this post was submitted on 28 May 2024
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I own a Volt. But let's stop saying that EVs are going to stop global warming. Do they help after years of being on the road? Sure a little. But until China stops burning coal, Saudi Arabia quits drilling for oil, factory dairy farms shut down.
People over paying for a car isn't doing a damn thing.
Are they fun to drive? Yes. Can you save a few bucks on gas? Yep sort of. (Thanks new registration taxes) But other than that EVs are not saving the world. That's not even thinking about the mining required to make batteries, or the copper needed for the motors.
We need to hold these super polluters accountable, and stop expecting the little guy to bail us out of the problems they created.
And you don't see any link between ditching your ICE car and "Saudi Arabia quits drilling for oil"? Better to ditch your ICE car for no car, of course, but if you HAVE to have one, the smallest EV you can get away with is a step towards stopping that oil drilling. If everyone did it, that drilling would change dramatically
Do you think it will work that way?
The more people switch to EVs the cheaper fuel will be, which incentivised people to drive ICE vehicles.
Fossil fuel extraction is an extreme economy of scale. This is only true to a point.
More people driving EVs won't make (oil-based) fuel cheaper. Every person getting off oil makes producing oil-based fuels more expensive, as the economies of scale are reduced.
Go to extremes if that helps picture it: imagine you're suddenly the only person on Earth driving an ICE car. How much would you be paying for a fill-up, which now involves finding, extracting, shipping and refining fuel just for you: more than today or less than today?
Fuel prices halved during covid when everyone stayed home.
All the infrastructure is in place, the fuel needs to be sold.
Reduced demand will only reduce production of fuel from more expensive wells, like where the oil is more difficult to reach.
Yeah but nobody retired a marginally profitable fuel refinery that became unprofitable during covid because they knew demand would return soon. The effect isn't instantaneous, but all the infrastructure has operation and maintenance costs. With fewer overall consumers all the overhead has to go somewhere eventually.
Yeah, but I think you might be waiting longer than you imagine.
There might be a long tail of barely profitable wells with low output, but I suspect the vast majority of current production can sustain a significant reduction in retail price and still be more profitable than simply capping the well.
Every person that switches to an EV increases the demand for electricity and reduces the demand for fuel.
Yeah, but... that stuff isn't going away. In a couple decades when an EV's worn out, all the materials will still be there ready for recycling. It's not like coal and oil where we dig them up and then set them on fire and they're gone.
Don't worry, that coal and oil is still there too. Just hanging around in the air.
You’re totally right I just want to mention one of their benefit which is the markedly decreased emissions from a smog standpoint! Some cities really struggle with this problem.
But from a climate change perspective you’re right.
Can EVs reduce local emissions, and lead to improved air quality? Is air quality something we should be concerned about?
EV's are also just as devastating to collective infrastructure as CE cars. They also won't change the fact that most packaging and plastic is still made from oil. They are a temporary patch, not a solution.