Note: There's some sloppy research and wording in here. I'm sorry. (1) The white paper by Michael Kelly is funded by a climate-denial think tank. (other, better sources linked below) (2) I want to make clear that I don't think EVs are the devil, I just think they are not THE solution to future transportation. It feels as if there's such a heavy emphasis on EVs and comparably little on public transit. I believe it should be the opposite. There will always be a role for EVs, but it must be much smaller than what it is currently. Please read further on this and come to your own conclusions. There are some great counterpoints in the comments! I have a bunch of resources in the description! On material demands of a clean energy transition: iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/ffd2a83b-8c30-4e9d-980a-52b6d9a86fdc/TheRoleofCriticalMineralsinCleanEnergyTransitions.pdf On production of EV batteries: www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02222-1
You shouldn't post sloppiness if you are doing this for a living, take the time and fix it before posting or else you look like an unintelligent person trying to spread conspiracy theories. And you will lose subscribers and views when they fact check you and find out you are spreading misinformation.
Thanks for your comment. I generally agree with your take but the numbers are very important here as the differences between different forms of "clean" transportation can be surprising. For example, a high speed rail project in the U.K. called HS2 is due to be net positive for emissions until thf 2080s! It's still going ahead of course :(
You've been infiltrated by big oil and its pathetic. Elon Musk's EV may not save us because is as big of an embarrassing capitalist stain on humanity as you have proven yourselves to be lately, the Aptera WILL.. You're purposefully misinforming people. Never charge technology is already here and being produced right now in CA. And they're cheap/luxurious too
@@benjaminhadenray I agree to the extent that something like half his videos follow the format "why ___ won't save us." Yeah, it's easy to lose hope when it turns out that every good thing you hear about climate action actually isn't good enough.
Also crucially road-based public transit (like buses) need dedicated lanes because if they get stuck in traffic with all the cars there will never be a time incentive to take public transit - public transit should be the best option, not just the one people take to save money or the environment
In the US, public transport is basically only used by those who are too poor to afford a car, thus creating a negative feedback loop by disincentivizing anyone else from using it, creating more traffic and thus further slowing down public transport.
You bring up a good point. Making public transit free will get a handful of people on board, and preaching about the emissions will get another handful…but there will always be a group who say things like “meh, my car gets me there faster.” So like you say, we have to turn it into the best option in order to have a chance of getting the most people on board.
@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet most of the time its enough to treat all participants in traffic just and fair to disincentivize cars. People dont realize how much of a leg up cars have over pedestrians due to massive lobbying. In germany most public transportation is partly public/government-owned or very at least heavily subsidized. So we kinda do think busses can have priority at i.e. traffic lights. It's not super popular yet, but we have cities that done so for really long time already (back then mostly just an extra-traffic light specifically for busses and "half-a-lane" for the bus to properly get into the other streets when turning; nowadays its often with a tracker that checks if a bus is near the traffic light). We do a lot of stuff different too, but i have seen the differences in punctuality compared to cities that have no such system in place at all, and through out the normal day its a lot better (rush-hour sucks everywhere but in japan :P )
@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet Because urban planning in most parts of N. America sucks. A proper Transit-oriented development planning would include adequate pedestrian / cycle trails, mixed development (which shorten the distance between home and work / shops / etc) and concentration around either transit stations or bus routes. Streets are designed to slow cars down, if not banning them altogether. In that sense cars are not necessary faster than transit even without congestion, and inconvinent anyway. Between cities trains are at least twice as fast as the cars, and good feeder are provided at the destination. So unless you're moving large bulky stuffs or going to some really remote places, cars aren't necessary. That's basically what European and properly developed Asian cities like Tokyo are doing for years.
Also, in the continental US there's already a lot of train rails in areas that have no public transit. I'm from a small town in Indiana and if there were passenger trains on the local rails it would cut down to drives to Indianapolis immediately. And in many cases there USED to be passenger trains on these rails but they disappeared over time.
One of the issues that LA has is that those rail lines are actually owned by the freight companies. So anytime a passenger car and a freight car want to use the same rail, the passenger car has to pull over in a station and let the freight car go. This leads to passenger trains which are more often not on time, which in turn leads to lower ridership, less revenue, etc. We’re working on it though and building rails owned by the passenger car companies so that this doesn’t continue. My point is, just because you see a railroad doesn’t mean that it’s always so simple as “put a passenger car on there and done!” I’ve found out a ton about this stuff since I started reading up on projects that my city has going on. And I try to regularly call/email in order to make sure they know that someone wants them to keep pushing!
@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet Thanks for the additional info! I know there's a lot of complexity to the issue and hopefully as we talk about it more the path forward will be clearer.
In a capitalist and deregulated transport system, cargo will most likely be prioritized over ppl. In trains all you gotta do is compare the density of a car packed with ppl and a same size car packed with whatever the cargo is. Even if it's just tap water, probably it'll have a overall profit higher than a car full of ppl. And that's why I think that either the lines must be built separated or the market must be regulated and even if you build two railroads you still gotta specify and regulate the use of each one of them (all that to say that, yes, the state *must* intervene)
I'm an Estonian and live in Tallinn. When public transport became free I sold my car the next day and started taking public transport. It has allowed me to pay my debt off faster and experience true financial freedom, which allows me to purchase more local goods and raise me out of low income. I hope other countries around the world adopt this as I want others that were in my situation can flourish.
Living in Australia with vast distances between destinations and limited to no public transport outside the core city centres has hampered the adoption of EV's. As for the prospect of abandoning the car for public transport, this is only suitable for inner city dwellers. My understanding is that the European Commission has a Hydrogen Strategy that is getting traction.
Well Estonia is small. In the United States even if public transport became better, I would still have a car due to the distances that I got to travel pretty often. They can range from 3 hour to 8 hour drives.
Thanks so much for this. I've had a gradual shift over the past few years from hyping up electric cars, to being turned off by all cars. This video solidified that for me.
Are you me?!? Haha but seriously, I’m way more excited to buy an electric bike these days and see the bike infrastructure get built up. Bought my wife a pair of roller skates for our anniversary this year and I’m hoping that helps get her onboard!
Many legitimate environmental NGOs have spoken against cars and planes for years only to be fed with deaf ears. If you do the math you'd see the energy density just can't compare.
If we do go with cars, I would suggest stopping car ownership and go with Uber-like services (possibly self-driving ?) and fleets, this means 90% of all cars needed because of car ownership wouldn't have to be build.
A huge problem I see here at home (the US) is that our cities were poorly planned out. You can't walk anywhere. Obviously you can but a trip to the store will take over an hour by walking. And unfortunately many places have unfinished sidewalks or none at all.
Depends where your going. Mall yes, Small Grocery stores no. Funny there's a good bus route to the mall, but I like to walk to mall and take the bus back home.
This is a major issue in the US. Another thing people get wrong is they think the US was just "built for the car", but car dependent LA used to have one of the largest streetcar networks ever. We didn't build for the car, we bulldozed for the car
Hmmm, wonder if residents could make building up functional mass transit and housing a major point of who they vote for for leadership in city, county, state, and federal leadership…….Nah, too much work.
You can pin any tag you like on it, but the fact is we in the UK now have people dying in London, and their death certificates cite pollution as one of the factors in their death. It's about saving a future for those yet to come...... It's a hard fact. There has been measurable large increases in toxic levels of pollution in our towns and cities. If nothing is done, people will begin dying in their 40's and 50's in just a decade or two. Is that the future you'd want for your children?
As someone who lives in suburban America and has to own a car, I really hate car-centric societies. Keep in mind I am a car person and I love driving- just not through traffic. As a college student, I need a car to reliably get to my college which is an hour from me (Still the closest college I can afford). Car expenses are a lot and while my part time job does pay for them, the issues that come up from owning an old car like mine (The only kind I can afford) are often unexpected and expensive. I find it really dumb that there is no train route from my town to my college, only endless different roads you can take there. Public transportation is super limited around me as well, it is not a viable option and the people who use it need to go by its limited schedules. I would love to bike around more for local travel too, but there is no protection for bikers on roads so it is not very safe to do it. Part of me wants to to save money on gas, but I will have to be super careful. I've been thinking about getting a job closer to my house so at least it would be a quick bike ride despite not being very safe, maybe I'll do that. Like my car person needs would be satisfied if I could just drive on a track with some frequency, it's just not as fun when I have no other option to get around. Some people think cars give you freedom, but how free are you when you have no other viable transportation options and you need to dish out a lot of money just to travel?
@HoboGardenerBen You are very brave! There are lots of cars in my area and also lots of bad drivers, if the lack of safe bike spaces wasn't bad enough.
@@Bru21424 I looked before, there isn't much available unless you have experience in certain fields. That's why if I switch jobs I'll try to get a closer one, a short commute on a bike would be nice.
@@jackmccarthy4047 I agree, but I also might live out of range for that. My college is more rural than the town I live in, and in fact if I didn't transfer two years of community college to my current college I would be forced to live on campus for my first two years unless I lived within 25 miles of campus. I live 40 miles away. There are closer colleges, but they are much more pricier. Personally I think all main roads (or at least highways) should be replaced with trains, that should help a lot.
cool that they turned it into a walkway instead of a highway, but we need more rail lines around the world. freight trains are insanely more efficient and clean then long range trucks. what would be perfect is to take away highways that go through and slit towns and cities, and put people/bike, and tram walkways, ad taking away stroads (people who don't know what those are should look it up, the Not Just Bikes RUclips channel is a great resource about it) and instead making human focused streets with limited or no cars, only letting in emergency and a some needed delivery vehicles. Still, nice progress.
You hit the nail on the head as always. I work for a Canadian ENGO and it seems to me that all the funding and priority is geared to expand EVs as fast as possible. It is honestly maddening to know there are better solutions but the focus is on cars (that most people still can't afford to purchase even with government incentives).
same here in Germany. After/during the pandemic the gov got the economy welfare package ready, and their "investment into green stuff" was, jeah... a 5000€ payment if you get a new EV, with the cheapest ones being somewhere ~20.000€. But, that was the old gov, after government changes end of last year we got a green party leading now too, and due to ukraine its planned to give out 9€-monthly tickets for public transportation, for 3 month (9 for 90). Gonna be interesting what we see after that time, which one had more positive impacts etc.
As a fellow Canadian do you agree that the money being spent subsidising relatively affluent people to buy EVs would be better spent on improving public transit?
@@dougpatterson7494 I agree. For Canada, Urban area like Toronto, Vancouver, & Montreal should try to be as public transportation friendly as possible. If you need to go outside of that then fine use an ICE vehicle. Since let's be honest electric cars so far do not fair well in extremely cold temperatures. Also the whole thing about the electrical grid isn't really doable for the foreseeable future in Canada outside of the major cities.
New tech always begins expensive and then... especially with electronics, the prices drop dramatically. The drive train of an EV uses 1/10 the number of parts and costs far less to operate and maintain than an ICE vehicle, so there is savings there but mass transit is very important where and when you can get governments to invest the tax money into the capital investment needed.
Another important thing: city centers have become increasingly more expensive places to live due to high rents, and apartment prices, pushing people into sprawling neighborhoods.
@@scumbagdyln yea they’re amazing as well. The humor really helps keep me from getting too depressed while hearing about how much our society screws everything up 😀 I’ve actually been taking a leaf out of their book and trying to work more humor into my videos as well. Hoping to make them a bit easier for the average Joe to watch.
The tone can be a bit off putting to those with completely neutral opinions but NotJustBikes used facts and statistics so I still recommend them even if you're neutral and still learning!!
Cities need to do more to encourage people to ride bicycles. Safe protected bike lanes and trails are needed so adults and children can ride safely. Speak up for bicycles in your community. Bicycles make life and cities better.
Awesome video! Car centric culture is definitely something I want to see challenged in the U.S. I'm curious whether you'll do a video on trucks. I've heard those can't be easily electrified and yet we depend so heavily on trucks to transport materials and goods. I imagine re-localizing our economies would help but I just wondered if you had any thoughts on that.
There is a company in Australia called Janus trucks or something like that. They are turning normal trucks to electric in I think 3 days. So seems like they solved the issue.
Don't know about relocalizing economies, a good traveling from one side of a country to another on a truck has way more polluting effects and carbon emissions when compared to it going around the world on a container ship (industry of scale) I think this video describes the solution really well: ruclips.net/video/_909DbOblvU/видео.html
You should watch this ruclips.net/video/_909DbOblvU/видео.html and this video ruclips.net/video/WiI1AcsJlYU/видео.html by The Armchair Urbanist. He explains how trucks are terrible for transporting goods and reasons we should use trains instead for transporting goods and people.
There's experiments with adding overhead wires to some highways for trucks. (I think Tom Scott made a video about one of them.) But yeah, as other people said, trucks aren't the best way for transporting goods for long distances. I'd be interested to hear about solutions for last mile transportation though! The German postal service has been using electric vehicles (in cities at least) for a while now, but they're barely large enough to be called a "truck" and I guess letters and parcels aren't the heaviest haha. I wonder about transporting things like building materials and such.
I’ve vowed to never own a car. I might hire one when I’m moving stuff or on holiday in the French mountains, but 95% of the year, I want nothing to do with cars. Luckily, I live in the Netherlands and work in microbiology, so I can get around with my bike and public transport without much issue. I hope others want to and can live like me too, soon.
Personally I've been so far too lazy to obtain a driving license, but living in car-centric Ireland, many jobs require a driving license so I will probably get it eventually as it's very limiting not to have it.
meanwhile, i live in a rural area that doesn't have public transport right now, and when it did, it was 2-3 times a day. It just doesn't work. They're not gonna dedicate a full bus for a handful of people.
@@shterguh2c that's why I added the "can" in the last sentence. I don't think rural areas will ever be fully integrated via public transport because of what you mentioned. But when looking at how many people live there vs. in more urban areas, I think it's logical that people in rural areas have personal transport. It's just more economical and ecologically that way.
I live about 7 miles from my office and live in south Florida. The heat and humidity is suffering for 9 months so biking 14 miles round trip a day is hot feasible.
Conservatives: Blood for oil! Liberals: let's make it green, 'Blood for lithium!' I just want some sweet infrastructure where I use my vehicle only on the weekends or if I want to go camping or out to a smaller town.
@@ecoRfan electric trains don't require batteries, so no lithium needed, just a track connected to electricity. Granted it is not always possible to have a connected track, but we should invest into creating an electric train system wherever it can go. This would be a much better way to travel out of cities or across countries.
@@Lily-ni5po most trains require subsidies. If you overspent then you end up with debt and then you have to impose austerity. That is the disaster that Spain, Ireland, Portugal, Grece faced. Even the Swiss railway sistem needs a 30% subsidy. And we are talking general trains, bullet trains are prohibitly expensive We need to find solutions that are economically viable. Ridesharing apps for example are used a lot in europe because they are much cheaper than train and for longer travels there are cheap airplane flights.
As a car enthusiast, I don’t want to envision a carless world, but I do agree that we need better public transportation. It benefits everyone, car enthusiasts and non-car-people alike. If cars could be purely a choice and not a necessity, then car enthusiasts would be free to drive whatever fun car they want without worrying about practicality, and everyone else would be able to spend that money on other things. Plus fewer cars on the road would mean better driving conditions for those with cars, and potentially fewer regulations because they’re no longer necessary. There’s no need to get rid of all the roads that currently exist. Trams, trains, and buses can both save car culture and give us a greener future.
Most of the emissions and materials problems with cars also apply to wind and solar farms. Endless mining. Energy costs of production. Exploitation of workers. Why can't anyone even consider the idea of using less energy?
Public transit was gutted by the car industry. The electric street cars in Chicago were paved over or planters put in the middle of roads where they had them. Amazing , there was a system built already and it was destroyed. Public transit only works when : clean, safe, runs efficiently and often. Also like the video says , once you get off the train cities have to be built for people , not cars. The car industry today controls almost everything... think 🤔 about it...
I grew up in a suburban town and required a car for getting anything done. It was only after moving to the east bay area was I able to truly utilize public transportation and living on a town built around people. It is so nice being able to take the bus or ride my bike to anywhere I need to go.
My biggest gripe with this no car thing is that you can’t bring as much groceries or items with you in general by walking/using public transportation/cycling. With a personal car, you can bring much more items with you as long as it fits inside, and you won’t have to go out for groceries as often. And there is also the luxury of personal ac, definitely beats having to be exposed to hot and cold temperatures, or having to share the ac of public transport with some random sweaty or sick passengers of whom you don’t know.
Watch Not Just Bikes on groceries. He advocates for building walkable cities so people can stop by the store easier and make more frequent trips. He said many people buy too much and there's too much food waste. People shouldn't be forced to drive and spend on gas just to get groceries cause the store is too far.
Exactly. Let’s build a robust public transportation system which can handle 80% of our travel needs. There will always be a handful of special circumstances so people can use EVs when those come up. But EVs should absolutely not be 100% of transportation.
Here is the reality. Public transportation will not save you in the US either, because Big Business is vehemently and bitterly opposed to it. They would rather sell more cars and more oil. Remember that the US used to have really good public transportation, back in the first half of the 20th Century, but big automobile companies exterminated that and replaced it with a highway network and an appetite for cars instead.
@@denelson83 That's true, I agree with your comment. But it' s possible for the people to change the system, people just need to take action against it.
The dependence on cars built by GM, Ford, and other auto industry magnates put humanity on a fast-paced death march. Better solutions exist, we must adopt efficient public transit.
Agreed. While my city isn’t the best at these currently, I actually become super inspired when I peruse the website describing the projects which are currently in the works. Lots of bike paths and new metro routes that they’re working to bring online within the next 10 years. Wish it would be faster though
You should demand basic retail and services in your proximity, so you can walk/bike there. decentralized schools en sport sites. 15 minute city environments .
Great video!very few people consider the raw materials. EVs are one of the major "justifications" for the capitalist exploitation of the deep sea. Just a few days ago the International Seabed Authority approved the first permits to go after polymetalic nodules which take millions of years to form and are in the deepest regions of Earth's oceans. The minerals in the nodules are used in phones, computers and EV batteries. There are a lot of terrible justifications for mining the seafloor and a lot of good reasons to keep the seafloor intact. If you're interested in learning more about this I wrote a paper last year on this subject that gives the gist of it all, sources included. I am always screaming internally when everyone around me thinks buying an EV is "doing their part" or "voting with your dollars". Please spread this message. There is still time to stop industrial scale deep sea mining from going forward.
I would absolutely LOVE more public transport. I try to cluster errands and driving as much as possible, but there are plenty of times in which it would be easy enough to carry a bag or two on a bus or subway. It’s ridiculous.
Hey! I really like this episode. I feel that recent videos have been transitioning to a very doomed mindset, whereas this one addresses a lot of solutions, and important accessibility aspects of public transit that have to accompany reduced emissions if it's to become a viable alternative. Love it!
I'll take the gloom over ignoring the issue and pretending we will figure everything out. Also, if you watch OCC through a Marxist lens, none of his videos are about doom and gloom. Most countries in this world need their own revolutions which focuses on re-structuring society equitably and using our resources in the least wasteful manner possible. That is the only sure-fire way to end the climate crisis with the least amount of deaths. But unfortunately cuz RUclips is RUclips and many of the audience are scared off by the slightest mention of revolution, OCC won't say anything. He's smart and if you know what he's talking about you'll see he proposes solutions indirectly, you just need the correct lens.
As far as global pollution goes, cars aren't even close to being a big part of the problem, they're just one that's easy to see due to them being everywhere. The 15 biggest container ships produce more emissions than all the cars in the world, as do electrical devices which are consuming power but not being used.
Dont worry, everyone will mostly ignore this comment, because they've jumped on the big oil hype train with "carbon footprint", "recycling", and now cars. Always the focus to fix problems is tamping down on the actions of individuals, when big industry and government is the main source of pollution and destruction. None of the pollution and problems are solved by those ideas, because they were all invented by transportation and oil companies who could care less about the planet and more about getting us to look the other way while they profit.
All for electric cars but 5,000 lbs plus cars or SUV seems counterintuitive. Smaller battery but w better charging infrastructure and try to getaway from thinking you need a 400 mi range car. Also public transportation! Bike lanes! Metro! Bullet trains! Better urban design!
Yea, hopefully 3 and 400 mile EVs are a short lived phenomenon. With good charging infrastructure along highways and at diners and malls, you only really need 200 miles and change before people start getting hungry and wanting a break. Personally I don't really care to sit in a car for more than around 3 hours straight, and even a 15 minute break at that point can add a lot of charge back on current designs.
@@Joesolo13 I think you need to have the range to drive a large vehicle 5-6 hours minimally at highway speeds in all weather (while blasting heat in the winter, AC in the summer) without recharging and with the ability to fully recharge in under 30 minutes before a lot of people will consider changing out an ICE vehicle unless they can afford a separate EV for their commuter/every day car and something else for longer trips. The other thing that needs to change is every parking place needs to become a charging station (wireless charging someday?) because you can't tie up one of only a dozen or two spots "at the pumps" at a gas station for 30-60 minutes.
10:26 3.5GW is about the same as one large nuclear or offshore wind plant. And this is only peak demand, not sustained demand. The National Grid has also said that it can handle the increase in demand and that with the advent of V2G 2-way charging, EVs will actually be a huge storage resource for a clean grid powered by intermittent renewables.
Can confirm. Vehicle-to-Grid is an important capability that EVs have since they vehicles can offer many services to the grid like: - Frequency/voltage regulation - Load shifting - Storage (obviously). Add on to the fact that many people could own EVs in a given society, meaning that the total EV force represents a form of distributed energy storage that can dynamically supplement the storage of more fixed/centralized storage resources. Despite those benefits, EVs still wouldn't be entirely reliable given that they require the stability of the grid everywhere (as opposed to fixed/centralized storage points that can more easily be managed for single/low reconnections to a downed grid), and they still require tons of material resources at the detriment of other countries and peoples. You could just as easily have that distributed resource capability fixed in place at people's houses and connected to residential solar PV or wind, and electrified/hybrid public transit. Fixing the battery as opposed to making it mobile via cars allows for different technologies to shine that can stratify building resources, like Redox Flow batteries, some of the other Li-ion batteries not optimized for driving like Metal-Air or Metal-Lithium, fuel cells with pumps and hydrogen/oxygen stores, thermal energy storage via phase-change materials like water/ice, etc. You can diversify the battery type by not making it portable, which decreases demand on any few given types of chemical elements.
That seems like a regressive solution, having individual people spend thousands of dollars to stabilize the grid rather than society investing in nuclear baseload generation
At some point, we will be recycling batteries enough to significantly slow down mining. You can't recycle oil. The biggest problem I see with cars in general is the tires. No matter how clean a car is it will still go through tires.
@@jimzecca3961 the real problem with oil is that it leaks. In your car it leaks at the refinery it leaks pipelines leak and oil spills at drill sights happen frequently. You won't se dawn make a commercial about their products cleaning up lithium or nickel.
@@jimzecca3961 You are not wrong. Here in the UK, we now have a growing move towards recycling old cooking oil (from hotels, cafes, restaurants etc) to produce bio-diesel for vehicles.....
If you’d ever ridden on the London Underground you’d know why it’s carbon footprint per person was so small. Even if it emits lots of carbon, the trains are so packed every single day at every hour, sharing that carbon footprint amongst so many people is bound to lower it. However, a lot of these journeys are so short, less than a mile, people would be better off walking, and they could easily do that, but don’t. If they did, the carbon out put per person of the underground would be much higher
I think the magic is regenerative braking. While in EVs or hybrids you'd need a big battery to recover the electricities, on a electrified rail the frequency so high that the power is straight up used by the train right behind yours. And you trains stop and go less frequent than your cars, which also means less energy usage.
@@davidty2006 The London Underground? What planet are you referring to? For a start, the UK only gets 10% of its fuel from renewable sources... The trains run all night and all day. Go figure!
@@BenMak1989 I think you're confusing energy and electricity - in 2020 the national grid was nearly 50% from renewables and over 60% including nuclear. Valid point about walking between stops - the pavements always seem to be busy though, would need to remove a car lane and increase the width of pavement :)
A monthly pass for the metro rail system in L.A. where I live cost $144 the last time I checked which is almost three times more expensive than the cost of riding my 150cc scooter 10 miles to and from work five days a week including insurance even with the current inflated gas prices. On top of that, I have only one chance each afternoon to catch the train home for the whole night. It's disappointing how lacking the public transit services are here. I'd much rather take a quiet and safe train ride to work than continue risking my neck driving the statistically lethal streets of L.A.
It seems like LA had a lot of trouble to get sufficient funding, so a light rail system of that large is impressive imho. But it's just unfortunate. A city of that size should easily have a proper metro with at least a few lines, together with at least hourly suburb trains and solid bus feeder network, not "light rails". In Asia only cities in less developed countries with a financially weak government would allow LA's situation to happen, but even those cities are getting ODAs and improving.
Another issue with LA metro is its lack of safety or at least it’s perception of it…the smell and look of buses near DTLA are not at ALL safe or comfortable after the 9-5s go to work. It’s full of trash, people who are homeless, and those who are mentally disabled. This is an issue because it not only scares off potential riders but also just gives politicians an excuse to no expansion/funding into public transit. Obviously without free medical care, solid public housing policies, and a greater social society net the homeless will continue to sleep on buses, criminals will continue to have petty theft on trains, and public transit will continue to be infrequent, unreliable, and unwelcoming.
Public transportation flat out will not work in suburbs. Huge sections of urban areas are suburbs and suburbs are just way too spread out. There is no way this can be changed in ten or twenty years (not without immense cost). In the mean time carbon from burning fossil fuels continues to accumulate in the atmosphere. In the mean time we do not have to go to other countries for lithium, we already have some here (as does Canada). There is a geothermal energy plant by the Salton sea in southern California (note the Salton sea is currently fairly toxic from evaporation over the years and farm runoff) that uses hot underground brine water to generate electricity. That hot underground water happens to be loaded with minerals (obviously: lots of hard water in the southwest) and one of those minerals is lithium, and quite a bit of it! One estimate is that there is enough lithium there to meet all of the United States needs, and forty percent of the world! President Joe Biden has already invoked the Wartime Production Act to get companies to investigate environmentally friendly ways to extract lithium in the United States. There is a similar situation for cobalt and nickel from coal mine waste (coal mine tailings). In this case it could be double win with the removal of these toxic waste sites. The Washington Post recently had an article on this (as did others) [WP: 'In coal country, a new chance to clean up a toxic legacy']. Since coal mine tailings have minerals we should also look at the fly ash left over after burning coal: it also may have strategic minerals.
Well, I've seen enough and read enough about EV's now to tell you that if you use "whole of life" emissions to compare EV's to ice cars then EV's ( using the average life of 180,000 miles driven ) are still overall higher emitters by around 10%. That is because an EV is massively more polluting to create and dispose of. Even Volvo, a car company that is committed to going EV-only, has a research paper that comes to the same current conclusions. EV's are a fairy tale.
@@davidty2006 Yea I'd love to see a well-organized new Conrail (it's last vestige actually lives on in my area), but nationalizing the track is a good middle ground. More areas need to be double tracked or more to allow for passenger service without freight interference.
OCC hitting the nail on the head, even without mentioning the pleathers of negative externalities of automobile dependency. Urban heat islands, particulate pollution, noise pollution, light pollution, deforestation, habitat destruction, and hydrological drainage to name a few.
Apparently the commute time into Manhattan would be reduced by 40-50% if all private vehicles are banned from downtown roads. How about a collab with City Beautiful and RM Transit?
One question I have is, how will we carry around heavy things without cars? For example, I have a band and I don't imagine carrying heavy and big speakers in the bus or train. I imagine you can think of better examples than that, but still
With a car. Usually when people think of totally car free cities, they think of cities without people needlessly driving everywhere. Think of horse carriers when those were a thing.
Outliers like that will always be exceptions to the rule. And frankly most musicians are perfectly capable of traveling with their instrument by bike, the Tubists and Drummers of the world are an outlier of an outlier. You always need options for those outliers but they don't mean we can't change the status quo.
Creating such a public transportation system is further away then we might think! Yes, in big cities it's more viable, you don't have to cover extra long distances, but in rural areas are simply un sustainable. (I'm talking about Europe, more specifically Germany) When I had to pick up my girlfriend form the airport (232 km round trip), I had to spend 60-70 eur to get 3 tickets for us (one for me there, and two for us to come back), ride 6-7 hours, and catch 6-8 connections. Oh and all the trains are going hourly or only every other hour. Compared to that, I got my electric recently, I can go whenever I want, I'll have to drive only 3 hours all together, and the "fuel" cost comes down to the third!! Public transport should be the cheaper option because it's significant limitations over any type of car.
6:33 Instead of “car-less” my wife and I opted to call ourselves CAR-FREE. Car-less could connote a deficiency, deficient in an “essential” car. Also on browsing could be mistaken for CARELESS, also a negative vibe. Car-free (carefree), is an unshackling, an unburdening. A heck of a lot less expensive.
I’m actually working to move my family to having only one car instead of two. I’ll move onto using an e bike and the train to get to work while my wife will use our EV. I’m lucky though because I live and work in a situation which makes this possible. 1st world cities need to invest like crazy in public transit so that more people can have this option as well. Many families will even be able to go completely car free!
@@Ascend777 agreed. Buses really only work for trips that are 5 miles or less. Anyone that is looking for something for their actual commute will want an option that’s on a rail. Ideally mixed with a quality bike path to make it easy/safe to get to and from the station.
Actually railways combined with the dense development is cheaper than building highway, because fewer infrastructures are needed. In Japan one of the biggest incentives of compact city development is the huge snow removal cost that comes with urban sprawling.
Thank you for this! We need to move away from auto-centric urban areas and move to public transit, cycling and walking. Yes, some people "need" cars - small towns, rural areas, those with mobility issues, the elderly - I get it. But most people in urban areas don't need cars. I have arranged my life to be car-free, and I'm nothing special, I assure you!
I would've agreed 500% with this overview presented... If we all lived in cities, big metropolitan areas and respective suburbs and nearbies. But we don't not all countries and territories are geographically populated as London/Greater London, not all territories are viable for public transportation usage. So, in many regions, the car will still be the best option for transportation and personal/population needs.
Urban planning is more important than just implementing public transport, if housing is socialized and people are given a home instead of purchasing, the need for long distance transportations on daily activities will be diminished extensively, people will just need to walk or cycle towards their destinations, creating a far lower carbon footprint. Unfortunately, this is only achievable in socialist economy where communities take over the means of production and decisions, not in a capitalist free market world.
One way is urban planning. Encourage the rail companies to develop properties along the rail, so they make a positive feedback to the ridership. Discourage development outside designated areas. Another way is to separate infrastructure from operations. Let's face it, in US most roads and airports are subsidised by the Fed, while rails have to be owed by rail companies themselves. Building and maintaining any infrastructures are prohibitively expensive. Why not build the rail by public fund, let train companies operate on it and ask them to pay for right-of-way just like turnpikes. European are doing that way, so as some new railways here in Japan.
@@steinwaldmadchen not good enough, communities should do lesser long distance travelling, rails are mostly for logistical purpose, it is way more efficient to develop around the hubs than along the railways. And since railways are essential to communities, they shouldn't be run by private companies, it should have been owned by the communities/people.
I've been seeing them more often around we're I live. And when I see them, I feel conflicted they don't use fossil fuels, but the more I learn, the more I see them as a contributor to global warming.
10:24 - It says electric vehicles could lift UK electricity demand by 3.5GW without any mention of the general electricity demand in the UK. Regular demand is over 300.000 GW - If the 3.5GW number is correct, I feel pretty confident that the UK can handle the increased demand.
If the UK's oil refineries - which produce 14 million gallons of petrol and 11 million gallons of diesel per day - operated at much less capacity (say just 25%) which may of course happen if we're all driving EV's, then that alone would reduce the demand on the UK'd grid hugely. It has been estimated that the UK's refineries use enough electricity to charge 3.29 million electric cars every day...... The National Grid state there will be no problems. They anticipate around 9 million EV's on Britain's roads by 2030, and 30 million by 2040......
The electric car history is quite fascinating. More recently several manufacturers had decent EVs in 90s for city/peri-urban use but most of them were seen as useless novelties by the general public. GM's EV1 was very promising in particular but GM sabotaged the project and recalled every one of them after they realised it was just easier to make money by producing endless lines of ICE trucks and SUVs.
Some experts predict car ownership will decrease by 90% once L5 autonomous driving is achieved. I think 50% is a very reasonable number. Furthermore recycling of batteries should decrease demand for mining as BEV adoption reaches critical mass. Even in an oil driven economy the use of oil will go down due to fewer cars and oil not being refined into gasoline.
One thing that isnt mentioned consistently in these types of videos is i dont think that public transport is the answer to decarbonisation and ridding the world of cars. Speaking to alot of people that drive cars, even when it doesnt make sense, whether that be financially or time wise, it is because they value having their own personal space too much. Most middle class people that can afford a decent car wouldnt consider getting on a crowded bus where their personal space is constantly invaded. We need an alternative solution that would get these people out of their cars, i think smaller and lighter individualised transportation would be a fantastic alternative that would consume less resources and atleast be more efficient then a car.
I see a lot of people putting all EVs in the same bag and I think that's a very misguided approach. You can't compare a Tesla Model X to an electric bike, or even a Citroen Ami. The car industry keeps selling cars that are bigger and more powerful every year but that's not what individual transportation has to be like.
So much car-centric infra is baked into the structure of our cities. I wish we had a blueprint for how to reorganize existing cities to make transit more accessible. How can we retrofit suburbia without tearing it down & starting over? I live in a suburban neighborhood but the nearest bus stop is 1.5 miles away and the busses only run once per hour. Most trips require at least one transfer. My bicycle is significantly more efficient for trips under 5 miles even in winter. But our streets are NOT currently very bike friendly so this mode is not for the faint of heart.
Suburbia is harder but not impossible. Linking up culs-de-sac with bike/pedestrian paths is a start. Many roads are far wider than they need to be, and much modern development features significant setback requirements which means there's actually plenty of room to add bike infrastructure, but it may require narrowing roads. This isn't really bad in itself as it'll force people to slow down to more reasonable speeds.
@@Joesolo13 Great feedback & ideas. Thank you - I really needed an infusion of optimismabout now! I wish I could generate more of your ideas & positive attitude around here. I really like the idea of Ped/Bike connections between cul-de-sacs. That would remedy a several of the issues we're having & wouldn't be very expensive.
Imagine that all car manufacturers stopped making engines larger than 2L, worked on fuel consumption and all the rest of the money went to improving of public transport (electric, natural gas, methane).
Haven’t you noticed more and more vehicles on the road are 2L turbocharged engines? Big trucks aside. Low displacement turbo charged engined vehicles are starting to become the average non hybrid vehicle.
Not only reduce the deaths from traffic, but also the ones from breathing exaust fumes. You might want to brush it off, but the air you breathe in urbanized areas is killing you.
I wish this video talked about the gentrification that comes with public transportation, making transportation accessible to all neighborhoods runs the risk of displacing people from their homes and the price increases of property that comes from public transportation, pushing out lower income folk. How to make a public transportation system equitable is still unclear.
As someone who is a big supporter of muscle cars, used to own one, and likely need to own one again in the future, believe me when I say this. How much I love cars, and what they can do, and even how they sound, I would rather take a train or transit system to a local or even far away destination far more than I would want to take my car. Trains and local transport brings people together far more than anything else, and cost far less than trying to force everyone in a car. We shouldn't have to be forced to purchase/use cars, how nice it is to take a night drive and be behind a wheel while feeling "free" I cannot deny that driving is still a hassle, and I would still rather sit on a train allowing myself to contemplate and see views I wouldn't normally in a car, because I can be distracted, I'm the one being taken to a new destination.
Some have said: we should transition to an Uber-like service of self-driving EV cars. And no car-ownership: this would mean 90% less cars would have to be produced and people don't have to deal with traffic, the self-driving system does this. And still you would have the door-to-door experience.
@@trtrhr How many times have you been shot at in your car? I never have been. In years of working on cars I've seen exactly one out of tens of thousands with bullet holes in it.
I can’t wait to live somewhere with good public transit. The city I’m in seems almost hostile to any kind of publicly beneficial infrastructure. It doesn’t help that businesses here have so many ways to avoid paying taxes, so our public sector is starving.
There are some good points here, however a completely carless world is not entirely feasible in my opinion. What about people who rely on cars for lifestyle? For example I go overlanding in the mountains with my Jeep Wrangler like 5-7 times a year for multiple nights and I just simply will not give up my lifestyle on that. That is not an option for me. And there are millions who will not. What about people who live in small, rural areas? What about people who do not live in towns at all? What about farmers and combines and tractors for food production? Food transportation from farms? What about people who do not want to live in big cities? You can't force people to give up their cars and move to big cities, then that is an authoritarian/humanitarian issue. I am all for EV's and would LOVE to see an efficient electric Jeep Wrangler for example. But that is the other thing, these cars are not affordable. If they made a Jeep Wrangler that was under $40,000 and fully electric and can go 400+ miles on a single charge then I would buy one. Until then, non of this is feasible. Maybe another 400-500 years or so.
No mention of remote work. This has substantially increased during the pandemic to the point where downtowns are still struggling to get people back into the office. Fewer emissions working from home than commuting, I can guarantee. Also, I wonder how many emissions there walking, and biking vs taking a car to get you to your location faster, or through a subway and bus.
10:13 "Electric vehicles would put immense stress on an already stressed grid" Thats a narrow view. EV can also help stablize the grid, or even provide energy when there is no sun and wind. It's called bidirectional charging or "Vehicle 2 Grid". Modern home charging stations and EVs are already capable of that.
How does an EV generate energy other than maybe solar? Sure I could use the car to power things from its battery, but the main goal is to have the EV fully charged at all times to actually drive it. They already have range and recharge rate issues.
I drove two small EVs from 2016 to 2020 and they are definitely great cars. And they do have a lot of obvious upsides until you really think deeply about the whole idea of private car ownership and realise it’s disastrous even with much cleaner EVs. But the fact that they’re so good to drive and own makes the job of trying to get people to realise they’re not the answer incredibly difficult. Which is also disastrous since we need a rapid phase out of car ownership in all forms. The climate is getting away from us super quickly and only the most “drastic” measures can help now. And obviously most countries are not even trying to accommodate cycling and micromobility like e-scooters. So for me that’s why car ownership has to go immediately, because then we can use those much emptier streets for cycling and buses.
bro it’ll be like the old days when i was kid and i used to be outside with my friends with scooters and bikes mannn i miss being a kid but i also love cars
We need Carsharing and good Bicycle Infrastructure to make the change to environmentally friendly individual transport! Of Course Public Infrastructure is also very important though!
1. A car is luckly to carry a few people, no matter what power it is on. Usually the number is one unfortunately. 2. A bus or train can carry dozens for the same amount of energy. By nature it's way more efficient. 3. Any technologies that improve cars would more or less benefit buses or trains as well, so 2 would still hold. Is it that difficult to comprehend?
Exactly. E bikes are also revolutionary partially because they always carry the ideal amount. For my video on electric cars (which I’m still editing) I did the math on the efficiency of an EV vs an e bike. An EV is lucky to get 4 miles/KW while an E bike tends to get 50 miles/KW. No contest really…
One thing to consider is a bus does use more energy than a car even if the energy used per person is less. This becomes a problem in low density areas where you need many buses in order to provide reasonable access and high frequency but the greater your frequency the lower the ridership per bus. The cost to maintain and operate a big bus fleet is unrealistic in some areas.
Public transport does not work for those of us who live in rural areas. And I don't mean in a small town I could bike around, I mean literally in the middle of nowhere.
I think we're doomed, to be honest. Americans have been brainwashed for generations to mindlessly ape "cars are freedom" without thinking...maybe they're incapable of critical thinking by this point. There will have to a vast and sweeping change for car-free life to even be possible especially for those who aren't wealthy. I'd love to not need a car but I live in a small town in Montana- there's no viable way to participate in society here if you can't drive (unless of course you're wealthy enough to just take an Uber or cab which is driving with extra steps).
To play devil's advocate, the reason people like Disney World transit is because it is setup with an optimal use case. They have minimal external political issues/funding problems. They have 100% control over the boarding locations and destinations. They control the hours those destinations are operating. They know how many people are in each hotel and have an app/ticket system that provides them the data to adjust transit to meet demands. They don't really connect to the outside world. The majority of passengers are either resort guests or employees. Real world transit needs to deal with so many more variables.
Notice that many of those that support these initiatives have a common link: city dwellers. The most important thing that is ignored or not brought into view is what makes this challenging: suburbanites. Remember, in the US, where the suburban landscape was practically born, you have many that left the urban centers for a more relaxed, less crowded life. Where adults could enjoy the hard-earned fruits of their labor, be it physical or mental. That also means the right to move about whenever one chooses, not to be constrained to a bus/train schedule. It lent to the creation of shopping centers, where accessibility to many goods and services were possible. Later on, home delivery/serviceability made living even easier. The 'nuclear family' jargon was identified with suburban living, where families could be able to make their own way, without the prying eyes and ears of others. It's not surprising that some have a disdain for such living, usually those that are younger, more socially inclined. It is when one gets older, better employed and more settled that wants to occupy something with more room for a family to grow besides a town home or a semi-detatched house. Even if that person or couple were to be employed in a major or secondary city, personal transportation will still serve these people. Using mass transit to take them to a certain length, then transferring to their own vehicles to go home or to take care of personal duties. In any attempt at planning you will have to include these residential areas, as these are the most influential in both social and political matters.
love the video. huge car nut and you hit the nail on the head-our issue isn’t just the vehicle itself, rather, it’s the structure of our society. electric cars still require road work! however, i now have one consideration now that i’m part of the demographic. how should this apply to rural communities? i’m a 4 hour drive from the closest metropolitan area. there’s 6000 people in the town-i wonder if the emissions cost of changing small rural areas’ infrastructures relative to their small population is worth the shift? or if the cars around town are still the more effective solution?
Mixed zoning so that you have to drive less. Businesses and schools located right next to residential areas so that you can just walk or bike wherever you have to go for the most part. Then people would only need to use their cars for longer trips.
@@crimsonghost4107 yes this is what my small town is. I bike everywhere in town, obviously if I'm not using my truck to pick something up or move something etc. It takes longer for me to drive to work. I bike 5 minutes to work, or I walk down to the parking lot, start my truck, let it sit for like 5 minutes, hit every light or wait to cross main street, and its upwards of 10 minutes just to get there. It's utterly useless. A small town is the best mixed zoning there is because necessity forced it. My original comment was moreso about whether or not it would be beneficial for small rural towns to undergo massive infrastructure changes relative to their population and how little they already drive.
@@MCatwar mid-range train lines like Amtrak are a pretty good potential solution if expanded a little bit. High speed rail project ideas have been thrown around a lot in political circles for a while now, and they could certainly help out with use cases likes yours. *However*, I'm honestly not too convinced that it'd really be *that* much of a problem anyways. I don't really know the specific numbers, but I'd say that the vast majority of car emissions probably comes from shipping and commuting in cities and not occasional road trips. And I feel like transporting between rural communities and cities would be the legit use case for cars in a greener future (esp if they were EVs).
I'm all for it. I also think we need to connect our urban areas with railways. I would travel so much more if I could just hop on a train and get there. It sucks how literally everywhere I go I need to drive.
Moving close to work was why urbanisation happened and soft 'abandonment' of the country except for one, maybe two cities. In my country, Greece, for example, nearly half of the citizens live in Athens. About another 1/10 of citizens live in Thessaloniki
Good points - but, it's good to keep in mind that electric cars are still in their early stages. Better to compare them to the original Ford Model T than to the current gas powered cars they are replacing. Batteries are also much more of a renewable resource. Mass transit and bike lanes do make a lot of sense in big cities but there's a large group of people who will live outside of cities or can't use public transit. Tesla has done a great job of making electric cars desirable, even by people who previously would have been attached to their big gas cars. Another thing to keep in mind is that probably we aren't too far off from autonomous cars - which could be a great combo with electric cars as a 'transit / taxi' option that works for people who don't want to use public transit. This could also revolutionize ride share which could mean that 1 EV is used by hundreds of people. Since the main emissions costs of EVs is in production, it makes sense to have them driving as much as possible during their lifetime.
Batteries are much more renewable but more renewable doesn't mean actuslly renewable. Lithium ion batteries are not sustainably renewable by any definition. Not to mention the maintenance of car infrastructure alone emits more than we cam handle and we aren't just maintaining car infrastructure, we are building more every day. The obvious answer is cars are antithetical to combating climate change but that fact is too inconvenient for people to champion it, and not profitable enough for companies to get on board. A good rule of thumb here is that if ford and gm are championing something as the future and good for the environment; it's not
I've been talking to people trying to convince them that we need to push for infrastructural change in the city I live in, in order to entirely get rid of cars in the city core and replace as many cars as possible with public transportation between the city centre and the "suburbs". Sadly, the only response I seem to get is "but without a car how am I going to get from 'A' to 'B'?". The distance they are usually describing is, however, just a short walk even today. Except it usually takes a while because of waiting at crosswalks for the lights to switch so the river of cars stop for a moment and let pedestrians cross. The point of how the problem goes away on its own - as it turns out - is surprisingly difficult to get accross. Productive change is hard when people won't think past the problems caused by the current state of the thing we're trying to change.
Blacksburg, VA is another example of free transit. College towns can more easily do this, and tack those expenses onto tuition costs for the students, and take it out of staff's paychecks. It was so convenient being able to hop on the bus for free there. More college towns should give something like that a try, especially if they already have paid transit systems in place.
I’ve run into this a lot when I talk to more casual environmentalists. They think that everyone switching to EVs will stop climate change. So I definitely think videos like this are crucial in order to help open their eyes.
@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet the battery infrastructure will though. It's the catalyst for even ebikes Tesla had had a massive effect of ebikes indirectly. I imagine one day a single cell will be like an AA cell and any bike can be fitted.
@@TheMagicJIZZ yea I agree. The tech is great and a huge step forward. The next step is to get more of that tech in stuff like bikes, buses, trains, etc. EVs are better for emissions than ICE cars, but the next step is less EVs so we can put the batteries in stuff which enables even lower emissions.
The solution to transportation issues is not different transportation, but larger cities with more people requiring less or no transportation. People need to live where they work/shop/learn, eliminating "transportation" as a daily problem of modern life. The private automobile was a temporary fad, perfected by Henry Ford in an era of zero environmental awareness, free fuels, and a huge industrial capacity with lots of new immigrant labor willing to work for wages at dirty and dangerous jobs. None of these conditions apply today except in places like Mexico and India, and maybe China. The entire question of what kind of car you should drive is an example of asking the wrong question. If that is not obvious today, it will become obvious over the next few years.
In the meantime while we reinvent our cities and neighborhoods to be more accessible via public transportation, I still think PHEVs (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles; gas + battery) are the way to go. They buffer the energy transition from fossil fuels to the grid by incorporating both kinds of energy types, they are resilient such that when 1 of 2 energy sources goes out (war over fuel, or grid outage), you can still recharge/refuel and move, and their battery sizes are most aligned with how far average American/Canadian workers commute daily (~40 miles). PHEVs can have as much as a half to lower than a tenth of a battery size compared to BEVs (Battery Electric Vehicles no gas, battery), so the material demand is lower. You could do all of what I said above with electrified or hybrid public transit, but the are solutions in the same vein that can be pursued in parallel. I agree. As an electrical engineer, I thought that EVs, and more specifically BEVs, were the holy grail, but after learning about their exploitation, twisted design principles, overconsumption, and general sustainability, they're not the ideal solution. One thing I didn't mention above is that with individual cars, the charging infrastructure has to be so widespread and built with so much overcapacity in order to be nearly equivalent to gasoline infrastructure. Public Transit takes the cake here, since all you need to do is switch out busses to charge during downtime while the other transports people where they need to go. Public transportation, and walkable urban design, and ideal, but in the mean time PHEVs are a good bandaid
To be fair as a product EVs has the simplicity. It doesn't require the engineering of combustion engines and moving parts, and it integrates perfectly with software, which makes automatic driving and connectivity easier.
@@steinwaldmadchen I can agree with this. The Chevy Volt, for example, was super complex. It was a PHEV, and the 2nd gen version of the car had 2 planetary gears and like 6 or 7 different operating modes using either the ICE and/or the 2 electric motors in different combinations ICEs alone are simpler than PHEVs, and BEVs alone are simpler than PHEVs, definitely And I would agree with you to say that more technological complexity is the enemy of the good, but there are strong cases still to make for PHEVs over ICEs and BEVs on their own
I think for short term improvements, I think the emphasis should have been for converting more vehicles to be plug in hybrid vehicles instead of EVs. This alleviates the usability concerns pure EVs have. You have as much range as you need and can refuel in minutes. On the flip side, if you can charge at your home or place of business for typical day-to-day driving you might hardly need to use gasoline at all. They make a lot of sense. My father who is retired has one and for most of his typical driving he barely uses gas at all and when he takes longer road trips he gets good mileage.
I think working from home has the potential to make a much bigger difference than public transport. If you remove the daily commute, people can shop and socialize locally. Cars will remain the primary form of transport but be used less often.
I don't question anything that has been said but alli hear is "city's". What about us who doesn't love in a city? How much of the pollution comes from city traffic?
Worth remembering that internal combustion engines have about 30% efficiency. Electric motors are at about 80%. So even with the existing grid electric vehicles do provide emissions reduction. As an added bonus, the reduction in smog will save thousands of lives every year. While I agree that public transport is an important part of the puzzle, america needs electric vehicles and quickly.
However, there are many environmental impacts that you may not be aware of. As Charlie has mentioned in a previous video, all cars require extraction of raw materials for processing and manufacturing. As a result, every conventional and electric car generates an environmental impact even before they hit the road. And according to a two year study conducted by the Union of Concerned Scientists on the life cycle of electric vehicles this impact is usually 68% more emissions heavy for long-range electric cars. In part this is due to the energy-intensive process of extracting rare metals which make up lithium-ion batteries, and can also be found throughout these cars in headlights and on-board electronics. And the actual search and extraction process for these rare materials can also be an extremely dirty process. Lizzie Wade of WIRED magazine, as Charlie also points out, also points us towards the Jiangxi mine in China, which digs massive eight foot holes into the ground and then douses them with toxic chemicals in order to obtain a miniscule amount of rare earth. All told, Wade says 0.2% of what gets pulled out of the ground is used, and the other contaminated 99.8% is dumped back into the environment. Mining companies also employ energy intensive coal fired or gas powered equipment in order to successfully extract materials resulting in high levels of greenhouse gas emissions. So, when we look at the manufacturing stage of these electric cars then, it's not something that starts in the often touted Gigafactory. Instead, the metals used to create their sleek designs have roots in a dirty extraction process halfway across the world. So in general, the manufacturing process of these cars is much dirtier emissions-wise than a conventional car. But that changes quickly once the car starts moving. In the same 2015 study of electric cars, the Union of Concerned Scientists found that battery powered cars make up for manufacturing's steep environmental cost after only eighteen months of driving. However, this differs widely according to where you live because electric cars still have emissions associated with them, it's just not coming out of their tailpipes. You see the environmental impact of these cars depend upon the type of grid you're plugging into. If it's reliant on dirtier energy sources, these cars most likely will have lower miles per gallon equivalency, like in Colorado where the equivalent fuel efficiency is around 35mpg. But of course in California, where there are much more renewables, using an electric car might equate to something more like 87 miles per gallon. And admittedly, overall, by the end of their time on the road, gas-powered cars have almost double the amount of emissions when compared to an electric vehicle, although that all depends on where electric cars are plugging into the grid.
It's funny that we have the solution even before cars existed, trains, just build more trains, if you can't build a train, build a subway or a trolley or even buses, even the worst public transport is more "green" than the best car, fora simple reason, the economy of scale.
An that's the problem with this whole situation. Yes it must be nice knowing YOUR exhaust is clean, but what about all those enslaved children digging up the components for your clean exhaust walking through rivers of toxic runoff. Or how about all the rainforests being leveled so you can pat yourself on the back for "saving the environment". Destroying other countries environment so we can act like we're saving our own isn't protecting anything other than the egos of narcissist.
aside from what is mentioned in this video, theres another hurdle to public transportation that i don't see discussed as often. how the rise of the gas-powered vehicle and the huge focus on independence and individualism in north america have normalized a lifestyle that the vast majority of people have become accustomed with and even identify strongly with. there is something to that sense of independence and individuality that not requiring much physical energy to travel vast distances, and having the freedom, space and time that an average vehicle affords that will be difficult for a lot of people to give up. also the luxury of directly interacting with as little people as possible on a daily basis is something that a lot of people cherish, whether they're aware of it or not. something like that is so abstract to address so i hope that that by addressing cost, infrastructure, accessibility, comfort, zoning, etc, that public transit can one day counteract it. i guess at the end of the day it really isn't to get literally everyone to take public transit but to make it a much more easily accessible and appealing that if they can, the vast majority choose it over the comforts of jumping in a car and just cruisin' to where you need to go
Except Western Europe also has a streak of individualism and they have vast public transportation systems. If cars weren't necessary then every person wouldn't see them as a necessity and only people who saw them as a hobby or collectable fun thing would get them. Say, like boats for example. Anyone can buy a boat, and for awhile in the US, it was a good way to get around. But is it necessary in the 21st century? Nope.
@@uni4rm oh yeah for sure, nit saying its not possible just coupled with the absurd infrastructure and lack of robust public transit for decades and decades, a lot of ppl in north america will have a hard time letting go of their current lifestyle unless some rly huge changes are made
Personal vehicle dominance in the US will continue until it's no longer economically feasible. I think even the most die-hard anti-transit types would reconsider if operating a car took say, 40-50% of their income.
My city in Virginia, half their buses already run on electric and don't charge fare (mostly bc of 2020). I don't know if that will last forever, but it has been convenient for the people so far. And i love that they already to a step to help the environment too.
My personal opinion: public transit doesn’t cover a number of transit needs (particularly when you have cargo to transport, or multiple destinations). Cars have been the mode for many, but is often really overkill. Did you really need to use 2,000kgs of metal to move less than 100kg of cargo? What I think is integral to solving this transit need is designing “right sized” vehicles, ie making more micromobility. Dropping off the kids and picking up groceries? A cargo ebike may be the best option. In terms of scale of weight, there’s a lot of space between a bicycle and a car that I think we ought to explore more, and optimize for efficiency.
Note: There's some sloppy research and wording in here. I'm sorry. (1) The white paper by Michael Kelly is funded by a climate-denial think tank. (other, better sources linked below) (2) I want to make clear that I don't think EVs are the devil, I just think they are not THE solution to future transportation. It feels as if there's such a heavy emphasis on EVs and comparably little on public transit. I believe it should be the opposite. There will always be a role for EVs, but it must be much smaller than what it is currently. Please read further on this and come to your own conclusions. There are some great counterpoints in the comments! I have a bunch of resources in the description!
On material demands of a clean energy transition: iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/ffd2a83b-8c30-4e9d-980a-52b6d9a86fdc/TheRoleofCriticalMineralsinCleanEnergyTransitions.pdf
On production of EV batteries: www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02222-1
You shouldn't post sloppiness if you are doing this for a living, take the time and fix it before posting or else you look like an unintelligent person trying to spread conspiracy theories. And you will lose subscribers and views when they fact check you and find out you are spreading misinformation.
How would this work in less populated areas
Thanks for your comment.
I generally agree with your take but the numbers are very important here as the differences between different forms of "clean" transportation can be surprising. For example, a high speed rail project in the U.K. called HS2 is due to be net positive for emissions until thf 2080s! It's still going ahead of course :(
You've been infiltrated by big oil and its pathetic. Elon Musk's EV may not save us because is as big of an embarrassing capitalist stain on humanity as you have proven yourselves to be lately, the Aptera WILL.. You're purposefully misinforming people. Never charge technology is already here and being produced right now in CA. And they're cheap/luxurious too
@@benjaminhadenray I agree to the extent that something like half his videos follow the format "why ___ won't save us." Yeah, it's easy to lose hope when it turns out that every good thing you hear about climate action actually isn't good enough.
Also crucially road-based public transit (like buses) need dedicated lanes because if they get stuck in traffic with all the cars there will never be a time incentive to take public transit - public transit should be the best option, not just the one people take to save money or the environment
In the US, public transport is basically only used by those who are too poor to afford a car, thus creating a negative feedback loop by disincentivizing anyone else from using it, creating more traffic and thus further slowing down public transport.
You bring up a good point. Making public transit free will get a handful of people on board, and preaching about the emissions will get another handful…but there will always be a group who say things like “meh, my car gets me there faster.”
So like you say, we have to turn it into the best option in order to have a chance of getting the most people on board.
In Honolulu they PROMISE that the tram will NEVER reach the shopping center in Ala Moana! By GOD!!!
@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet most of the time its enough to treat all participants in traffic just and fair to disincentivize cars. People dont realize how much of a leg up cars have over pedestrians due to massive lobbying.
In germany most public transportation is partly public/government-owned or very at least heavily subsidized. So we kinda do think busses can have priority at i.e. traffic lights. It's not super popular yet, but we have cities that done so for really long time already (back then mostly just an extra-traffic light specifically for busses and "half-a-lane" for the bus to properly get into the other streets when turning; nowadays its often with a tracker that checks if a bus is near the traffic light).
We do a lot of stuff different too, but i have seen the differences in punctuality compared to cities that have no such system in place at all, and through out the normal day its a lot better (rush-hour sucks everywhere but in japan :P )
@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet Because urban planning in most parts of N. America sucks.
A proper Transit-oriented development planning would include adequate pedestrian / cycle trails, mixed development (which shorten the distance between home and work / shops / etc) and concentration around either transit stations or bus routes. Streets are designed to slow cars down, if not banning them altogether. In that sense cars are not necessary faster than transit even without congestion, and inconvinent anyway.
Between cities trains are at least twice as fast as the cars, and good feeder are provided at the destination. So unless you're moving large bulky stuffs or going to some really remote places, cars aren't necessary.
That's basically what European and properly developed Asian cities like Tokyo are doing for years.
Also, in the continental US there's already a lot of train rails in areas that have no public transit. I'm from a small town in Indiana and if there were passenger trains on the local rails it would cut down to drives to Indianapolis immediately. And in many cases there USED to be passenger trains on these rails but they disappeared over time.
One of the issues that LA has is that those rail lines are actually owned by the freight companies. So anytime a passenger car and a freight car want to use the same rail, the passenger car has to pull over in a station and let the freight car go. This leads to passenger trains which are more often not on time, which in turn leads to lower ridership, less revenue, etc.
We’re working on it though and building rails owned by the passenger car companies so that this doesn’t continue.
My point is, just because you see a railroad doesn’t mean that it’s always so simple as “put a passenger car on there and done!”
I’ve found out a ton about this stuff since I started reading up on projects that my city has going on. And I try to regularly call/email in order to make sure they know that someone wants them to keep pushing!
@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet Thanks for the additional info! I know there's a lot of complexity to the issue and hopefully as we talk about it more the path forward will be clearer.
"They were removed due to car companies buying off the legislature over time"
In a capitalist and deregulated transport system, cargo will most likely be prioritized over ppl. In trains all you gotta do is compare the density of a car packed with ppl and a same size car packed with whatever the cargo is. Even if it's just tap water, probably it'll have a overall profit higher than a car full of ppl.
And that's why I think that either the lines must be built separated or the market must be regulated and even if you build two railroads you still gotta specify and regulate the use of each one of them (all that to say that, yes, the state *must* intervene)
same, I'm in Oregon and there are disused rail lines right thru the middle of town that lead straight to Portland
I'm an Estonian and live in Tallinn. When public transport became free I sold my car the next day and started taking public transport. It has allowed me to pay my debt off faster and experience true financial freedom, which allows me to purchase more local goods and raise me out of low income. I hope other countries around the world adopt this as I want others that were in my situation can flourish.
Living in Australia with vast distances between destinations and limited to no public transport outside the core city centres has hampered the adoption of EV's. As for the prospect of abandoning the car for public transport, this is only suitable for inner city dwellers. My understanding is that the European Commission has a Hydrogen Strategy that is getting traction.
Well Estonia is small. In the United States even if public transport became better, I would still have a car due to the distances that I got to travel pretty often. They can range from 3 hour to 8 hour drives.
You cannot compare a literal midget country to big countries like US, Canada, Australia, Russia etc...
We should do this Scotland, we have very high population density so this would work. But instead people here like to pretend their in the USA.
You also live in a tiny country with tiny infrastructure. So of course it works. You need to understand how big the infrastructure here is.
Thanks so much for this. I've had a gradual shift over the past few years from hyping up electric cars, to being turned off by all cars. This video solidified that for me.
Are you me?!? Haha but seriously, I’m way more excited to buy an electric bike these days and see the bike infrastructure get built up. Bought my wife a pair of roller skates for our anniversary this year and I’m hoping that helps get her onboard!
this comment sounds oddly close to someone questioning their sexuality
that being said I totally feel the same haha
Many legitimate environmental NGOs have spoken against cars and planes for years only to be fed with deaf ears. If you do the math you'd see the energy density just can't compare.
Good luck if you don't live on a transit line or are physically challenged. No more farming or food either I spose!
If we do go with cars, I would suggest stopping car ownership and go with Uber-like services (possibly self-driving ?) and fleets, this means 90% of all cars needed because of car ownership wouldn't have to be build.
A huge problem I see here at home (the US) is that our cities were poorly planned out.
You can't walk anywhere. Obviously you can but a trip to the store will take over an hour by walking. And unfortunately many places have unfinished sidewalks or none at all.
Depends where your going. Mall yes, Small Grocery stores no. Funny there's a good bus route to the mall, but I like to walk to mall and take the bus back home.
This is a major issue in the US. Another thing people get wrong is they think the US was just "built for the car", but car dependent LA used to have one of the largest streetcar networks ever. We didn't build for the car, we bulldozed for the car
I recommend the ''how the car industry stole the american dream'' video.
Hmmm, wonder if residents could make building up functional mass transit and housing a major point of who they vote for for leadership in city, county, state, and federal leadership…….Nah, too much work.
@@JamesDecker7 I'll do it. It's the way to affect change.
A wise man once said:
"Electric cars aren't here to save the planet, they're here to save the car industry"
Yup!!!
You can pin any tag you like on it, but the fact is we in the UK now have people dying in London, and their death certificates cite pollution as one of the factors in their death. It's about saving a future for those yet to come...... It's a hard fact. There has been measurable large increases in toxic levels of pollution in our towns and cities. If nothing is done, people will begin dying in their 40's and 50's in just a decade or two. Is that the future you'd want for your children?
True
exactly
Ladies and Gentleman, this is Trashla the products which made by Elon Cuck Musk company.
As someone who lives in suburban America and has to own a car, I really hate car-centric societies. Keep in mind I am a car person and I love driving- just not through traffic. As a college student, I need a car to reliably get to my college which is an hour from me (Still the closest college I can afford). Car expenses are a lot and while my part time job does pay for them, the issues that come up from owning an old car like mine (The only kind I can afford) are often unexpected and expensive. I find it really dumb that there is no train route from my town to my college, only endless different roads you can take there. Public transportation is super limited around me as well, it is not a viable option and the people who use it need to go by its limited schedules. I would love to bike around more for local travel too, but there is no protection for bikers on roads so it is not very safe to do it. Part of me wants to to save money on gas, but I will have to be super careful. I've been thinking about getting a job closer to my house so at least it would be a quick bike ride despite not being very safe, maybe I'll do that. Like my car person needs would be satisfied if I could just drive on a track with some frequency, it's just not as fun when I have no other option to get around. Some people think cars give you freedom, but how free are you when you have no other viable transportation options and you need to dish out a lot of money just to travel?
@HoboGardenerBen You are very brave! There are lots of cars in my area and also lots of bad drivers, if the lack of safe bike spaces wasn't bad enough.
Have tried working at home jobs
@@Bru21424 I looked before, there isn't much available unless you have experience in certain fields. That's why if I switch jobs I'll try to get a closer one, a short commute on a bike would be nice.
They should make a policy saying there has to be adequate public transport to all colleges. Seems stupud to not have a service like that.
@@jackmccarthy4047 I agree, but I also might live out of range for that. My college is more rural than the town I live in, and in fact if I didn't transfer two years of community college to my current college I would be forced to live on campus for my first two years unless I lived within 25 miles of campus. I live 40 miles away. There are closer colleges, but they are much more pricier. Personally I think all main roads (or at least highways) should be replaced with trains, that should help a lot.
My town turned an old railroad line into a walkway and all the businesses on it have done great. I hope more cities do this.
What town is that? I'd love to see it.
That’s so cool!
cool that they turned it into a walkway instead of a highway, but we need more rail lines around the world. freight trains are insanely more efficient and clean then long range trucks. what would be perfect is to take away highways that go through and slit towns and cities, and put people/bike, and tram walkways, ad taking away stroads (people who don't know what those are should look it up, the Not Just Bikes RUclips channel is a great resource about it) and instead making human focused streets with limited or no cars, only letting in emergency and a some needed delivery vehicles. Still, nice progress.
You hit the nail on the head as always. I work for a Canadian ENGO and it seems to me that all the funding and priority is geared to expand EVs as fast as possible. It is honestly maddening to know there are better solutions but the focus is on cars (that most people still can't afford to purchase even with government incentives).
same here in Germany. After/during the pandemic the gov got the economy welfare package ready, and their "investment into green stuff" was, jeah... a 5000€ payment if you get a new EV, with the cheapest ones being somewhere ~20.000€.
But, that was the old gov, after government changes end of last year we got a green party leading now too, and due to ukraine its planned to give out 9€-monthly tickets for public transportation, for 3 month (9 for 90).
Gonna be interesting what we see after that time, which one had more positive impacts etc.
As a fellow Canadian do you agree that the money being spent subsidising relatively affluent people to buy EVs would be better spent on improving public transit?
@@dougpatterson7494 It is the socialist way!! Take from the w orking class to give to the educated NIMBY elites!!
@@dougpatterson7494 I agree. For Canada, Urban area like Toronto, Vancouver, & Montreal should try to be as public transportation friendly as possible. If you need to go outside of that then fine use an ICE vehicle. Since let's be honest electric cars so far do not fair well in extremely cold temperatures. Also the whole thing about the electrical grid isn't really doable for the foreseeable future in Canada outside of the major cities.
New tech always begins expensive and then... especially with electronics, the prices drop dramatically. The drive train of an EV uses 1/10 the number of parts and costs far less to operate and maintain than an ICE vehicle, so there is savings there but mass transit is very important where and when you can get governments to invest the tax money into the capital investment needed.
Another important thing: city centers have become increasingly more expensive places to live due to high rents, and apartment prices, pushing people into sprawling neighborhoods.
If this interested you, check out 'not just bikes' or eco gecko's playlist about suburbia. Thank you for the incredibly informative video as always!
Yea the Not Just Bikes Channel is a favorite of mine. Tons of amazing content
@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet climate town is fantastic as well
@@scumbagdyln yea they’re amazing as well. The humor really helps keep me from getting too depressed while hearing about how much our society screws everything up 😀
I’ve actually been taking a leaf out of their book and trying to work more humor into my videos as well. Hoping to make them a bit easier for the average Joe to watch.
The tone can be a bit off putting to those with completely neutral opinions but NotJustBikes used facts and statistics so I still recommend them even if you're neutral and still learning!!
Yes!!! I love that channel.
Cities need to do more to encourage people to ride bicycles. Safe protected bike lanes and trails are needed so adults and children can ride safely. Speak up for bicycles in your community. Bicycles make life and cities better.
I have no interest or intention of cycling to work, not interested in the slightest, I would rather pack up work and live off the state.
@@simony2801 I'm sorry for you.
@@Joesolo13 dont be.
@@simony2801 Just because you don't want to personally doesn't mean there shouldn't be the infrastructure for it. Why all the hate for cycling anyway?
@@MrCrazyjoe259 im scared for biking not because i don’t like it because its a lot of people that drive like they’re playing mario kart
Awesome video! Car centric culture is definitely something I want to see challenged in the U.S. I'm curious whether you'll do a video on trucks. I've heard those can't be easily electrified and yet we depend so heavily on trucks to transport materials and goods. I imagine re-localizing our economies would help but I just wondered if you had any thoughts on that.
There is a company in Australia called Janus trucks or something like that. They are turning normal trucks to electric in I think 3 days. So seems like they solved the issue.
Don't know about relocalizing economies, a good traveling from one side of a country to another on a truck has way more polluting effects and carbon emissions when compared to it going around the world on a container ship (industry of scale) I think this video describes the solution really well: ruclips.net/video/_909DbOblvU/видео.html
You should watch this ruclips.net/video/_909DbOblvU/видео.html and this video ruclips.net/video/WiI1AcsJlYU/видео.html by The Armchair Urbanist. He explains how trucks are terrible for transporting goods and reasons we should use trains instead for transporting goods and people.
There's experiments with adding overhead wires to some highways for trucks. (I think Tom Scott made a video about one of them.)
But yeah, as other people said, trucks aren't the best way for transporting goods for long distances. I'd be interested to hear about solutions for last mile transportation though! The German postal service has been using electric vehicles (in cities at least) for a while now, but they're barely large enough to be called a "truck" and I guess letters and parcels aren't the heaviest haha. I wonder about transporting things like building materials and such.
I’ve vowed to never own a car. I might hire one when I’m moving stuff or on holiday in the French mountains, but 95% of the year, I want nothing to do with cars. Luckily, I live in the Netherlands and work in microbiology, so I can get around with my bike and public transport without much issue. I hope others want to and can live like me too, soon.
Personally I've been so far too lazy to obtain a driving license, but living in car-centric Ireland, many jobs require a driving license so I will probably get it eventually as it's very limiting not to have it.
meanwhile, i live in a rural area that doesn't have public transport right now, and when it did, it was 2-3 times a day. It just doesn't work. They're not gonna dedicate a full bus for a handful of people.
@@shterguh2c that's why I added the "can" in the last sentence. I don't think rural areas will ever be fully integrated via public transport because of what you mentioned. But when looking at how many people live there vs. in more urban areas, I think it's logical that people in rural areas have personal transport. It's just more economical and ecologically that way.
Have 12 cars, trucks, and a couple vintage Jeeps.
I'm not giving them up.
I live about 7 miles from my office and live in south Florida. The heat and humidity is suffering for 9 months so biking 14 miles round trip a day is hot feasible.
Conservatives: Blood for oil!
Liberals: let's make it green, 'Blood for lithium!'
I just want some sweet infrastructure where I use my vehicle only on the weekends or if I want to go camping or out to a smaller town.
Going from “Invade Iraq” (Dems supported it too) to “Invade Bolivia”
Imagine if you could take a high speed electric train to do that too.
@@Lily-ni5po all aboard for Bolivia
@@ecoRfan electric trains don't require batteries, so no lithium needed, just a track connected to electricity. Granted it is not always possible to have a connected track, but we should invest into creating an electric train system wherever it can go. This would be a much better way to travel out of cities or across countries.
@@Lily-ni5po most trains require subsidies. If you overspent then you end up with debt and then you have to impose austerity. That is the disaster that Spain, Ireland, Portugal, Grece faced.
Even the Swiss railway sistem needs a 30% subsidy.
And we are talking general trains, bullet trains are prohibitly expensive
We need to find solutions that are economically viable.
Ridesharing apps for example are used a lot in europe because they are much cheaper than train and for longer travels there are cheap airplane flights.
As a car enthusiast, I don’t want to envision a carless world, but I do agree that we need better public transportation. It benefits everyone, car enthusiasts and non-car-people alike. If cars could be purely a choice and not a necessity, then car enthusiasts would be free to drive whatever fun car they want without worrying about practicality, and everyone else would be able to spend that money on other things. Plus fewer cars on the road would mean better driving conditions for those with cars, and potentially fewer regulations because they’re no longer necessary. There’s no need to get rid of all the roads that currently exist. Trams, trains, and buses can both save car culture and give us a greener future.
This is the only good comment I saw here. The rest and video above seem very depressing.
Most of the emissions and materials problems with cars also apply to wind and solar farms. Endless mining. Energy costs of production. Exploitation of workers.
Why can't anyone even consider the idea of using less energy?
Because capitalism demands infinite growth, so the economy must keep growing no matter what, otherwise it is a recession.
@@GTAVictor9128 I: Yeah - and that´s why capitalism needs to go
@@GTAVictor9128 Well, when the oil runs out, it won't ask the capitalists' permission.
Public transit was gutted by the car industry. The electric street cars in Chicago were paved over or planters put in the middle of roads where they had them. Amazing , there was a system built already and it was destroyed. Public transit only works when : clean, safe, runs efficiently and often. Also like the video says , once you get off the train cities have to be built for people , not cars. The car industry today controls almost everything... think 🤔 about it...
I grew up in a suburban town and required a car for getting anything done. It was only after moving to the east bay area was I able to truly utilize public transportation and living on a town built around people.
It is so nice being able to take the bus or ride my bike to anywhere I need to go.
My biggest gripe with this no car thing is that you can’t bring as much groceries or items with you in general by walking/using public transportation/cycling. With a personal car, you can bring much more items with you as long as it fits inside, and you won’t have to go out for groceries as often.
And there is also the luxury of personal ac, definitely beats having to be exposed to hot and cold temperatures, or having to share the ac of public transport with some random sweaty or sick passengers of whom you don’t know.
Watch Not Just Bikes on groceries. He advocates for building walkable cities so people can stop by the store easier and make more frequent trips. He said many people buy too much and there's too much food waste. People shouldn't be forced to drive and spend on gas just to get groceries cause the store is too far.
They are better than regular cars, but can’t beat trains or buses
Exactly. Let’s build a robust public transportation system which can handle 80% of our travel needs. There will always be a handful of special circumstances so people can use EVs when those come up.
But EVs should absolutely not be 100% of transportation.
@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet tell that to the @usdot
Here is the reality. Public transportation will not save you in the US either, because Big Business is vehemently and bitterly opposed to it. They would rather sell more cars and more oil. Remember that the US used to have really good public transportation, back in the first half of the 20th Century, but big automobile companies exterminated that and replaced it with a highway network and an appetite for cars instead.
That's why another political system is needed. One without oligarchs.
@@DarkDeepGreen The oligarchs will not let the current system go.
@@denelson83 That's true, I agree with your comment. But it' s possible for the people to change the system, people just need to take action against it.
@@DarkDeepGreen the people won't and if we do we would literally become a pariah state unless we ally with China.......
The dependence on cars built by GM, Ford, and other auto industry magnates put humanity on a fast-paced death march. Better solutions exist, we must adopt efficient public transit.
The auto industry will stop Americans from attempting to expand public transit.
Where practical, but it cannot solve but a fraction of transport needs.
People keep looking for saviors. There is no savior. Only revolt of millions will solve this.
💚
cars are just not efficient for urban areas. Public transport, walking, and cycling are the best ways to get around. Thats where we need to invest
Agreed. While my city isn’t the best at these currently, I actually become super inspired when I peruse the website describing the projects which are currently in the works. Lots of bike paths and new metro routes that they’re working to bring online within the next 10 years.
Wish it would be faster though
I really want to see a lot more public transportation where I live
rails are 3x more efficient than bus. faster too. and not dependent on lithium nor oil.
@@Ascend777
Your right but for short trips, the bus would be more efficient
You should demand basic retail and services in your proximity, so you can walk/bike there. decentralized schools en sport sites. 15 minute city environments .
Great video!very few people consider the raw materials. EVs are one of the major "justifications" for the capitalist exploitation of the deep sea. Just a few days ago the International Seabed Authority approved the first permits to go after polymetalic nodules which take millions of years to form and are in the deepest regions of Earth's oceans. The minerals in the nodules are used in phones, computers and EV batteries. There are a lot of terrible justifications for mining the seafloor and a lot of good reasons to keep the seafloor intact. If you're interested in learning more about this I wrote a paper last year on this subject that gives the gist of it all, sources included. I am always screaming internally when everyone around me thinks buying an EV is "doing their part" or "voting with your dollars". Please spread this message. There is still time to stop industrial scale deep sea mining from going forward.
I would absolutely LOVE more public transport. I try to cluster errands and driving as much as possible, but there are plenty of times in which it would be easy enough to carry a bag or two on a bus or subway. It’s ridiculous.
Hey! I really like this episode. I feel that recent videos have been transitioning to a very doomed mindset, whereas this one addresses a lot of solutions, and important accessibility aspects of public transit that have to accompany reduced emissions if it's to become a viable alternative. Love it!
Well he can't avoid that most of the time, this is a very serious issue
I'll take the gloom over ignoring the issue and pretending we will figure everything out.
Also, if you watch OCC through a Marxist lens, none of his videos are about doom and gloom. Most countries in this world need their own revolutions which focuses on re-structuring society equitably and using our resources in the least wasteful manner possible. That is the only sure-fire way to end the climate crisis with the least amount of deaths. But unfortunately cuz RUclips is RUclips and many of the audience are scared off by the slightest mention of revolution, OCC won't say anything. He's smart and if you know what he's talking about you'll see he proposes solutions indirectly, you just need the correct lens.
@@8lec_R but hasn't he proposed a revolution before?
I highly suggest you check out his video about radical hope. It might give you hope.
@@manuelsalinas5705 oh I already saw that
EV cars use fossil fuel . And that harms the environment more then gas cars.
As far as global pollution goes, cars aren't even close to being a big part of the problem, they're just one that's easy to see due to them being everywhere. The 15 biggest container ships produce more emissions than all the cars in the world, as do electrical devices which are consuming power but not being used.
Dont worry, everyone will mostly ignore this comment, because they've jumped on the big oil hype train with "carbon footprint", "recycling", and now cars. Always the focus to fix problems is tamping down on the actions of individuals, when big industry and government is the main source of pollution and destruction. None of the pollution and problems are solved by those ideas, because they were all invented by transportation and oil companies who could care less about the planet and more about getting us to look the other way while they profit.
Don't forget Elon Musk's private jet lol.
All for electric cars but 5,000 lbs plus cars or SUV seems counterintuitive. Smaller battery but w better charging infrastructure and try to getaway from thinking you need a 400 mi range car.
Also public transportation! Bike lanes! Metro! Bullet trains! Better urban design!
Yea, hopefully 3 and 400 mile EVs are a short lived phenomenon. With good charging infrastructure along highways and at diners and malls, you only really need 200 miles and change before people start getting hungry and wanting a break. Personally I don't really care to sit in a car for more than around 3 hours straight, and even a 15 minute break at that point can add a lot of charge back on current designs.
@@Joesolo13 I think you need to have the range to drive a large vehicle 5-6 hours minimally at highway speeds in all weather (while blasting heat in the winter, AC in the summer) without recharging and with the ability to fully recharge in under 30 minutes before a lot of people will consider changing out an ICE vehicle unless they can afford a separate EV for their commuter/every day car and something else for longer trips.
The other thing that needs to change is every parking place needs to become a charging station (wireless charging someday?) because you can't tie up one of only a dozen or two spots "at the pumps" at a gas station for 30-60 minutes.
10:26 3.5GW is about the same as one large nuclear or offshore wind plant. And this is only peak demand, not sustained demand. The National Grid has also said that it can handle the increase in demand and that with the advent of V2G 2-way charging, EVs will actually be a huge storage resource for a clean grid powered by intermittent renewables.
And anyway batteries should be charged off peak.
@@jamesgrover2005 very little about human action is reflected by what people should do.
Can confirm. Vehicle-to-Grid is an important capability that EVs have since they vehicles can offer many services to the grid like:
- Frequency/voltage regulation
- Load shifting
- Storage (obviously).
Add on to the fact that many people could own EVs in a given society, meaning that the total EV force represents a form of distributed energy storage that can dynamically supplement the storage of more fixed/centralized storage resources.
Despite those benefits, EVs still wouldn't be entirely reliable given that they require the stability of the grid everywhere (as opposed to fixed/centralized storage points that can more easily be managed for single/low reconnections to a downed grid), and they still require tons of material resources at the detriment of other countries and peoples.
You could just as easily have that distributed resource capability fixed in place at people's houses and connected to residential solar PV or wind, and electrified/hybrid public transit.
Fixing the battery as opposed to making it mobile via cars allows for different technologies to shine that can stratify building resources, like Redox Flow batteries, some of the other Li-ion batteries not optimized for driving like Metal-Air or Metal-Lithium, fuel cells with pumps and hydrogen/oxygen stores, thermal energy storage via phase-change materials like water/ice, etc. You can diversify the battery type by not making it portable, which decreases demand on any few given types of chemical elements.
True, and EVs will slowly replace ICEs. Moving away from gasoline will also free up electric grid capacity. The grid will be fine.
That seems like a regressive solution, having individual people spend thousands of dollars to stabilize the grid rather than society investing in nuclear baseload generation
At some point, we will be recycling batteries enough to significantly slow down mining. You can't recycle oil. The biggest problem I see with cars in general is the tires. No matter how clean a car is it will still go through tires.
I could be wrong but I do believe that a lot of waste oil is recycled.
@@jimzecca3961 the real problem with oil is that it leaks. In your car it leaks at the refinery it leaks pipelines leak and oil spills at drill sights happen frequently. You won't se dawn make a commercial about their products cleaning up lithium or nickel.
@@jimzecca3961 You are not wrong. Here in the UK, we now have a growing move towards recycling old cooking oil (from hotels, cafes, restaurants etc) to produce bio-diesel for vehicles.....
If you’d ever ridden on the London Underground you’d know why it’s carbon footprint per person was so small. Even if it emits lots of carbon, the trains are so packed every single day at every hour, sharing that carbon footprint amongst so many people is bound to lower it. However, a lot of these journeys are so short, less than a mile, people would be better off walking, and they could easily do that, but don’t. If they did, the carbon out put per person of the underground would be much higher
Been electric since 1903.
For the most part.
I think the magic is regenerative braking.
While in EVs or hybrids you'd need a big battery to recover the electricities, on a electrified rail the frequency so high that the power is straight up used by the train right behind yours. And you trains stop and go less frequent than your cars, which also means less energy usage.
@@davidty2006 The London Underground? What planet are you referring to? For a start, the UK only gets 10% of its fuel from renewable sources... The trains run all night and all day. Go figure!
@@BenMak1989 I think you're confusing energy and electricity - in 2020 the national grid was nearly 50% from renewables and over 60% including nuclear. Valid point about walking between stops - the pavements always seem to be busy though, would need to remove a car lane and increase the width of pavement :)
Now with covid, this is definitely a downside for public transit, but normally that's what makes them so great.
A monthly pass for the metro rail system in L.A. where I live cost $144 the last time I checked which is almost three times more expensive than the cost of riding my 150cc scooter 10 miles to and from work five days a week including insurance even with the current inflated gas prices. On top of that, I have only one chance each afternoon to catch the train home for the whole night. It's disappointing how lacking the public transit services are here. I'd much rather take a quiet and safe train ride to work than continue risking my neck driving the statistically lethal streets of L.A.
It seems like LA had a lot of trouble to get sufficient funding, so a light rail system of that large is impressive imho.
But it's just unfortunate. A city of that size should easily have a proper metro with at least a few lines, together with at least hourly suburb trains and solid bus feeder network, not "light rails". In Asia only cities in less developed countries with a financially weak government would allow LA's situation to happen, but even those cities are getting ODAs and improving.
Another issue with LA metro is its lack of safety or at least it’s perception of it…the smell and look of buses near DTLA are not at ALL safe or comfortable after the 9-5s go to work. It’s full of trash, people who are homeless, and those who are mentally disabled. This is an issue because it not only scares off potential riders but also just gives politicians an excuse to no expansion/funding into public transit. Obviously without free medical care, solid public housing policies, and a greater social society net the homeless will continue to sleep on buses, criminals will continue to have petty theft on trains, and public transit will continue to be infrequent, unreliable, and unwelcoming.
Public transportation flat out will not work in suburbs. Huge sections of urban areas are suburbs and suburbs are just way too spread out. There is no way this can be changed in ten or twenty years (not without immense cost). In the mean time carbon from burning fossil fuels continues to accumulate in the atmosphere.
In the mean time we do not have to go to other countries for lithium, we already have some here (as does Canada). There is a geothermal energy plant by the Salton sea in southern California (note the Salton sea is currently fairly toxic from evaporation over the years and farm runoff) that uses hot underground brine water to generate electricity. That hot underground water happens to be loaded with minerals (obviously: lots of hard water in the southwest) and one of those minerals is lithium, and quite a bit of it! One estimate is that there is enough lithium there to meet all of the United States needs, and forty percent of the world! President Joe Biden has already invoked the Wartime Production Act to get companies to investigate environmentally friendly ways to extract lithium in the United States.
There is a similar situation for cobalt and nickel from coal mine waste (coal mine tailings). In this case it could be double win with the removal of these toxic waste sites. The Washington Post recently had an article on this (as did others) [WP: 'In coal country, a new chance to clean up a toxic legacy']. Since coal mine tailings have minerals we should also look at the fly ash left over after burning coal: it also may have strategic minerals.
I will never drive an electric car, I will drive an old civic or something till my grave.
Same
Well, I've seen enough and read enough about EV's now to tell you that if you use "whole of life" emissions to compare EV's to ice cars then EV's ( using the average life of 180,000 miles driven ) are still overall higher emitters by around 10%. That is because an EV is massively more polluting to create and dispose of. Even Volvo, a car company that is committed to going EV-only, has a research paper that comes to the same current conclusions. EV's are a fairy tale.
we need to nationalize our rail network in the us to help make this possible
Well atleast the track.
To make sure passenger trains get priority over freight.
@@davidty2006 Yea I'd love to see a well-organized new Conrail (it's last vestige actually lives on in my area), but nationalizing the track is a good middle ground. More areas need to be double tracked or more to allow for passenger service without freight interference.
OCC hitting the nail on the head, even without mentioning the pleathers of negative externalities of automobile dependency. Urban heat islands, particulate pollution, noise pollution, light pollution, deforestation, habitat destruction, and hydrological drainage to name a few.
Apparently the commute time into Manhattan would be reduced by 40-50% if all private vehicles are banned from downtown roads.
How about a collab with City Beautiful and RM Transit?
Electric vehicles; the neoliberal response to climate change.
One question I have is, how will we carry around heavy things without cars? For example, I have a band and I don't imagine carrying heavy and big speakers in the bus or train. I imagine you can think of better examples than that, but still
With a car. Usually when people think of totally car free cities, they think of cities without people needlessly driving everywhere. Think of horse carriers when those were a thing.
Maybe companies like uber for stuff like that. Not sure if the price would increase or decrease with a car free city though.
Outliers like that will always be exceptions to the rule. And frankly most musicians are perfectly capable of traveling with their instrument by bike, the Tubists and Drummers of the world are an outlier of an outlier. You always need options for those outliers but they don't mean we can't change the status quo.
Indeed, how about carrying around your two children! They don't fit on your bike, and have you seen children on a train? no thanks
Creating such a public transportation system is further away then we might think! Yes, in big cities it's more viable, you don't have to cover extra long distances, but in rural areas are simply un sustainable. (I'm talking about Europe, more specifically Germany)
When I had to pick up my girlfriend form the airport (232 km round trip), I had to spend 60-70 eur to get 3 tickets for us (one for me there, and two for us to come back), ride 6-7 hours, and catch 6-8 connections. Oh and all the trains are going hourly or only every other hour.
Compared to that, I got my electric recently, I can go whenever I want, I'll have to drive only 3 hours all together, and the "fuel" cost comes down to the third!!
Public transport should be the cheaper option because it's significant limitations over any type of car.
6:33 Instead of “car-less” my wife and I opted to call ourselves CAR-FREE. Car-less could connote a deficiency, deficient in an “essential” car. Also on browsing could be mistaken for CARELESS, also a negative vibe. Car-free (carefree), is an unshackling, an unburdening. A heck of a lot less expensive.
I’m actually working to move my family to having only one car instead of two. I’ll move onto using an e bike and the train to get to work while my wife will use our EV.
I’m lucky though because I live and work in a situation which makes this possible. 1st world cities need to invest like crazy in public transit so that more people can have this option as well. Many families will even be able to go completely car free!
rails, not bus. no one likes bus.
@@Ascend777 agreed. Buses really only work for trips that are 5 miles or less. Anyone that is looking for something for their actual commute will want an option that’s on a rail. Ideally mixed with a quality bike path to make it easy/safe to get to and from the station.
In London buses are quite popular
Actually railways combined with the dense development is cheaper than building highway, because fewer infrastructures are needed.
In Japan one of the biggest incentives of compact city development is the huge snow removal cost that comes with urban sprawling.
Thank you for this! We need to move away from auto-centric urban areas and move to public transit, cycling and walking. Yes, some people "need" cars - small towns, rural areas, those with mobility issues, the elderly - I get it. But most people in urban areas don't need cars. I have arranged my life to be car-free, and I'm nothing special, I assure you!
I would've agreed 500% with this overview presented... If we all lived in cities, big metropolitan areas and respective suburbs and nearbies. But we don't not all countries and territories are geographically populated as London/Greater London, not all territories are viable for public transportation usage. So, in many regions, the car will still be the best option for transportation and personal/population needs.
Waiting for Not Just Bikes to appear!
Urban planning is more important than just implementing public transport, if housing is socialized and people are given a home instead of purchasing, the need for long distance transportations on daily activities will be diminished extensively, people will just need to walk or cycle towards their destinations, creating a far lower carbon footprint.
Unfortunately, this is only achievable in socialist economy where communities take over the means of production and decisions, not in a capitalist free market world.
One way is urban planning. Encourage the rail companies to develop properties along the rail, so they make a positive feedback to the ridership. Discourage development outside designated areas.
Another way is to separate infrastructure from operations. Let's face it, in US most roads and airports are subsidised by the Fed, while rails have to be owed by rail companies themselves. Building and maintaining any infrastructures are prohibitively expensive.
Why not build the rail by public fund, let train companies operate on it and ask them to pay for right-of-way just like turnpikes. European are doing that way, so as some new railways here in Japan.
@@steinwaldmadchen not good enough, communities should do lesser long distance travelling, rails are mostly for logistical purpose, it is way more efficient to develop around the hubs than along the railways. And since railways are essential to communities, they shouldn't be run by private companies, it should have been owned by the communities/people.
"Amsterdam doesn't exist, Delft doesn't exist, the Netherlands don't exist."
I've been seeing them more often around we're I live. And when I see them, I feel conflicted they don't use fossil fuels, but the more I learn, the more I see them as a contributor to global warming.
10:24 - It says electric vehicles could lift UK electricity demand by 3.5GW without any mention of the general electricity demand in the UK. Regular demand is over 300.000 GW - If the 3.5GW number is correct, I feel pretty confident that the UK can handle the increased demand.
If the UK's oil refineries - which produce 14 million gallons of petrol and 11 million gallons of diesel per day - operated at much less capacity (say just 25%) which may of course happen if we're all driving EV's, then that alone would reduce the demand on the UK'd grid hugely. It has been estimated that the UK's refineries use enough electricity to charge 3.29 million electric cars every day...... The National Grid state there will be no problems. They anticipate around 9 million EV's on Britain's roads by 2030, and 30 million by 2040......
Fun Fact: Electric cars are almost 200 years old, the first crude electric car was made in 1832
True, but led-acid batteries were never capable of rivaling the energy density of gasoline.
Thats electric vehicles in general technically.
With some early experiments and full on use of 3rd rail and cantanery in the late 1800's
The electric car history is quite fascinating. More recently several manufacturers had decent EVs in 90s for city/peri-urban use but most of them were seen as useless novelties by the general public. GM's EV1 was very promising in particular but GM sabotaged the project and recalled every one of them after they realised it was just easier to make money by producing endless lines of ICE trucks and SUVs.
Some experts predict car ownership will decrease by 90% once L5 autonomous driving is achieved. I think 50% is a very reasonable number. Furthermore recycling of batteries should decrease demand for mining as BEV adoption reaches critical mass. Even in an oil driven economy the use of oil will go down due to fewer cars and oil not being refined into gasoline.
One thing that isnt mentioned consistently in these types of videos is i dont think that public transport is the answer to decarbonisation and ridding the world of cars. Speaking to alot of people that drive cars, even when it doesnt make sense, whether that be financially or time wise, it is because they value having their own personal space too much. Most middle class people that can afford a decent car wouldnt consider getting on a crowded bus where their personal space is constantly invaded. We need an alternative solution that would get these people out of their cars, i think smaller and lighter individualised transportation would be a fantastic alternative that would consume less resources and atleast be more efficient then a car.
I see a lot of people putting all EVs in the same bag and I think that's a very misguided approach. You can't compare a Tesla Model X to an electric bike, or even a Citroen Ami. The car industry keeps selling cars that are bigger and more powerful every year but that's not what individual transportation has to be like.
So much car-centric infra is baked into the structure of our cities. I wish we had a blueprint for how to reorganize existing cities to make transit more accessible. How can we retrofit suburbia without tearing it down & starting over?
I live in a suburban neighborhood but the nearest bus stop is 1.5 miles away and the busses only run once per hour. Most trips require at least one transfer. My bicycle is significantly more efficient for trips under 5 miles even in winter. But our streets are NOT currently very bike friendly so this mode is not for the faint of heart.
Suburbia is harder but not impossible. Linking up culs-de-sac with bike/pedestrian paths is a start. Many roads are far wider than they need to be, and much modern development features significant setback requirements which means there's actually plenty of room to add bike infrastructure, but it may require narrowing roads. This isn't really bad in itself as it'll force people to slow down to more reasonable speeds.
@@Joesolo13 Great feedback & ideas. Thank you - I really needed an infusion of optimismabout now! I wish I could generate more of your ideas & positive attitude around here. I really like the idea of Ped/Bike connections between cul-de-sacs. That would remedy a several of the issues we're having & wouldn't be very expensive.
Imagine that all car manufacturers stopped making engines larger than 2L, worked on fuel consumption and all the rest of the money went to improving of public transport (electric, natural gas, methane).
Haven’t you noticed more and more vehicles on the road are 2L turbocharged engines? Big trucks aside. Low displacement turbo charged engined vehicles are starting to become the average non hybrid vehicle.
Not only reduce the deaths from traffic, but also the ones from breathing exaust fumes. You might want to brush it off, but the air you breathe in urbanized areas is killing you.
I wish this video talked about the gentrification that comes with public transportation, making transportation accessible to all neighborhoods runs the risk of displacing people from their homes and the price increases of property that comes from public transportation, pushing out lower income folk. How to make a public transportation system equitable is still unclear.
As someone who is a big supporter of muscle cars, used to own one, and likely need to own one again in the future, believe me when I say this.
How much I love cars, and what they can do, and even how they sound, I would rather take a train or transit system to a local or even far away destination far more than I would want to take my car.
Trains and local transport brings people together far more than anything else, and cost far less than trying to force everyone in a car.
We shouldn't have to be forced to purchase/use cars, how nice it is to take a night drive and be behind a wheel while feeling "free" I cannot deny that driving is still a hassle, and I would still rather sit on a train allowing myself to contemplate and see views I wouldn't normally in a car, because I can be distracted, I'm the one being taken to a new destination.
Some have said: we should transition to an Uber-like service of self-driving EV cars. And no car-ownership: this would mean 90% less cars would have to be produced and people don't have to deal with traffic, the self-driving system does this. And still you would have the door-to-door experience.
@@trtrhr How many times have you been shot at in your car?
I never have been. In years of working on cars I've seen exactly one out of tens of thousands with bullet holes in it.
We used to have electric buses. They were called trolleys. Some were even interurban.
I can’t wait to live somewhere with good public transit. The city I’m in seems almost hostile to any kind of publicly beneficial infrastructure. It doesn’t help that businesses here have so many ways to avoid paying taxes, so our public sector is starving.
There are some good points here, however a completely carless world is not entirely feasible in my opinion. What about people who rely on cars for lifestyle? For example I go overlanding in the mountains with my Jeep Wrangler like 5-7 times a year for multiple nights and I just simply will not give up my lifestyle on that. That is not an option for me. And there are millions who will not. What about people who live in small, rural areas? What about people who do not live in towns at all? What about farmers and combines and tractors for food production? Food transportation from farms? What about people who do not want to live in big cities? You can't force people to give up their cars and move to big cities, then that is an authoritarian/humanitarian issue. I am all for EV's and would LOVE to see an efficient electric Jeep Wrangler for example. But that is the other thing, these cars are not affordable. If they made a Jeep Wrangler that was under $40,000 and fully electric and can go 400+ miles on a single charge then I would buy one. Until then, non of this is feasible. Maybe another 400-500 years or so.
No mention of remote work. This has substantially increased during the pandemic to the point where downtowns are still struggling to get people back into the office. Fewer emissions working from home than commuting, I can guarantee. Also, I wonder how many emissions there walking, and biking vs taking a car to get you to your location faster, or through a subway and bus.
10:13 "Electric vehicles would put immense stress on an already stressed grid" Thats a narrow view. EV can also help stablize the grid, or even provide energy when there is no sun and wind. It's called bidirectional charging or "Vehicle 2 Grid". Modern home charging stations and EVs are already capable of that.
It probably degrades the battery faster
How does an EV generate energy other than maybe solar? Sure I could use the car to power things from its battery, but the main goal is to have the EV fully charged at all times to actually drive it. They already have range and recharge rate issues.
I drove two small EVs from 2016 to 2020 and they are definitely great cars. And they do have a lot of obvious upsides until you really think deeply about the whole idea of private car ownership and realise it’s disastrous even with much cleaner EVs.
But the fact that they’re so good to drive and own makes the job of trying to get people to realise they’re not the answer incredibly difficult. Which is also disastrous since we need a rapid phase out of car ownership in all forms. The climate is getting away from us super quickly and only the most “drastic” measures can help now. And obviously most countries are not even trying to accommodate cycling and micromobility like e-scooters. So for me that’s why car ownership has to go immediately, because then we can use those much emptier streets for cycling and buses.
That would be great to be able to cycle and go anywhere you want on bike. .
bro it’ll be like the old days when i was kid and i used to be outside with my friends with scooters and bikes mannn i miss being a kid but i also love cars
@@nastynick7125 If the cars were gone, I think you’d quickly realise how much better you had it as a kid.
We need Carsharing and good Bicycle Infrastructure to make the change to environmentally friendly individual transport! Of Course Public Infrastructure is also very important though!
1. A car is luckly to carry a few people, no matter what power it is on. Usually the number is one unfortunately.
2. A bus or train can carry dozens for the same amount of energy. By nature it's way more efficient.
3. Any technologies that improve cars would more or less benefit buses or trains as well, so 2 would still hold.
Is it that difficult to comprehend?
Exactly. E bikes are also revolutionary partially because they always carry the ideal amount. For my video on electric cars (which I’m still editing) I did the math on the efficiency of an EV vs an e bike.
An EV is lucky to get 4 miles/KW while an E bike tends to get 50 miles/KW. No contest really…
One thing to consider is a bus does use more energy than a car even if the energy used per person is less. This becomes a problem in low density areas where you need many buses in order to provide reasonable access and high frequency but the greater your frequency the lower the ridership per bus. The cost to maintain and operate a big bus fleet is unrealistic in some areas.
Public transport does not work for those of us who live in rural areas. And I don't mean in a small town I could bike around, I mean literally in the middle of nowhere.
I think we're doomed, to be honest. Americans have been brainwashed for generations to mindlessly ape "cars are freedom" without thinking...maybe they're incapable of critical thinking by this point. There will have to a vast and sweeping change for car-free life to even be possible especially for those who aren't wealthy. I'd love to not need a car but I live in a small town in Montana- there's no viable way to participate in society here if you can't drive (unless of course you're wealthy enough to just take an Uber or cab which is driving with extra steps).
I sometimes think many Americans like Disney World because the busses and monorail show them what good public transportation looks like.
To play devil's advocate, the reason people like Disney World transit is because it is setup with an optimal use case. They have minimal external political issues/funding problems. They have 100% control over the boarding locations and destinations. They control the hours those destinations are operating. They know how many people are in each hotel and have an app/ticket system that provides them the data to adjust transit to meet demands. They don't really connect to the outside world. The majority of passengers are either resort guests or employees. Real world transit needs to deal with so many more variables.
Notice that many of those that support these initiatives have a common link: city dwellers. The most important thing that is ignored or not brought into view is what makes this challenging: suburbanites.
Remember, in the US, where the suburban landscape was practically born, you have many that left the urban centers for a more relaxed, less crowded life. Where adults could enjoy the hard-earned fruits of their labor, be it physical or mental. That also means the right to move about whenever one chooses, not to be constrained to a bus/train schedule. It lent to the creation of shopping centers, where accessibility to many goods and services were possible. Later on, home delivery/serviceability made living even easier. The 'nuclear family' jargon was identified with suburban living, where families could be able to make their own way, without the prying eyes and ears of others.
It's not surprising that some have a disdain for such living, usually those that are younger, more socially inclined. It is when one gets older, better employed and more settled that wants to occupy something with more room for a family to grow besides a town home or a semi-detatched house. Even if that person or couple were to be employed in a major or secondary city, personal transportation will still serve these people. Using mass transit to take them to a certain length, then transferring to their own vehicles to go home or to take care of personal duties.
In any attempt at planning you will have to include these residential areas, as these are the most influential in both social and political matters.
love the video. huge car nut and you hit the nail on the head-our issue isn’t just the vehicle itself, rather, it’s the structure of our society. electric cars still require road work!
however, i now have one consideration now that i’m part of the demographic. how should this apply to rural communities? i’m a 4 hour drive from the closest metropolitan area. there’s 6000 people in the town-i wonder if the emissions cost of changing small rural areas’ infrastructures relative to their small population is worth the shift? or if the cars around town are still the more effective solution?
Mixed zoning so that you have to drive less. Businesses and schools located right next to residential areas so that you can just walk or bike wherever you have to go for the most part. Then people would only need to use their cars for longer trips.
@@crimsonghost4107 yes this is what my small town is. I bike everywhere in town, obviously if I'm not using my truck to pick something up or move something etc. It takes longer for me to drive to work. I bike 5 minutes to work, or I walk down to the parking lot, start my truck, let it sit for like 5 minutes, hit every light or wait to cross main street, and its upwards of 10 minutes just to get there. It's utterly useless. A small town is the best mixed zoning there is because necessity forced it.
My original comment was moreso about whether or not it would be beneficial for small rural towns to undergo massive infrastructure changes relative to their population and how little they already drive.
@@MCatwar mid-range train lines like Amtrak are a pretty good potential solution if expanded a little bit. High speed rail project ideas have been thrown around a lot in political circles for a while now, and they could certainly help out with use cases likes yours.
*However*, I'm honestly not too convinced that it'd really be *that* much of a problem anyways. I don't really know the specific numbers, but I'd say that the vast majority of car emissions probably comes from shipping and commuting in cities and not occasional road trips. And I feel like transporting between rural communities and cities would be the legit use case for cars in a greener future (esp if they were EVs).
You know batteries are going to be recycled. These problems are being fixed as we speak.
I'm all for it. I also think we need to connect our urban areas with railways. I would travel so much more if I could just hop on a train and get there. It sucks how literally everywhere I go I need to drive.
Move closer to work. Move close to work. Live in your electric delivery van at work. Drive only for groceries. Have more fun.
Moving close to work was why urbanisation happened and soft 'abandonment' of the country except for one, maybe two cities. In my country, Greece, for example, nearly half of the citizens live in Athens. About another 1/10 of citizens live in Thessaloniki
Good points - but, it's good to keep in mind that electric cars are still in their early stages. Better to compare them to the original Ford Model T than to the current gas powered cars they are replacing. Batteries are also much more of a renewable resource. Mass transit and bike lanes do make a lot of sense in big cities but there's a large group of people who will live outside of cities or can't use public transit. Tesla has done a great job of making electric cars desirable, even by people who previously would have been attached to their big gas cars. Another thing to keep in mind is that probably we aren't too far off from autonomous cars - which could be a great combo with electric cars as a 'transit / taxi' option that works for people who don't want to use public transit. This could also revolutionize ride share which could mean that 1 EV is used by hundreds of people. Since the main emissions costs of EVs is in production, it makes sense to have them driving as much as possible during their lifetime.
Batteries are much more renewable but more renewable doesn't mean actuslly renewable. Lithium ion batteries are not sustainably renewable by any definition. Not to mention the maintenance of car infrastructure alone emits more than we cam handle and we aren't just maintaining car infrastructure, we are building more every day. The obvious answer is cars are antithetical to combating climate change but that fact is too inconvenient for people to champion it, and not profitable enough for companies to get on board. A good rule of thumb here is that if ford and gm are championing something as the future and good for the environment; it's not
Unless they are going to fly, most of the problems with cars will remain, regardless of technology.
@@ernststravoblofeld and the idea of them flying is probably a new bug disguised as a feature if we are being honest!
@@nicostrappazon I don't want those things hanging over my head.
What if magic super-bateries will never be a thing?
I've been talking to people trying to convince them that we need to push for infrastructural change in the city I live in, in order to entirely get rid of cars in the city core and replace as many cars as possible with public transportation between the city centre and the "suburbs". Sadly, the only response I seem to get is "but without a car how am I going to get from 'A' to 'B'?". The distance they are usually describing is, however, just a short walk even today. Except it usually takes a while because of waiting at crosswalks for the lights to switch so the river of cars stop for a moment and let pedestrians cross. The point of how the problem goes away on its own - as it turns out - is surprisingly difficult to get accross.
Productive change is hard when people won't think past the problems caused by the current state of the thing we're trying to change.
7:30 yes, and EV emissions also fall as the grid gets cleaner.
Blacksburg, VA is another example of free transit. College towns can more easily do this, and tack those expenses onto tuition costs for the students, and take it out of staff's paychecks. It was so convenient being able to hop on the bus for free there. More college towns should give something like that a try, especially if they already have paid transit systems in place.
Public transportation like this is just a giant petri dish!
I honestly don’t know who is saying electric cars will save anyone. Perhaps Elon Musk.
I’ve run into this a lot when I talk to more casual environmentalists. They think that everyone switching to EVs will stop climate change. So I definitely think videos like this are crucial in order to help open their eyes.
Great point. The industrial giants, Musk included, are the ones selling that nonsense.
@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet the battery infrastructure will though. It's the catalyst for even ebikes
Tesla had had a massive effect of ebikes indirectly. I imagine one day a single cell will be like an AA cell and any bike can be fitted.
@@TheMagicJIZZ yea I agree. The tech is great and a huge step forward. The next step is to get more of that tech in stuff like bikes, buses, trains, etc.
EVs are better for emissions than ICE cars, but the next step is less EVs so we can put the batteries in stuff which enables even lower emissions.
Just switching 4,000 lbs gas cars to 6,000 lb electric cars will not end climate change. We need 500lb electric cars.
Electric cars are for rich people who think that they're saving the world.
The solution to transportation issues is not different transportation, but larger cities with more people requiring less or no transportation. People need to live where they work/shop/learn, eliminating "transportation" as a daily problem of modern life. The private automobile was a temporary fad, perfected by Henry Ford in an era of zero environmental awareness, free fuels, and a huge industrial capacity with lots of new immigrant labor willing to work for wages at dirty and dangerous jobs. None of these conditions apply today except in places like Mexico and India, and maybe China. The entire question of what kind of car you should drive is an example of asking the wrong question. If that is not obvious today, it will become obvious over the next few years.
In the meantime while we reinvent our cities and neighborhoods to be more accessible via public transportation, I still think PHEVs (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles; gas + battery) are the way to go.
They buffer the energy transition from fossil fuels to the grid by incorporating both kinds of energy types, they are resilient such that when 1 of 2 energy sources goes out (war over fuel, or grid outage), you can still recharge/refuel and move, and their battery sizes are most aligned with how far average American/Canadian workers commute daily (~40 miles). PHEVs can have as much as a half to lower than a tenth of a battery size compared to BEVs (Battery Electric Vehicles no gas, battery), so the material demand is lower.
You could do all of what I said above with electrified or hybrid public transit, but the are solutions in the same vein that can be pursued in parallel.
I agree. As an electrical engineer, I thought that EVs, and more specifically BEVs, were the holy grail, but after learning about their exploitation, twisted design principles, overconsumption, and general sustainability, they're not the ideal solution.
One thing I didn't mention above is that with individual cars, the charging infrastructure has to be so widespread and built with so much overcapacity in order to be nearly equivalent to gasoline infrastructure. Public Transit takes the cake here, since all you need to do is switch out busses to charge during downtime while the other transports people where they need to go.
Public transportation, and walkable urban design, and ideal, but in the mean time PHEVs are a good bandaid
To be fair as a product EVs has the simplicity. It doesn't require the engineering of combustion engines and moving parts, and it integrates perfectly with software, which makes automatic driving and connectivity easier.
@@steinwaldmadchen I can agree with this. The Chevy Volt, for example, was super complex. It was a PHEV, and the 2nd gen version of the car had 2 planetary gears and like 6 or 7 different operating modes using either the ICE and/or the 2 electric motors in different combinations
ICEs alone are simpler than PHEVs, and BEVs alone are simpler than PHEVs, definitely
And I would agree with you to say that more technological complexity is the enemy of the good, but there are strong cases still to make for PHEVs over ICEs and BEVs on their own
I think for short term improvements, I think the emphasis should have been for converting more vehicles to be plug in hybrid vehicles instead of EVs. This alleviates the usability concerns pure EVs have. You have as much range as you need and can refuel in minutes. On the flip side, if you can charge at your home or place of business for typical day-to-day driving you might hardly need to use gasoline at all. They make a lot of sense. My father who is retired has one and for most of his typical driving he barely uses gas at all and when he takes longer road trips he gets good mileage.
Towns and cities arn't the only places where people live,
In the NWO, it will be … Outside of cities, you’ll have “forbidden zones” - like on “Planet of the Apes” …
I think working from home has the potential to make a much bigger difference than public transport. If you remove the daily commute, people can shop and socialize locally. Cars will remain the primary form of transport but be used less often.
cars are a waste of space period
Agreed 🙋🏼♀️
Not really. I never use the space my car occupies, for anything else.
I don't question anything that has been said but alli hear is "city's". What about us who doesn't love in a city? How much of the pollution comes from city traffic?
What we need is less car dependency.
Worth remembering that internal combustion engines have about 30% efficiency. Electric motors are at about 80%.
So even with the existing grid electric vehicles do provide emissions reduction.
As an added bonus, the reduction in smog will save thousands of lives every year.
While I agree that public transport is an important part of the puzzle, america needs electric vehicles and quickly.
However, there are many environmental impacts that you may not be aware of. As Charlie has mentioned in a previous video, all cars require extraction of raw materials for processing and manufacturing. As a result, every conventional and electric car generates an environmental impact even before they hit the road. And according to a two year study conducted by the Union of Concerned Scientists on the life cycle of electric vehicles this impact is usually 68% more emissions heavy for long-range electric cars. In part this is due to the energy-intensive process of extracting rare metals which make up lithium-ion batteries, and can also be found throughout these cars in headlights and on-board electronics. And the actual search and extraction process for these rare materials can also be an extremely dirty process.
Lizzie Wade of WIRED magazine, as Charlie also points out, also points us towards the Jiangxi mine in China, which digs massive eight foot holes into the ground and then douses them with toxic chemicals in order to obtain a miniscule amount of rare earth. All told, Wade says 0.2% of what gets pulled out of the ground is used, and the other contaminated 99.8% is dumped back into the environment.
Mining companies also employ energy intensive coal fired or gas powered equipment in order to successfully extract materials resulting in high levels of greenhouse gas emissions. So, when we look at the manufacturing stage of these electric cars then, it's not something that starts in the often touted Gigafactory. Instead, the metals used to create their sleek designs have roots in a dirty extraction process halfway across the world. So in general, the manufacturing process of these cars is much dirtier emissions-wise than a conventional car. But that changes quickly once the car starts moving. In the same 2015 study of electric cars, the Union of Concerned Scientists found that battery powered cars make up for manufacturing's steep environmental cost after only eighteen months of driving.
However, this differs widely according to where you live because electric cars still have emissions associated with them, it's just not coming out of their tailpipes. You see the environmental impact of these cars depend upon the type of grid you're plugging into. If it's reliant on dirtier energy sources, these cars most likely will have lower miles per gallon equivalency, like in Colorado where the equivalent fuel efficiency is around 35mpg.
But of course in California, where there are much more renewables, using an electric car might equate to something more like 87 miles per gallon. And admittedly, overall, by the end of their time on the road, gas-powered cars have almost double the amount of emissions when compared to an electric vehicle, although that all depends on where electric cars are plugging into the grid.
I refuse to leave my basement so i guess I'm actually a climate hero.
It's funny that we have the solution even before cars existed, trains, just build more trains, if you can't build a train, build a subway or a trolley or even buses, even the worst public transport is more "green" than the best car, fora simple reason, the economy of scale.
💯💯💯
I've had the opportunity to drive PEV and now EVs, and I will never miss the exhaust from my 2010 Camry.
An that's the problem with this whole situation. Yes it must be nice knowing YOUR exhaust is clean, but what about all those enslaved children digging up the components for your clean exhaust walking through rivers of toxic runoff. Or how about all the rainforests being leveled so you can pat yourself on the back for "saving the environment". Destroying other countries environment so we can act like we're saving our own isn't protecting anything other than the egos of narcissist.
aside from what is mentioned in this video, theres another hurdle to public transportation that i don't see discussed as often. how the rise of the gas-powered vehicle and the huge focus on independence and individualism in north america have normalized a lifestyle that the vast majority of people have become accustomed with and even identify strongly with. there is something to that sense of independence and individuality that not requiring much physical energy to travel vast distances, and having the freedom, space and time that an average vehicle affords that will be difficult for a lot of people to give up. also the luxury of directly interacting with as little people as possible on a daily basis is something that a lot of people cherish, whether they're aware of it or not.
something like that is so abstract to address so i hope that that by addressing cost, infrastructure, accessibility, comfort, zoning, etc, that public transit can one day counteract it. i guess at the end of the day it really isn't to get literally everyone to take public transit but to make it a much more easily accessible and appealing that if they can, the vast majority choose it over the comforts of jumping in a car and just cruisin' to where you need to go
Except Western Europe also has a streak of individualism and they have vast public transportation systems. If cars weren't necessary then every person wouldn't see them as a necessity and only people who saw them as a hobby or collectable fun thing would get them. Say, like boats for example. Anyone can buy a boat, and for awhile in the US, it was a good way to get around. But is it necessary in the 21st century? Nope.
@@uni4rm oh yeah for sure, nit saying its not possible just coupled with the absurd infrastructure and lack of robust public transit for decades and decades, a lot of ppl in north america will have a hard time letting go of their current lifestyle unless some rly huge changes are made
Personal vehicle dominance in the US will continue until it's no longer economically feasible. I think even the most die-hard anti-transit types would reconsider if operating a car took say, 40-50% of their income.
I'm only taking transit for short term trips and errands as for leisure (barring clubs) I'm taking a car.
My city in Virginia, half their buses already run on electric and don't charge fare (mostly bc of 2020). I don't know if that will last forever, but it has been convenient for the people so far. And i love that they already to a step to help the environment too.
As we public transportation zombies would say...
TRAAAAAINS! TRAAAAAINS!🧟
My personal opinion: public transit doesn’t cover a number of transit needs (particularly when you have cargo to transport, or multiple destinations). Cars have been the mode for many, but is often really overkill. Did you really need to use 2,000kgs of metal to move less than 100kg of cargo? What I think is integral to solving this transit need is designing “right sized” vehicles, ie making more micromobility. Dropping off the kids and picking up groceries? A cargo ebike may be the best option. In terms of scale of weight, there’s a lot of space between a bicycle and a car that I think we ought to explore more, and optimize for efficiency.