this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2024
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So, you got yourself a bicycle (e- or otherwise) yet?
Yeah? I even go grocery shopping with mine.
I’m yet to own my first car, but I certainly appreciate when people getting one go for EV over ICE.
Yeah a lot of people here are just like "Don't own a car at all" and don't know how most of the US is laid out. When a commute is 20 minutes by car and 2 hours by bus, it's hard to still justify the bus. I'll for sure be pushing for better bus service and transit, but I can't force my wife to sit on a bus 4 hours a day just out of principals. EV is a good solution, but I'll push for the better solution at the same time.
Never mind how the US is laid out, a lot of people -- myself included -- do not want to and will never live in an urban environment. I realize that makes the "fuckcars" contingent salty, but that's just tough shit for them.
I'm big on urbanism and walkable cities and absolutely don't mind people who don't want to live in cities. We don't tend to argue rural areas shouldn't exist, but rather point out that suburban areas have a lot of problems and are way more common than they should be, when looking at demand for mixed use development, walkable cities, etc.
For what it's worth, for most of human existence rural towns existed without need for cars, so there's still some truth to the idea that America has been rebuilt for the car, even in rural areas. There's a variety of explanations out there for why and how they worked, but one I'm a fan of is how many rural towns would organize around a central "main street", and keep the houses near it while the rest of their land spread outward. That way food, entertainment, and neighbors were all still easily accessible despite the large average amount of land.
And tbh, even setting that aside, I don't think many urbanists actually have an issue with rural areas. The movement really focuses on suburbia. A lot of the problems stem from suburbs being spread out like rural areas, but with city level amenities, without paying the amount of taxes to get those amenities that far out. Most notably, paved roads are extremely expensive to maintain and gas taxes are not high enough to pay for it. But to some extent most services suburbs get are going to be subsidized by those living in a nearby city, because it's just so much cheaper to provide those services when everyone lives closer together. And besides the subsidization, suburbs (unlike both cities and rural towns) just have a lot of qualities to them that make them bad for the environment and unpleasant and dangerous to live in - I understand not wanting to live in a city, but no one thinks hour long commutes through rush hour traffic is a positive.
I respect that, but counter with it's still easy go go green. EV for commuting with charging at home, if there is a bus system learning it and taking it when possible is great, and biking if you're in a town makes a huge impact. At home, moving off of gas and going electric can reduce your footprint by a huge amount, and of course as the comic says adding solar panels can go a long way.
We used to have both I don't know why governments threw out the extensive transit systems the US once had.
I'm currently learning to drive but I think, unfortunately, my first car will be ICE.
I'll be looking into various different vehicles when I've passed my practical test so I'm not ruling EVs or PHEVs yet, but it's looking unlikely.
Understandable. Consider that one of the biggest things you can do is just buy a smaller vehicle. I gave up my car about 12 years ago, but I'm considering buying something like a Vespa now for errands around town. They get 90+ mpg! If you can't go that small, just try not to buy bigger than what you need for 90% of trips.
For the last decade I've mostly rented vehicles for trips to the coast and things like that. Even if I did that once a month it would be far cheaper than owning a car. I recommend this route to anyone who doesn't want to buy more car than they need.
My Honda Metropolitan gets one hundred and seventeen MPG.
https://lemmy.world/post/7449419
Look, nothing wrong with an ICE especially starting off. Ease up on use, drive safe and swap when you are able. Don't take on the worlds problems when you aren't even secure in yourself yet - leave those sacrifices for us until you can.
This is one of the exceptions I still give, however, look into hybrid options. Newer hybrid can really reduce your emissions (and petrol bill). Even used ones are still pretty decent
I can totally understand that, I think its not a wise option to buy a new ICE car, but a cheap used older car can be a good option until you are able to buy an EV.
I have an ICE car as well, because it just didnt make sense for me to buy an EV a few years ago, I couldnt afford it and there wasnt a suitable one available in Germany.
I do use my bike quite a lot, so I dont think its too bad.
Working on it actually. We got the EV for the wife to replace a dying ICE vehicle, and we live about 20 miles away from her job, with no transit in between, so we were stuck with a car. For me, I won't be replacing my car and I take the bus to work, but we are getting a train within the year, so I'm looking at possibly an ebike to get to the train station