So it's run into logistical challenges that are taking awhile to get past
Sounds about right when building new infrastructure
this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2024
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Isn't that what they said with hydrogen fuel cells as they grifted away a decade continuing to invest in car infrastructure instead of pedestrian, bike, and rail?
EVs are the new hydrogen fuel cells. They're not about saving the environment, they're about saving the auto industry.
My understanding is they the problem with hydrogen is the conversion loss factor of air to hydrogen. It at least used to be a net loss of power by a significant margin to generate.
It was always completely impossible. Transportation was the biggest impediment, but it was just full of unsolvable problems. At the end of the day, the easiest way to crack hydrogen was from oil anyway. It was never intended to work. It was intended to buy time for the auto and oil industry by selling the people a fake solution.
The infrastructure investment needed to support EVs, when the electricity would come from natural gas anyway, is pretty transparently the exact same grift.
As hopeless as it feels sometimes, the US has opened two new nuclear power plants in the last 8 years and there Is broad support for new nuclear in the US.
And fusion is becoming viable at scale finally due to AI preventing spillover and runaway. Hope is late, but not lost.
Well that's great, but we solved the problem of efficiently moving people around 100 years ago and the auto industry destroyed it. EVs do not exist to save the climate, they exist to save the auto industry. That's always been the game.
Even if we do manage to actually get the electricity, where will the lithium come from? How will the charging infrastructure actually get built? None of these were ever meant to be solved, because the point of EVs has always been to push off the real changes just a little bit more.
EVs also make a lot of things worse. They're deadlier, they produce more tire microplastics, they do more damage to car infrastructure (which, uh, is HUGELY carbon intensive), and they're also hugely carbon intensive to build and ship. In terms of carbon today you're better off getting a small older ICE than a new EV.
They just make rich liberals feel better about themselves without actually needing to change their behaviour.
Hope isn't lost at all. A future that's still full of cars isn't hopeful. The hopeful thing is that we can solve all this today without any new technology simply by abolishing free parking, ending parking minimums, creating super blocks, and investing in mass transit, bike, and pedestrian Infrastructure instead of car infrastructure.
The thing that makes it hard to keep that hope going is that there are people who subscribe to /c/climate who think there will be a magic solution to climate change that lets everything go on exactly as it is without changing anything at all.
So volunteer to let them drill for oil in your back yard? Is that the answer since anything that takes more time or more money than that is obviously not a worthwhile solution.
Even expanding public transport takes time to build infrastructure and contractors would need to get paid, you know, "funnelling money" to them. None of it is a one presidency job and none of it is free.
This money is going to the auto industry. The same auto industry that lobbies against mass transit and bike infrastructure, the same auto industry that ripped out all the light rail and destroyed American cities. The auto industry that is selling everyone SUVs and trucks in order to evade environmental regulations. This is a massive subsidy to some of the worst people, instead of funding things that make the auto industry basically obsolete.
Those are the same people who sell electric cars. This is money for them, instead of bike lanes and mass transit. That's the problem. Work takes time, but what work you choose to do and who benefits from it actually matters.
Dude how tf are we not just putting these at interstate rest stops. It’s a no brainer and they’re clearly going to fumble it
The majority of places where we need additional EV charging infrastructure are off the the interstates.
I’m sure the hand of the free market will step in at any moment.
Per the article:
“State transportation agencies are the recipients of the money,” he said. “Nearly all of them had no experience deploying electric vehicle charging stations before this law was enacted.”
So the money is there, it's just taking time.
That money could be building infrastructure to make cars less relevant instead of wasting time on a fake solution.
Here in Australia, I'd LOVE to know what infrastructure that could be. We have extensive trains and buses.
It also won't help my hiking group, unless you propose they send buses to the middle of our national forests?
Infrastructure does help a lot of people, BUT, not everyone. Both are needed
There are trains that go to forests in Europe. That's not really a far fetched thing at all. There are busses that can take you to national forests in the US of all places.
Yeah, that's totally a thing and it could be more of a thing if we stopped spending so much money on absolutely the wrong things.
I don't think you do much hiking do you...
For starters, Australia has a much lower density than Europe. And some of the hikes we go on during winter, its generally only us.
There are buses going to some here in Australia too, the touristy ones.
Some of the walks we go to are dead quiet, and sometimes we finish late at night.
Wouldn't work at all here. Sorry. And I suspect you say "Europe" instead of being specific because you're referring to tourist traps
I used to go backpacking a lot, but I haven't been since I got shot. I'm looking forward to bike camping now that I'm no longer in the US.
My group of friends and I rent a bus for our yearly trip. Sometimes with driver, sometimes without when one of has the licence. Where we less, we would rent or borrow a mini-bus. And I'm regularly borrowing and renting vans and cars for trips for just a few.
Personal car ownership can be greatly reduce while still improving personal transportation convenience. Of course, at some point, it might become slightly less convenience for the individual passanger but the benefit for society would still compensate it.
I organise trips almost every week. We do carpool when we can.
It would be too much work, and realistically on a few of them, we need a 4wd to avoid trouble (on one we almost got stuck for the night)
Mass Public Transport > Electric Cars.
Electric car support will take a short while to implement, but fossil fuel reduction will take a long time to show and a long time to be significant.
But Mass Public Transport takes a long while to implement and savings are quick to show, that would be because less people would require personal cars, which means direct drop in fuel usage per person, even more so in big cities which suffer because high population density requires too much parking space that is never enough.
Mass Public Transport could undo plenty of harm caused knowingly by the auto industry. funding, or in this case legitimizing the industry will not really help as electricity itself is still generated from fossil fuels.
The solution should be LESS consumption, not making excuses for the same consumption, or legitimizing more.
There are applications for which mass transit just isn't enough. I expect to see for example some of the disabled using EVs instead of mass transit. Realistically: we need to minimize driving, and electrify what remains.
Agreed, also public transport should be more accommodating towards the disabled, it's always such a weird thing that the buses (where i live in) have 0 or 1 "seating spots" for wheelchairs, instead of something modular that is more accomodating.
Some of us told you Biden's climate bills were performance and pork and wouldn't make any difference. Some of us told you the goal was to funnel money to political allies, not save the environment.
You told us to vote harder and donate more money to Democrats in the midterms and it would work out somehow.
Yeah. How's that "most environmentally friendly president in history" talking point working out?
Per the article:
“State transportation agencies are the recipients of the money,” he said. “Nearly all of them had no experience deploying electric vehicle charging stations before this law was enacted.”
So the money is there, it's just taking time.
How does this refute the message you replied to?
Because he's arguing the work is happening, just slowly and is not just a way to funnel and steal money? The opposite of the comment he's replying to?
The work that's chosen is funneling money away.
Almost like work costs money and it takes time to do said work and gain the experience to do it faster...
Or maybe Biden should have snapped his fingers and Tesla would build 50k more stations for free? Is that how it's supposed to work?
Biden shouldn't give money to the auto industry or anyone who supports them. He should spend money on things that actually solve the problem: huge grants to build bike lanes and super blocks in cities, national high speed rail, and local rail networks.
He could literal give away eBikes to people who can't afford them. Manufacturing infrastructure for those already exists and there's actually enough lithium available to make that happen.
The problem isn't that work takes time and money, it's that this is a huge subsidy to the auto industry who are the absolute last people who should ever be involved in any kind of climate solution.
Edit: this isn't even a new thing. The auto industry sold hydrogen fuel cells as the solution last time and it turned out to just be a giant grift to buy more time to sell cars and take a bunch of money from the government. Why are you letting the same people fool you again?
By my read the money went to state transportation departments, or at least 5 of the $7B.
It sounds like a lot of money, but look at these high speed rail cost estimates. I do visual segments are HUNDREDS of billions of dollars. To re-design city bocks in Metro areas across the country is also quite expensive and ONLY benefits the people of those cities.
If we are going to make a swap to electric cars, which is IMO more plausible than a complete eisenhower-esque infrastructure overhaul, a fast and reliable charging network is a necessity.
Hate Biden if you want for in rental progress, but at least there IS some progress. I can't imagine it's easy to move the needle when an entire branch of government (the two houses) will actively vote against their own plans to keep Biden from getting any wins at all.
You're going to trust the exact same industry that grifted away 10 years and billions of dollars on hydrogen fuel cells only to switch to the promise of EVs when the grift ran out? Good luck with that.
How much power would be needed to switch to EVs everywhere? Where does that power come from? Recognizing that manufacturing and transportation are also extremely carbon intensive, would we actually be better off switching or is this just another opportunity to dump money in to the auto industry?
The US had massive rail infrastructure in the past. We know that's possible. I don't have any evidence that electric vehicles would actually improve things even if they can be rolled out. Why would I believe an industry that has lied before and has every incentive to lie again? Why would anyone?
It's less than $10B across 50 states for charging infrastructure, not to auto manufacturers as I understand, despite what you're saying. And yeah I have 2 electric cars in my garage and live next to two of the largest wind farms in the country.
Redoing rail the right way, doing full scale infrastructure overhauling to enable bicycles and revised public transit, or whatever else that services all 50 states are all projects with two more zeros and probably decades of work to build. Sorry you're jaded about that, but thousands of charging stations would be, I suspect, better in the long run than handing out bird scooters that you can only use year round in less than half of CONUS.
I will take the increment. If you don't want to buy an electric car, don't. Burn some gas and go vegan I guess.