this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2025
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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I know it's a joke, but many Tesla "solar" charging stations did actually use diesel generators a few years ago. Citation needed, but I can't be assed to look up the article.
Still more energy efficient than a regular ICE car.
Okay....now that the left is finding every reason to hate on Tesla, allow me to help: this is, and always has been, a massive fucking myth. It never was more energy efficient than a regular ICE vehicle.
Mainly because of its construction. Mining the cobalt, etc for the batteries is very energy intensive. Then there's the tires. AFAIK, you can't just throw any old tires on a Tesla vehicle. You have to buy their special tires with all these sensors in them. I think there are knockoffs, but still. You also have to change the tires more frequently than traditional ICE vehicles, because they wear out faster, because the Teslas are heavier. A car weighs as much as an SUV or truck (3,582 lbs - 4,065 lbs), the Model X Plaid weighs 5390 lbs, and the Cybertruck weighs 6000-7000 lbs.
The damage doesn't stop with the vehicle itself; we must also consider the impact of heavier vehicles on the roads. It will also cause the roads to wear out faster than normal.
Unless it's crashed or burned in protest or whatever, IIRC, a Tesla vehicle can redeem itself from its massive environmental cost to produce & such. But only after many hundreds of thousands of miles on the road, and by the time that occurs, you'll need to replace the battery. "Tesla batteries can last between 300,000 to 500,000 miles, which translates to about 1,500 battery charge cycles." Kiss another $13K - $20K goodbye to swap out that battery for a new one.
So with its far simpler & straightforward construction out of readily available material, coupled with a sprawling existing infrastructure...the ICE car is more eco-friendly and cheaper to operate! And the hybrid vehicles are better than both full-electric & ICE, best of both worlds.
The tire thing is completely made up. Yes, they sell their premium tires but they are not necessary and do not contain electronics. https://www.tesla.com/support/tires
You are arguing a side rather than looking at facts.
You are correct that it is best to have a lightweight car if you have to have one. But an electric one does take over in environmental cost relative quickly and is cheaper in countries that don't subsidize fossil fuels and tax emissions. In addition the air quality in cities improves.
Or you could use literally any form of public transportation and kick the ass of both. ICE or not cars are just a stupid waste of space and resources. They need to be phased out. As a "lefty" I have never advocates for electric cars. They were always a distraction to try to keep car based infrastructure alive.
Not all of us live in cities, nor would we ever want to. I do not have access to public transportation to take me to & from one of my jobs.
If you are able, yes, kind of amazing perks & I'd use it. It would certainly save me more than a little money in car insurance, maintenance, fuel, potential for accidents, etc. But it is not a feasible option, specifically for me.
I lived in a small town in the Netherlands for 3 months last year for work. Never once needed a car. You're imagining a world where youre not using a car in a world built for cars. Do they have their use. Sure. But the scale at which we use them and the world that we build around their use needs to be done away with.
Debatable, it depends on what fraction of the power was supplied by the generator. The chemical-kinetic-electric energy conversion incurs great losses because of waste heat, and portable diesel generators are not always built with efficiency in mind. A charging station operating on 100% diesel to power an EV is much less efficient than a modern ICE vehicle of a similar mass sans batteries.
Citation needed. Do ICE engines not get hot and therefore also have great losses because of waste heat?
Presumably a generator making electricity for a charging station would only run when electricity is needed, while an ICE engine would be losing energy to heat the entire time the vehicle is idling in traffic.
Why would a diesel generator not be made to efficient and why are ICE engines always made to be efficient? How do you know which kind of generator they were using? Why would they use the generator for 100% of the energy needed?
Keeping in mind that this is a hypothetical scenario and that I did point out that the overall efficiency is dependent on how much of the power is generated by renewables and how much by the on-site diesel generator:
It doesn't really matter actually. Electric motors are so much better at delivering power, that you will get more range from a gallon of gas by towing an 'flat battery' EV behind a truck and then driving the EV than you will just driving the truck without towing the EV.
Doesn’t that highlight the torque that is available and delivered, more than efficiency of the electric motors, charging, heat losses, etc.?
There has to be a better example to prove your point than this.
Nope.
Last I ran the numbers, it seemed like on paper charging off an industrial scale generator was around 20-30% more fuel efficient per km than directly running an ICE car, but I based it on the advertised efficiency values of a random average seeming diesel car, compared to rather pessimistic charging loss and efficiency numbers for the EV. The inefficiency of even modern ICE cars is quite astonishing, even compared to the engine in a generator that can constantly run at the optimal RPM and load for efficiency.