• grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
    764·
    1 year ago

    The EVs the government really ought to be subsidizing are electric bicycles, not cars.

    • gronjo45@lemm.ee
      11·
      1 year ago

      Right? I wish more people would consider the product life cycle analysis of what they want to purchase. Virtue signaling doesn’t help, and nor does more scrap ending up in a landfill at the end of the cradle to grave trip.

      I’d love an E bike! It would be great to take the train into the city for me and use it to get around. I haven’t been able to afford insurance and still don’t have a driver’s license. It’d save me a killing and allow me to actually save my money than have it guzzled up by gas, car maintenance, and overall way less hassle for me. I’d rather not have to worry about features eventually getting pay walled by the shitfotainment system…

    • doktorseven@lemmy.world
      1263·
      1 year ago

      Why? So they can oppress people who have mobility issues? Why is it that every single time some small brained Fuck Cars person posts, it’s horribly and insultingly ableist?

      • hex_m_hell@slrpnk.net
        39·
        1 year ago

        Biking in the Netherlands, you regularly see people with different mobility devices riding in the bike lanes. That’s because bike lanes are also for people with mobility issues. The “anti-car is ableist” argument is actually itself ableist because a lot of people with mobility issues actually can’t drive either. Continued investment in car infrastructure vs bike infrastructure traps these people at home.

        https://youtu.be/B9ly7JjqEb0?si=c-Ah66UjEBhEaCuF

      • arthurpizza@lemmy.worldEnglish
        301·
        1 year ago

        If you gave a shit about people with mobility issues you’d know how dumb that statement is.

      • Fried_out_Kombi@lemmy.worldEnglish
        26·
        1 year ago

        Last year, my sister had her driver’s license suspended because of a medical condition, but she’s still perfectly capable of riding a bike. But the problem is our societal assumption of cars-for-all-whether-you-like-it-or-not means her neighborhood street design is extremely hostile to her getting around by bike safely, and it’s way too sprawling and car-dependent to walk anywhere. There’s also no public transit within a reasonable walking distance.

        So I might ask you: Do you believe people like my sister deserve the same right to mobility as the rest of us? If so, why support a system that make life actively hostile to her and people like her? You act as if disabilities are a monolith, and that cars are only ever their saviors, as if cars are never the thing making life actively more difficult for many people.

      • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.ml
        273·
        1 year ago

        You do realize that cars and car centric infrastructure make it harder for disabled people to get places right? You do realize that public transport is infinitly more beneficial to the disabled than cars are right?

      • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
        141·
        1 year ago

        What a pathetic attempt at trolling.

        First of all, nothing I wrote was ableist and you fucking know it.

        Second, you say that as if subsidizing cars isn’t itself ableist, since there are plenty of disabled folks who can’t drive and therefore rely on infrastructure that accommodates alternatives like transit and walking.

        In reality, subsidizing biking doesn’t affect the disabled in any way (except possibly to help them by encouraging better lanes and ramps that can be used by both bicycles and wheelchairs). In contrast, further subsidizing car-centrism very much hurts them and you damn well know it.

      • mrpants@midwest.socialEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        Car infra is the most ableist thing in transportation you idiot.

        Try being vision impaired and driving. Try being in a wheelchair and getting down the average American street. Try having a limp and crossing a large intersection in 20 seconds. Try being an entirely able bodied person and getting to the other side of a highway that cuts through your city.

  • x4740N@lemmy.worldEnglish
    501·
    1 year ago

    Is this ai generated ? or is it just poorly photoshoped because there’s a lot of texture detail missing from the image

    Edit: it also looks like someone told it to make Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and it created a Asian-European version of her because the face seems to similar

  • s_s@lemm.eeEnglish
    6520·
    1 year ago

    Electric cars are still a 3 ton object you’ll needlessly try to dispose of in 5 years.

    Electric cars are here to save the car companies, not the environment.

    • the_third@feddit.de
      442·
      1 year ago

      Mine weighs 1.5 tons and is going strongly into it’s sixth year of existence at about 95% capacity left. 3/4 of the year I’m driving it exclusively using power from my own roof. It uses about 14kWh/100km which is the equivalent of about 1.3 Liters of Gasoline. I fail to see how all of this is not an advantage.

            • the_third@feddit.deDeutsch
              2·
              1 year ago

              Yes, a noble idea, sure, but what do I do now with the ressources available to me? I am not a politician, people here laugh about the green party because most of them are farmers, land owners and factory workers, so voting green has some sort of meaning for the stats but doesn’t impact anything in local politics. I don’t own a company, I’m not responsible for public transport or any decisions related to it and I’m not rich enough for outright bribery lobbyism, so what I can do is:

              • turn most of my appliances to running on electricity
              • make as much electricity as possible locally from renewables

              Hence, electric cars. Oh yeah, and taking the bike when possible, I do that.

            • the_third@feddit.deEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              I have an electric bike for those instances where I only need to transport myself and a backpack. But then again, I’ve got a few hectars of forest to take care of, family within a 100km radius and a girlfriend and a dog, so riding my bike is not always an option.

            • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
              11·
              1 year ago

              Yeah I am not doing that again. It was fun when I was single but not so much when you have kids. Yes I have done the sidecar thing and yes I have been to regions of the world where this is the norm. Not doing it again, all it takes is one accident and my family will be dead.

      • FiniteLooper@lemm.eeEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        That’s awesome, but how much does a car + charger + home batteries + solar roof cost upfront? I know it will eventually pay itself off.

        I would love to go the same path but I know the upfront cost of all of this stuff can be pretty insane

        • the_third@feddit.deEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          Home batteries, wallbox for the cars (honestly, those are just fancy plugs with some switching logic) and panels was about 30k€, heatpump and floor heating was about 60k€. The heatpump helps with using even more of my own energy. Currently I’m almost 100% self sufficient (including mobility, except for lonmg range drives) between the middle of march and the middle of october, which is okay. At current inflation rates all this will have paid for itself in about 18 years in comparison to more traditional versions of all of it.

      • mrpants@midwest.socialEnglish
        61·
        1 year ago

        It’s actually spewing tire and brake particles everywhere. It’s responsible for 30% of microplastics in our environment. It should not be anywhere near our main mode of transportation in the future.

    • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
      107·
      1 year ago

      Got any stats for that or is it just the usual anti-EV BS where you equate EVs to cellphones? No? Of course you don’t and are just making shit up.

        • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
          3·
          1 year ago

          I’m referring to the “dispose of in 5 years” comment, as if EVs are easily outmoded throwaway tech like cellphones.

          A fairly standard anti-EV comment, often paired with the “worse for the environment” comment.

          • schnokobaer@feddit.de
            1·
            1 year ago

            Coming straight from “unless 100% of people abstain 100% I’m not calling it change”-folks. There’s significant shifts in both of these issues. Meat more so, or leading ahead compared to cars, but the fact that some people aren’t going to drop one or either doesn’t change anything about that.

            So maybe efforts to reduce the impact of those kinds of things aren’t necessarily wasted.

            Not only are they not wasted, they are absolutely necessary. What’s important to understand is, however, that large parts of the negative impact of cars aren’t affected by EVs at all. It’s not just internal combustion engine exhaust pollution, it’s the waste of space, gigatons of asphalt for roads and parking, microplastics from rubber tires driven endless miles by a billion people, traffic congestions and the never-ending demand for another lane to fix them, ““cities”” sprawling out so far that everything is too far to get to by any means other than driving, pedestrian (if such a thing even still exists in your neck of the woods) safety, noise, socioeconomic factors such as the high upkeep costs vs low-income population who are reliant on a car in a car dependant world, …

            We have to transition to EVs either way, but it’s not going to fix anything meaningful. And that’s just the neutral outlook, a real danger we’re facing is that through car manufacturers’ greenwashing that is already in full swing, we coax ourselves to a good eco conscience over our no-emissions cars and continue growing the dependency, which would eventually increase the impact. The only real way of reducing the impact is by reducing cars and car dependency where it’s possible. And people are, very slowly, waking up to the fact that this is more often the case than they were led to believe by lobby driven media and politics of the last 60 years.

  • dangblingus@lemmy.world
    395·
    1 year ago

    Not only does pink girl have 5 knuckles where one would expect to find only 4, but she’s also somehow in the drivers seat at the same time as Glasses. And she’s wearing her backpack while also seated.

    Man, AI sucks.

    • scottywh@lemmy.world
      152·
      1 year ago

      90+% of the AI generated content is just straight garbage.

      I don’t get why people are so obsessed with it to be honest.

      • DeathWearsANecktie@lemm.ee
        83·
        1 year ago

        I got AI to generate an image very similar to a piece of digital artwork I did, based on a description. In the space of 10 or so seconds, it created something that looks much better than the piece that took me like 4 hours to do. And I think it really captured the mood and spirit of what I originally made.

        I think AI can generate some really excellent pieces, sometimes it just takes a few regenerations and changes to your description prompt. Although it’s not perfect, it’s become pretty amazing IMO.

    • ChronosWing@lemmy.zipEnglish
      52·
      1 year ago

      Give it time, soon you won’t be able to tell the difference and that is honestly the scary part.

  • pedz@lemmy.ca
    344·
    1 year ago

    I don’t drive a car, so where’s my money for saving the planet? Where are my rebates for shoes and bikes?

    Subsidizing the car industry is indeed dumb. I don’t think it’s hurting the economy though, as the goal is to continue to sell and replace millions of cars. Still, the infrastructure for cars is probably costing us much more on the long term though. Maintenance of expressways, space for parkings, and other infra for cars costs billions.

    Just replacing a single expressway interchange in my city cost 4.3 billion! For ONE interchange.

    So again, where are the rebates for people taking public transit? Where are the investments in public transit? Why is it only on the condition of BUYING A CAR?

    • Rehwyn@lemmy.world
      17·
      1 year ago

      Worth noting that the recent Infrastructure bill passed under Biden includes $108 billion for public transportation (Link). This is much larger than the $7.5B set aside for electric vehicles.

      As much as I despise our car-centric infrastructure, climate change is a large enough threat that we should seriously consider and pursue multiple avenues of decreasing our emissions as fast as possible. Fully transitioning away from auto-dominant transportation in the US is, frankly, not realistic in a timely manner with the public support and resources available. Not only will transportation infrastructure need changing, but even the design of our cities. So while we should pursue broader public transportation, we should also pursue other initiatives with high likelihood of broad acceptance and rapid implementation. Electric vehicles seems to be one such initiative.

    • BingoBangoBongo@midwest.socialEnglish
      5·
      1 year ago

      REI is leading an initiative to give tax incentives for electric bikes. Seems like they are the main voice behind it though and I don’t dare to hope.

    • Roboticide@lemmy.world
      42·
      1 year ago

      There are absolutely incentives - tax credits and rebates - for buying electric bikes in some areas. My state is offering $500 off any ebike purchase.

      The auto industry is not being subsidized by consumer incentives. The auto industry is being subsidized by tax credits whenever they build a new facility, which is still arguably dumb. Consumer incentives are designed to get the average citizen to buy an EV over an ICE vehicle. The consumer is gonna buy a car anyway - someone in the market for a car isn’t going to buy a bike, even an ebike, based off of price. They’re buying a mode of transportation based off of lifestyle. Many simply can’t commute to work via bike or public transportation, and if a credit gets them to buy an EV over an ICE vehicle, this is a net benefit.

      The solution to public transportation is not to attempt to disincentivize or punish car drivers, then build mass transit. Gotta build the mass transit first. The financial incentives for people taking mass transit are the fact that the most expensive mass transit in the US costs ~$1,500/year. The cost of owning an operating the average car in the US is ~$10,700/year. Yes, build more mass transit to free us from being slaved to expensive automobiles! But until then, preventing incentives for greener vehicles that would be purchased by those who have no choice is just shooting yourself in the foot.

  • NotSoCoolWhip@lemmy.world
    15·
    1 year ago

    I bought a 2002 Honda insight. One of the first hybrids, except the electric motor went out, so it’s all gas now. Still got slapped with an extra $150 so called “hybrid tax” so the state can subsidize a lower usage of gas that they would have received tax on. Literally incentivizes gasoline vehicles. What the fuck?

      • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 year ago

        My first one was $400, and still works just fine, I just left it in another state. The one I have now was $1200. Admittedly I got the first one for a steal in 2018, and prices have more than doubled since then.

        $2500 gets you the top of the line, not just a good E-bike.