Electric Cars Won't Change Anything, Here's Why

this video is sponsored by ag1 the Buddha castle Exquisite architecture incredible Panorama billions of embezzled EU funds Hungarian Vladimir Putin annual neonata Gatherings but this epicenter of Hungarian culture boasts something else not often talked about public transportation what kind of public transportation midi buses from the mid-1990s The Budapest Transit company launched the so-called Castle bus service with the aforementioned midibuses which are a third shorter than normal solo buses for better maneuverability inside the castle area and its tight curves they were the Icarus model 405 brand new domestically made contemporary and massive pieces of the buses had more issues than a Bethesda game on release day they had problems with the engines the axles the frame nearly every major component had some fatal issue waiting to come out they would constantly break down sometimes Catch Fire and make passengers nauseous due to their Drive characteristics after years of constant factory recalls and futile attempts to fix them the Transit company finally announced a tender for new midibuses which failed so the 405 series remained after years of desperate servicing and even more desperate overhaul attempts which for a lot of money made there was a slightly less The Budapest Transportation Company finally received brand new minibuses Turkish Carson attack Diesel and Hungarian modulo Medio electric buses however there is a problem many problems in fact the Turkish midi buses have a habit of smoking I mean really smoking or just spontaneously combusting while idle that's because going up on steep gradients all day is not something their diesel engine can reliably do okay so how about those battery buses the future of Green Transportation ready to solve the castle bus issue once and for all well there are such that as of this year six out of the original 20 are already scrapped seven years after entering operation otherwise the remaining 14 are set to produce 5 to 6 breakdowns per day their design is terrible their frames are cracking they don't tolerate Unity or cold weather and they smoke during winter turns out the heating on these electric buses is operated by a gasoline-fired fern is in the back oh and one of them also caught fire about charging the castle bus has been announced up two decade disaster show for Budapest why can't they run normal actually working Rolling Stock up the damn hill well they wanted to decades ago there were plans to lead wires up the hill and run trolley buses up and down the castle the electric traction motor is much more reliable and can handle steep gradients far better than a combustion engine however thanks to the influential bus Lobby the lines were never put up and Budapest got stuck with its current midi buses without such a meaningful change the castle bus is and will remain not even shiny new battery buses could solve the problem because aside from all the construction issues turns out slapping a big-ass battery on a bus that has to go up and down the hill constantly isn't the smartest thing to do also they were horribly expensive about twice the cost of a regular large solo bus why have I told you all this I wish I knew just kidding I told you all this to illustrate how fundamentally broken systems cannot be fixed either by making its parts slightly better or by slapping batteries into it and calling it a day and the situation is the same with electric records only with them things are much worse how is that possible let me explain now electric cars are green or so they say and so did you know what's also agree okay so today's video is sponsored by ag1 and it's green and this was my attempt at a seamless transition our returning sponsor ag1 is a whole food dietary supplement for everyday use containing 75 vitamins minerals and Whole Food sourced ingredients ag1 is gluten and dairy free low calorie vegan and it's one of the most comprehensive supplements on the market made with the 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make things actually worse electric cores are powered by gigantic batteries and they're all fun and games until it gets cold then many owners find that their range can have even an E4 charge similarly when the weather gets too hot electric car batteries are at their Peak Performance at 21 degrees Celsius anything above or below that will result in performance loss but a far bigger problem is battery degradation for example the Tesla Model S has an annual degradation rate of 2.3 percent according to this geotab article So at around year 4 of ownership you are already down to 90 percent and this is a big issue in terms of the car's reusability and the second hand Market if you buy a 10 year old used electric car now you have to pay for both the car and the new battery which costs thousands potentially tens of thousands of dollars extra not to mention who will process the millions of discorded batteries each year should EVS get popular enough but an even bigger problem is 5 [Music] core batteries are technically safe unless you keep them in sub-optimal conditions meaning when you use them in areas where the temperature isn't 21 degrees Celsius and the roads aren't perfectly smooth which tends to happen around the globe if you run an EV in say hot climate on bumpy roads that shake the battery around for years there is a higher chance it will spontaneously combust this can already be observed with electric buses there have been numerous large fires around the world where bus batteries just randomly caught fire that's because buses are intensively used often on imperfect Road surfaces but some cars are also very intensively used also on imperfect Road surfaces so once EVS get widespread enough and get enough years of operation in many EVS will just become ticking time bombs and Lord help you if one of them goes off in a tunnel during a traffic jam or something extinguishing EVS is borderline impossible a combustion car fire on average takes 1100 liters to put out in contrast a Tesla takes between 11 and 30 000 liters 10 to 26 times more our fire departments do not have the capacity to put out such fires imagine if there is a 20 car pileup on the highway and advs Catch Fire aside from the fact that everyone unable to get out will be vaporized within minutes in the best case scenario you would need something like 88 000 liters of water meaning each burning electric car would need one full water tender to put out at minimum so the more likely scenario is that firefighters will just let the cars burn out which means the road surface below them will be completely destroyed and will need closures and repaving after each fire speaking of Roads we've all seen this Boomer meme about Roman roads vs today's roads Roman roads have stayed perfectly intact for Millennia yet our new asphalt throws are full of potholes after a year thanks Engineers is the Roman roads famous for having withstood the intense Roman truck traffic the reason why our roads fall apart quickly isn't Engineers it's vehicle traffic increasing the weight of a vehicle leads to exponential roadwear so to cause as much road damage as one Toyota Prius you would need 5633 fat men on freakishly heavy bicycles to bike through a road section and you would need 35612 to cause the same damage as a Hummer does and thus the equivalent of 63 Priuses and to get the road damage caused by a 9-ton big rig you would need 6.8 million Fatman or freaky Levy bicycles biking through a given Road section now a Tesla Model S's weight is actually comparable to the Chevy Tahoe causing Road wear equivalent to 59 575 fat men on freakishly heavy bicycles all this is to say get ready for a tax increase once EVS got popular enough road damage caused by cars will at least double and you'll be paying for the repairs more road damage will of course lead to bumpier roads which will give a good shake to all those batteries so we might even see more fires because of that but the biggest most fundamental unchangeable problem with electric cars the reason why they won't solve our problems is when it comes to space use cars are inherently inefficient and unsustainable especially if used by everyone at mass for example a six-lane highway might let through around 112 000 vehicles per day invested daily output of the Golden Gate Bridge 112 000 vehicles with an average U.S occupancy of 1.5 passengers is 168 000 people a six-lane highway for 168 000 people with the oldest Associated infrastructure asphalt concrete surface traffic barriers lighting ramps noise barriers overpasses underpasses Wildlife Bridges signage policing accident Response Road Works quality checks Landscaping cleaning all these expenses to carry a third of the people in a day that the boot attached M3 metro line carries or as a more American example the 26 Lane Katy Freeway carries 300 000 people every day while the Bay Area Rapid Transit carries 400 000. so this two-track Urban rail actually beats this monstrosity in terms of capacity not to mention the costs which if you're an American taxpayer you footed the bill for this highway large-scale core infrastructure is a fundamentally broken system which we're now trying to fix by slapping batteries into cars and calling it a day but electric cars will not solve this issue they will not solve the inherent inefficiency and horrible economy of cars and Roads if anything they will actually make it worse by causing way more road damage and making excellent response an absolute nightmare with all the associated additional costs so what's the solution a public transit that provides a practical convenient alternative to driving and in cities actually useful safe bike infrastructure to give people the freedom to not have to own a car to get around of course this solution mostly applies to urban areas in the countryside cars will always be necessary but the vast majority of people do not live in the countryside anyway so it's fine this infatuation with battery electric vehicles will not solve anything it's just a way to greenwash our problems and for our politicians to pretend they're doing something for the environment when in fact they aren't so that's the reason why as soon as battery cars battery buses and Battery trains became a thing those politicians who didn't give a single about public transit before suddenly started obsessing over them that's because they still oppose investment into public transit so instead of electrifying Rail lines or putting up trolleybus wires they can just go oh yeah just put some battery vehicles on the lines there we go environment saved now we can go back to not giving a about public transit for the next 20 years in the end the Budapest started considering running autonomous trolley buses in the castle instead of the accuracy midi buses these are so called autonomous trolley buses with small batteries inside that can move the bus for a few kilometers and then can be recharged from the regular contact Network this is a good compromise between the reliability and efficiency of trolley buses and the flexibility of battery buses minus all the enormous fire risks and road damage though in the end if trolleybus is in the castle work out eventually they will put up proper trollbus wires about rude solving the castle bus issue once and for all with a practical economical and sustainable mode of Transit

Channel: Adam Something

Views: 688,174

Keywords: car, cars, electric car, electric cars, tesla, elon musk, battery, battery electric, ev

Id: V1kOLhhSjl8

Length: 11min 4sec (664 seconds)

Published: Fri May 19 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/StatementBot]

The following submission statement was provided by /u/Post_Base:

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This is related to collapse because it describes how electric vehicles, long hailed as a transformational change which may help us avoid collapse, will not in fact do so. Electric vehicles are mired in a plethora of regulatory and technical issues which do not have feasible solutions that would enable EVs to simply replace ICE vehicles en masse with no negative consequences.

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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/13w4ct2/electric_cars_will_not_change_anything/jm9ifcb/

[u/ShitholeWorld]

Anything to avoid simply using less. I'd take the push for EVs a little more seriously if there were similar pushes to WFH and reduce air travel. Reduce the consumption of animal products (I'm not talking veganism). Maybe a firm stand against planned obsolescence.

[u/Potential178]

Car ownership is ridiculous. We could have designed our cities with amazing light rapid transit, cable cars, bike lanes, etc. Fast trains between. Cars could have been entirely co-op. 1/50th as many, available to use when you need them. No ownership, maintenance, insurance ... just book one when you need it, sometimes a fancy one, sometimes a van.

We have car co-ops, but it'd be completely different if it was how everyone do, and complimented with cities designed to get us around without them.

[u/jeremyjack3333]

Been saying this for a while. We still need oil to extract and refine the materials and extraction destroys the surrounding areas. Many EVs are being powered by fossil fuels, not renewables. Renewables don't have the energy density to power a whole fleet of EVs. The shift towards 100% recyclable lithium is still in it's early stages, tons and tons of lithium is getting dumped into landfills every week, only 5% is recycled.

The only real solution is degrowth. Reduction of all consumption and restructuring of infrastructure to be more walkable.

[u/Taqueria_Style]

Tesla Model S!

Tesla Model 3!

Tesla Model X!

Tesla Model Y!

Put them together what do you got? A douchebag!

[u/TropicalKing]

The most fuel efficient vehicle is the one with all its seats full. A typical car has 5 seats, yet few Americans use all 5. Most Americans drive only by themselves 90% of the time.

I wish American cities were designed more around public transit. You basically become a pariah as a citizen without a car. Americans think that electric vehicles will be like their angel and "save them," no they won't. A lot of Americans may have to get used to driving less, being less independent, combining trips, pooling resources more often, and filling out more of the seats of their car.

[u/conscsness]

Someone thought it would? /s

[u/Sanpaku]

Electric cars aren't an ideal solution, but they help.

Obviously, cities should be rezoned to allow denser, walkable neighborhoods, and develop better mass transit to serve them. Barring rapid collapse, much of this will happen naturally as we progress past the 2018 global peak production of all petroleum liquids, and suburban sprawl becomes more manifestly the colossal malinvestment it always was.

But electric vehicles are more efficient at converting energy to movement, thanks simply to the vast efficiency advantage of electric motors over internal combustion engines. Even when generation and transmission losses are considered, electric comes out on top. I think where we've failed is in making and embracing smaller electric vehicles, mopeds and the like, that could cover gap posed by limited strategic minerals for batteries, and condensing cities to denser forms.

[u/Few_Plenty1915]

Whoever thought this was going to work is a fucking fool. This venture is like putting a bunch of tapes over the deep cracks in the building that's falling apart and hoping that they hold it together. We need to get rid of cars altogether. Until we don't do this, we aren't doing anything that'd be worth a damn.