Biden is trying to lower gas prices now. The problem with Climate Change pushers.

Specter Von Baren

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Part of the issue is that a lot of American cities are literally designed around private ownership of cars. Like a lot of suburbs are kinda designed to be hostile to mass transit. There is no quick way away from americans needing gas.
Cities are flattened concrete and steel. It seems odd to be touting them as environmentally better.
 
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Schadrach

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Of course, we could all drive less ludicrously big cars.
Maybe I should have got the Scion iQ instead of the xD when I bought my current car back in 2013.

Seriously though, aside from an old Avalon that was rebuilt from a salvage title I've driven compacts and smaller my whole life. My first car was a Geo Metro 2 seat convertible that had a 3 cylinder engine that sounded like it was powered by a swarm of angry bees that got increasingly agitated as you pressed on the accelerator. Had friends joke that I could park it in a bike rack. Actually did park it in the same space as the cart return at a grocery store once, the return left about half the parking space open on one side, and that was enough for my little Geo.
 

Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
Cities are flattened concrete and steel. It seems odd to be touting them as environmentally better.
You either have big cities with concentrated populations which allow for better mass transit and walking options or smaller cities but massive suburb areas which are much harder to do mass transit or walking in, but are great for private cars.
 

Agema

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1. They have done no work on making electric vechiles viable for long term use or travel. Meaning that road trips in your electric car is near impossible because there aren't enough (if any) road stops, hotels, charging stations, available to make sure you can plug your Tesla or whatever in over night, or just while you shop to make sure you don't run out of juice.
If they don't make petrol prices high, why does anyone have a motivation to install the infrastructure for electric?

This is how capitalism works: people choose the cheap option. By which I mean short term cheap, given the long-term costs of potentially wrecking the planet they're on.

People need to be incentivised to turn to electric. Either the government can slap some sort of ban down (no petrol cars sold after 2030, etc.) which has no hope of passing in the USA; or it can massively subsidise electric, which won't happen because it is a government spending measure that has no hope of passing; or they can make petrol expensive, and let businesspeople do the rest to meet the coming demand, which they'll fucking love and make plenty of them lots of money.

Let's also be clear: petrol is going to become unviable for road vehicles eventually. The sooner the USA adapts and prepares for this, the better it's going to be.

Yeah absolutely cost is a big problem. Which is also one of the reasons why i said that our technology simply isnt there yet. As tech improves costs go down.

Right now the cheapest Tesla is a little over 40k which isnt hugely expensive but is still out of the price range for a lot of people. Even my fully loaded 2019 Nissan with all the fancy shit they could pack into the thing was only 30k.

Im sure as making fully electric cars advances those prices will go down a bit. But not only does cost have to go down but battery life has to get better. As much as tech has improved in the last 20 years, we have made very little improvement on batteries.

200 mile ranges are nothing, i drive 520miles a week just going to and from work. Electric cars are a luxurious novelty right now, not practical replacements for everyday life.
520 miles a week, assuming 5 days work, is ~100 miles a day. So go to work, come home and plug in, back to full charge the next day, rinse and repeat. The range is more a problem for very long distances. However, there is already fast charging capability and some cars get about 80% in ~15-20 minutes. Drive for 2-3 hours, you should be having a break to rest about that time.

Secondly, the cost of a car is not just the initial outlay - it's also the maintenance and fuel costs. Electric cars will have lower fuel and (because of that complex combustion engine) lower maintenance. The lifetime cost of an electric car is not much different from petrol/diesel. You can buy a car on a finance deal with monthly payments and spread it out.

I also wonder whether car ownership is going to dive anyway. Companies like Uber and automated driving are pointing us at a world where you don't need to own a car. You just order one on an app when you need it and it takes you somewhere. People who need to do lots of driving may still prefer their own, but chances are many are likely to find rental or automated "taxi" cheaper and easier.
 

CriticalGaming

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520 miles a week, assuming 5 days work, is ~100 miles a day. So go to work, come home and plug in, back to full charge the next day, rinse and repeat. The range is more a problem for very long distances. However, there is already fast charging capability and some cars get about 80% in ~15-20 minutes. Drive for 2-3 hours, you should be having a break to rest about that time.
Assuming charging is available where you are going in that time frame. And still having to stop for a fairly lengthy period of time that often puts a damper on roadtrip drives. Maybe not day trips, but if you were to drive from Southern California to, say Yellowstone National park in Wyoming, you're easily adding days to the trip both ways on an electric car.

Secondly, the cost of a car is not just the initial outlay - it's also the maintenance and fuel costs. Electric cars will have lower fuel and (because of that complex combustion engine) lower maintenance. The lifetime cost of an electric car is not much different from petrol/diesel. You can buy a car on a finance deal with monthly payments and spread it out.
In theory. I don't know what the repairs are like in something like a Tesla nor what the warrenties are like. But I would imagine that if something fucks up in the car, it has a bigger trickle down effect that fucks with every system in the car versus what more mechanical cars take. Repairs are repairs though. The cost honestly I feel is debatable, because yes you save on fuel costs, my area's electric bills are fucking stupid high and I wonder how much load a charging station adds to a home's electrical consumption. Let's say lifetime cost is a wash, assuming one can afford the upfront cost of the car and the installation of the charging station. Again there is a reason as to why Tesla owners are pretty solidly high in the income bracket.

I also wonder whether car ownership is going to dive anyway. Companies like Uber and automated driving are pointing us at a world where you don't need to own a car. You just order one on an app when you need it and it takes you somewhere.
I imagine we are 50 years from this at least. Again there is a lot of technology and infrastructure that needs to happen to make this a reality.
 

Specter Von Baren

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I also wonder whether car ownership is going to dive anyway. Companies like Uber and automated driving are pointing us at a world where you don't need to own a car. You just order one on an app when you need it and it takes you somewhere. People who need to do lots of driving may still prefer their own, but chances are many are likely to find rental or automated "taxi" cheaper and easier.
Considering the practices of Amazon with their employees and still not being able to meet demand, and the issues with Uber deliveries, is this really the world you WANT to live in?
 

Agema

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Assuming charging is available where you are going in that time frame. And still having to stop for a fairly lengthy period of time that often puts a damper on roadtrip drives. Maybe not day trips, but if you were to drive from Southern California to, say Yellowstone National park in Wyoming, you're easily adding days to the trip both ways on an electric car.
No, I've literally just pointed out that with a fast charge you may be looking at something like 2h drive for 15 mins charge. That will extend the time taken for the journey ~10-15%. It only adds days if your car trip is over a week. And at that point, my sympathies for the extra days are running pretty thin.

In theory. I don't know what the repairs are like in something like a Tesla nor what the warrenties are like. But I would imagine that if something fucks up in the car, it has a bigger trickle down effect that fucks with every system in the car versus what more mechanical cars take.
Electric cars are mechanically more simple than petrol. There is less to break, and they will break down less. In terms of electrics, modern petrol cars are already stuffed to the brim with electrics.

In the UK, electric cars are probably already reckoned cheaper than petrol by lifetime cost. Fuel alone, electrics cost about a third as much as petrol. It's not as good in the USA because petrol prices at the pump are so much lower, but the idea electrics are stupidly expensive is a mirage created by the initial purchase cost.

I imagine we are 50 years from this at least. Again there is a lot of technology and infrastructure that needs to happen to make this a reality.
We're already almost there. Rental and taxi firms already have car supply principle nailed. All the thing we're waiting for is to make sure the automatic driver software is up to scratch, and it's already pretty close in testing, that's why we're reading about the accidents, because they're already good enough to be set loose on the roads.

As for electric vehicle infrastructure, if in the 1940s the USA could go from slumbering civilian-focused to invading the Pacific and Europe with millions in three years, it can cover itself with the infrastructure for electric vehicles in less than a decade if it put its mind to it. Although I wouldn't necessarily recommend having to hurry it.
 

Agema

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Considering the practices of Amazon with their employees and still not being able to meet demand, and the issues with Uber deliveries, is this really the world you WANT to live in?
And yet Amazon is wildly successful and how the world has become. Whether I like it or not is relatively small beans. It works well enough that there's little appetite to change.

And given that you're constantly arguing with the people who don't like how Amazon works, I'm not sure why you think it's a problem.
 

CriticalGaming

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No, I've literally just pointed out that with a fast charge you may be looking at something like 2h drive for 15 mins charge. That will extend the time taken for the journey ~10-15%. It only adds days if your car trip is over a week. And at that point, my sympathies for the extra days are running pretty thin.
Fast charge to ~80% which isn't a full charge. So you purposefully would gimp a 200 mile range by an additional 20%? So you get 160miles out of that 15 minute stop. Which also has to assume every charger at every stop is capable of providing a fast charge to your particular car. And then if you wanted to wait for that 20% how much long does it take? It adds too much inconvinence to something that people already don't like doing.

Also we haven't considered what extras people are doing in the car that might further reduce the range. Running the screen, charging cell phones, running the A/C, all of this further decreases the range of the battery. Which means you'd realistically be running on 150mile increments. which means you're stopping for 30 minutes every two hours. That is a lot of time to add to a 1000mile trip.

As for electric vehicle infrastructure, if in the 1940s the USA could go from slumbering civilian-focused to invading the Pacific and Europe with millions in three years, it can cover itself with the infrastructure for electric vehicles in less than a decade if it put its mind to it. Although I wouldn't necessarily recommend having to hurry it.
That's if the industry wants too. If the money wants too. Which highlights my whole initial point of this topic. The people with power and money need to make these changes, not the individual everyman. What they are trying to do is make the everyman eat the cost first, and that will never work because it's too expensive and inconvient.
 
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Satinavian

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1. They have done no work on making electric vechiles viable for long term use or travel. Meaning that road trips in your electric car is near impossible because there aren't enough (if any) road stops, hotels, charging stations, available to make sure you can plug your Tesla or whatever in over night, or just while you shop to make sure you don't run out of juice.
I believed that as well, but it seems battery research progressed immensely after it was certain that there really is a market for electric cars. Infrastructure is still lacking though.
2. People's electric bills are already extremely high (it costs almost $500/month for me to run my AC during the summer and im not even home much). You are demanding people take on that with no promise of lowered rates or insentives. But this one maybe we can ignore if we replace the cost of gas with the electricity cost. Fine.
You waste electricy for 500$ per month for AC when you are rarely home ? That is not environmentally friendly at all.
3. What about jet fuel and all the vechicles incapable of running electric yet. Big rigs, the maintenence on aircrafts, tow trucks, emergency vechicles. Again this might just fall into my infrastructure complaint but it doesn't seem like any country anywhere is anywhere close to bailing on fossil fuels.
Jet fuel will stay jet fuel because batteries weight too much. People flying less would need to be part of any solution though. Tow Trucks and emergency verhices can be made electric though as they don't need range.
4. Why was nuclear power not even considered as an option? It's exceptionally clean, and exceptionally safe (except when it isn't but that can be said for anything).
Won't work. We have enough uranium to power a couple of countries but not enough for most of the world to go nuclearThorium stretches that slightly but not enough. Unless we get fusion, nuclear is helpful but no solution.
I'm all for going "green" if we want to make better changes for the world. But regulations and changes need to be started on an infrastructural level, not the individual level. Look if you made it super easy and cheap for people to drive electric cars, they would do it in a heartbeat. There is a reason as to why only the wealthy are buying Tesla's and other pure electric cars and it's because of cost and the fact that these people often also have a gas powered car for situations beyond just a little cruise around town.
We have already had 3 decades of chicken and egg. People don't buy electric cars because those are expensive and the infrastructure is missing. People don't build the infrastructure because the user base does yet exist. People don't develop electric cars outside of the high-price segment because without infrastructure only buyers who want a second car and build a loading station at home buy one.


You are right that we can't rely on the individual to make changes. But basically forcing people to go electric or car-less is not "relying on the individual". It is the kind of forceful action needed to change something.
Now for a proper transition there should be investment in infrastructure. Why would you even want to use a car for a 1000 mile trip instead of say, a train ? Likely because your public transport is horrible.


Cities are flattened concrete and steel. It seems odd to be touting them as environmentally better.
But they are. By far.
 
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Specter Von Baren

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And yet Amazon is wildly successful and how the world has become. Whether I like it or not is relatively small beans. It works well enough that there's little appetite to change.

And given that you're constantly arguing with the people who don't like how Amazon works, I'm not sure why you think it's a problem.
???????????????????????????????????? When have I ever argued that Amazon's practices are good?
 

CriticalGaming

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You waste electricy for 500$ per month for AC when you are rarely home ? That is not environmentally friendly at all.
The power company's rates are just fucking stupid. I have nothing but "energy certified effecient" appliances and there is no reason for my bill to be so high. But in the summer they jack up the costs because they want to discourage people from using the A/C, We even have PSA's on TV trying to encourage people not to run their A/C or if so keep the temp really fucking high. It's very fucking dumb and I hate my state very much.

Jet fuel will stay jet fuel because batteries weight too much. People flying less would need to be part of any solution though. Tow Trucks and emergency verhices can be made electric though as they don't need range.
I'd argue that people would end up flying MORE because it would be impractical to drive 500 miles in your electric car to see Grandma for the holidays when you can just fly and not have to deal with the long roadtrip. Not to mention what do we do about Motorhomes and RV's. Because frankly the car debate is pointless when the vast majority of roadtrips are done in some sort of big RV which has no prospect for becoming fully electric anytime soon.

Won't work. We have enough uranium to power a couple of countries but not enough for most of the world to go nuclearThorium stretches that slightly but not enough. Unless we get fusion, nuclear is helpful but no solution.
We could just dismantle some of our bombs you think?

Also I feel like not every country really needs to make this change, so the uranium can be sourced to countries in which nuclear power would provide the most effect for the most people and reduce the most overall polution. The whole world doesn't need to go electric or solar (good luck getting the Taliban to embrace science), but if even just a handful of populations could have a very positive impact.

We have already had 3 decades of chicken and egg. People don't buy electric cars because those are expensive and the infrastructure is missing. People don't build the infrastructure because the user base does yet exist. People don't develop electric cars outside of the high-price segment because without infrastructure only buyers who want a second car and build a loading station at home buy one.
But people DO buy Hybrid cars. So we are already halfway there. Prius' are all over the place but even those hybrid cars are expensive. But they solve the range problem, and the charging problem because they have no need for new devices or nationwide charging stations.

If we met somewhere in the middle and put more emphasis on making a hybrid change, i think would could have a greater impact sooner and more people would embrace it.

Not only that, but once you are already hybrid, moving fully electric in another 10 years when the support is there would be a much easier change.
 
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Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
The power company's rates are just fucking stupid. I have nothing but "energy certified effecient" appliances and there is no reason for my bill to be so high. But in the summer they jack up the costs because they want to discourage people from using the A/C, We even have PSA's on TV trying to encourage people not to run their A/C or if so keep the temp really fucking high. It's very fucking dumb and I hate my state very much.
 

Agema

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???????????????????????????????????? When have I ever argued that Amazon's practices are good?
Implicitly, every time you tell us how great capitalism is. Amazon is capitalism writ large.

Fast charge to ~80% which isn't a full charge. So you purposefully would gimp a 200 mile range by an additional 20%? So you get 160miles out of that 15 minute stop. Which also has to assume every charger at every stop is capable of providing a fast charge to your particular car. And then if you wanted to wait for that 20% how much long does it take? It adds too much inconvinence to something that people already don't like doing.
Also we haven't considered what extras people are doing in the car that might further reduce the range. Running the screen, charging cell phones, running the A/C, all of this further decreases the range of the battery.
Electric car ranges will automatically include what it costs to run the car's other functions, nearly all of which are trivial (except the A/C). To give an idea, an electric car has a battery size usually of ~60kWh. A mobile phone battery will be about 10Wh, which means that to charge such a mobile phone from 0-100% will use about 0.016% of that car battery. In other words, basically nothing. The A/C however will significantly affect car range, especially with temperature extremes because heating and cooling requires plenty of energy.

Which means you'd realistically be running on 150mile increments. which means you're stopping for 30 minutes every two hours. That is a lot of time to add to a 1000mile trip.
You mean 15-20 minutes, which is what a fast charger can manage (it's ~30 mins to full charge). You don't get to use the 80% charge value for range with 100% charge value to time to charge, because that's cheating. And like I said, you should be having such breaks anyway, because it makes you much less likely to lose concentration, fall asleep etc. and crash your car.

That's if the industry wants too. If the money wants too. Which highlights my whole initial point of this topic. The people with power and money need to make these changes, not the individual everyman. What they are trying to do is make the everyman eat the cost first, and that will never work because it's too expensive and inconvient.
Cars are mostly owned by ordinary people. So if a change needs to be made in how cars work, it needs to be made by ordinary people. Businessmen will react to demand, demand will come from people, so people need to change.

If you think other people should pay, what you want is socialism: tax the rich and drive the infrastructure and technology forward. Do you really want socialism?
 

Specter Von Baren

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Implicitly, every time you tell us how great capitalism is. Amazon is capitalism writ large.





Electric car ranges will automatically include what it costs to run the car's other functions, nearly all of which are trivial (except the A/C). To give an idea, an electric car has a battery size usually of ~60kWh. A mobile phone battery will be about 10Wh, which means that to charge such a mobile phone from 0-100% will use about 0.016% of that car battery. In other words, basically nothing. The A/C however will significantly affect car range, especially with temperature extremes because heating and cooling requires plenty of energy.



You mean 15-20 minutes, which is what a fast charger can manage (it's ~30 mins to full charge). You don't get to use the 80% charge value for range with 100% charge value to time to charge, because that's cheating. And like I said, you should be having such breaks anyway, because it makes you much less likely to lose concentration, fall asleep etc. and crash your car.



Cars are mostly owned by ordinary people. So if a change needs to be made in how cars work, it needs to be made by ordinary people. Businessmen will react to demand, demand will come from people, so people need to change.

If you think other people should pay, what you want is socialism: tax the rich and drive the infrastructure and technology forward. Do you really want socialism?
I have said multiple times that I don't much like capitalism but it's far better than any of the other governmental systems we've tried and if anyone tries to sell me shit like communism/socialism then I will fight tooth and nail against them because that is a hundred times worse as has been factually demonstrated over and over and over again.

I would LOVE a better system but I need someone to come up with one first. Do not mis-represent me despising a truly despicable and fallow system like communism as me saying capitalism is a shinning beacon of all that is good. I'd just rather eat rotton apples than literal excrement.
 

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Capitalism or no, this is clearly not a problem that market economics can solve.

In order for the market to invest in the infrastructure, there needs to be an install base.
In order for the install base to buy from the market, there needs to be infrastructure.
The market will not do one without already having the other.

So, like literally every major infrastructure project in the US, the government needs to play a major part. Same way as electricity and phones and rail and roads in the first place
 

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There is no good decision here. If Biden goes full on Green New Deal he loses votes in the short term, and could lose the election to Tucker Carlson, Trump, Cruz or even Hawley. If he doesn't he's going help drive the world off a climate cliff in the future So he's trying to maximize both. He will drill like crazy, and frack like crazy and pursue renewables.

Edit: The reason Biden could lose the election if he spikes out fuel taxes, or allowed fuel prices to increase is due to the fact that fuel prices are correlated with winning or losing an election.
 
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Satinavian

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The power company's rates are just fucking stupid. I have nothing but "energy certified effecient" appliances and there is no reason for my bill to be so high. But in the summer they jack up the costs because they want to discourage people from using the A/C, We even have PSA's on TV trying to encourage people not to run their A/C or if so keep the temp really fucking high. It's very fucking dumb and I hate my state very much.
Well, the US has basically twice the electricity consumption per person of Germany. And a huge part of that is superflous A/C. In fact the only other countries that get similar numbers are either nordics with electric heating via renewables or some rich Arab desert countries using lots of a/C as well. People thinking that this should be toned down is not particularly surprising. But the good message is that your energy grid can already handle twice the energy per person than Germanys and thus would have a much easier time to handle additional electric cars as well.
I'd argue that people would end up flying MORE because it would be impractical to drive 500 miles in your electric car to see Grandma for the holidays when you can just fly and not have to deal with the long roadtrip. Not to mention what do we do about Motorhomes and RV's. Because frankly the car debate is pointless when the vast majority of roadtrips are done in some sort of big RV which has no prospect for becoming fully electric anytime soon.
Only if flying doesn't get hammered as well. If it is thrice the price and many regional airports get closed that might even be enough. More extreme measures like flying mile contingents per person don't look very American but making stuff more expensive and annoying works well enough.

We could just dismantle some of our bombs you think?

Also I feel like not every country really needs to make this change, so the uranium can be sourced to countries in which nuclear power would provide the most effect for the most people and reduce the most overall polution. The whole world doesn't need to go electric or solar (good luck getting the Taliban to embrace science), but if even just a handful of populations could have a very positive impact.
Sure, you could get enough uranium for France. But it won't even be enough for France, the US and China if those want to cover the majority of their energy needs.
It is welcome as a contribution but the solution must come from elsewhere. Not that nuclear power was an answer to fossil fuel cars in the first place.

Not only that, but once you are already hybrid, moving fully electric in another 10 years when the support is there would be a much easier change.
There was mention f countries phasing out non electric cars in the late twenties or early 30s. As it is written that mostly means "no new such cars allowed on the street from that date on". They will still exist in the second hand market for some time. Sounds slow enough for me.

But the important thing is that when electric is the only kind of new cars being sold, you get the powerful car industry in various countries from pushing against the transitioning to supporting it because the sooner people switch, the sooner they buy a new car.
 
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