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[MMBeilis]

This message was self-deleted by its author (MMBeilis) on Fri Mar 21, 2025, 11:33 PM. When the original post in a discussion thread is self-deleted, the entire discussion thread is automatically locked so new replies cannot be posted.

[MissB]

1. ? No.

I’m not encouraging anyone to spend money in this economy.

[Blues Heron]

2. Of course not teslas, there is a world wide boycott on them right now. They are... off the menu

[Nixie]

13. And the boycott is working!

Great news about the Nazi’s sinking stock.

[LS0999]

3. I doubt they're any better for the environment as a whole

If you want to do better for the environment expand mass transit and stop treating it as a makeshift homeless shelter and mental ward. The adverse effects of EVs are shifted to lithium mining and electric production on the grid.

[AZJonnie]

10. I think if you power your electric vehicle with solar or wind it's def. better for the climate overall

If not, it becomes much more questionable.

[CentralMass]

12. I wont make your eyes gloss over with the math, but EV's do produce considerably less CO2 at the power plant than

Gasoline powered equivilent vehicle do at the tailpipe.
Mining the materials for EV batteries does have an enviromental impact, but there a few key points. Lithium is infinitely recyclable and more and more battery recycling plants are being constructed globally. The greener our power generation becomes, the smaller the carbon footprint of EV's get.

I will never buy a Tesla while Elon Musk is involved with the company. I will however most likely purchase another brand of EV.

[Solly Mack]

4. Enriching Musk is good for the environment? How is the EPA doing under DOGE? The BLM?

EV, yes. All things Musk, no.

Mass transit, best of all.

[RainCaster]

5. I'm keeping my 26 year old truck

It's paid off and has very low miles.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

6. People pretend that there is no cost to the electric

batteries that power Teslas, or any other electric vehicle.

I've been having trouble getting my friends who actually own Teslas, realize that the batteries are not magic, they didn't come from nowhere, that there are actual costs to them.

Meanwhile, I'm staying with my 2017 Honda Fit. Which is a stick shift, and were I in charge, everyone with two feet would be required to drive a stick. Others can have an automatic.

What I despise about automatics is that when you take your foot off the brake, it starts moving. Excuse me? I want to do something to actually make the car move.

[tinrobot]

36. Everyone should drive a stick? Should we also go back to 8-tracks and AM radio?

We can't be stuck in the 20th century. The rest of the world is rapidly going electric for their transportation in this century.

If we snooze on EVs, we'll lose out on decades of manufacturing business that China will be happy to accept.

[Ron Green]

7. EVs aren't to save the planet.

They’re to save the automobile industry.

[MichMan]

8. Why was there a subsidy for buying one?

[hunter]

9. No!

We ought to be turning our cities into attractive affordable places where car ownership is unnecessary.

Cars are bad for the environment no matter what powers them. It's not just the cars, it's all the infrastructure required to support them to.

[CentralMass]

14. Unfortunately we dont live in a utopia where this is possible.

At 65, for the first time in my life, my situation allows me time Ito walk frequently and or cycle and live close enough to a stire and restaurants that I can walk to. I did buy a recumbent trike and installed a small electric mid-drive drive motor on it. If I need something small I walk to the store when I can or stop by on my longer walk on the way home. I'm not working and am most likely going to retire. However I can't get by without a car

[hunter]

15. What sort of "freedom" is it to live in a nation where we are forced to own automobiles?

I resent the fact that I must own an automobile to be considered a fully functional adult in this society.

The cars I own have always been a big "fuck you!" to car culture, beat-up looking things, often with salvage titles. I'm a pretty good mechanic, have a good selection of tools, so I can get away with that.

I bought I new car once, in the mid 'eighties, when I was young and full of myself but I'll never do that again. That car lasted a long time before I gave it away. My children and all their friends learned how to drive a manual transmission with it.

My wife and I were automobile commuters when we first met but with some planning and greater good fortune managed to avoid the automobile commuter lifestyle for most of our adult lives.

But we still had to own cars.

[meadowlander]

18. Virtually nobody is "forced" to buy an automobile.

You, for the most part, choose your major life circumstances. You chose your job, your house and how you get between them and you can usually chose something different. I didn't own a car until I was in my early 40s because I chose to pay extra rent to live in cities close to my job and public transport. Not everyone is able to afford that.

And I do think some people, because of their life situation, are always practically going to need a car. In most areas, you can't ferry multiple kids/toddlers/infants between school, extra-curriculars, appointments, jobs, etc. on public transport or bicycles. Some people have health issues that mean that can't use active transport or are in areas with terrible access to public transport options. As someone who spent most of my adult life going grocery shopping every week by bus and having to plan an extra hour to get anywhere because I usually had to transfer which meant sitting in the rain for up to 20 minutes for a bus that might or might not show up, I can tell you that those options suck and represent an unacceptable (if not impossible) step down in life quality for most people.

If we can create a personal car-like option while minimising the adverse environmental effects that seems like the way forward in many situations. Not everybody lives in a city, or even a city where it's feasible to provide city-wide coverage of rapid transit options.

[hunter]

22. In exactly the same way, many U.S. Americans can't imagine free or affordable universal health care.

There are so many ways the United States is "exceptional." That's not a good thing.

I'm not talking about forcing anyone to do anything. If we had attractive affordable cities where car ownership was unnecessary don't you think many people would choose to live there? Owning a car is a hassle.

And why do you suppose it is so damned expensive to live in walkable U.S. cities with good public transportation? For example San Francisco, where living without a car is actually possible. I have relatives who do that. If living without a car was so horrible, shouldn't it cost less to live in such places?

[meadowlander]

23. Some, but not all might choose to live there.

Some people want to have a garden so they can grow some of their own food. Some people want a yard so they can have a larger dog or a safe place for the kids to play when they are crawling up the walls. Some peoples' work places aren't urban and they want to live closer to them. Some people don't want to listen to their neighbours thumping on the walls or shouting in the stairwells or listening to the TV or music cranked up too loud. During Covid there was a massive flight out of cities for people who realised they could work at home and didn't need to be cooped up in a tiny apartment in a city during a pandemic. My suburban house almost doubled in value between 2019-2023 because there was so much demand for places like it.

Owning a car may be a hassle but it's significantly less of a hassle than not owning one for many people. I was carless for decades but then had to give it up as I got older, busier, partially disabled, etc. I know lots of people with kids whose families couldn't function in the same way without a car. Lots of working women basically live out of their cars on weeknights making multi-stop trips all afternoon and evening shuttling people around.

It's expensive to live in large cities because land values are so high from numerous competing demands, not just housing. The areas that are best serviced by infrastructure and other amenities have the most different parties wanting to use it, commercial and industrial as well as residential, while the further and further out you go, the less competition there is. Convenience is the draw for expensive neighbourhoods, and things like desirable school districts, leafiness, historic character, etc. not necessarily just walkability. San Francisco and New York are so expensive because you're competing with so many people whose salaries are so high and who also want a short commute, not because they are necessarily that walkable or have great public transport.

[hunter]

25. My great grandparent's house in San Francisco has a large back yard garden.

Alas, my great grandma sold the house long ago when it became apparent her adult daughters were in Hollywood California to stay. My grandma and her sister always thought of San Francisco as a hard-edged working class city, which it was. My great aunt was born before the Great Earthquake, my grandma after.

If I had three or four million dollars I'd buy the house back into our family. The house is within easy walking distance of schools, parks, a supermarket, and restaurants offering cuisines from all over the world.

High density urban living doesn't necessarily mean "no garden." Even people living in small apartments can enjoy community gardens.

My wife's sister lived a few years in a nice, sunny apartment in the same area. The only downside to visiting her then was finding a place to park . When we'd visit I'd drop off my wife and kids at her front door and go looking for a spot. The longest it ever took was forty minutes...

When our children were old enough to visit family on their own, or just the city itself for fun, they quickly learned to use public transportation. That's probably one of the reasons they have chosen to live in densely populated cities themselves. So have some of their cousins. Urban living was not unfamiliar to them.

[MMBeilis]

20. I agree completely and will offer as proof that during my years in Architecture School (1975-1980) that is exactly....

.......what our coursework on urban planning was teaching. Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House and General Motors built 1117 lease cars called the "EV1" back then. Those panels are long gone and GM recalled all the cars and scrapped them. I'm a true believer too, but the earth is still getting warmer every year.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

16. Pretty sure Tesla isn't the only manufacturer of electric cars

[Rstrstx]

17. This has been addressed numerous times

This video is my favorite, it’s about 6 years old and manufacturing and battery tech may have changed, but probably not for the worse

[Nixie]

21. Exactly. I deleted considering the follow-up thread gossiping

Last edited Fri Mar 21, 2025, 02:53 AM - Edit history (1)

about the responses.

[Scrivener7]

26. No. Not teslas. There are plenty of alternatives.

[Gore1FL]

27. Should we be encouraging people to use more efficient products in their energy use? Absolutely!

I get twice the mileage with my hybrid than my old gas-only car.
Full electric would work well for me.

Tesla? Why? It's not like we have a shortage of options.

[bucolic_frolic]

28. No.

You should buy proven, durable, reliable technology that's lean on energy and does minimal CO2 damage. Whatever that is for you.

If you buy 3 cars over 10 years because they fail, that's not good for the environment. If your car burns up, same.

[Littlered]

29. My motivation for an ev purchase

Has never really been environmental. It does factor into it. Capturing the CO2 at the source of generation is far better than creating it through millions of tail pipes. Then trying to sequester it later, duh. With that said, my main motivation is to be free from oil companies and their nasty ass, stinky ass, gas stations. Not to mention, being held hostage by the ripoff pricing scheme they regularly change up to keep the hoople heads confused.

I would definitely consider a Tesla. They have been around for a while now, and have proved to be very reliable. I was looking at a used bolt yesterday, but it just doesn’t fit my needs. A true plug in might be my best option. But considering we just bought a new suv last month I’m merely window shopping at this point. I need trucks for my business and that market is still emerging.

[CrispyQ]

30. I hate car culture.

I worked for a company that bought bus passes for their employees. They were centrally located & you could get there by bus pretty easily. I LOVED IT!! I could catch the bus three blocks from my house & get dropped off in front of work. If I had to work a weird shift I'd have to drive to the main bus center a mile away & then catch the bus into town.

When you ride the same route & at the same time you get to know your fellow travelers & it's like a little community. When someone misses a day you ask them where they were the next day. You find out whose kids are getting awards, who's about to be a grandparent. It's cool & IMO better than dealing with traffic. Of course, public transit isn't convenient enough for most people since big auto, along with oil & gas, made sure that we as a nation didn't invest in it.

We've given up a shit ton for convenience & we were easily convinced to do it.

[LexVegas]

31. I own an EV. My use case is perfect for it.

My commute is a total of 50 miles per day. I paid $5k for a used Nissan Leaf and I love it. I only use it for commuting, I have ICE vehicles for longer trips.

[DBoon]

32. yes, except Teslas

If you want a luxury EV, there are many very good ones out there that aren't Tesla. BMW for example. If you want something less expensive, there are good deals in used EVs.

If you can't afford a new car, then keep your current car. We all do what we can.

Global warming requires a collective political effort. Individual purchases can help but will never fix the problem.

[Ol Janx Spirit]

33. More than anything, EVs are a necessary step in the natural evolution of power production, and they

serve not only to expand our knowledge of storing energy for use in vehicles--but in the storage of energy for all sorts of uses. This technology will be the key to humans surviving off the planet if that is where civilization must go. And that eventual technology will not likely look anything like batteries of today--possibly hydrogen or other cells. We only get there by going through here. Virtually no one now even thinks about whale oil, but it dominated as a fuel for lighting in early America. Oil lamps are a fascinating subject in and of themselves and go back many millennia using oil from many sources over time. When you look at how humans actually behave, there is a lot of evidence to suggest that EV production hasn't been about saving the planet, but about providing it with a less-expensive and more reliable fuel source. When the Toyota Prius was developed in 1997 it wasn't really seen as a planet-saver but a way to buy a lot less gasoline that was constantly fluctuating in price. But that early Prius showed the world that electric motors actually had a lot of advantages over cars propelled directly by internal combustion engines even aside from the fuel savings. Human technology tends to move forward regardless of the impact on the planet--as we can painfully see now.

[Prairie Gates]

34. ...

[AKwannabe]

35. OP states question then disappears from the discussion

Hmmmmm
Zero recs…

And what the fuck is the Musk support (even Teslas).

Clickbait at the very least.

[tinrobot]

37. If you absolutely have to buy a car, seriously consider an EV

Modern ones have plenty of range and charge quickly. Public charging in large cities is getting really good. Used EVs are priced the same as gas cars.

Plus, EVs are absolutely cleaner than gas cars, they're more fun to drive, and cheaper to maintain and operate.

These days, there's very few reasons not to consider one if you absolutely need a car.