Its a philosophical argument, but that's very very rarely how people choose what car to buy - it only matters if the car already checks all the other boxes they're looking for.
This statement is false and perpetuating it is socially harmful. Are you being serious? The scientific literature is extremely clear that automobile exhaust contributes to a high number of negative health effects annually. These include hundreds of thousands of deaths, significantly higher rates of asthma, and various other cardiovascular conditions which severely hamper individual health and wellness. The economic cost of these health impacts are immense. Your tax dollars are funding the unnecessary hospital bills of everyone whose lungs and hearts are negatively impacted by auto emissions.
The negative health effects of ICE exhaust are well-documented. Brugge et al. write in the chapter "Pollutants from Vehicle Exhaust Near Highways" of Environmental Health: Indoor Exposures, Assessments and Interventions (2013):
By the way, this book is focused on a large number of studies most or all of which took place in the United States. It is categorically incorrect to suppose that negative health outcomes of auto emissions are localized in China and India.
If you want a study from the last few years, also from North America, see Shamsi et al. 2021:
Emphasis mine. It is misleading and irresponsible to deny, downplay, or otherwise deflect the empirical findings that ICE emissions cause death and injury.
This argument distracts from the obvious reality that the United States cannot magically decrease diesel particulate from another sovereign state, especially one with which it is currently feuding.
As respectfully as I can say this, the idea that "It's not our fault, just make China and India change their behavior" is an utterly unreasonable and counterproductive perspective. Yes, obviously, those nations also need to reduce emissions. But China in particular is doing a very good job at switching to EVs, far better than the United States. This year, 31% of light vehicle sales in China have been electric compared to only about 7% in the United States. China is also a leader in high-speed rail, which is electric and has very few emissions relative to automobiles, whether ICE or EV. While China's energy makeup is too reliant on coal, they are also leaders in renewable energy generation. For example, globally, 55% of new solar power capacity has been in China this year. The American market share lags far behind. Chinese investment in renewable energy in 2022 was $184 billion, more than the entire European Union combined, and almost twice as much as the United States. Obviously more can and should be done on every nation's part: but your implication that China is not doing its part is wrong.
Just because your country is not the only country contributing to a significant global health crisis does not mean that it is somehow reasonable to ignore all social responsibility for... your country's contribution to the crisis.
Yes, I think I stated very clearly that we can only successfully motivate individuals to purchase EVs by appealing to things like cost and operational simplicity. The reason it is important for us to shift away from ICEs in general (via policy, which is not the same thing as individual decision) is because of all the research I provided above: ICEs are harmful to health. Plus all the research I haven't quoted here, but which is very much true, that shows how environmentally destructive ICEs are: consider greenhouse gas emissions and future costs induced by anthropogenic climate change.
I think it might be good to lower the stakes a bit. Someone saying the wrong thing on Tildes might be important to some of us who hang out here, but the "social harm" is pretty small, because this is just another forum on the Internet and we have little influence.
We sometimes discuss serious issues from a zoomed-out perspective, but that doesn't mean a discussion on Tildes is as important as whatever is being discussed. We can work things out without treating it like a grave error.
Yes, you are right. It is “socially harmful” for me to ascribe bad faith to these discussions. I regret my severe tone. I have always been too uptight.
@gowestyoungman I apologize for being so critical in what should not have been a particularly emotional discussion.
No worries. All good.
From the article:
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Regarding that last quoted paragraph (the part about Bolt production ending), I saw this other article: Why GM is reviving the Bolt, the best-selling EV it almost discontinued
I haven't been following this partnership in detail, but it's surprising to me because I'd read about GM's BEV3 platform with Ultium batteries back in 2021 and how Honda was already teasing an EV called the Prologue (a play on the Prelude, perhaps?) based on the shared platform. An article from just last year claimed the Prologue was scheduled for a 2024 release. But if they're having difficulty with parts suppliers then that's all there is to it. Now Honda is saying that their e:Architecture platform is being pushed forward, but we won't see it until 2025. That may give the German manufacturers (and Stellantis) a chance to catch up. They have some really interesting battery tech and vehicles slated for around the same time.
For folks curious about why the bigger auto manufacturers haven't chosen to move faster on transitioning to EVs, part of it comes down to parts suppliers. It's a very similar situation to when the original iPhone came out -- a lot of the supply of screens had already been purchased by one company and that supply was paid for and committed. Manufacturers of those parts simply couldn't turn around and ramp up more production for other companies who wanted to compete with Apple just because they were having money thrown at them.
Yes, it's a play on the Prelude, which they just revealed a concept of at the Tokyo Auto Show, that looks surprisingly complete for a concept (aka close to production spec).
The Prologue info has been ramping up of late with a walkaround by Honda released a month ago and news ramping up that it'll be out early next year.
"Fantasy land mode" is an apt description. I'm in the market for a new car to replace a decade-old Honda Accord, but will hold out until prices come down to Earth. I look around my kid's school pick-up line and see too many of these oversized, "luxury" monstrosities and wonder where their owners are getting their Monopoly money from. There are some sane choices in the Bolt EV and hopefully the 2024 VW ID.4 won't be too much, but even then that's still not many options and still too much money IMO since it requires the $7500 credit to be palatable.
A lot of this is based on memory that may be faulty, so take this with a grain of salt.
There is one Chinese manufacturer who is selling vehicles in the US: Kandi. IIRC their American branch is actually a partnership with GM. I can't seem to find anything about it at the moment, though.
You'll probably notice if you click that link that they are pushing golf carts.
There are two main problems with Chinese companies selling their cars to the US; safety and speed. China doesn't have as many safety regulations as the US, so their cars aren't legal to sell there without some significant alterations. They would have to make a custom US version car and that could be a rather big investment that may or may not take away from their efforts in the domestic market. But more importantly many of the Chinese EV's I've seen are designed for low speeds, especially the few that do make it to the US. Most of them are classified as NEVs which are a special category of low-speed car that you can't drive on most public roads. Kandi's top-performance EV tops off at 60mph, which makes it just barely safe to drive on the highways (and you'll probably get a bunch of angry honks from other drivers).
I'm actually a fan of NEV "kiddie cars" - I think they're neat - but I also don't own one. There's probably about 1 mile total of roads around my house that I would legally be allowed to drive them on and that just goes to houses; I couldn't even take it to the grocery store.
This seems very odd to me. Why was everything else that China does not enough?
Where/when did you get that view? I always felt it was more of the woke crowd (before the word became the boogeyman) because it was people trying to be aware of injustices around the world. And I especially felt it was not associated with the Conservatives during the Hong Kong protests.
Oh, before 2016, there wasn't much anti-China stuff on reddit. In 2018/2019 there started to be a lot more and it was in all the "neutral" (aka left-leaning circlejerk) news/politics subreddits, whereas the conservative ones were a bit more confusing because the authoritarian side loves supporting things China does, while the ethno-nationalist side hates them.