Transportation

Canada to Ban New Gas-Engined Car Sales by 2035

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Canada to Ban New Gas-Engined Car Sales by 2035

The 2035 target is part of the country's plan to achieve a net-zero emissions economy by 2050, with the federal government already offering a $5000 subsidy for purchases of EVs priced under $55,000, with the province of Quebec adding a maximum of $8000 on top of that federal subsidy. In 2020 the government of Quebec announced an identical plan to phase out the sales of gas and diesel passenger models in the province by 2035, and aims for 22% of new car sales to be zero-emission far sooner, by 2025.

When do electric vehicles become cleaner than gasoline cars? | Reuters

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Analysis: When do electric vehicles become cleaner than gasoline cars? | Reuters

I think this analysis ignores that most coal power plants are located in remote areas, often on high ridges outside of polluted air basins unlike gasoline automobiles. Moreover, natural gas power plants put far fewer traditional emissions than gasoline engines on a per mile basis. Electric cars don't have tailpipe emissions. 

I think the national obsession over climate change is unhealthy, when we should be more concerned about controlling urban emissions in air basins that significantly out of compliance. Climate change emissions have the lowest impact on the environment compared to nearly any other form of pollution. 

ALCO

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I was reading about the decline of ALCO in Schenectady. A pretty common sad story, new technology comes out and a business is slow and half heartily adopting as they can’t imagine a world where there old profit center doesn’t exist any more.

ALCO believed in steam locomotives, as they very profitable at one point, and while they adopted diesel electric locomotives eventually by outsourcing technology development to GE, they couldn’t be bothered to spend much money on developing a good diesel electric locomotive in house even though GM EMD and eventually GE developed their own superior models in their final 40 years that the corporation limped along.

Anatomy of a Car Crash

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Anatomy of a Car Crash

Without the details of how crashes happen, we tend to dismiss them as the work of “idiots”—drivers who occupy the lower echelons of driving skill and common sense. But while humankind’s measured intelligence is increasing, so is the number of deadly car crashes. After a lifetime of improvement, we saw an 8 percent jump in crash fatalities during 2015, the largest in 50 years. That number rose again in 2016, when more than 40,000 people died in collisions.

Fortunately, science is coming to the rescue. We no longer have to rely solely on dents, skid marks, and the lawyer-vetted remarks of drivers to figure out what happened and to tell us how to avoid the next crash. In a landmark study published in 2008, researchers at the University of Michigan combed the scene of 6,950 crashes to give us a more detailed analysis of what happened during each crash. Naturalistic driving studies are now equipping cars with accelerometers, sonar, sensors that track driver inputs, and lots of video cameras. Drivers sign up to participate in these studies, and they sometimes crash, leaving researchers with valuable data. We’re also benefiting from the rise of road cams—dashboard-mounted video cameras owned by everyday drivers, aka cammers, who cruise around, record crashes, and then post them on websites like Reddit.