this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2025
369 points (83.5% liked)

Fuck Cars

12826 readers
1968 users here now

A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!

Rules

1. Be CivilYou may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.

2. No hate speechDon't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.

3. Don't harass peopleDon't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.

4. Stay on topicThis community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.

5. No repostsDo not repost content that has already been posted in this community.

Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.

Posting Guidelines

In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:

Recommended communities:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
369
Electric Cars (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by DwZ@lemmy.world to c/fuckcars@lemmy.world
 
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 35 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Car culture evangelist in fuckcars community missing the point as always.

The point is that EVs are not a good solution to the problem with cars - they are just a better car. This individualizes what is a collective problem.

My city is adding six new lanes for cars in the coming years, meanwhile there are already intersections that a person has to jog to get across in time. Cars have their use, but it's far far far less than people realise.

Valorizing EVs leads to perpetuating car centric designs, which is a negative across many dimensions - not only ecologically.

[–] Nalivai@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

All that being said, better car is still better than a worse car. I live near a big road, and it kinda sucks. Back then when all cars were emitting poison from a tailpipe instead of only some doing it, it didn't just suck, it was a fucking nightmarish hell, dirty, loud, smelly, poisonous dark hell, and some people from my family died prematurely because of that.
I don't think the community in my city can persuade carbrains to quit caring any time soon. They can convince them to start with being slightly less damaging, for starters.

[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 17 hours ago

it's also important to remember that electric cars are heavier (you know, batteries) which increases road wear, tyre wear, and makes them more dangerous in collisions (and means they need yet more battery to push the extra weight, very fun).

Electric cars are really only strictly better if they're also made smaller and lighter, electric cars are great but we should be treating 2-seaters with like 200km range as the norm.

[–] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yes, a better car is a better car. That's perfectly reasonable harm reduction logic.

I just would rather people not forget that that's all it is, and know that there are much better communal solutions. Even if they seem utopian, they're actually very sensible and pragmatic.

Materially speaking, we could start building a better world tomorrow morning. We don't have to wait for tech to save us.

[–] Nalivai@lemmy.world 2 points 19 hours ago

That's very true

[–] mienshao@lemmy.world 138 points 4 days ago (28 children)

I hate this car-centric society, but let’s be real cars aren’t going anywhere. Moving away from fossil fuels is a good thing. Not sure why we’re criticizing progress here.

[–] IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works 71 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (14 children)

It's because on the modern internet, everyone is all-or-nothing when it comes to their chosen issue. Nuance has become unacceptable.

This community in particular can get a little out of touch at times. In North America in particular, even if every level of government agreed to begin working towards a car free society immediately, we'd still be facing a decades long construction campaign as entire towns and cities would have to be restructured. In the meantime, a shift to electric vehicles is something that can drastically help the global warming issue, and can be implemented in less than a decade.

In reality, we should be shifting to electric cars in the sort term, while we work towards eliminating the need for them in the long term.

Also, I'm convinced that the brake dust/tire wear particulates talking point is the result of oil industry astroturfing. The brake dust thing especially is actually better on electric cars, since regenerative braking reduces the amount of brake wear.

load more comments (14 replies)
[–] FireRetardant@lemmy.world 29 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Its because EVs are being marketed as a green solution, not a stepping stone. If a car must exist it might as well be electric but we should be asking how do we reduce the cars that exist and their frequency of use. Building electrified transit and keeping ICE cars would as a whole be more beneficial than just converting all cars to EVs.

[–] IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works 15 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Building electrified transit and keeping ICE cars would as a whole be more beneficial than just converting all cars to EVs.

This choice you've presented is extremely misleading. The build out of electrified public transportation and the shift from ICE to EV cars are not in any way related choices. If the government chooses to build more public transportation, that has no effect on whether or not EVs replace ICE cars.

[–] FireRetardant@lemmy.world 15 points 4 days ago (4 children)

The government building transit would effect the number of people who need to rely on a car.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Booboofinget@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

My 2 favorite cities that is lived in were San Francisco and Rio de Janeiro. Apart from both of them being gorgeous and fun, one of the best things was that I did not need a car.

load more comments (25 replies)
[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 57 points 4 days ago (16 children)

Electric vehicles

  • eliminate tailpipe emissions
  • cut brake dust emissions in half
  • pollute less as we transition to renewable energy
  • let us work toward elimination the huge polluting industries for gasoline refining and distribution
  • let us shrink the huge polluting industries of oil extraction and refining
  • are a huge step toward slowing the growth of climate change.

While I completely agree transit, and walkable cities are much better, EVs are not nothing. More importantly, given the amount of time to build transit and walkable cities, EVs get us many of the advantages NOW

[–] amongstthetrees@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago

While those are great improvements over fossil fuel based cars, they also exasperate existing issues.

Almost all of these EVs are in the SUV category. These vehicles take up more space on the road and parking lots. This results in less capacity for our road systems causing traffic engineers to incorrectly add more and more lanes to roads. Additionally combined with parking minimums, more and more land is developed into parking lots, which in term increases pollution and increases the heat island effect.

The increased weight and instant torque both causes increased tire dust (as another commenter mentioned) as well as accelerated wear to the roads. The high power figures results in inattentive selfish drivers being able to reach high speeds quickly adding risk for pedestrians.

I understand that the SUV craze existed before EVs were popular however as EVs are normalized it'll only further enforce people buying oversized dangerous sub-4s 0-60 bricks.

[–] Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works 18 points 4 days ago

Yeah, this comic is putting perfect in the way of good.

Not to mention, there are people who do need vehicles, the trades being one example.

[–] psud@aussie.zone 12 points 4 days ago

They also increase tyre wear particles due to their greater weight and torque

load more comments (13 replies)
[–] FundMECFS@quokk.au 20 points 3 days ago (2 children)

report from the Pew Charitable Trust found that 78 percent of ocean microplastics are from synthetic tire rubber. These toxic particles often end up ingested by marine animals, where they can cause neurological effects, behavioral changes, and abnormal growth. 

Meanwhile, British firm Emissions Analytics spent three years studying tires. The group found that a single car’s four tires collectively release 1 trillion “ultrafine” particles for every single kilometer (0.6 miles) driven. These particles, under 100 nanometers in size, are so tiny that they can pass directly through the lungs and into the blood. They can even cross the body’s blood-brain barrier. The Imperial College London has also studied the issue, noting that “There is emerging evidence that tire wear particles and other particulate matter may contribute to a range of negative health impacts including heart, lung, developmental, reproductive, and cancer outcomes.”

Source

[–] MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago

Cool beans, I've got "Tire Brain".

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Sneptaur@pawb.social 45 points 4 days ago (8 children)

This, to me, just seems like it's trying to give permissions to ICE car owners not to change anything.

[–] floo@retrolemmy.com 19 points 4 days ago

It definitely is not that. However, it is a reminder that, even with electric vehicles, there is a serious, environmental and social impact.

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] Ledivin@lemmy.world 33 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Ah, well if an improvement isn't perfect, we should definitely reject it and continue using the worst possible version until a perfect one is created

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Maestro@fedia.io 29 points 4 days ago (10 children)

Electric cars also reduce particulate dust. Because of regenerative braking they need to brake less often and less agressive. There was a study published just kadt week.

[–] rainwall@piefed.social 21 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Also noise pollution. Under 35 mph, most car noise is engine noise.

[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 17 hours ago

eeeh, i don't think this is a particularly noticable benefit.
The amount of noise given off by cars at those speeds is just an annoyance, the real problem is the tyre noise at high speeds and that's only made worse by electric cars.
They recently lowered the speed on a through-road near me from 70km/h to 60km/h and it made a pretty huge difference in how tolerable it is to be anywhere near the road, the difference between a combustion and an electric car driving on a residential street is so much smaller that it's not even funny.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (9 replies)
[–] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 21 points 4 days ago (4 children)

It doesn't solve all the problems, so instead, let's solve none of the problems!

[–] petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Get an electric car if you want, but you should still support society moving away from needing them in the first place, no?

Imagine a school cafeteria is serving kids the option of 5 hershey's chocolate bars, or a slice of pizza. You can acknowledge the pizza is better, but you should still be asking where the god damn vegetables are.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] stepan@lemmy.ca 11 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Most of the fuckwads in this comment section missed the point of the post

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] henfredemars@infosec.pub 17 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Had the right idea but lost me at the end. Better is better. We can both electrify and work to move away from automobiles at the same time. We should not divide a group of people with common interest in a better tomorrow. To do so is how we lose.

load more comments
view more: next ›