YouTube’s Loaded With EV Disinformation::When it comes to articles on a website like CleanTechnica, there are two kinds of articles. First, there are the … [continued]
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youtube’s loaded with
EVdisinformation…In other news, sky’s still blue.
Twitter isn’t blue anymore. It’s black like Elon Musk’s heart.
Ugh, so metal
That’s like the nicest thing anyone said about him
To be fair EVs only solve the tail pipe emission problem of cars and not like the 50 others. It’s would be much better to focus on public transit and pedestrian and bike infrastructure, that solves more issues and is accessible to everyone.
They solve tailpipe emissions AND all the emissions associated with mining, refining and transporting the fuel - which is enormous and usually left out of the calculations. Public transportation / walkable infrastructure is god-tier but lots of people live away from dense neighbourhoods. Ev’s are not a golden bullet solution to climate change but they’re pretty good and neither is anything else. It makes sense to attack the issue from as many angles as possible instead of getting all tunnel-vision about one particular solution.
AND all the emissions associated with mining, refining and transporting the fuel
Except it’s nowhere near that simple. Manufacturing and shipping batteries is hardly a clean process. And the impact of the fuel is dependent upon the method used to generate the electricity, and both in the US and globally fossil fuels are still used widely for that.
Plus a lot of the pollution and carbon generation is virtually identical for personal vehicles regardless of how it’s powered. You still have tires that wear, tons of plastics and fluids (even EV’s need lubrication), and of course all of the metals involved. Then of course there is road infrastructure: thousands upon thousands of miles of asphalt and concrete separating neighborhoods and habitats. Acres upon acres of impermeable pavement soaking up heat and occupying valuable space that could be used for something more productive.
EV’s are better than ICE options because they at least will get greener as the electrical grid does, but still have the same fundamental issues that all personal vehicles do. You could add in bil-diesel and hydrogen cars too. It’s saving pennies when things like better public transportation and more walkable cities saves pounds.
The pollution from EVs is far lower than ICEs even if they are powered by 100% coal - the absolute worst electricity source. This is because a large generator is inherently more efficient than lots of small ones simply due to the efficiency of scale. And most grids are far cleaner - the UK uses almost ZERO coal.
The problems that you’ve just described are real and I support your solutions to them - but they apply to the entirety of modern industrial society. Public investment should absolutely go to these things, but since people are spending their private money on EVs ( which in many cases makes economic sense AND are better on emissions ) , why push against that? They are two totally different revenue streams. Spending on one doesn’t detract from the other. A private individual can’t buy a bus. American suburbia is not going to become walkable any time soon.
Except it’s not private money. Private vehicles have been heavily subsidized for almost a century in the US. We’ve had decade after decades or tax credits, interest-free loans, and bailouts to the oil and automotive industries. Most local road maintenance is financed with debt, and that debt has started to bankrupt municipalities. Minimum parking requirements encourage sprawl and reduce the tax base by filling these municipalities with land that is economically unproductive.
This all applies to electric too. Tesla famously would not exist if not for years and years of government money propping them up and artificially lowering their prices. Plus all the incentives for building owners to add charging stations, and the billions of dollars going towards expanding EV charging infrastructure in general.
And if you want to optimize for efficiency, personal EV’s are still not even close to buses or trains. Personal vehicle ownership absolutely does NOT make economic sense for anyone except the owners and managers of the companies who profit from them.
American suburbs aren’t ever going to become walkable if everyone just keeps saying “well it’s just too hard to have nice things” and keeps throwing money at perpetuating the problem instead of using that money to get out of the hole.
EVs are a good stopgap solution for climate change while we rework our urban environments to be less car-centric.
But we have to start somewhere, and as an individual I can pester my representatives to improve public transit & infrastructure and at the same time look at EVs next time I buy a car. One doesn’t preclude the other, and EVs are still a step in the march towards carbo-neutrality. They’re not the destination, but they absolutely have a role to play in getting there.
but lots of people live away from dense neighbourhoods.
then we should focus on creating a 15 minute city
This takes time and a lot more money. It’s something we should do in parallel, but even if we started this today, any EV sold in the next decade would be long off the road before sizable impactful progress had been made on 15min cities.
There are also tire and brake emissions that no one talks about.
Tires sure, the vehicles all need to get lighter and smaller. EV Hummers just straight up don’t need to exist and are a danger to anyone near a road or parking lot.
Brakes however, are largely used less than in ICE vehicles. Regenerative braking turns much of the kinetic energy that would become heat and brake dust back to electricity (and some heat) instead.
Smaller vehicles will help reduce brake use even more. We need to limit heights, weights and sizes of vehicles since there’s no near term way to eliminate them. Even Texas is raising taxes base on the weight of the vehicle.
These are bad from a local air-quality perspective, but they’re not relevant to climate change.
all the emissions associated with mining, refining and transporting the fuel
Not trying to be pedantic… But, EVs have the same essential issue, their batteries require the same mining, refining, and transportation process as any other powered vehicle. And if your electricity isn’t sourced from renewables, you’re just kicking the problem down the road.
And if your electricity isn’t sourced from renewables, you’re just kicking the problem down the road.
Partially. With the exception of maybe coal, fossil fuel energy plants are more carbon efficient than an internal combustion engine can be just due to difference in scale.
The better option is to have it powered through 100% renewable, but it isn’t an automatic lost cause.
The mining only happens once. The materials in batteries are infinitely recyclable.
Oil is single use and the impacts of mining it has caused sooooooo much damage, news agencies don’t even bother covering it anymore.
While it is recyclable unfortunately no one is doing that as recycling is more expensive than mining.
AND all the emissions associated with mining, refining and transporting the fuel
Highly dependent on the grid you use to charge the car.
Not really though.
If the grid is powered completely by coal, and the government has no plans to phase out said coal and the grid is going to stay all coal for the next 30 years. Then yes, in that case EVs aren’t a great choice.
But like anything else and the “but the grid is currently not clean” arguments don’t really hold water.
To be fair EVs only solve the tail pipe emission problem
Gotta start somewhere. At least I can say that I’m part of the solution and that I am not one of the negative nellies who don’t do squat because they cannot find the ONE solution that solves everything.
gotta start somewhere
Then start with vastly increasing the amount of bicycle Infrastructure so that people can safely use their bike to go to schools, work, home, buy groceries. Give subsidies to buy bikes for even less money than they cost anyway, increase taxes on shit cars like pick tricks that nobody needs in a city setting
Invest heavily in public transportation. Make busses actually useful, start making an actual rail infrastructure in the US instead of… Whatever that turtle crap is you have now.
Same for walking, which would require overhauling urbanisation laws, granted, but still, that would also make your cities actually nice to live in.
If you think that all is an impossibly expensive job then please be reminded that gasoline is heavily subsidized and bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure costs pennies on the dollar compared to car infrastructure.
Biggest issue is stopping the oil and car manufacturer lobbyists who will all stop all of this. Why have nice cities that make big money and recover your environment if thateans that a couple of rich guys will get less rich?
An individual cannot do any of that. The best they can do is vote. Buying an EV on top of that to limit their own impact is a separate issue.
The transition from EVs to public transit, biking, etc has to come eventually, too. We can however already do that and places have successfully done so. Look at the Netherlands for example. EVs are in the way of transitioning to better public infrastructure and will only delay it.
Ev don’t exist to protect the environment. They exist to protect the car companies.
Believe it or not but the “ONE solution that solves everything” is already here. It’s right in the comment you responded to. Not only does public transport and bike infrastructure cut massively down on CO2 it also helps with mental health as we aren’t constantly 10+ miles away from each other but we also aren’t getting constantly frustrated with driving or isolated. And not to mention with having everyone closer together wel also have room for car guys to hoon about in race tracks. And because ideally the only people driving would be car guys they’d be quite the minority and the emissions from that would be minimal anyway. There’s almost 0 downsides to walkable cities. Even car guys have something to gain from this. Well finally get to the point that we can focus on the CO2 dumps that are airplanes.
This is what I keep saying, as a gear head. So many people who like cars hate public transport, but they don’t understand that getting people who don’t like to drive off the roads would only make driving better. Also, the only roads that might (and should) close would be in city centers, places it sucks to drive anyways.
It’s would be much better to focus on public transit and pedestrian and bike infrastructure, that solves more issues and is accessible to everyone.
Or both…?
Yeah this sort of either or mentality and that “perfect is the enemy of good” is an absurd argument.
Make things better if even a little and iterate. At least you’re moving in the right direction.
infrastructure and public transit solve the same issue but infinitely better while EVs are accessible only for people with enough disposable income and are comparably very bad at helping with climate change so I’d rather focus on a more accessible solution that helps more.
In my country people buy used cars pretty much always because of cost and used EVs aren’t really a thing I have seen. There also aren’t many charging stations and local power is mostly produced from oil shale so EVs do squat to help with anything. Public transit on the other hand is easy to advocate for because it’s widely used and most people prefer the tram over car in my city already which is like the best form of transportation over short distances.
I’d rather focus on a more accessible solution that helps more.
I get that. But I think it’s extremely important to not mix climate policies with ideology. You risk alienating a very large chunk of the population, especially in the US, who are ideologically against public transportation.
We need everyone to get onboard with the green transition. Also conservatives.
I’m not in the US so I’m not advocating for anything there as I have no power to do that. Here advocating for public transit over cars is pretty simple and accessible, also not alienating to any group I’m aware of. I’m just saying EVs are not very helpful in comparison to public transit.
While public transit is great. It’s a lot more expensive to setup, and even more expensive to make convenient if the city wasn’t built with public transit in mind.
It’s just not a medium term solution for most north american cities, I do desperately hope that cities will start investing more in public transit, and encourage more dense housing, but realistically that is a 30-80 year timeframe. And that’s assuming 100s of municipal governments all get on board. The political lift here is also very large.
The reality right now in North America is, if you’re heavily advocating against electric vehicles, all you’re really doing is adding support to the oil and gas industry trying to stop the outright ban of ICE cars.
We need to do more public transit, and we need to stop using ICE vehicles.
Actually maintaining car infrastructure is quite a lot more expensive than setting up public transit. The issue is that the effects of climate change are here and will get worse faster and faster while EVs are a drop in the ocean as far as solutions are.
Sure, advocate for EVs if you want but don’t pretend they will have a meaningful effect with the environment unless you can replace every ICE vehicle globally and even then public transit would have a massively higher impact while easier and cheaper to implement.
The highest impact for climate change would be to force the 10 or so companies that produce like 70% of CO2 to not do that or just bomb their factories or something.
Which car infrastructure are you talking about in this case?
Roads and parking mostly
Roads don’t really go away with public transit, they might need less maintenance overall, but they still need to exist in some form, and roads lasting 10% longer doesn’t seem like a huge savings
Parking is mostly privately owned, so saving money on parking doesn’t really make more money available to invest in public transit.
They also introduce their own share of issues like increased road wear due to weight and environmental costs from the mining of rare metals like cobalt and lithium.
With the fact that vehicle size is generally trending towards larger, at least stateside; we’re looking at a situation where those shiny electric pick up trucks that need a battery that’s four to eight times larger than a compacts or sedans battery are going to require further scaling of rare metal mining and are going to result in vehicles that blow way past the weight of anything our roads were designed to handle. Public transit is just far more sustainable. Trains can be hooked directly to a grid so no ridiculously heavy battery, buses carry the same number of people on a road that it would take… Let’s be generous… 30 cars, so even if they were using a cell larger than a pick up truck, their wear would be far lower than the 30 or so cars they could replace.
Of course the issue with America is we’ve got bigger fish to fry like boys who kiss boys and people who want to fuck without having kids.
In terms of mining they kinda shifts it around, because gasoline cars also use rare metals (although smaller volumes). Weight depends, the batteries certainly need to be larger (currently) but motors are smaller and you ditch a lot of mechanics.
But public transit is definitely better overall
The damage to roads from added weight is absolutely tiny, practically negligible. Even pickup trucks barely cause any damage. Semis do exponentially more damage.
I am against cars getting more like everyday electronic gadgets. Why do you need a selfie camera inside it? Also who attends zoom calls in it? Evs are notorious for doing so. Not to mention all the privacy concerns over the data these smartcars collect.
At an EV car showroom the other day, one of the big main focus function of the car that the salesman tried to pitch was “you can browse Amazon or do shopping online on the infotainment system”. Also, you have to pay for a subscription to "unlock " the top speed and torque.
This is not the USA, so maybe it’s just a thing in my country.
BMW is already doing the subscription thing for certain features. Mercedes too.
Afaik they pulled back on some of those
Was it BMW because they’re awful for that kind of thing. But then again you deserve it for buying a BMW don’t you.
Not that this really has anything to do with electric cars the same thing could be pulled off with ICE vehicles. I don’t actually mind my car having cameras and microphones but if my car is going to have cameras I want all the data stored locally unless I choose to upload it to some online location.
Tesla has a game system on its huge touchscreen panel. At least you have to be parked to use it, but that’s still fucking stupid.
I don’t like or understand it therefore it is stupid.
My wife played some Fallout Shelter while we were in the carwash one time. I played some arcade game while in the waiting with my daugher while the wife was inside the store getting some groceries. It’s pretty neat. And when we go on a roadtrip next summer it might be nice to play a game of chess while charging.
It’s a car. Use your phone or something. Cars aren’t game systems.
It’s a car. Use your phone or something. Cars aren’t game systems.
AKA …
Bah Fucking Humbug!
Nothing wrong with playing a video game (or watch a show/movie) in a car while you’re waiting for somebody in the store. Doesn’t matter which device it’s being played on.
My car is. It’s also one of the fastest family sedan on the road, it has almost zero maintenance cost. The future is now old man, sorry if you can not keep up.
That has nothing to do with what I’m talking about. Also… It must be nice to be rich, but bragging about it is not especially civil.
Not rich, older Model S with warranty since it was sold by Tesla. 24K USD split between two people is quite affordable.
It’s stupid
It’s completely out of your way if you don’t go looking for it. For those that enjoy it it is great. Too bad you are so close minded and simple you can not see other people’s point of view. How limiting it must be for you.
I worry about features in cars.
For example, our Mazda has headlights that turn with the steering wheel (ala Tucker Torpedo’s center light). Neat idea and it is a useful feature while driving at night on the rural roads by our house. But what will happen when it fails, and how much will they cost to replace? (I’ve been told they “fail straight ahead”, but who really knows for sure. I’m hoping we get rid of the car before that happens.)
I saw a pickup with automatic folding mirrors having an issue with them folding and unfolding while the guy was driving. I followed him through several traffic lights and watched it happen a few times. Automatic folding mirrors would be a nice feature on my pickup, but I’d rather not have them fail especially when I’m towing a trailer and be completely blind to the rear-right.
I’ve seen pickups with the running bar that folds out. I’m not sure there’s much value in that other than “oooh shiny” but if it fails to open while I’m getting out, it could hurt.
Our Mazda again has several software bugs in the infotainment system. None of these are critical, but it does make me wonder how much testing they did on the software that controls the brakes, for example. Are the brakes going to fail to release someday? I already know the computer has some control of them, because of the auto-hold feature that I usually keep turned off, and because I sometimes notice a slight delay in releasing the brakes when I take my foot off the pedal.
The FCA Uconnect 8.4 infotainment systems allowed an attacker to remotely take over throttle, brakes, etc. until they were patched. That’s an obvious safety issue.
And that crash at the Peace Bridge last week, it seems very likely it was caused by an issue with the car, rather than the driver (there is evidence the driver was alert and trying to stop, and he swerved around another car that turned in front of him before the crash). Turns out the right-hand drive version of that car had a recall of an issue with the accelerator…which supposedly did not effect left-hand drive vehicles. But here we are with two people dead and a third injured from a vehicle that may have been accelerating out of control through no fault of the driver.
The point is that including additional features, even if only software, increases the complexity of the system and makes errors more likely. It increases the chances of some unexpected interaction or failure. It increases the surface of a software attack for a potential safety issue. It makes the code that much harder to test for bugs in general and security in particular.
our Mazda has headlights that turn with the steering wheel
That sounds pretty cool, but also horrible if they fail as you seem worried about, when they are pointing to the side. I am partial to the little extra lights that shine to the side when turning sharply. If they should fail they will not impact the vision ahead.
automatic folding mirrors
Yeah, we disable ours in the winter because of issues when snow and ice builds up and they automatically try to fold in or out and get stuck. Disabling them in the winter time works well. I just use them manually when it is safe to do so. Quite nice in tight parking garages.
I sometimes notice a slight delay in releasing the brakes when I take my foot off the pedal.
An Audi Etron in Norway just had a complete failure of the breaking functionality. https://dinside.dagbladet.no/motor/skrekkopplevelse-vi-hadde-griseflaks/80583545 It is in Norwegian but you can right click and translate to english ( at least in Edge ). There is still a mechanical connection to the breaks most likely, but it is hard to break hard enough when the car weighs 2.5 Tons.
And that crash at the Peace Bridge
Have not seen that one. That is terrible. There should be complete separation between the software that controls the drivetrain, breaks etc in a modern car, and the part that plays spotify. In my car atleast. I can reboot the screen that shows the map, spotify, and speedometer while driving and the essential car functionality such as breaking, gears and blinking still works with no issue.
That’s why I never bought any smartphones, I wondered how I’d make phone calls if something else broke on it. Like what happens if the camera dies, or the battery fails? /s
Oh right, you fix it or replace it like everything else in the world.
We should probably stop advancing technology for the sake of the few drawbacks….sounds kinda silly doesn’t it?
Your smartphone failing doesn’t involve 3,000+lbs of heavy machinery flying down the highway, now does it? Your smartphone failing isn’t going to kill you or anyone else. A car failing sure as hell can. That alone requires it to have a greater standard of quality and care.
You speak as if there’s never been any recalls of cars in the past, before they had electronic and computer systems in them.
My Ford Explorer trunk door almost fell on my head and killed me. It’s tires shredded while driving on the freeway at high speeds, almost killing me and my family, twice. Neither of those had electronics or computer parts.
I don’t think you’ll have any car manufactured anymore that’s not complex, it’s just part of what happens over time, new technology is taken advantage of in the manufacturing of products.
I’m not sure I follow your point here. Even necessary parts of a car failed for you, and almost caused injury. Now people are advocating adding unnecessary parts to cars that may also fail and cause injuries or death.
I see the point of view. But I find it stupid
Fair enough then :D
I hate that grotesque faces are a clickbait technique.
That and the feigned look of surprise youtubers use, mouth open eyes wide with titles like “mr beast reaction compilation”
Only on EV? It’s hard to find reliable informacion between 99% influencer crap and bullshit. YT is good for music and some movies which someone had uploaded, little else.
There’s plenty of good quality content on YouTube but you actually have to subscribe to the good stuff. If you would like exclusively on the recommended videos you’ll watch utter crap
I know that you need to subscribe reliable info channels, which I have done. Naturally there is good content on YT, but this, among the amount of content there is… how much? 1%-2%, maybe 3%? Trusted source is something else
The problem is that those nuggets of content are near impossible to find on today’s YouTube unless you had found them before all the ai bloat channels using ai to crank out videos of nothing.
How does clicking “subscribe” get you any better content from yt? Less clicks? Sure. Good stuff, no.
Or do you mean YT premium?
You subscribe to stuff you like and then it shows you more of that stuff and less of the general dross what do you confuse about?
There’s a button at the bottom of the app and on the left of the web page that says “Subscriptions”.
I get that, but how does that get you better content?? It’s no different if you sub or don’t sub to a channel
Que? Good channels are good channels. Some of these people have standards and stick to them. Like Project Farm and Essential Craftsman.
Like I thought.
Subscribing does not do anything special other than bookmark channels. It does not give you better content at all which is why none of the responses make any sense.
If you only subscribe to good content creators, you no longer have the click bait garbage recommendations. It’s not a bookmark. It’s a separate feed.
YouTube used to be good for music until they put 2 ads before AND after EVERY VIDEO!
I know this comes off as “old man yelling at clouds” but there used to be a time when there were NO ads on YouTube. You could make an entire playlist of songs without having to hear a single ad.
Novadays not even a Playlist, without YT paused it after some pieces or in the middle of those, which also need an extension to skip this, apart of another extension to avoid the clickbaits in most of the videos. As least, YT only with a good adblocker + the uFrame script + YT Nonstop or similar (depends on the store) + Clickbait Remover, as basics, or otherwise and better frontends (before Google kills these all) Piped, Invidious, PokeTube, or desktop, apps like MotionBox Video Browser (the best, but shitty UI), FreeTube or at least SMplayer. YT lacks a really alternative, the only I know which in ammount of content can it be in the future is Odysee, PeerTube is nice but the ammount of content…mhe. Only for music I use this one sometimes, there genres for every taste and mood 24/7 nonstop https://www.internet-radio.com , well in the browser or also with downloadable m3u files in any mediaplayer.
Fuck google seriously. The fact that these videos are not deleted and they don’t detect all these obviously fake comments tells a lot.
Has anybody else noticed that youtube is porting comments from related videos? I’m seeing the exact verbatim comment jumping from vid to vid in the same category per the algorithm, with fresh vote counts. It’s very obvious youtube is stuffing the comments with old material just to generate more views. Kind of pathetic really. Terrible user experience.
yea, i think thats just bots reposting the same comment.
Are you sure it’s YouTube doing that and not just bot accounts? It seems like you’re jumping to the conspiracy conclusion.
If that’s true, that would indicate that the vast majority of comments are just bot spam, making it even more of a cesspool than I originally thought. None of the comments are advertising anything. I guess there’s money to be made in stuffing the comment section in either direction.
Not surprising considering it’s the biggest shilling platform currently available. Low price of entry and easy way to reach masses combined with plenty of people with large following and questionable morals… you can push pretty much any idea and agenda. But good thing they don’t allow swearing. That’s just too much.
Lol, you just described every open content platform out there. This is not a YouTube-specific problem. You can’t personally control what’s uploaded on these sites, but you can choose if and how you interact with it.
YouTube does control what people upload… however they have a specific fetish on what is punished and what allowed.
Any idiot with a camera can put videos on YT so I’m not surprised. There’s misinformation about literally everything on there or any other platform that doesn’t restrict who can post. When the hell did news become nothing more than stating the obvious?
Don’t even need a camera
Just like Toyoda likes it. Him and his lemmings were parroting how bad sales were for their garbage EVs.
YouTube’s loaded with disinformation about everything. Especially egregious are the awful ads YouTube runs about scammy health cures and devices.
Which is why we need downvote buttons by default for those videos. People say it’s unnecessary, but you at least have to let the upvotes go to zero if there are that many downvotes.
We need laws that make it illegal to disinform people for profit.
There are, and have been, but Republicans constantly work to repeal them, calling it ‘deregulation’.
Businesses would sell you cyanide and call it a weight-loss miracle cure if the laws didn’t prevent it.
