I’ve seen a lot of posts here on Lemmy, specifically in the “fuck cars” communities as to how Electric Vehicles do pretty much nothing for the Climate, but I continue to see Climate activists everywhere try pushing so, so hard for Electric Vehicles.
Are they actually beneficial to the planet other than limiting exhaust, or is that it? or maybe exhaust is a way bigger problem?
They’re better than ICE cars so provide a path for improvement on the existing installed base for transportation whilst not requiring people to significantly change their habits or large public investment.
However they’re not the environmentally best solution for transportation in urban and even sub-urban settings: walking, cycling and public transportation (depending on distance) are vastly superior realistic solutions from an environmental point of view in those areas (they’re seldom very realistic in the countryside, hence why I’m being very explicity about it being for urban and sub-urban areas).
However making cities and, worse, suburbia, appropriate for those better alternatives requires public investment (and we’re in the late ultra-capitalist max-tax-evasion neoliberal era, so it’s very much “screw collecting taxes and spending that public money for the public good”), time and even changes in housing density in many places (US-style suburbia is pretty shit at the population density and travel distance levels for realistic commuting by bicycle or public transport).
So Electric Cars are a pragmatic environmental improvement in such areas (and pretty much the only realistic solution outside them) and one where the economic elites don’t have to pay taxes like everybody else since unlike for public transportation the cost of upgrading is entirelly born by consumers.