While I agree with most of the articles points, even if they and the title are nearly all phrased in very hyperbolic language and the extent of the “slowdown” has been rather overstated given that sales are still increasing, I take issue with it citing Norway’s 89% EV sales as insufficient becuse only 20% of vehicles on the road are EVs yet.
Namely, the average lifespan of a ICE car is 12 years. While it’s definitely better for the environment to replace a functional ICE with an EV after two to four years, buying a new car when you don’t need to is a big financial cost and so it shouldn’t be surprising that many people are waiting until their cars get old to replace them.
While I also agree that simply replacing every ICE with an EV isn’t enough on its own and that trollybuses and other electric mass transit need to be part of the solution, it’s not a question of one or the other. If we are to have any hope of staying below 2C, we need to be doing both and a whole lot more beside, especially when it comes to cleaning up industry.
We simply don’t have the time left anymore for any one solution to be expanded to the point it can solve the problem on its own, if that was ever possible to begin with. We need solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear to generate clean power in the first place. We need heat pumps and geothermal to turn that into the heating and cooling necessary to keep people safe in a world with increasing dangerous temperatures.
We need trollybuses, metros, and high speed intercity rail to electrify the transport of people. We need denser housing in our cities and EVs in our rural areas and service and delivery vehicles. We need overhead cantanarys to electrify our railroads. We need green hydrogen to decarbonize farming, steel marking and a thousand other processes. We need net zero bio and synthetic fuels for ships and aircraft. We even need carbon capture and sequestration to deal with the industrial processes that can’t otherwise be decarbonated.
Any framing that expects a single one of these to solve the problem on its own ignores the things it can’t cover. Our current actions are insufficient to tackle the scale of the problem, that is not a sign we should roll back one in favor of another, it is a sign that we need to be pushing increasing the scale of all of the above.
Namely, the average lifespan of a ICE car is 12 years. While it’s definitely better for the environment to replace a functional ICE with an EV after two to four years, buying a new car when you don’t need to is a big financial cost and so it shouldn’t be surprising that many people are waiting until their cars get old to replace them.
Precisely! And while the ongoing environmental cost of burning gasoline is a concern, there’s also the environmental impact of the chassis, the internal electronics. That’s a sunk cost right now. And that’s not counting making sure you have access to charging infrastructure. When I was renting, I simply didn’t have street access to a regular home plug. And my workplace also didn’t have any electrical infrastructure in its parking lots (despite years of begging from employees.) There are still a lot of reasons an EV might not make sense for individuals.
All that said, my next vehicle will definitely be an EV since I can charge at home now. But only when our car gives up the ghost from a cost to repair perspective.
I’m trying hard to hold out buying a new vehicle until I can move into somewhere I can charge an EV. Sold my last ICE when I moved overseas, and current apartment has no charging places.
We simply don’t have the time left anymore for any one solution to be expanded to the point it can solve the problem on its own, if that was ever possible to begin with.
This is such an important point. We are too late in the game to have the luxury of choosing a single sector or a single solution to pursue before the others. We need to hit all sectors with a diverse barrage of solutions, and we need to do it yesterday.
To quote UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, “In short, our world needs climate action on all fronts – everything, everywhere, all at once.”
While I agree with most of the articles points, even if they and the title are nearly all phrased in very hyperbolic language and the extent of the “slowdown” has been rather overstated given that sales are still increasing, I take issue with it citing Norway’s 89% EV sales as insufficient becuse only 20% of vehicles on the road are EVs yet.
Namely, the average lifespan of a ICE car is 12 years. While it’s definitely better for the environment to replace a functional ICE with an EV after two to four years, buying a new car when you don’t need to is a big financial cost and so it shouldn’t be surprising that many people are waiting until their cars get old to replace them.
While I also agree that simply replacing every ICE with an EV isn’t enough on its own and that trollybuses and other electric mass transit need to be part of the solution, it’s not a question of one or the other. If we are to have any hope of staying below 2C, we need to be doing both and a whole lot more beside, especially when it comes to cleaning up industry.
We simply don’t have the time left anymore for any one solution to be expanded to the point it can solve the problem on its own, if that was ever possible to begin with. We need solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear to generate clean power in the first place. We need heat pumps and geothermal to turn that into the heating and cooling necessary to keep people safe in a world with increasing dangerous temperatures.
We need trollybuses, metros, and high speed intercity rail to electrify the transport of people. We need denser housing in our cities and EVs in our rural areas and service and delivery vehicles. We need overhead cantanarys to electrify our railroads. We need green hydrogen to decarbonize farming, steel marking and a thousand other processes. We need net zero bio and synthetic fuels for ships and aircraft. We even need carbon capture and sequestration to deal with the industrial processes that can’t otherwise be decarbonated.
Any framing that expects a single one of these to solve the problem on its own ignores the things it can’t cover. Our current actions are insufficient to tackle the scale of the problem, that is not a sign we should roll back one in favor of another, it is a sign that we need to be pushing increasing the scale of all of the above.
Precisely! And while the ongoing environmental cost of burning gasoline is a concern, there’s also the environmental impact of the chassis, the internal electronics. That’s a sunk cost right now. And that’s not counting making sure you have access to charging infrastructure. When I was renting, I simply didn’t have street access to a regular home plug. And my workplace also didn’t have any electrical infrastructure in its parking lots (despite years of begging from employees.) There are still a lot of reasons an EV might not make sense for individuals.
All that said, my next vehicle will definitely be an EV since I can charge at home now. But only when our car gives up the ghost from a cost to repair perspective.
I’m trying hard to hold out buying a new vehicle until I can move into somewhere I can charge an EV. Sold my last ICE when I moved overseas, and current apartment has no charging places.
This is such an important point. We are too late in the game to have the luxury of choosing a single sector or a single solution to pursue before the others. We need to hit all sectors with a diverse barrage of solutions, and we need to do it yesterday.
To quote UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, “In short, our world needs climate action on all fronts – everything, everywhere, all at once.”