Tag: electric vehicles

Sac CAAP disappointment

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The City of Sacramento Climate Action and Adaptation Plan (CAAP) draft has been released. Note that this is the second draft, though essentially unchanged from the first draft. I reviewed my previous posts on the CAAP (category: CAAP) and looked a a few key places in the plan to see what had changed. Nothing.

City staff gave a presentation on the CAAP to the ECOS Climate Committee last night. As with all previous presentations, and the plan itself, the focus was on SMUD zero-carbon (which the city shouldn’t really be taking credit for), electrification of built housing, and EVs. And EVs, and EVs.

57% of Greenhouse Gas emissions (GHGs) are from transportation, so it certainly makes sense that electrification of vehicles is important. However, the the city’s focus on EVs ignores: 1) all the city can do is provide charging, all other aspects of the transition are largely beyond their control; 2) the transition will be slow, and there will be fossil fuel vehicles on the road long after net-zero is intended; 3) it turns out EVs are not the environmental panacea claimed, with battery manufacture, rare earth mining, and battery recycling (or lack thereof, turns out almost no batteries are being recycled); 4) EVs are not and will probably never be affordable to low income people, and nearly all the subsidies so far have gone exclusively to high income individuals; 5) EVs have the same or worse pollution potential as fossil fuel because the main health impacts of motor vehicles are not tailpipe emissions, but road dust, tire dust, and brake dust, which are all exacerbated by the higher weights of EVs; 6) EVs kill pedestrians and bicyclists just as effectively, if not more (higher weight) than fossil fueled cars.

the false promise of EVs

Dan Allison3 Comments

Electric vehicles (EVs) are touted as being the solution to many of our climate change problems. Most of the money being spent on climate change current is going to EV subsidies and to creating widespread charging networks. They also dominate the conversations about climate change, pushing other issues and solutions to the margin. I’m sick of this (I’m tired of the electric vehicle conversation), and become more sick by the day. They are only a small part of the actions we need, and they should not be receiving the bulk of the funding.

The hype and commitment to electric motor vehicles also pushes out the real climate solution (and livability solution), electric bikes, whether privately owned or bike share systems. Entities from the city to the county to the state to the federal government claim that there isn’t enough money to really support the transition to elective bikes. Why? Because almost all of it going to EVs.

If we depend on EVs to solve our environmental or social problems, we’ll will end up with exactly what we have today, which is world dominated by motor vehicles and traffic violence. Except it will be worse, because we’ve put all our eggs in one basket.

Paris Marx in Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation, addresses the boosterism in Chapter 3: Greenwashing the Electric Vehicle (ISBN 978-1-83976-588-9). Conservative magazine Forbes offers The Expensive And Harmful Truth About Electric Vehicles. Volt Rush: The Winners and Losers in the Race to Go Green (ISBN 978-0861543755) covers the mining and battery manufacturing side of electric vehicle production. If you search the Internet, you will find articles and sources ranging from ‘EVs are the single solution to everything’ to ‘EVs will be the end of us all’. The truth, is of course, somewhere in between. It is early enough in EV adoption that we really don’t know that much about overall and long-term effects. Nor is there an effective battery recycling industry yet (though it is not hard to find dead Teslas, with their batteries waiting to be recycled).

Much of the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, as well as other federal investments, is going to subsidizing the purchase of electric vehicles, and creating charging networks. As is well known, almost all the existing EV subsidies at the federal and state levels have gone to high income individuals. Little in the current and planned programs will change that. Though there is work to make subsidies more equitable, every proposal has met with significant blowback. The rich want to preserve their perquisites.

I suppose the thing that most irritates me personally is the ‘more environmental than you’ attitude of Tesla owners. They live, though not speak, as though their purchase of a Tesla has absolved them of all other environmental harms. Tesla owners are part of the ‘I’m richer than you, so I can do anything I want, and I can drive in any way I want’ crowd. For more on Tesla the real instead of Tesla the hype, see Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors, Edward Niedermeyer, ISBN 978-1948836128.

My greatest concerns about EVs are:

  • all cities and counties can do is provide charging, all other aspects of the transition are largely beyond their control; this sends the locus of control to a higher level of government, further from people
  • the transition will be slow, and there will be fossil fuel vehicles on the road long after net-zero is intended
  • it turns out EVs are not the environmental panacea claimed, with battery manufacture, rare earth mining, and battery recycling (or lack thereof, turns out almost no batteries are being recycled)
  • EVs are not and will probably never be affordable to low income people, and nearly all the subsidies so far have gone exclusively to high income individuals
  • EVs have the same or worse pollution potential as fossil fuel because the main health impacts of motor vehicles are not tailpipe emissions, but road dust, tire dust, and brake dust, which are all exacerbated by the higher weights of EVs
  • EVs kill pedestrians and bicyclists just as effectively, if not more (higher weight), than fossil fueled cars

Why this topic today? Because I’m about to get to some posts on the City of Sacramento Climate Action and Adaptation Plan. The plan prioritizes EVs in its solutions to GHG reduction. Ack!

CARB 2022 Scoping Plan

Dan Allison4 Comments

CARB has released for public review the Draft 2022 Scoping Plan Update. The June 23/25 CARB Board Meeting will have public comment (and board decision?) on this document. The document is 255 pages, not even including many appendices. I have only just begun to review the document, but what I see so far is pretty disappointing. For a brief introduction, see the four page Executive Summary. Also see Air Board Seeks Comments on Climate Scoping Plan; Shoup Urges a Look at Parking.

From the Executive Summary: “… rapidly moving to zero-emission transportation, electrifying the cars, buses, trains, and trucks that now constitute California’s single largest source of planet-warming pollution”. Notice that bicycles are not mentioned. Even more worrisome is that one third of the carbon reduction is from actions that capture carbon, including natural environments and as-yet unavailable carbon capture technology.

From the Ensure Equity and Affordability section: “… effective actions to move with all possible speed to clean energy, zero-emission cars and trucks, energy efficient homes, sustainable agriculture, and resilient forests…”. No mention of electric bikes or transit. Unless CARB intends to buy every low income person in the state an electric car, its plan will not meet with needs of low income and disinvested communities. What would meet those needs is a transit-first policy and funding, with significant state investment in making walking and bicycling more welcoming and safer.

In the entire document, there are two instances of ‘bike’ and three of ‘bicycling’ (and none of bicycle or e-bike or electric bicycle). There is one instance of ‘transit’. Six instances of ‘walking’. Ten instances of ‘active transportation’, but 163 instances of ‘transportation’, many of them referring to other documents and programs. In contrast, 157 instances of ‘vehicle’. Not hard to see where the focus is.

Here is a wordcloud of just the Executive Summary section. See if it speaks to your concerns. A wordcloud of the entire document would show vehicle prominently.

CARB seems incapable of imagining a future that is not dominated by cars. They simply intend to replace existing cars with electric cars. Put simply, this is climate arson, by the very agency that is supposed to be working on climate change in a serious way.

Sadly, many of the climate change and environmental organizations seem aligned with this focus on vehicle electrification.

I’ve said it before and will repeat (again and again): electric cars, or any electric vehicles other than bikes, are only a partial solution to the climate crisis. Serious solutions will include and prioritize walking, bicycling and transit. If you are an electric car booster and not working to reduce the dominance of motor vehicles in our cities and lives, you are not serious about climate change. And you are certainly not serious about livable cities.

I’m tired of the electric vehicle conversation

Dan Allison1 Comment

Warning: Grumpy old man mode.

I am really, really growing tired of the electric vehicle boosterism that pervades the environmental community. It is sucking all the air out of organizations and meetings, diverting attention away from solutions that would have a much greater impact on greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). The transportation sector is responsible for 41% of GHGs in California (2020), and that percentage will continue to climb as we work to reduce the other sectors. Except for this pandemic period, GHG emissions from vehicles have continued to climb every year, and they will probably go back to their rise when the pandemic is over, and that is already happening in some places.

Do electric vehicles have a lower emissions impact than fossil fuel vehicles? Yes, but the difference is not enough to justify the boosterism. Until our electricity supply is 100% renewable (with storage of course needed for peak periods), and we are not importing electricity from other states, the impact from electric vehicles will be unacceptably high.

And there is the other impact of vehicles. You’ve all seen the images, a take off on the old one showing the number of and space used by cars, buses, bicycles and walkers, showing congestion from electric vehicles being exactly the same as fossil fuel vehicles. But congestion is actually a friend to walkers and bicyclists, so mostly a concern to transit and drivers.

The biggest problem with cars is that they dominate our cities, and make compact, walkable development and neighborhoods impossible. I live in a place (downtown Sacramento) where nearly all of my needs are within walking distance, and the few that are not are within bicycling distance. I’m car free and have been for ten years (I had written care free instead of car free, but you know, it is much the same thing).

Yet car drivers through downtown, many but not all of them people who don’t live in downtown, challenge me for right-of-way every time a use a crosswalk. Crossing the street should not require either yielding my right of way to drivers, or trying to intimidate them into stopping (which most walkers are too afraid to do, rightly so). When I’m bicycling, drivers running red lights and not coming close to stopping at stop signs are a constant danger, meaning I have to be on high alert rather than enjoying my place and my ride. The nature of the majority of drivers is that they willingly intimidate walkers and bicyclists. People driving electric vehicles are not any better. Tesla drivers are giving BMW drivers a run for their money in competition for the worst drivers on the road.

Because of the space taken up by cars, the roadway, on-street parking, off-street parking, everything is further away. Downtown and midtown, things are still within a reasonable distance, but that is not true anywhere else in the region except downtown Davis, old town Folsom, and old town Roseville. The amount of land devoted to cars is truly amazing, and sad, and criminal. Six lane or more arterials, with parking lanes and turn lanes. Six lane or more freeways, with the ever present threat to widen them. Katy Freeway (26 lanes in Houston area), coming to your community, courtesy of Caltrans!

I suspect a lot of the energy behind electric cars is just people who really don’t want to give up their car, at all, ever. They are the same people who bought Prius cars because they were more environmental, and continued driving the same or more, and then bought Tesla cars because they are even more green, and continued driving the same or more.

Car drivers kill more than 40,000 people every year in the US, and it looks like 2020 is going to be 43,000 when the official data is in. Motor vehicle fatalities are usually a bit above gun-related deaths. Cars are the leading cause of death for children and young people. Many people tolerate this as just part of the way things are, but it is not the way things are. It is the result of our American car addiction, and the design of our roadways (engineers are morally and legally responsible for this), and the choices of drivers.

Here is my suggestion. We remove one-half of all cars from service, by whatever means necessary, with whatever funding it takes. There should be criteria that prioritizes: 1) the most polluting cars; and 2) cars owned by drivers who drive a lot, 3) cars that are not used but still take up space on the street. I realize that there are homeless people living in vehicles, and I’m not talking about those, but the ones just gathering dust and leaves and cobwebs. I am not suggesting that the government pay going prices for these vehicles, but something quite a bit less. If necessary to induce the change, we can simply refuse to renew registration on vehicles in these categories.

Then, and only then, we start subsidizing replacement of the remaining internal combustion cars with electric, starting with the lowest income people. If we devote X amount of dollars to this, and X amount only gets us up to 40% of the median income, that is just fine with me. As many studies have shown, it is high income people that are receiving almost all the benefits from electric vehicle incentives. That is classist and racist, and must stop. We might eventually get to higher income levels, but only after replacement in the lower income levels has been achieved. That means we need to immediately end the programs as they exist and revise them to be equitable. If you are an electric car booster and and not working to achieve equity, you are just being an entitled jerk.

Please, let me not hear anything about electric vehicles the next time I go to a meeting or jump on Twitter. Please.