this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2023
366 points (95.8% liked)
Asklemmy
43898 readers
1268 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Nah, they're an incremental improvement. EVs are more efficient at turning energy into locomotion. They get >100 mpge. The increase in tire wear isn't nearly as significant the CO2 emissions. I'm pretty sure there are studies that show EVs are better for the environment as a whole than ICE vehicles (even accounting for things like lithium mining and fossil fuel powered grids).
Tesla is a horrible, anti-consumer company. A lot of companies make EVs now (but a lot of those companies are pretty horrible too, I guess).
I disabled notifications, so sorry for the late response.
In theory, what you're saying is true. The problem is, these are expensive cars, meaning they're all being bought by people with relatively deeper pockets. They just replace their relatively new cars with Teslas instead of prolonging the use of their existing ICE cars.
The result is more vehicle turnover for "green" reasons, but that is a lie. The use of vehicles for fewer and fewer months to move to an electric car is not helping the environment in any way.
Traded-in vehicles don't go to waste. Vehicle life cycles are actually pretty efficient. If a car runs, and is street legal, it will likely be bought and used by someone. Once a vehicle does not run, it will go to a salvage yard and used for parts. After a while, whatever metals are left will be recycled.
Edit: Yes, I don't think everyone should just ditch their ICE cars to "help the environment." I don't know if anyone is arguing for that. And, all new cars are bought by wealthier people because all new cars are way too expensive and have all kinds of "features" with dubious utility. I do think this is a problem. Until a couple years ago, I've never bought a new car. The only reason I bought a new car is because I couldn't find a used car that was worth the price (used car market was pretty fucked up back then). Coincidentally, I ended buying an EV, lol (a Leaf).