• bleistift2@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    What the actual fuck⁈ “Batteries can catch on fire.” Sure, whatever could go wrong with a 1000l tank of FUCKING GASOLINE.

    AAAaaaaHHhh I hate people!

    • mriguy@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Going with the “batteries catch on fire argument” is stupid. “Batteries are heavy and expensive” is probably more compelling. But yeah, wires are better solution for things going in fixed routes.

      • Batpool23@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yup batteries are not the way. By the time the batteries need to be replaced you might have helped slightly but probably not. Batteries is a illusion to going green right now. Just another product that has a demand and an easy market for it.

        • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          I think we’re all aware of the costs associated with recycling batteries.

          Are you aware of the costs associated with high CO2 levels?

          Have to choose the lesser of two evils.

      • Platomus@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        No it’s not. It’s harder to catch fire than gasoline.

        It still catches fire easily.

        • xthexder@l.sw0.com
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          1 year ago

          You can toss a lit match into a puddle of diesel and the match will go out. Diesel burns, but since it doesn’t evaporate as fast as gasoline, you don’t have those flammable gases hanging in the air. A trail of diesel that’s being burned at one end will not spread, unlike gasoline.

        • argv_minus_one@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          Gasoline doesn’t burn that easily, either. Cars with gas tanks don’t burst into flames while sitting powered off in a garage. Even when they get wrecked they don’t usually burst into flames.

          On the other hand, gasoline is slowly causing the world to burst into flames…

          • Platomus@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Well yeah… You need a spark to cause a fire. To have ignition you need oxygen, fuel and a spark.

            Nothing burns easily if there’s no spark.

            • Umbrias@beehaw.org
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              1 year ago

              Gasoline burns accidentally when fumes are released, as the stoichiometric mixture has to be pretty specific to combust.

              Gasoline in a gas tank does not achieve this mixture. That’s the entire job of the fuel pump and throttle in modern cars. As the other user said, there are lots of sparks and live electricity in a car crash, it’s just not easy to set gasoline on fire or make it explode.

              Diesel does not appear to achieve this vapor mixture readily at standard temp and pressure, like gasoline does, and therefore is technically safer in this specific regard.

              • Platomus@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                Gasoline doesn’t burn that easily, either. Cars with gas tanks don’t burst into flames while sitting powered off in a garage

                Diesel combusts at 140 degrees. A care could reach those temps in a car accident as well if we’re making that argument.

    • dustojnikhummer@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Gasoline and diesel can be extinguished relatively easily. Extinguishing an EV means throwing it into a tub of water for a day or two

      • TimeSquirrel@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Gasoline vehicles also don’t tend to catch fire spontaneously while parked. That risk exists with every unattended lithium-ion battery undergoing recharging. People technically shouldn’t be plugging their phones in at night and then going to sleep, but everyone does it anyway.

        • boonhet@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Doesn’t matter much for phones, but when talking EV charging… Night electricity tends to be cheaper when it’s not solar energy season.

          • dustojnikhummer@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Can’t wait for miles of 240V extension cords when EU makes even used non EVs illegal. Yes, millions of city dwellers in apartments totally have a garage to charge in.

            • boonhet@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              There will be solutions by 2050 (the proposed timeframe for having a zero-emissions fleet). For an example, vehicles with combustion engines can still be newly registered after 2035 if they use only CO2-neutral fuels. I think EU would rather ban sale of fossil fuels than ban used cars that can technically burn fossil fuels. If only plant-based fuels are available, it doesn’t matter what the cars can technically burn.

              The German big 3 are already developing cars that would only run on non-fossil fuels I believe.

              Secondly, chargers near apartment buildings and on sidewalks can be added. We have plenty of time.

              And I’m sure Germany will water down the regulations even more so in the end, I’m fairly sure they’ll consider new MHEVs fine after 2035.

              And finally, those who can’t charge at home will do so at the charging stations. It’s not a huge issue if you have a battery with 500+ km of range. Might be an issue for i-miev and first gen Leaf owners though.

              • dustojnikhummer@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Unless we get mass producable, cheap fuel like CHOOH2, “cars can use co2 neutral fuels” is translation to “in reality no ICE cars for the mass population”

                Secondly, chargers near apartment buildings and on sidewalks can be added. We have plenty of time.

                And who will pay for those? My town can barely get enough money to maintain street lights, who will install and maintain the charging infrastructure on streets where it will inevitably get destroyed?

                And finally, those who can’t charge at home will do so at the charging stations.

                Oh yes, so now instead of 15 minute wait at a gas station I will only have to wait 2 hours before a space is available and then 30 minutes to charge, all while thinking “how much is this quick charge degrading my battery”

                • boonhet@lemm.ee
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                  1 year ago

                  There’s 27 years to go till EU’s predicted (not required by law) end of ICE cars. There’s time to invest, time to innovate and hopefully time for your town to reduce crime and gain more resources.

                  Also HVO is pretty affordable nowadays. Maybe 20% more than regular diesel fuel at most. It is claimed to be carbon neutral. I’m sure something similar will be developed for otto cycle engines.

                  Also unless you’re planning to use a first gen leaf past the 2050s, quick charging isn’t very bad. All modern EVs have battery cooling and will also throttle charging when the temperature rises. The don’t full on go 350kW for 20 minutes straight.

                  Waiting 2 hours is solved by installing more chargers. Clearly a regional issue with fuel pumps as well because I never have to wait over 2-3 minutes.

      • Strayce@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        It didn’t suck as a solution when it was implemented. The buses function like small diesel trains; they don’t have to deal with traffic, and can travel faster because they kinda lock in to the rails. It didn’t need as much land as a freeway or cost as much as a dedicated train line because you could just retrofit old buses. Plus the advantage of being able to run a standard bus route at each end of the line, no need for connecting services.

      • Strayce@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        Holy shit, I didn’t know that. I always thought the O-Bahn was a unique piece of Adelaide weirdness. Adelaide has a lot of weirdness.

  • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Battery fires are also less common than gasoline fires. But batteries are expensive, so overhead lines are still a good idea

    • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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      1 year ago

      Shhh they’ve been fed their propaganda by Fox news and they want to clutch it as hard as they can.

      God forbid they ever see what Europe or the rest of the world is doing while the US is being left behind. We might as well be pulled by horse and buggy still compared to how easy it is to get around Europe

      • dustojnikhummer@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Europe or the rest of the world is doing Are you talking about public transit or Germany banning gas and diesel cars EU wide all while also getting rid of the best source of electricity, essentially making individual vehicle transportation for common folk a thing of the past?

  • DrTeeth@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Switzerland runs a lot of these buses. Also trams, normal buses , trains. For those people in the U.S., it’s a very effective and efficient system called public transport.

  • Erismi14@midwest.social
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    1 year ago

    Honestly, for growing places, or places with bad public transit, diesel busses are the way to go. They are the cheapest and require almost no new infrastructure so it can offset car emissions quicker than the other options. Established bus routes that are popular should be converted to tram lines or BRT.

    • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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      1 year ago

      Diesel busses should be considered the last alternative though, out of all the mass transit options they are still the worst for the environment. Not unless a city has exhuasted all other options should they look into them, or truly have no money for alternatives.

      Downtown areas can easily be canternaried for electrified busses, and battery busses are great for trips within cities.
      If a city is growing then it’s the perfect time to lay down rail and plan it out properly before road infrastructure gets in the way, and rail always pays off in the long run.

      For longer trips then fine, diesel, but only if 1) It’s out of range for electrified busses and 2) there is not ridership enough for rail. (but even then, look at the UK’s request stop numbers and I’d say that argument is pretty flimsy)

      • Erismi14@midwest.social
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        1 year ago

        I honestly disagree. If you can get 5 car users on a diesel bus, you are making a positive impact on the environment. And you can deploy way more diesel busses than electric ones. Once you build demand, you can skip busses altogether and replace with trams. The batteries in busses are a cool technology, but still exploit child labor and extended neocolonialism in the same way oil does. Also battery fires are much worse than normal fires.

        I think we should electrify fleets as soon as possible but I think adding a few battery busses here and there won’t do anything but pander to environmentalist

  • rustyfish@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    People need to learn the difference between „Doesn’t catch fire“ and „Doesn’t burn AS EASY AS gasoline“.

    • Scraft161@iusearchlinux.fyi
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      1 year ago

      The problem with battery fires is that most batteries are made out of lithium which reacts with pretty much everything and is extremely difficult to put out.

      In addition obtaining the rare earth metals for these batteries ecologically is a real challenge and it will only get worse the more we use.

      I’m not saying we should abandon electric cars but we should know the benefits and drawbacks of each option before making a decision.

      • BioMando@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Depends on battery tech. LFP batteries dont use cobalt and manganese, and have have much less chance of fire when punctured for example

      • rustyfish@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I didn’t mean batteries, I was talking about diesel. Should have made that clearer, my bad.

    • dustojnikhummer@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Obviously diesel burns and batteries don’t really explode, but the only way to put out an EV fire is to dunk the car for a few days in a tub of water. And how many of those will a fire department have? 1-5?

  • gammasfor@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    “Electric buses aren’t safe because the batteries can catch on fire”

    London here running hybrids for over half a decade with no issue.

    • spen@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      We USians are so hooked on, and controlled by, car infrastructure that we’ll come up with any lame ass excuse to undermine public transit. “Busses (or trains or any other form of public transit) aren’t perfect because of X, so we should just keep destroying our health, our communities and our planet”

    • Fushuan [he/him]@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      We have some electric but lines in San Sebastian (Spain) too, no issues, the buses are lovely, they work fine. It has been about 4 years since they first got introduced, no major issues.

    • CoderKat@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, who the heck complains about either of those points? Hybrid buses have been a thing for a long time. And even if it was a plain diesel bus, it’d still be better than having dozens of gasoline cars.

  • NotNotNathan@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    We had trolley busses here in Wellington NZ for decades. The network needed an upgrade so our shortsighted council ripped it down while promising battery buses to replace the trolleys. We ended up with old, dirty, diesels chugging round our city for years, an I’m not sure we’ve gotten rid of them all yet. It was a disaster.

    • jonne@infosec.pub
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      1 year ago

      Doesn’t work in hilly cities. That’s why San Francisco has trolleybuses too (and the historical cable cars, but those are more for tourists). They do have light rail where it does make sense though.

        • Kempeth@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          I looked it up and it can indeed go up to 13.5% inclination but they can only run powered cars, no attached wagons. That reduces capacity.

          I don’t want to shit on trams. I don’t like this bus vs tram bashing in either direction. I’ll happily take either improvement over a sea of cars…

        • Uranium_Green@slrpnk.net
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          1 year ago

          I don’t quite remember what they’re called but in the UK there’s both old mining trains and old cliff trains/trolleys that use toothed wheels and toothed tracks on the hill portions to go up/down hill with little issue, obviously it’s only safe for some gradient, but still with the right gearing it would be of possible

    • FluffyPotato@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      This. Trams are so much nicer, carry more people, way less maintenance cost and the tracks look so good if grass grows between it, also I don’t get motion sickness on them. You don’t even need any asphalt for them which is expensive to maintain, looks worse than pretty much anything except maybe a literal pile of garbage and heats up the surrounding area.

  • SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Let’s face it: in most US cities there probably isn’t much aesthetic for the power lines to spoil. Just like in the grey Soviet cities where they come from

    • Freeman@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Greetings from Winterthur, a pretty nice, human-friendly, town in Switzerland which bunch of old buildings. Also called the bike-city of switzerland. It turns out that the trade off is worth it. I rather have power lines than cars or fuel powered busses.

      • filthy_lint_ball@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yes! I used to live there for most of my childhood, and thus have always considered those power lines to be a normal part of any city as a kid. Growing older and starting to visit other cities (without either trams or trolleys) I was surprised to see them missing and thought it looked strange, like a crucial piece of infrastructure was missing.

      • dustojnikhummer@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Those wires are only there if you are looking for them.

        This is in my city. It looks this way because it is the biggest public transport intersection, with trolleybuses going all 4 directions meeting a tram line.

        Seriously, after a while you just ignore those wires.

  • Zeta_Reticuli@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Trams… Where isn’t possible trams use trolleybus… That’s it!!! But what is sad, Eastern Europe falls into buying electric buses because it’s mainstream 😬

  • mlekar@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The best thing trolleybuses have going for them is their relatively low dependence on rare earth elements in production in contrast with BEV buses with their large batteries. Trolleybuses environmental toll is way smaller and it makes producers and operators way less dependent on third world countries devastating the environment with slave labor.

    • Mayoman68@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      There’s also the centralization advantage and long lifespan. Centralized power generation is nearly always most efficient, and EV batteries degrade relatively quickly, while there are real life examples of 30 year old trolleybuses still operating fine.

      • dustojnikhummer@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Those 30 year old trolleybuses die when power dies, but even semi modern ones (aka 15-10 year olds) can still have diesel backup. New ones always have battery backup.

        • mlekar@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          That’s true but still those batteries are significantly smaller than those of BEV buses - usually trolleybuses with batteries have 5-15km of range compared to 200-350 km of equivalent BEV buses which also means that the trolleybuses are significantly lighter than BEV buses, which helps with efficiency of electricity utilisation. Another efficiency factor is that not having to charge and deplete a huge battery will save quite significant ammnount of power that is lost as heat during battery operation.

    • Lobotomie@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Hurr duurr rareearth . Written from your phone with rare earth materials, tomorrow you’re going to drive to work using rare earth to work on your laptop with rare earth materials.

      Neither batteries nor drive train components of bevs HAVE to use rare earth. There’s tons of cars without them (bmw electric cars for example).

      If you even respond, please include a modern car which does not contain ANY rare earth material and does not use electricity for energy storage.

      • mlekar@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Nothing is black and white you know. No decision is 100% good or 100% bad, we live in a sepectrum where some decisions may be less bad than others and that is the point.

        Also current batteries will use cobalt or lithium, other options are either not efficient enough (like metal hydride or sulphuric acid batteries) or developed enough - solid state batteries, or LiFePo.

        Also current BMW BEVs are still using lithium based batteries, whose mining pretty much is environmental disaster as a process.