this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2025
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Fuck Cars

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Electric Cars (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by DwZ@lemmy.world to c/fuckcars@lemmy.world
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[–] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 35 points 6 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 5 days ago* (last edited 5 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.

[–] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 6 points 5 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 3 days ago

That's very true

[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Nalivai@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

The biggest difference is about 20%, if we compare smallest EV with smallest ICE car. The bigger the cars, the less the difference. And even for the maximum, 20% is so negligible compared to benefits, it's not even a question.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 57 points 6 days ago (9 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

[–] Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works 18 points 6 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.

[–] amongstthetrees@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 days 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.

[–] psud@aussie.zone 12 points 6 days ago

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

[–] MBech@feddit.dk 5 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Also important to remember that not everywhere can be made walkable or makes sense to make public transit. You don't want a bus route that picks up 2 people every day. That's just worse than those 2 people having their own electric car.

A lot of people in the world are living in rural places where public transit is worse for the environment and bikes aren't a realistic way to get from a to b. In these places electric vehicles are the only better alternative.

[–] Nalivai@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Not as many people in the world as you think. By definition of remote parts of the world, very small amount of people actually live there.
I lived in a remote part of the world in the village of barely 50 people. We had a small bus coming through it twice a day, and if you needed to go to the town, you just went there in the morning and returned in the evening in the bus. Some people had cars they were using once every couple of weeks, but most people didn't. Bikes and walking was the most used form of transportation. Most of the people there were there for the sole reason of being far away and not needing to rush to the nearest city often, that's kind of the whole thing.
The shit you're describing is mainly uniquely American problem, people living in bumfuck nowhere but commuting to town using their gasguzzler, not only it's not universal, it's actually very not normal.

[–] MBech@feddit.dk 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

My perspective is coming from Denmark. Around most of the country, a car is essential. Most of the country is farmland. People live on this farmland, and without a car, getting to work, buying groceries, getting to the doctor, is simply not feasible.

I don't own a car, because I live in a city, but I grew up somewhere, where you can't live without a car.

So why do people live out there? Because they're farmers, construction workers and everything else an area with a lot of agriculture needs.

[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Are you seriously using denmark as an example of car dependence?
This is the extent of the danish rail network in 1930, there is no reason any part of denmark needs to be car dependent.

[–] MBech@feddit.dk 0 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Yes I am. I don't expect people to ride a bike 10 km til at bus station in places where it's simply not feasible to make bike lanes.

Edit. Not to mention. You ride a bike 10 km to a bus, then take that bus for 20 minutes to a trainstation, then wait anything between 5 to 55 minutes for a train to show up, then ride that train for 1 hour to get to a big city, and then take another bus for 20 minutes to your job. No way am I spending 4+ hours in transport every day, if a car can do it in 1,5 hours.

[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

your country is the size of the netherlands and equally flat, what precisely is the reason they can do it and danes can't?

Also, 10km at e-bike speed (25 km/h) is not even half an hour, and if there aren't tons of cars on the roads then you don't need bike infrastructure beyond covered parking, so what's the problem with biking that distance?

[–] MBech@feddit.dk 0 points 3 days ago (1 children)

But can the Netherlands do it? Do they only bike in the rural parts?

Sure, if people could just ride 10 km and then be at work, I see the point in it. But there are A LOT of places that are much further from the bigger cities where the actual jobs are. Out there you'd need to ride 10 km to even get to a bus, that may or may not come by once every hour. That bus can take you to a trainstation where a train will usually come by every hour. Then you can take that train to a bigger city where you can work, but that can easily be an hour. So at this point, if you time your initial bike trip to the bus right, you may already spend in excess of 2 hours, just to get to a large city where the jobs are. Now you need to take another bus to get to your actual job. Meaning 4+ hours round trip. It is not feasible for a person with family to do this.

Sure the person can just move to the city, where houses cost 5x more, and simple appartments cost half their paycheck.

[–] Nalivai@lemmy.world 1 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

Do they only bike in the rural parts?

Yes, mostly. At least in the rural parts where I visited, the bike path is the norm and everyone is using it.

places that are much further from the bigger cities where the actual jobs are.

Then you move closer to your job. Communing form whatever remote farm to a city every day for work is absolutely not normal. Living close to work is what most of the people do (by definition), and it works for most of the people. Worst case scenario you move to a town-satellite that is connected to a big city via rail network. If fucking Russia figured it out, Denmark can do it too, it's not a rocket science. Farm workers who work on their farms and live their isolated lives still will have to use cars, but first of all they're in a minority, even in agrarian developed countries it's like 1% of population give or take. For everyone else cars is not a necessity and the best and only option, and if it is, it's a failure of infrastructure and needs to be fixed first priority.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Yes and no. The problem is too much of the world is unnecessarily built that way. This is one of the fundamental reasons why it will take so long to implement: we need to change where people prefer to live.

Note I said “prefer” before y’all get up in arms about forcing people to move. We’ve spent way too many years giving rural people a lot of the same infrastructure as urban people and it’s just not sustainable. The thing is that even relatively small towns can have denser walkable areas and useful transit. Without forcing anyone to uproot, we ought to be able to get a good 80% or more of the population to not require a car.

[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

here in sweden more than 80% of the population already lives in an urban area, and contrary to what some people want to believe it's perfectly fine.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Someone from the US will always chime in about how we’re different, bigger, more spread out, but that’s BS.

  • We also have 80% of our population in urban or suburban areas that could be designed for effective transit use.
  • Most of our travel is between near-ish cities that could be effectively served by intercity rail.
  • Many of our worst traffic jams are beyond the possibility of fixing by adding more lanes.
  • Most of our air congestion is thousands of regional flights that could be served by rail

We have a fantastic interstate highway system, amazing air travel facilities, but we’ve not spent enough time or money on other possibilities. We emphasized people’s privacy on their own lot at the expense of being unable to walk anywhere

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[–] FundMECFS@quokk.au 20 points 6 days ago (2 children)

A 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 6 days ago

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

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[–] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 21 points 6 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 6 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.

[–] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

That's pretty much exactly the point I was trying to make. Incremental improvements are better than no improvements.

People shit on electric cars because they aren't the perfect solution, ignoring the fact that they are better than what we have now.

It took us 150 years to get in to this mess. We aren't going to fix it completely overnight.

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[–] stepan@lemmy.ca 11 points 6 days ago (2 children)

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

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[–] RandomVideos@programming.dev 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (4 children)

Arent roads useful for more things than cars? Biking on a road that is filled with small rocks is not fun

Streets can also allow kids play if there arent cars on them

[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 3 days ago

roads designed for cars are massively larger than roads that aren't made for cars, a standard modern car-centric road would be a pretty major and significant thing for most of human history.

A single standard car lane is a generously wide bike path.

[–] SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social 6 points 6 days ago

A road is more than a smooth, flat surface. A road that's designed for cars has to have an extensive roadbed of gravel and soil laid down, as well as a thick base of pavement on which to lay the surface, because of the weight of vehicles. A bike path, or a street where children can play, is comparatively speaking just some asphalt.

[–] waterdog9@sh.itjust.works 5 points 6 days ago

Definitely don't need streets to play. A couple paved areas for basketball, skating, etc is nice - but that's just a park.

[–] IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago

ish, but without cars you don't need a 20 lane highway. and streets can also less lanes,

[–] 18107@aussie.zone 6 points 6 days ago

Electric cars are the best solution available for people who live in car centric areas and can't afford to build their own train line.

We should also be trying to get walkable neighborhoods and adequate public transport, but I will very rarely tell someone not to replace their car with electric. It really is much better than the available alternatives.

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