this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2022
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Cool. I guess they'll be powered with electricity generated from gas (sourced from...?). There's still no scalable battery recycling program. Where will the raw materials for the batteries and motors come from? Will citizens get subsidized high voltage lines to their homes or streetfront parking for fast charging? Can the grid handle so many EVs?
I don't want to have to be so critical of something which is ostensibly good, but the EU has been digging deep into the greenwashing bag of tricks and none of their energy policy has been good for anyone except fossil fuel industry shareholders.
Fuck cars, that should be the starting point, you cannot achieve realistic measures if you do not ditch motor companies
Gotta start somewhere.
Europeans do not travel that far most of the time, unless on e.g. vacation. So fast charging is only really needed on e.g. major highways.
No, that why it needs overhauling in places. That is however a thing to worry about or national and local gov., not the EU.
Never let perfect be the enemy of good.
Saying you can only have one type of power source for new cars is not perfect nor good. Its extremely short sighted and infeasible.Biodiesel take smuche less energy to produce than extracting natural gas (which is burned to produce most of the electricity these days) and other minerals used in battery production. You could say solar and wind will be used but those are not going to scale to the point of being avls to charge everyone's car every day.
I also dont like the idea of not being able to fuel your car up without it being near a charger. If I had an EV I would probably keep a multi fuel generator in the trunk.
Biofuels are taking valuable croplands that could be user for food production. And BEVs could run on e.g. nucleair fission until we figured stuff out more. Try that with combustion engines.
Well consider if we set aside half of the crop land we use for animal feed and used it to grow soybean biodiesel it would still be half as much land that we use to feed livestock. Yes I'm pulling these numbers out of my ass but I'm pretty sure they'll be close to accurate.
Also all the land we grow corn on that is refined into ethanol (a terrible fuel with a shelf life of barely a year) could be repurposed for much more efficient crops.
Yes fission is great but I doubt we will stop extracting natural gas for energy production any time soon.
https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2022/04/15/biden-administration-restart-oil-gas-leasing-public-lands
From the Lithium Triangle. Expect renewed imperialist efforts there.
Not to mention the brutal cobalt mines in Congo... And even if recycling happens at scale it'll be poor folks in the global south who won't have another choice but to sift through the toxic waste. It's fine though, the wealthy white people of Europe don't care that coloured people at home and abroad are suffering as long as their greenwashed sense of sustainability superiority is intact.