alt Hacker NewsThe road to electric in charts and data
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I live in a city which is far better navigated by foot or by bicycle than by car - it was, after all, designed for the horses ass.
So I converted to electric - at first, electric moped, but now I ride a more powerful electric motorbike. It is simply a pleasure to get on and ride every day, smooth, quiet, efficient - and because I’m not car-sized, extremely fun to get around.
I encourage everyone to not just get off the petroleum treadmill, but to also try to live closer to the things that are important. I know a vast swath of humanity has to navigate the plains every day just for survival - but getting a closer, more local outlook on life can be rewarding too, and converting to electric has certainly provided that for me personally.
I found https://www.racfoundation.org/research/mobility/still-standi... a fascinating report, especially how nearly half of London has off-road parking.
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"datePublished": "2024-09-26T13:11:00.000Z",
In general, is it more efficient for society to invest in electric cars, or in electric trains?
French TGV trains have been planed as turbotrain powered by gas turbines, but after 1973 oil crisis evolved into electric trains.
Moving to electric is not some optional thing that you can choose not to do. Fossil fuels are a finite resource. They will run out at some point.
We can either make the shift now or we'll have to do it later. Much better to do change early and invest in it early.
This seems to lack 2025 data, unless BEVs have suddenly disappeared! (Which they haven't, everyone around here in stockbrokerland seems to have one.)
(2024)
EVs are great if you're wealthy and have the prerequisite 'EV-compatible home' (with garage/driveway for charging)
But a lot of UK housing relies on on-street parking, and there's flats with car parks where charging isn't currently practical. So far there's very little attempt to solve this, leaving green tech mostly as 'expensive toys for the rich'. Roll-out of public chargers is slow, and they're always going to be vastly more expensive to use compared to home charging.
Similarly, many people are locked out of heat pumps and home solar due to 'incompatible homes'. Most problems the UK faces come down to the excessive cost of housing.
(And meanwhile, the government are quite determined to keep the majority of PLEVs - e-scooters and >250W ebikes, entirely illegal, while illegal use grows rapidly and is policed very inconsistently)