YouTube’s Loaded With EV Disinformation::When it comes to articles on a website like CleanTechnica, there are two kinds of articles. First, there are the … [continued]
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Only on EV? It’s hard to find reliable informacion between 99% influencer crap and bullshit. YT is good for music and some movies which someone had uploaded, little else.
There’s plenty of good quality content on YouTube but you actually have to subscribe to the good stuff. If you would like exclusively on the recommended videos you’ll watch utter crap
How does clicking “subscribe” get you any better content from yt? Less clicks? Sure. Good stuff, no.
Or do you mean YT premium?
You subscribe to stuff you like and then it shows you more of that stuff and less of the general dross what do you confuse about?
Some of the criticism is perfectly valid, frankly. I’m hyped for EVs but there’s a lot of work to be done before they’re really competitive. Glossing over glaring issues isn’t doing anyone any favors.
Aging wheels did a great video on the charging station problem. He drove a Polaris and a Tesla on the same route and demonstrated really well how unreliable charging stations are, unless you have a Tesla. This guy loves electric cars and has been reluctant to actually recommend any.
That problem is going to be addressed as American manufacturers adopt Tesla as a standard, but that won’t happen for two model years at least.
And in the long run, they won’t address climate change in any meaningful way either. We’ve just exchanged one resource disaster for another, and there’s far less rare earth minerals than there is oil. And we’ll still need oil. The only way we’re doing that is by massively overhauling every city and going away from any individualized transportation larger than a bike.
Pretty much all of the arguments against EVs from the right are solvable. There are arguments against them that are also unique from the left, but I’ve seen too many leftists adopt some of the bullshit arguments from the right.
Charging does need to improve. Believe me, I drove a Mini EV from Madison to Chicago once, and it was a nightmare to find two working stations along the way. But this is solvable with time. At least, it is when you’re presenting it honestly, and not “haha EVs suck ROOOOLLL COOAAAALLLL!”
They’re a huge facet to fixing climate change. Mining issues are not part of climate change. Burning petroleum is.
The problems with lithium mining do exist (and in ways that are less hypocritical for the left to point out than the right), but it’s also not permanent. There’s an interesting string technique that, assuming it can be scaled up, can use far less land and open up more reserves (that being the amount of lithium that can be economically mined, which people often mistake for the amount of lithium actually there). Even if it doesn’t, oceanic methods of extraction are being ramped up already, and there’s more lithium available there then we’d have a use for.
All that’s even assuming we stay on lithium batteries, or that we won’t reduce the amount of lithium per kwh.
Now, there’s another set of arguments–the kind conservatives would never touch–which get into how cars are bad for society regardless of what they run on. They take up tons of space just sitting there, they enable urban sprawl, they hit pedestrians and animals, and are all around an inefficient way to move your moist meat flesh around. These are why I did an e-bike conversion recently and am looking to heavily reduce my car reliance.
But we’re stuck with them to a certain extent. There are decisions literally set in concrete about where people live and where they work. Even with the most radical government imaginable, we could not rip our cities up and lay new concrete without releasing so much CO2 that we might as well drive ICE cars for an additional decade.
Getting rid of cars is not on the table, at least not in any reasonable timeframe. That said, what can we do to get American cities from <5% bike commuters to 25%? That alone would be massive.
Honestly it’s the other way around. Most of the downsides are vastly overstated in my experience, and people don’t really grasp how nice it is to never visit a gas station and always have a full tank to start the day, until they are living it. If you have the ability to charge at home and aren’t making 1000 mile trips very often, there is basically no reason to not have an EV.
The first question I always get about my EV is “how long does it take to charge?” Most people can’t wrap their head around the concept of waking up every day with a full battery.
And also that they are probably stopping for around 20 minutes every 300 miles on road trips anyway. A certain 450 mile trip I have make several times per year for two decades takes me about 20-30 minutes longer in an EV vs my previous 35mpg vehicle. There are just a bunch of these small cognitive blindspots people have about their own driving habits that you see repeated over and over again.
We must stop all EV development until they’re good enough to serve the small percentage of people who drive 700 miles at once, pee in a bottle, and eat sandwiches they prepared ahead of time. Think of all the bottle urinators being left behind.
Seriously, I don’t think there’s a good reason to have ranges much over 400 miles. If you work out a highway speed of 70mph, charge to 80% at each stop (which is significantly faster than going to 100%), and add some margin for cold days, then about 400 miles is around the max you need considering you’ll want a break, anyway.
If there’s battery improvements to throw on top of that, then use them to reduce weight, not increase range.
Yep. I stop for 20 or so minutes every 200 or so miles, and honestly I’m stretching it to go that long because my wife and kid want to stop even more often. I spend basically 0 extra time road tripping in my EV unless it’s a holiday weekend and the charger is packed.
I mostly agree with you, but there is barrier to entry cost.
I think the bigger issue with EVs is that there’s a huge gap between what EV’s actually are and what EV industry players are claiming EV’s are and can be. It makes EV conversations divisive and ripe for misinformation.
This idea that batteries should ever be used in trucking and heavy machinery (before massive boosts to battery capacity and sustainability/recycling) is a total crock of shit. The idea that you’re doing the environment or yourself a favor by buying an electrified SUV or truck is a crock of shit. Buying a vehicle with 250mi+ of range using today’s battery tech is bad for the environment.
Small to medium sized commuter vehicles and delivery vans/fleet vehicles with <50kWh batteries are prime EV candidates. EV buyers need to charge at home and drivers need to change their behavior, not chase 300 miles of range at the expense of the environment.
Everything else is better off with a hybrid engine for the very distant foreseeable future.
Instead, buyers are unloading perfectly good ICE vehicles for EV’s with 100kWh+ batteries and companies like Tesla are destroying the credibility of the EV industry with their stupid stunts and ridiculous EV semi claims. These buyers and industry players are making EV’s easy targets for an anti-EV crowd which wants to undermine the truly green and sustainable aspects of an automotive technology shift.
Not surprising considering it’s the biggest shilling platform currently available. Low price of entry and easy way to reach masses combined with plenty of people with large following and questionable morals… you can push pretty much any idea and agenda. But good thing they don’t allow swearing. That’s just too much.
To be fair EVs only solve the tail pipe emission problem of cars and not like the 50 others. It’s would be much better to focus on public transit and pedestrian and bike infrastructure, that solves more issues and is accessible to everyone.
To be fair EVs only solve the tail pipe emission problem
Gotta start somewhere. At least I can say that I’m part of the solution and that I am not one of the negative nellies who don’t do squat because they cannot find the ONE solution that solves everything.
The transition from EVs to public transit, biking, etc has to come eventually, too. We can however already do that and places have successfully done so. Look at the Netherlands for example. EVs are in the way of transitioning to better public infrastructure and will only delay it.
gotta start somewhere
Then start with vastly increasing the amount of bicycle Infrastructure so that people can safely use their bike to go to schools, work, home, buy groceries. Give subsidies to buy bikes for even less money than they cost anyway, increase taxes on shit cars like pick tricks that nobody needs in a city setting
Invest heavily in public transportation. Make busses actually useful, start making an actual rail infrastructure in the US instead of… Whatever that turtle crap is you have now.
Same for walking, which would require overhauling urbanisation laws, granted, but still, that would also make your cities actually nice to live in.
If you think that all is an impossibly expensive job then please be reminded that gasoline is heavily subsidized and bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure costs pennies on the dollar compared to car infrastructure.
Biggest issue is stopping the oil and car manufacturer lobbyists who will all stop all of this. Why have nice cities that make big money and recover your environment if thateans that a couple of rich guys will get less rich?
It’s would be much better to focus on public transit and pedestrian and bike infrastructure, that solves more issues and is accessible to everyone.
Or both…?
infrastructure and public transit solve the same issue but infinitely better while EVs are accessible only for people with enough disposable income and are comparably very bad at helping with climate change so I’d rather focus on a more accessible solution that helps more.
In my country people buy used cars pretty much always because of cost and used EVs aren’t really a thing I have seen. There also aren’t many charging stations and local power is mostly produced from oil shale so EVs do squat to help with anything. Public transit on the other hand is easy to advocate for because it’s widely used and most people prefer the tram over car in my city already which is like the best form of transportation over short distances.
I’d rather focus on a more accessible solution that helps more.
I get that. But I think it’s extremely important to not mix climate policies with ideology. You risk alienating a very large chunk of the population, especially in the US, who are ideologically against public transportation.
We need everyone to get onboard with the green transition. Also conservatives.
I’m not in the US so I’m not advocating for anything there as I have no power to do that. Here advocating for public transit over cars is pretty simple and accessible, also not alienating to any group I’m aware of. I’m just saying EVs are not very helpful in comparison to public transit.
While public transit is great. It’s a lot more expensive to setup, and even more expensive to make convenient if the city wasn’t built with public transit in mind.
It’s just not a medium term solution for most north american cities, I do desperately hope that cities will start investing more in public transit, and encourage more dense housing, but realistically that is a 30-80 year timeframe. And that’s assuming 100s of municipal governments all get on board. The political lift here is also very large.
The reality right now in North America is, if you’re heavily advocating against electric vehicles, all you’re really doing is adding support to the oil and gas industry trying to stop the outright ban of ICE cars.
We need to do more public transit, and we need to stop using ICE vehicles.
Actually maintaining car infrastructure is quite a lot more expensive than setting up public transit. The issue is that the effects of climate change are here and will get worse faster and faster while EVs are a drop in the ocean as far as solutions are.
Sure, advocate for EVs if you want but don’t pretend they will have a meaningful effect with the environment unless you can replace every ICE vehicle globally and even then public transit would have a massively higher impact while easier and cheaper to implement.
The highest impact for climate change would be to force the 10 or so companies that produce like 70% of CO2 to not do that or just bomb their factories or something.
Which car infrastructure are you talking about in this case?
Roads and parking mostly
Roads don’t really go away with public transit, they might need less maintenance overall, but they still need to exist in some form, and roads lasting 10% longer doesn’t seem like a huge savings
Parking is mostly privately owned, so saving money on parking doesn’t really make more money available to invest in public transit.
I am against cars getting more like everyday electronic gadgets. Why do you need a selfie camera inside it? Also who attends zoom calls in it? Evs are notorious for doing so. Not to mention all the privacy concerns over the data these smartcars collect.
Tesla has a game system on its huge touchscreen panel. At least you have to be parked to use it, but that’s still fucking stupid.
I don’t like or understand it therefore it is stupid.
My wife played some Fallout Shelter while we were in the carwash one time. I played some arcade game while in the waiting with my daugher while the wife was inside the store getting some groceries. It’s pretty neat. And when we go on a roadtrip next summer it might be nice to play a game of chess while charging.
It’s stupid
It’s completely out of your way if you don’t go looking for it. For those that enjoy it it is great. Too bad you are so close minded and simple you can not see other people’s point of view. How limiting it must be for you.
I worry about features in cars.
For example, our Mazda has headlights that turn with the steering wheel (ala Tucker Torpedo’s center light). Neat idea and it is a useful feature while driving at night on the rural roads by our house. But what will happen when it fails, and how much will they cost to replace? (I’ve been told they “fail straight ahead”, but who really knows for sure. I’m hoping we get rid of the car before that happens.)
I saw a pickup with automatic folding mirrors having an issue with them folding and unfolding while the guy was driving. I followed him through several traffic lights and watched it happen a few times. Automatic folding mirrors would be a nice feature on my pickup, but I’d rather not have them fail especially when I’m towing a trailer and be completely blind to the rear-right.
I’ve seen pickups with the running bar that folds out. I’m not sure there’s much value in that other than “oooh shiny” but if it fails to open while I’m getting out, it could hurt.
Our Mazda again has several software bugs in the infotainment system. None of these are critical, but it does make me wonder how much testing they did on the software that controls the brakes, for example. Are the brakes going to fail to release someday? I already know the computer has some control of them, because of the auto-hold feature that I usually keep turned off, and because I sometimes notice a slight delay in releasing the brakes when I take my foot off the pedal.
The FCA Uconnect 8.4 infotainment systems allowed an attacker to remotely take over throttle, brakes, etc. until they were patched. That’s an obvious safety issue.
And that crash at the Peace Bridge last week, it seems very likely it was caused by an issue with the car, rather than the driver (there is evidence the driver was alert and trying to stop, and he swerved around another car that turned in front of him before the crash). Turns out the right-hand drive version of that car had a recall of an issue with the accelerator…which supposedly did not effect left-hand drive vehicles. But here we are with two people dead and a third injured from a vehicle that may have been accelerating out of control through no fault of the driver.
The point is that including additional features, even if only software, increases the complexity of the system and makes errors more likely. It increases the chances of some unexpected interaction or failure. It increases the surface of a software attack for a potential safety issue. It makes the code that much harder to test for bugs in general and security in particular.
You speak as if there’s never been any recalls of cars in the past, before they had electronic and computer systems in them.
My Ford Explorer trunk door almost fell on my head and killed me. It’s tires shredded while driving on the freeway at high speeds, almost killing me and my family, twice. Neither of those had electronics or computer parts.
I don’t think you’ll have any car manufactured anymore that’s not complex, it’s just part of what happens over time, new technology is taken advantage of in the manufacturing of products.
I’m not sure I follow your point here. Even necessary parts of a car failed for you, and almost caused injury. Now people are advocating adding unnecessary parts to cars that may also fail and cause injuries or death.
At an EV car showroom the other day, one of the big main focus function of the car that the salesman tried to pitch was “you can browse Amazon or do shopping online on the infotainment system”. Also, you have to pay for a subscription to "unlock " the top speed and torque.
This is not the USA, so maybe it’s just a thing in my country.
Was it BMW because they’re awful for that kind of thing. But then again you deserve it for buying a BMW don’t you.
Not that this really has anything to do with electric cars the same thing could be pulled off with ICE vehicles. I don’t actually mind my car having cameras and microphones but if my car is going to have cameras I want all the data stored locally unless I choose to upload it to some online location.
BMW is already doing the subscription thing for certain features. Mercedes too.
Fuck google seriously. The fact that these videos are not deleted and they don’t detect all these obviously fake comments tells a lot.
