> We need every possible contribution to fight the dooming climate emergency. Bicycles AND electric cars. Renewables AND nuclear AND carbon capture.
The problem is that some of these are working against each other. Electric cars means much much higher electrical energy needs - perhaps needing to even double the current grid. And that works against the need to decomission fossil fuel plants.
As such, significantly reducing car usage seems like a much safer bet than achieving a 0-carbon grid that is double the size of the current one in ~15 years.
They are not "literally batteries on wheels", because their charge is used up by the car itself, not by the grid. They take energy out of the grid, and never put it back in.
Sure there are some ideas that EVs which don't see too much use could be used to discharge back into the grid, but that is hard to organize and destroys the battery much more quickly.
Batteries dont need to discharge back to the grid to time shift energy demand.
Australia has heated water overnight att off peak times for years with ripple signals because otherwise the coal plants wouldn't run efficiently.
They don't need to use that domestic hot water to feed electric energy back into the grid, they just need to use it to avoid calling on the grid when they would otherwise have added to peak load.
EVs are batteries on wheels, with computer chips and internet connections to tell them the best time to charge. All the pieces are there and in actual use for decades.
The problem we're discussing, and the biggest problem for renewable, is that we need massive amounts of storage to handle the cases where production is unexpectedly low for long periods of time - months of low wind and cloud coverage. Car batteries don't help in any way with this problem, which is the biggest risk for a renewable-only grid.
Now, let's assume this problem were solved, and now we start replacing all fossil fuel power plants with renewables + storage. Unfortunately, we are also replacing ICE vehicles with BEVs at the same time, which require massive amounts of extra electrical power to replace the power they were getting from oil. Suddenly, we can no longer close all of our fossil fuel plants, because all of the growth in renewables is consumed by BEV charging.
The problem you're discussing - handling variable load - is somewhat secondary. It's a significant practical problem if you're adding new solar and wind to the grid without closing down old fossil fuel generators, which is what everyone is mostly doing currently, so it is a very discussed problem. The problem of ensuring reliability from a renewable-only grid is so complicated, no one is really tackling it yet, especially since they can barely construct enough new renewables to handle all the extra new load from growing industry + BEVs.
How would you propose to significantly reduce car usage in 15 years? I've never seen a realistic plan for that which accounts for politics, funding, and the time required to build large infrastructure projects. Just pointing out that we ought to do it doesn't get us anywhere.
I think you could do a lot with quick-build bus and bike lanes, and some combination of pollution taxes and market-pricing for parking & high-demand roads/bridges. A lot of people will take a bus - it’s so much cheaper & less stressful - but only if service is reliable so I’d focus on how you could remove delays there, and many things like bus priority lanes or enforcement can be implemented quickly at modest cost.
The big question is politics: even in cities where many people use transit, the political class favors cars.
A lot of single programmers in dense metros, living in apartments, conveniently located next to transit and close to work, might do so. Getting groceries for a family, getting kids to schools and after school activities, running errands etc. is very inconvenient on a bus. As for how much cheaper is the bus I am not sure, last time I've taken one it was $1.5 for each leg, of course, this depends on location, though it's pretty stressful with half of the passengers being seemingly troubled and sometimes "experiencing" strong BO, urination, vomiting and drug consumption right on the bus.
> Getting groceries for a family, getting kids to schools and after school activities, running errands etc. is very inconvenient on a bus.
This isn’t a universal truth - I know a ton of people who do that (I bike more) - but rather a policy decision. Driving has been massively subsidized for a century so it’s not surprising that it often works better but other choices are possible.
> As for how much cheaper is the bus I am not sure, last time I've taken one it was $1.5 for each leg, of course, this depends on location
Okay, that’s still 20 trips a day before you’re at AAA’s _average_ cost of owning a car. If we chose to offer better service, I’m sure more than a few people would pocket the difference — the primary deterrent for most people is when service is infrequent and inconsistent.
What do you mean by "subsidized driving"? Care to give examples? I am not getting anything for driving, instead I pay taxes in registration and in fuel.
>Okay, that’s still 20 trips a day before you’re at AAA’s _average_ cost of owning a car.
It might be so if they amortized TOC but when you already own a car the additional cost of travel per mile is much cheaper than buses charged 15 years ago or so.
> What do you mean by "subsidized driving"? Care to give examples? I am not getting anything for driving, instead I pay taxes in registration and in fuel.
You pay less in taxes than it costs to maintain the roads — the U.S. average is about half.
Public space is reserved for driving — legal categories like jaywalking were created to remove other users from those spaces — and land owners are required to dedicate substantial amounts of space for parking, most of which is either not charged to users at all or at far below market rates (this is famously a cause of congestion as people drive around longer looking for street parking since it's so much cheaper). Even businesses like bars whose owners don't expect their customers to drive are in many cases forced by parking minimums to provide spaces, which means everyone is paying for that parking even if they don't benefit from it.
Employers can offer free parking as a job perk with no tax impact but cannot do the same for transit or bike commuters.
There are also a lot of social costs which come back to the idea that we've built the world around the idea that everyone has to drive everywhere: we're extremely reluctant to take away unsafe drivers' licenses, drivers are not required to carry enough insurance to adequately compensate people for serious injuries, cities are typically much slower to repair pedestrian infrastructure than car infrastructure, sidewalks, curb cuts, etc. are often not ADA compliant to leave more room for drivers, etc.
>You pay less in taxes than it costs to maintain the roads — the U.S. average is about half.
I don't think so. Quick search shows that states and localities spend $200B per year on roads, the US alone tax revenue from just individual taxes is roughly ~40% of 4T i.e. $1.6T. What sources do you use to support your claim?
>Public space is reserved for driving — legal categories like jaywalking were created to remove other users from those spaces — and land owners are required to dedicate substantial amounts of space for parking, most of which is either not charged to users at all or at far below market rates (this is famously a cause of congestion as people drive around longer looking for street parking since it's so much cheaper).
I don't think you are being serious, there much more legal categories against drivers: speeding, DUI, dozens of kinds of illegal parking etc.
And would need some source on the parking below market rates and land owners required to provide free parking. I own land, I am not required to provide parking to anyone, least so for free or below market rates. Parking requirements for public accommodations is not subsidizing anything it just taking reality into account and prevents patrons from crowding nearby streets with their cars as well as using parking space from other businesses.
Driving is subsidized in many ways. Gasoline taxes and registration taxes don't fully cover the cost of road construction and maintenance, so the rest of the money comes from general revenue at the municipal, state, and federal levels of government - property taxes, income taxes, sales taxes. Parking lots take up a lot of land but pay much less property tax than residential or commercial buildings on the same plots of land. Sprawl causes everyone to travel farther, even people not in cars who didn't ask to sign up for this development pattern. Crashes resulting in property damage and personal injury/death are not fully compensated for by drivers or insurance; every time a driver hits something, both the driver and the rest of society lose together. Paved surfaces increase the amount of flooding during rainstorms, a cost borne by everyone, even those who don't drive. Noise, tire dust, polluting gases, and oil leaks affect everyone.
Gasoline taxes and registration taxes might not fully cover road construction but other taxes do, I am just pointing out that drivers do not get subsidies but are taxed more than, say, bicyclists or pedestrians who use the same roads but don't pay extra tax.
Pedestrians don’t use those roads, usually enforced by law. Their taxes are subsidizing roads they are at best sidelined on, and in many cases have their experience made worse and riskier for.
Bicyclists do use roads, but need much less space - far less than the half of the road their taxes pay for even for the cyclists who don’t own a car. Nobody needs a 6 lane road for bicyclists - even a single lane can handle more people than would fit in cars on that kind of wide road.
The underlying problem here is the spatial inefficiency of driving: you need far more public space for the same number of people and that requires more expensive infrastructure to build and maintain than it would if people primarily used active travel or transit.
The fairest way to pay for the infrastructure which is required to support a predominantly private-vehicle based model would be to fund it entirely by user fees, which would also handle the case of larger vehicle owners paying more to reflect their greater use, but because that model has been subsidized and often legally required for so long most people aren’t even aware of how much that’s true.
>Pedestrians don’t use those roads, usually enforced by law.
They do, it's called "sidewalk".
>Their taxes are subsidizing roads they are at best sidelined on, and in many cases have their experience made worse and riskier for.
Even if they don't walk on the streets and only walk by unpaved footpaths they might be still using roads to get their food and clothes shipped to them.
>Bicyclists do use roads, but need much less space - far less than the half of the road their taxes pay for even for the cyclists who don’t own a car. Nobody needs a 6 lane road for bicyclists - even a single lane can handle more people than would fit in cars on that kind of wide road.
But they pay zero extra tax regardless of the space they use when they don't own a car. So I am not sure what the point you are trying to make here. A one lane road is not free, somebody has to pay for it.
>The underlying problem
I got it in the first 1000 posts on HN from anti-car people, I just have not seen "driving is subsidized" yet so I had been asking what is it based on.
The problem is that some of these are working against each other. Electric cars means much much higher electrical energy needs - perhaps needing to even double the current grid. And that works against the need to decomission fossil fuel plants.
As such, significantly reducing car usage seems like a much safer bet than achieving a 0-carbon grid that is double the size of the current one in ~15 years.