this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2024
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[–] [email protected] 206 points 9 months ago (6 children)

Love it. People look at me like I'm crazy for trying to go greener, and I see this stuff online all the time.

"Haha EVs are so dangerous! Look at the fire hazard" like you aren't literally parking a tank of explosive gas in your house every night

"It doesn't have nearly the range of gas" They say while driving a massive truck that needs filling every week, meanwhile my charger at home is needed once a week and costs 1/6th a tank of gas

"Solar doesn't even cover the entire electric bill" Sure, it only halves it...

So much simping for big oil companies. Always reminds me of this from the Simpsons

[–] [email protected] 113 points 9 months ago (2 children)

This is an informal fallacy, "letting perfect be the enemy of good." You have to feel out people who are doing this and try to determine what their angle is. Usually they have one, some kind of asinine hobby-horse or ulterior motive, and you need to figure out quickly if they're arguing in good faith or not.

Because usually they're not, and inevitably you'll find that as soon as you're done addressing one point they've moved the goalposts somewhere else.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 9 months ago (21 children)

I just heard this phrase, and I'm so happy because I've needed a word for it. People who do this annoy me so much. Like with EVs especially. "Well we should be using mass transit_." Yes, we should, but that will take a very long time. Let's take a good solution now, which is better than the bad solution that is currently being used, and we will continue to build and push for the perfect solution at the same time.

Strive for perfect, but accept a good solution in the meantime.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Even with good public transit I'd have to sell my house and move to get a job and travel with public transit. I feel like that's a bit excessive if I had to get another one and move more. My commutes 250 miles a week and I was using a tank of gas a week. Went electric and I use 20-30kW to charge per day. 16k miles in on my first year. Hopefully one day I'll get solar installed and reduce even more too.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Solar is pretty damn sweet. My only gripe is that I installed my system before getting an EV, so during a couple winter months I sometimes have to use electricity from the grid. Not a lot, but just enough to make me mad that I'm not 100% self sufficient. Had I gotten an EV before installing solar, I could have gotten a bigger system.

My power company has some rules that say I can't do net metering with them if I install a system that was greater than 100% of my average annual usage or some BS.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Ouch that sucks. I don't want a roof install though that seems the most common. I got a half acre open land with farm land east and west with no trees so I figured I could do a decent size system.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

That's awesome. There's a guy I've met in a small town in Iowa that has a setup like that and he lets people use his Tesla charger since it doesn't cost him anything.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

The thing with public transit vs EVs though is targeted towards governments and corporations, not necessarily to individuals

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

We already had it.. I die a little inside every time I see the tracks when the roads are being resurfaced. Last ride was in the 40's

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Fully agree bud, kills me every time I hear "tracks to trails" or something else stupid. We had one going from our 10,000 person town through a few other towns to downtown of our nearby city. They proudly paved over it and made a 50 mile bike trail. Which sure, is nice but no one is going to go commute on a 50 mile bike trail. They already owned the land, that's 80% of the battle and cost when it comes to building rail, why couldn't they redo the rail, throw up a couple of concrete platforms, and build an easy commuter rail?

Because no one even thought of it as a possibility, that's why. A simple little DMU (really electric would be great but let's not push it in my imaginary scenario) could have moved hundreds (probably thousands) of people of day. But no, bike trail

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Tangently related- im a big fan of the easiest 10%. Effectively, the easiest 10% of change does just as much as the hardest 10%.

Want to use the dryer less? Big stuff on line, little stuff in the dryer. That kind of thing.

Chucking a solar panel on your roof gets you 10% of the way there in a weekend then forget about it for 5 years.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I feel like I read somewhere about someone routing the Arizona air from outside into a dryer intake and running it without the heat and saving a big chunk in electricity too. It's too bad I live in rain and humidity town.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

I mean, you got it use it

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Well, not to be that guy but given your specific example of a dryer there is a way you can get over half the way there. Get a heatpump dryer. They use 1/4th the amount of electricity as a standard electric dryer and can literally be plugged into a standard 110v 15A outlet they don't need the big ass 220v 50a plug. Heavy items like thick beach towels take a bit longer but otherwise they function identically

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Different country, all our dryers and appliances run off mains power - 220v 10amp. The big issue is that they can't be mounted upside down, so we can't have one.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That's definitely a unique mounting circumstance, I'm very curious why specifically upside down mounting

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Because you put them above the washing machine, and flip them upside down so you can reach the buttons - its a space thing. They even have mounting brackets they come with and the front panel removes so you can turn it upright. I never did though, mine are upside down. But I don't care.

But yeah, means we can't use heat pump or condensation dryers unless you have extra space.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

I really like this, thanks for sharing. It really does highlight "If we each do just a small change, it will make a noticeable difference"

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago

a tank of explosive gas

And we purposely use it to fuel small controlled explosions to make it go.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (4 children)

“Haha EVs are so dangerous! Look at the fire hazard” like you aren’t literally parking a tank of explosive gas in your house every night

Just to be pedantic, the real issue there is that EVs are potentially more explosive, and once they've caught fire, pouring water on the makes them explode a second time.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Do gasoline fires go out with a douse of water?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

Nah I think it makes them worse

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

Sure, and that's one I hear, but it's blown out of proportion by them. Really whenever you store that level of potential energy in any form it's going to be dangerous.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

Pouring water on lithium-ion battery fires is not only safe it's the primary means of fighting them. It does not make them explode a second time, what it does do is cool down the battery.

Lithium battery fires though, there you'll want a class D extinguisher. Those batteries aren't in EVs though.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

So don't use water? I mean, don't use water in basically any situation regarding a fire anyway, it's a last resort, but if you don't have a fire extinguisher in your home you're asking for trouble eventually.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Tbf if an EV is burning you probably need an electric fire extinguisher, instead of the normal type thats for more common fire fuels.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

Looks like Lisa's never heard of the food chain

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (2 children)

While I agree with the premise of your argument, most of your points are false. Liquid gasoline doesn't explode and the range of the truck is definitely longer than the range of the EV, regardless of when you recharge/fill up the tank.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Sure, liquid doesn't, just it's vapour. Which of course is constantly evaporating around gasoline. :|

And yes, the range thing was a comparison to "Who cares about range when you're guzzling 40 gallons of gas to get the same range". But even then, I always argue that the range argument is ridiculous anyway. 95% of trips people make are within their town or county, plenty close enough within the range of most EVs. Mine is 260 miles. Tell me who drives 260 miles daily. Even when I lived in a rural small town my commute was an hour and a half, 60 miles each way. That's less than half of my current range.

And for those who are like "But muh roadtrips!" I reply immediately with 1) Most families have 2 cars, the obvious solution is to have one EV for 95% of your driving and keep the old ICE for longer trips or 2) shockingly enough, you can rent a car to go on a roadtrip. Hell I did that already when I went camping. People say "I need a truck for when I go outdoors or move" - but here I've been renting trucks for that for years.

People are so terrified of change that they'll just throw up whatever they can think of (or whatever the oil lobby tells them) rather than think critically. Both of those arguments I've made with gearhead friends, and every time they don't have a response to them. Same as what other people have said below, changing just 10% can have an impact. So for people with big trucks I tell them "no one says get rid of your truck completely, but be smarter about what you drive and when". Commuting? Take an EV. Camping/towing? Sure take the truck. That can have an impact too.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

the range of the truck is definitely longer than the range of the EV

Depends on the truck and EV. Compare a Regular Cab F150 Raptor to a Lucid Air Pure, and the EV probably gets more range. Obviously looking for edge cases that probably aren't the case in Scrumbbles's story, but there's no way you can know the EV's range is shorter from their post. In a couple years, we might have 1000 mile range EVs delivered to customers (and cheaper than the Lucid Air), in which case the range would be more than the majority of ICE vehicles.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yeah I've got family that are like this. I'm kinda wondering what you'd actually need for solar to change a vehicle for say a drive to work and back in a mid sized city (10-30km) on the average electric vehicle.

One the the reasons I haven't gone solar here is not so much cloud as cloud+half the year the things are gonna be covered in snow+smoke during the summer (we actually have issues with solar-powered parking kiosks already due to this).

If I won the jackpot though I'd definitely go "prepper" with one item being a solar-powered retreat I'm a location that gets a decent amount of sun without too much dangerous weather.

Has anyone done the actual math?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Shot in the dark: you're in BC?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Could be anywhere in Canada really.