2023-06-05 03:35:03.57279+02 by Dan Lyke 3 comments
Just when I thought the writers of this face couldn't get any lazier, here comes Mr Bean shilling "hydrogen" (natural gas) and spreading battery fud in The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/co...ar-ev-environment-rowan-atkinson
[ related topics: Nature and environment Writing Automobiles ]
comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):
#Comment Re: Just when I thought the writers of this made: 2023-06-06 00:37:54.826835+02 by: brainopener
I am driving again after a 10 year hiatus (family member has a special medical need now).
There were always a lot of car mechanics in my family line, so knowing a bit about cars and maintenance is something I kept up with a bit.
I agree with the idea that people ought to keep cars longer. Here in the U.S. that's been happening pretty steadily.
I do wish that there were fewer makes and models and that model platforms lasted longer. Let that Prius platform get incremental upgrades for 10+ years and have lots of parts available that way. I'm not exactly pitching that the median car shouldn't be something like the Lada that was the same for 20+ years --- but I'm not not pitching that either.
When I've done the pencil math on a gas car, hybrid, hydrogen, diesel/biodiesel, electric... my arithmetic always comes out that keeping that gasoline Corolla on the road another 100k miles instead of making a new car is the bigger environmental win. My memory is that half the emissions impact of a car is in manufacturing.
Electric cars seems really fraught because they are so heavy --- concern is that they are really going to wear out the roads prematurely.
What's your view on the "right" thing here with cars, economics, and environment? I keep coming back to radical solutions that is essentially back to street cars and rental/rideshare plugin Priuses... I have a hard time imagining that converting the entire existing fleet to electric would end up being a good thing.
#Comment Re: Just when I thought the writers of this made: 2023-06-06 20:52:01.342274+02 by: Dan Lyke
Yeah, my gut feel is that keeping a vehicle on the road for about another 100k miles is better than buying a new one, given that the tradeoff between new and old vehicle seems to be about 40k miles, so there's, say, a base level of 60k miles of manufacturing externality?
Probably depends a lot on what the local electrical mix is.
My main thing is that the whole hydrogen or synthfuels distraction is pie in the sky "imagine if...". Yeah, if we could easily sequester carbon in synthfuels without a lot of additional energy expenditure, if there were flying unicorns, etc.
And there's also all of the other external costs of automobiles that have nothing to do with the fuel source impacts on climate change. Death, dismemberment, particulate pollution, the negative economic, and equity, impacts of building environments in which everyone is essentially required to own an automobile, the list goes on and on. It's kinda like "the whole how are people going to continue to drink if we ban indoor tobacco in bars?" conversation that was happening ten or twenty years ago. Gotta rework those premises.
#Comment Re: Just when I thought the writers of this made: 2023-06-09 00:49:00.889984+02 by: Dan Lyke
So that I can move it over to my phone: Fact check: why Rowan Atkinson is wrong about electric vehicles
(If anyone ever actually uses Webmention/indie-action to post here, please email me)
We will not edit your comments. However, we may delete your comments, or cause them to be hidden behind another link, if we feel they detract from the conversation. Commercial plugs are fine, if they are relevant to the conversation, and if you don't try to pretend to be a consumer. Annoying endorsements will be deleted if you're lucky, if you're not a whole bunch of people smarter and more articulate than you will ridicule you, and we will leave such ridicule in place.
Flutterby™ is a trademark claimed by
Dan Lyke for the web publications at www.flutterby.com and www.flutterby.net.