TheLastHero [none/use name]

Don’t take it so personally. sure EVs have a role to play but if we’re to be serious about tackling climate change and environmental sustainability it’s going to require massive infrastructure redevelopment projects, not asking everyone to please swap to rechargeable batteries. It’s not about being “right enough” it’s about recognizing a non-solution and also on a policy level a blatant scam. All these EV subsides the liberal Biden administration is throwing out are an obvious hand out to the failing American auto industry to try to keep them competitive and desperate ploy to their quickly dwindling supporters for them to look like they’re doing anything worthwhile on climate change at all.

Having every American buy a new electric car is just going to make a few auto executives rich as hell and not even reduce overall global emissions because those cheaper ICE cars that can’t be sold in America are just going to go to other parts of the world that don’t have EV infrastructure but have plenty of already existing gas stations. And there’s all the emissions of actually building the damn things. No, they need to put their money where their mouth is and build some fucking trains.

Demetrious Polychron

holy shit what an incredible name, don’t even care what’s this about, I’m with him. President Polychron 2024.

I disagree. The UN predicts the number of light duty vehicles to more than double by 2050, with 90% of that growth happening in non-OECD countries. Granted that would be a mix of new and used cars, but the vehicle trade is only regulated on the national level. That means there are considerable financial incentives to export abroad and take advantage of regulatory inconsistency.

For example, stricter emissions laws means that many cars may not be able to be driven at all in a country, but those laws do not exist elsewhere- that will cause an oversupply of cars that can’t be legally sold domestically, but demand for cars is only grow in the global south as their economies and standards of living improve. Logistic and shipping costs also get cheaper every year and shouldn’t be relied on as a economic deterrent, and it’s apparently already cheap enough for the US, Japan, and EU to export 14 million used vehicles between 2015-2018. Rich counties and their populations tend to replace their cars far before their economic life is over as well, and vehicle values depreciate far quicker in the OECD compared to elsewhere. There’s going to be a lot of economic pressure to export more cars in the near future, especially if the OCED countries try to get “serious” about ICE vehicles without including the rest of the world in a global agreement.

also, if the West did adopt EVs en mass (hard to even imagine), all those ICE vehicles aren’t just disappearing. They’re getting exported to the rest of the world as cheap used cars. Nothing has been “replaced”, you’ve just made more cars and more pollution.