I think in the west, they're overhyped as a solution in their own right. But they are an essential step; to achieve full decarbonisation, combustion engines have to go.
I dunno, just think it’s a form of green washing. It’s not like there has been a tremendous shift in how we’re producing electricity, we’re still using coal and fossil fuels.
The only positive is that carbon emmissions from cars are lowered but those are somewhat offset by the increase in electricity production.
Edit: And if the environmental benefits aren’t there, there is zero reason to pick evs over traditional vehicles. Awful to drive, at least in my experience.
It’s green washing if it’s touted as the best strategy to combat climate change, which china doesn’t do rhetorically or with policy. China has over a billion people, and while they have advanced greatly with public transportation, people are still gonna keep driving. They can either keep burning gas or switch to EVs while China continues to make progress with other forms of renewable/sustainable energy. Not to mention other developing countries currently drive diesel vehicles which China seeks to replace.
Meanwhile, the US has resisted highly rated Chinese EVs and every form of renewable energy and not interested in public transportation, and instead they give Elon billions of dollars to jack off and make memes. They are not serious in anything except greenwashing.
This is true today, but EVs can be recharged by solar and wind power just as much as by coal power, no? Doesn't an EV unshackle the concept of a car from the concept of burning fossil fuels, even if they are not practically separated today?
Don't get me wrong, I fucking hate cars. But there's no putting the toothpaste back into the tube, and I don't think we can complain that China is underinvesting in alternate forms of transportation.
As tech improves it will get better. Itxs easier to build small scale individual uses right now. That is helping to develop batteries at scale which will eventually greatly improve efficiency of plants and will eventually have full scale solar arrays smart grids and battery plants. Peaking power and crap-it-all-ist generating on demand for maxinum short term profts is something that needs to change as a mindset.
China is going to do it first. Once they put us to shame because we're 20-50 years behind and then maybe we'll get to what we should have done. But we need to be spanked and humiliated first.
even if the only benefit from EVs is future proofing and transferring carbon debt from the car to the power grid, that's still a huge boon since you can reduce a power grid's CO2 production
the moment cold fusion is solved every single EV becomes near-zero emission, the same cannot be said for carbon emitting cars, and for that reason alone every country with the means to do it should be trying to make sure the future average citizen's cars can run on electricity
Forget fusion, China already has a significant portion of its national electrical grid on solar or nuclear. And while those aren't zero emission energy sources, they're pretty damn close to it.
There are significant forms of pollution and carbon emissions associated with manufacturing EVs, especially their batteries, but between all of this China is both increasing their infrastructure and meaningful tackling emissions all at once.
Like Ryan said, it is green washing if it's viewed as the end to climate change. The best solution is mass public transit and ending fossil fuel use.
The efficiency of fossil fuel power plant production is greater than the efficiency of a single ICE car, so the overall emissions are lower, but emissions will grow the more people drive.
Now if the power source changes from fossil fuels, then the emissions go down a lot, except for what is needed to exploit resources to make the cars and the power production.
it is green washing if it's viewed as the end to climate change.
I don’t think this is the definition of green washing. Something doesn’t have to be the be all and end all solution to climate change to be a form green washing.
The efficiency of fossil fuel power plant production is greater than the efficiency of a single ICE car, so the overall emissions are lower, but emissions will grow the more people drive.
I think this is a reply that would change my mind on the effectiveness of evs and would like to see any studies that proove this.
It was one thing when you made your initial comments. But at this point, you are just splitting hairs.
It is just a fact that evs reduce emissions compared to ices, and will reduce them even further in the future given the track china is on.
Like even you argue that the better solution is public transit, china has been developing that too. Or say you have a problem with steel production, or concrete manufacturing, or literally every major source of pollution, Chinese industry is fucking working on it and making progress quickly.