this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2024
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I'm far from an EV fan. We're better off with a lot fewer cars in addition to electrification of those which remain.
I'm just more of a fan of a civilization-supporting planet than burning fossil fuels. And that's a physics-driven choice, not one constructed for ideological reasons
Hummer EV. I've said it before, I'll say it again. Hummer EV is worse for the environment than the typical ICE car, by huge margins.
If you don't get this right, you'll end up hurting USA (and the world) more than you think. That's just physics. Sending 9000lb cars around with huge profiles with Coefficient-of-Drag in the 0.5+ range will eat up our energy and burn more coal/natural gas than any more reasonable car (even traditional ICE cars like Chevy TRAX).
That's just physics. And organizations like ACEEE + Argonne National Labs are busy calculating / number crunching these statistics. Random assertions aside, pure EV is worse than many other possible regulations we could be doing. (In particular, encouraging the most efficient vehicles regardless of technology).
EVs in particular are going to be natural-gas powered for the near future. Fortunately Nat. Gas is 60% thermal efficiency rather than 30% (of typical ICE), but your margin for efficient vehicles is much smaller than you might expect. And there's probably Coal-plants (~30%) that'd drag down the efficiency of our energy grid in practice anyway.
You have to look at this problem holistically. Randomly just white-knighting EVs all day every day is going to lead to more environmental problems.
If we actually succeed, we end up with a decarbonized electric grid too, and the big EV's emissions drop to zero.
I do agree that huge vehicles should be discouraged for personal transport, but that's for livable-cities reasons, not climate.
Hummer EV is literally worse for the climate.
This isn't even some "theory" I'm trying to show you. Its real. This is a real vehicle that's causing more pollution right now in our country and world to measurable effects.
Lithium is made by pouring acid down mountains and collecting the acid that leaks out. There are incredible environmental effects you need to account for in the creation of EVs, even if we had a 100% decarbonized grid.
In fact, a 100% decarbonized grid would likely favor H2 (Hydrogen) vehicles since those have fewer environmental effects in the production process. And H2 can be made out of just electricity and water.
The number of hummer EVs being built is tiny.
You're concern trolling at this point.
Hummer EV is just to make you think about your stupid argument. Here's my real argument:
https://www.aceee.org/greener-cars
Prius is literally better than EVs for the environment. You can't get rid of these hybrids, they're surprisingly good for the environment.
Banning the #1 best vehicle for the environment because they don't conform to your "insane" idea of environmentalism is stupid. Actually run the math, actually calculate the environmental effects of various metals and the real world turns out to be more complex than braindead "duh go EV" arguments.
You have to run the math, its not as easy as it looks to make good environmental decisions.