I will never forgive VW for cheating on diesel emissions. That corruption went so far throughout the org the entire company should've been criminally indicted and shut down.
No. They deliberately programed entire generations of diesel engines to give the wrong smog emissions results by knowing the environment and duty-cycle of emissions testing.
On both total emissions as well as emissions/ton/mile metric, long-haul commercial fleet diesel trucks are far better than the millions of polluting and poorly maintained small displacement privately owned diesel cars and pick-ups.
My diesel VW had adblue, and still was affected by deiselgate. The ecu fix took my highway mpg from 35-50 to 18-24, and made the APR tunes incompatible.
The finding is that older diesel engines and renewables produce measurable adverse effects in microglial stem cells, but new diesel formulations in new engines do not. The implication is that policy-makers should accelerate the transition to newer diesel and abandon reusable diesel. Since Europe has been gung-ho for diesel for decades, this finding could have significant regulatory and market effects.
Most people who don't wear a good mask have no idea of the bad smells on the roads. Once you start wearing a mask there for a few months, you then become sensitive to smelling all the bad smells on the roads that you otherwise tune out. I mean the smell is then noticeable if you momentarily take the mask off one day. You then realize the horror of how everyone else has so completely tuned it out to the detriment of their health.
5 miles for groceries is ridiculous statement, you will not get any support with such stance. It's like 1h 30m walk one way. Day doesn't have infinite time, and people with families will need significant amount of food.
Very few people want to walk 5 miles for groceries. I'm lucky enough to be able to walk to my grocery store, and even being healthy and able, 1 mile each way is the most I want to do.
Even the "decent climate" range is actually huge, <especially with ebikes>. Basically I can think of only a one climate where life on bikes is really hard: very hot and humid.
Hot and dry is manageable since when cycling you naturally create cooling currents around you; you need to wear appropriate clothing (sunglasses + cap or helmet with shaded visor; appropriate long sleeved shirt, appropriate pants and shoes).
Cold climates are super manageable with appropriate clothing, bar mitts and most crucially of all: <well designed bike infrastructure including priority maintenance, just like for car infrastructure>.
Of course super extreme weather like -30C or +40C at some point makes any active transportation close to impossible, but the vast majority of people don't live in those conditions and the people that do live like that, only do it for max 1-2 months per year.
99.99% of these issues are actually failures of infrastructure design and implementation.
For snowy conditions: daily snow plowing, debris removal, salting to prevent ice formation, etc, etc.
For hot conditions: planting trees, removing asphalt (for example grassy tram/train lines; parking spots with grass pavers (https://buildwithabs.com/product/grass-pavers/), designing tall buildings to shade urban sidewalks, etc.
Also, infrastructure doesn't just need to safe, it needs to be maintained as critical infrastructure, just like for cars, so that the infra is not degraded in practice.
> Basically I can think of only a one climate where life on bikes is really hard: very hot and humid.
Truth. I used to live in D.C. and our office was so enthused about bike-commuting we lobbied the building to install showers and a small locker-room so folks could change.
It lasted about a year. It was just too time consuming to maintain "bike clothes & work clothes" and change into/out of them (we're talking suits) every workday.
Now I live in Boulder, CO and we've got both better (drier) weather and athleisure sartorial standards--win win!
5 miles is a long walk. That’s at least 1 hour and 15 minutes for a very fast walker, and probably around 2 hours for a more typical walker.
Plus you have to walk back, with groceries. Assuming you are feeding a family and not doing this 2-4 hour round trip every day, that means you’ll need a cart to push or pull.
Good luck pushing that loaded cart on a road with any amount of traffic. Most places in the U.S. where the grocery store is 5 miles away will involve either zero sidewalks and dangerous roads (more rural/suburban areas), or many many road crossings with lights that slow you down (denser areas).
I’m a big fan of walking. But 5 miles to a grocery store and then back is going to be way too much and too dangerous for most people.
But it's only a good judgment call if you have the available transit + shopping time, able body, suitable climate, and a single store that has everything you need.
If any of those conditions are not satisfied then it's better economic utility to outsource that entire task and get your exercise and socialization by going to the gym. You can even walk to the gym too. You can outsource almost anything except exercise.
It's still not practical. Humans just walk too slowly.
Let's be realistic here and accept the fact that anything that involves more than 1km of walking one way won't happen for 99% of people.
That's why we have bikes, for distances from 1km to 10-12km (one way).
And only after that should we have cars. Cars should also be reserved for very heavy loads (more than 50kg), groups of people (not single drivers, 2+ people in the car), and various other niche uses.
> And only after that should we have cars. Cars should also be reserved for very heavy loads (more than 50kg), groups of people (not single drivers, 2+ people in the car), and various other niche uses.
There is a (slightly) tongue in cheek video you should watch.
> Cars should also be reserved for [...] and various other niche uses.
to which you replied:
> I don't want to spend 6 hours commuting a daily in the UK. I've done this btw in the UK a decade ago. It was miserable.
6 hours per day commuting is 3 hours one way, which in almost every country in the world is called "super commuting" and it affects a very small minority of people:
-> the average commute is under 30 minutes each way.
-> commutes longer than 2 hours affect only 2% of workers.
So yeah, that's what "niche" means.
Besides that, I literally listed some recommended distances (up to 1km for walking, up to 10-12k for cycling), don't tell me your commute was 3h one way for a distance under 12km? You can walk 12km in less than 3h one way :-)
If you watched the video. The point is that it was something like a 2 and a half hour commute via public transport, it was much shorter while driving. It isn't a "super commute" if you are travelling less than an hour.
A commute in a car that less than an hour isn't niche.
The public transport commute was definitely a super commute, so that's the starting point.
And yeah, that's one of the things to take into account when choosing both a residence and a job.
If you don't have a direct connection (ideally) or very good transfers, yeah, it's going to get ugly quick.
I found a comment on Youtube particularly poignant for this type of problem:
> I worked 7 miles away in Redditch for 18 years, for my sins. The 16 minute journey by car took 45 minutes at rush hour, so I experimented with buses which took an hour and a half, needed two separate tickets from different bus companies, and didn't allow me to do any overtime. I took up cycling and once fit the journey only took 24 minutes.
* * *
Which leads back to my original point: let's all campaign for better public transportion infrastructure, for more dedicated bus lanes, for more bike lanes, for more walkable neighbourhoods, for less car-only infrastructure. Let's give people more options.
Because while there are tons of anecdotes against public transportation, for example, the numbers reveal that it's badly needed and used by millions and millions of people wherever it's available and the coverage and frequency aren't completely unusable. So demand for public transportation is there.
Cars should be there to "plug" the gaps where public transportation, cycling, walking are not valid options. Not be the default as they are in many places.
Let's optimize for 80% of the population first.
Oh, nice side effect: once all those sardines are neatly packed in buses, trams and trains (or on top of bikes) they're no longer on roads so people who do have to use cars have much faster and relaxed commutes.
Right. So you didn't watch it and instead cherry picked the comments. You missed a key thing in the video. It isn't really any cheaper using public transport. BTW my experience was roughly the same as in the video but replace buses with trains.
One of the key reasons I learned to drive was because trains, buses and taxis are expensive and mile per mile more expensive than using the car. Even flying in some circumstances is more expensive and longer than driving (short domestic UK flights).
The issue with public transport is that it doesn't go quite go where, when you want and nothing is going to fix that.
No amount of campaigning is going to change anything. Near where I live there is two roads closed. It been this way for almost three years now. If the council can't fix one road in three years, how are they ever going to sort out more complex issues.
So you have something that isn't cheaper, doesn't quite do what you want and generally is less pleasant than using a car, you aren't going to want to use it.
You are deflecting from the original point, while saying nothing.
It simply doesn't work for a lot of people and never will and you were trying to pretend these are niche things when they are not.
People generally don't like public transport. You have to be in a confined space with strangers, that in any other circumstance you would probably never see.
I ended up cycling through wet, snow, extreme cold because I got fed up of dealing with buses and trains after a week. When I had to travel by train it was because cycling wasn't feasible and I had no other choice. It was miserable. Everyday there seemed to be delays and that is 2 hours a day for a year I will never get back.
Saying use what you think is best basically equates to "I am going to drive" for the vast majority.
An EV is still 2 tons of metal, plastics, batteries, that needed to be mined, refined, transformed, assembled, and delivered. Sounds excessive for getting groceries.
The solution, as usual for complex systems, involves more than one factor, almost no one living in an urban environment should need to go 5 miles to find groceries. Even on my suburb of Stockholm I have the option of 3 different groceries less than 1km away (we have villas, terraced houses, etc., so not only small apartments that some Americans are afraid of).
Urban design is a core principle to make your life easier, no self-driving EVs, those are a bad patch not solving anything of importance.
How do you think the groceries got to your shop in first place tho?
By the way, it's 1.766 tons. You can use it for other things too. Taking kids to schools and hobbies, going to beach, city, forests, camping.
I say that as someone who took my kids to daycare by bike for 2 years until they've grown out of it. It was great while it lasted and weather permitted, but I'm not going to make it my personality trait.
Getting groceries for family with a bike would be somewhat insane for me. Technically possible, practically nightmare. Also much more expensive than driving for 10 mins to a larger shop.
> How do you think the groceries got to your shop in first place tho?
Through economies of scale with a truck delivering tons of goods while consuming more than the single-person car delivering it... I think it was pretty clear from my comment the excessive part is the "individual" aspect.
> Getting groceries for family with a bike would be somewhat insane for me. Technically possible, practically nightmare. Also much more expensive than driving for 10 mins to a larger shop.
Insane how? There are cargo bikes, you don't need to shop groceries for the month if you can bike there, you can do it every 3-4 days. I pack groceries in a cargo backpack, and they last 3-4 days, with a cargo bike it would be even easier to carry more.
It's only insane if you've never done it, or live in a place where frequent trips to a grocer takes 10km.
> You can use it for other things too. Taking kids to schools and hobbies, going to beach, city, forests, camping.
Use it for other things, not grocery shopping. Saves on excessive trips at least.
And a last disclaimer: I'm originally from a country very Americanised where people drive to go to the bakery, people there also think it's insane to do simple things on a bike (like grocery shopping) simply because the culture is car-centric... It's not that hard if the urban design where you live is not abhorrent.
I will never forgive VW for cheating on diesel emissions. That corruption went so far throughout the org the entire company should've been criminally indicted and shut down.
Compared to what diesel trucks running across the country are exhaling daily, then what VW did is absurdly negligible.
No. They deliberately programed entire generations of diesel engines to give the wrong smog emissions results by knowing the environment and duty-cycle of emissions testing.
On both total emissions as well as emissions/ton/mile metric, long-haul commercial fleet diesel trucks are far better than the millions of polluting and poorly maintained small displacement privately owned diesel cars and pick-ups.
> what VW did is absurdly negligible
You're both completely right, while you're completely wrong.
And there was a solution available. AdBlue. Mercedes already used it, and so did BMW. But VW didn't want to use it.
And because of this scandal VW pulled their diesels, AND both Mercedes and BMW followed suit.
Quite sad, because an X5 diesel had really good mileage (if you used it for longer distances).
My diesel VW had adblue, and still was affected by deiselgate. The ecu fix took my highway mpg from 35-50 to 18-24, and made the APR tunes incompatible.
The finding is that older diesel engines and renewables produce measurable adverse effects in microglial stem cells, but new diesel formulations in new engines do not. The implication is that policy-makers should accelerate the transition to newer diesel and abandon reusable diesel. Since Europe has been gung-ho for diesel for decades, this finding could have significant regulatory and market effects.
Not to mention breathing in all the microplastics from tire wear dust...
Most people who don't wear a good mask have no idea of the bad smells on the roads. Once you start wearing a mask there for a few months, you then become sensitive to smelling all the bad smells on the roads that you otherwise tune out. I mean the smell is then noticeable if you momentarily take the mask off one day. You then realize the horror of how everyone else has so completely tuned it out to the detriment of their health.
Seems intuitive, I have always had a strong negative reaction to inhaling diesel exhaust / particulate matter. Nasty stuff
[flagged]
5 miles for groceries is ridiculous statement, you will not get any support with such stance. It's like 1h 30m walk one way. Day doesn't have infinite time, and people with families will need significant amount of food.
Very few people want to walk 5 miles for groceries. I'm lucky enough to be able to walk to my grocery store, and even being healthy and able, 1 mile each way is the most I want to do.
Bicycling would make 5 miles a cinch, however.
Not related, cargo bikes absolutely rule if you have a decent climate and suitably safe biking infrastructure.
Even the "decent climate" range is actually huge, <especially with ebikes>. Basically I can think of only a one climate where life on bikes is really hard: very hot and humid.
Hot and dry is manageable since when cycling you naturally create cooling currents around you; you need to wear appropriate clothing (sunglasses + cap or helmet with shaded visor; appropriate long sleeved shirt, appropriate pants and shoes).
https://youtu.be/2opQQP13lPI?si=LdhJnF8yLKrVNuGM (for long sleeved shirts)
Cold climates are super manageable with appropriate clothing, bar mitts and most crucially of all: <well designed bike infrastructure including priority maintenance, just like for car infrastructure>.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU
Of course super extreme weather like -30C or +40C at some point makes any active transportation close to impossible, but the vast majority of people don't live in those conditions and the people that do live like that, only do it for max 1-2 months per year.
99.99% of these issues are actually failures of infrastructure design and implementation.
For snowy conditions: daily snow plowing, debris removal, salting to prevent ice formation, etc, etc.
For hot conditions: planting trees, removing asphalt (for example grassy tram/train lines; parking spots with grass pavers (https://buildwithabs.com/product/grass-pavers/), designing tall buildings to shade urban sidewalks, etc.
Also, infrastructure doesn't just need to safe, it needs to be maintained as critical infrastructure, just like for cars, so that the infra is not degraded in practice.
> Basically I can think of only a one climate where life on bikes is really hard: very hot and humid.
Truth. I used to live in D.C. and our office was so enthused about bike-commuting we lobbied the building to install showers and a small locker-room so folks could change.
It lasted about a year. It was just too time consuming to maintain "bike clothes & work clothes" and change into/out of them (we're talking suits) every workday.
Now I live in Boulder, CO and we've got both better (drier) weather and athleisure sartorial standards--win win!
5 miles is a long walk. That’s at least 1 hour and 15 minutes for a very fast walker, and probably around 2 hours for a more typical walker.
Plus you have to walk back, with groceries. Assuming you are feeding a family and not doing this 2-4 hour round trip every day, that means you’ll need a cart to push or pull.
Good luck pushing that loaded cart on a road with any amount of traffic. Most places in the U.S. where the grocery store is 5 miles away will involve either zero sidewalks and dangerous roads (more rural/suburban areas), or many many road crossings with lights that slow you down (denser areas).
I’m a big fan of walking. But 5 miles to a grocery store and then back is going to be way too much and too dangerous for most people.
It is an accomplishment in a healthy, pro-social environment.
But it's only a good judgment call if you have the available transit + shopping time, able body, suitable climate, and a single store that has everything you need.
If any of those conditions are not satisfied then it's better economic utility to outsource that entire task and get your exercise and socialization by going to the gym. You can even walk to the gym too. You can outsource almost anything except exercise.
It's still not practical. Humans just walk too slowly.
Let's be realistic here and accept the fact that anything that involves more than 1km of walking one way won't happen for 99% of people.
That's why we have bikes, for distances from 1km to 10-12km (one way).
And only after that should we have cars. Cars should also be reserved for very heavy loads (more than 50kg), groups of people (not single drivers, 2+ people in the car), and various other niche uses.
> And only after that should we have cars. Cars should also be reserved for very heavy loads (more than 50kg), groups of people (not single drivers, 2+ people in the car), and various other niche uses.
There is a (slightly) tongue in cheek video you should watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfBgQjByvXI
I don't want to spend 6 hours commuting a daily in the UK. I've done this btw in the UK a decade ago. It was miserable.
It just isn't possible to commute in places without a car. Especially once you get outside of a main transit hubs.
And that is perfectly fine, nobody should be exerting themselves needlessly. Where a car makes the most sense, use it.
But we should all campaign for better public transit, good bike infrastructure, good walking infrastructure, less car-only infrastructure, etc, etc.
> And that is perfectly fine, nobody should be exerting themselves needlessly. Where a car makes the most sense, use it.
That wasn't what you were suggesting by the way we worded it.
I said:
> Cars should also be reserved for [...] and various other niche uses.
to which you replied:
> I don't want to spend 6 hours commuting a daily in the UK. I've done this btw in the UK a decade ago. It was miserable.
6 hours per day commuting is 3 hours one way, which in almost every country in the world is called "super commuting" and it affects a very small minority of people:
https://www.jmfassociates.co.uk/news/news/how-long-is-the-av...
-> the average commute is under 30 minutes each way.
-> commutes longer than 2 hours affect only 2% of workers.
So yeah, that's what "niche" means.
Besides that, I literally listed some recommended distances (up to 1km for walking, up to 10-12k for cycling), don't tell me your commute was 3h one way for a distance under 12km? You can walk 12km in less than 3h one way :-)
If you watched the video. The point is that it was something like a 2 and a half hour commute via public transport, it was much shorter while driving. It isn't a "super commute" if you are travelling less than an hour.
A commute in a car that less than an hour isn't niche.
The public transport commute was definitely a super commute, so that's the starting point.
And yeah, that's one of the things to take into account when choosing both a residence and a job.
If you don't have a direct connection (ideally) or very good transfers, yeah, it's going to get ugly quick.
I found a comment on Youtube particularly poignant for this type of problem:
> I worked 7 miles away in Redditch for 18 years, for my sins. The 16 minute journey by car took 45 minutes at rush hour, so I experimented with buses which took an hour and a half, needed two separate tickets from different bus companies, and didn't allow me to do any overtime. I took up cycling and once fit the journey only took 24 minutes.
* * *
Which leads back to my original point: let's all campaign for better public transportion infrastructure, for more dedicated bus lanes, for more bike lanes, for more walkable neighbourhoods, for less car-only infrastructure. Let's give people more options.
Because while there are tons of anecdotes against public transportation, for example, the numbers reveal that it's badly needed and used by millions and millions of people wherever it's available and the coverage and frequency aren't completely unusable. So demand for public transportation is there.
Cars should be there to "plug" the gaps where public transportation, cycling, walking are not valid options. Not be the default as they are in many places.
Let's optimize for 80% of the population first.
Oh, nice side effect: once all those sardines are neatly packed in buses, trams and trains (or on top of bikes) they're no longer on roads so people who do have to use cars have much faster and relaxed commutes.
It seems you really didn't understand the point of the video.
I didn't watch it as it seemed fairly long.
Now I have watched it and he basically says the same thing as me.
A lot of people have to use cars because they have no other option. Yes, let's fix that for them as best we can.
As he puts it, that also leaves more room on the road for the people with the vintage Mustangs.
Right. So you didn't watch it and instead cherry picked the comments. You missed a key thing in the video. It isn't really any cheaper using public transport. BTW my experience was roughly the same as in the video but replace buses with trains.
One of the key reasons I learned to drive was because trains, buses and taxis are expensive and mile per mile more expensive than using the car. Even flying in some circumstances is more expensive and longer than driving (short domestic UK flights).
The issue with public transport is that it doesn't go quite go where, when you want and nothing is going to fix that.
No amount of campaigning is going to change anything. Near where I live there is two roads closed. It been this way for almost three years now. If the council can't fix one road in three years, how are they ever going to sort out more complex issues.
So you have something that isn't cheaper, doesn't quite do what you want and generally is less pleasant than using a car, you aren't going to want to use it.
Yet plenty of people use it.
In many cases public transportation works.
In many cases it doesn't.
Do whatever works best for your personal situation but always demand options because you never know when you'll need them.
You are deflecting from the original point, while saying nothing.
It simply doesn't work for a lot of people and never will and you were trying to pretend these are niche things when they are not.
People generally don't like public transport. You have to be in a confined space with strangers, that in any other circumstance you would probably never see.
I ended up cycling through wet, snow, extreme cold because I got fed up of dealing with buses and trains after a week. When I had to travel by train it was because cycling wasn't feasible and I had no other choice. It was miserable. Everyday there seemed to be delays and that is 2 hours a day for a year I will never get back.
Saying use what you think is best basically equates to "I am going to drive" for the vast majority.
Nah just get an EV. Self driving one if you want extra piece of mind.
An EV is still 2 tons of metal, plastics, batteries, that needed to be mined, refined, transformed, assembled, and delivered. Sounds excessive for getting groceries.
The solution, as usual for complex systems, involves more than one factor, almost no one living in an urban environment should need to go 5 miles to find groceries. Even on my suburb of Stockholm I have the option of 3 different groceries less than 1km away (we have villas, terraced houses, etc., so not only small apartments that some Americans are afraid of).
Urban design is a core principle to make your life easier, no self-driving EVs, those are a bad patch not solving anything of importance.
> Sounds excessive for getting groceries.
How do you think the groceries got to your shop in first place tho?
By the way, it's 1.766 tons. You can use it for other things too. Taking kids to schools and hobbies, going to beach, city, forests, camping.
I say that as someone who took my kids to daycare by bike for 2 years until they've grown out of it. It was great while it lasted and weather permitted, but I'm not going to make it my personality trait.
Getting groceries for family with a bike would be somewhat insane for me. Technically possible, practically nightmare. Also much more expensive than driving for 10 mins to a larger shop.
> How do you think the groceries got to your shop in first place tho?
Through economies of scale with a truck delivering tons of goods while consuming more than the single-person car delivering it... I think it was pretty clear from my comment the excessive part is the "individual" aspect.
> Getting groceries for family with a bike would be somewhat insane for me. Technically possible, practically nightmare. Also much more expensive than driving for 10 mins to a larger shop.
Insane how? There are cargo bikes, you don't need to shop groceries for the month if you can bike there, you can do it every 3-4 days. I pack groceries in a cargo backpack, and they last 3-4 days, with a cargo bike it would be even easier to carry more.
It's only insane if you've never done it, or live in a place where frequent trips to a grocer takes 10km.
> You can use it for other things too. Taking kids to schools and hobbies, going to beach, city, forests, camping.
Use it for other things, not grocery shopping. Saves on excessive trips at least.
And a last disclaimer: I'm originally from a country very Americanised where people drive to go to the bakery, people there also think it's insane to do simple things on a bike (like grocery shopping) simply because the culture is car-centric... It's not that hard if the urban design where you live is not abhorrent.