I’m all for fuck the US but don’t you think Canada can make it’s own cars? Being dependent on China’s economy is no better than being dependent on the US or Europe.
Comment on Tesla sales plunge 40% in Europe as Chinese EV rival BYD's triple
DarkSirrush@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
Come on Canada, let us have cheap BYD, fuck the US economy.
pressanykeynow@lemmy.world 2 days ago
DarkSirrush@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
While Canada making its own affordable, long range EV’s would be ideal in the long run, we literally have no canadian-owned production facilities or brands that currently can, or do produce low or mid end cars, and Canada seems to have no interest in subsidising those.
Which means, in the short run, I want a vehicle I can afford to buy that doesn’t give me range anxiety, and the only reason I can’t is because Canada literally doubled the price of the cars that currently exist that fit my requirements because the US asked them to.
yogurt@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Hydro Quebec invented BYD’s battery technology, the only reason they licensed it to BYD in the first place is nobody else was going to do anything with it.
mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
nah, forget about them
let us have economical cars because we don’t need these massive expensive things just to go 5km to get a load of groceries
phoenixz@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
Let us have safe bicycle infrastructure do that we can bike to those stores, how about that? And with that, add mixed constructions in the suburbs so that people have small local stores around.
A bike costs a fraction of a car
Bicycle infrastructure building and maintenance costs a fraction of that for cars
Bicycles don’t emit CO2. And for those wise asses saying that the cyclist does, it’s a fraction of a fraction of a car because you’re not lugging 2 tonnes of stell around to transport you and a bottle of milk.
Cycling infrastructure is much more efficient, you can push a shit tonne more people over the same road if you don’t need big ass cars. Yes, even your Mercedes smart car is I ass compared to a bicycle
It creates much much less pollution from tire dust
It’s much safer, bicycles kill only a fraction of the people that cars kill all year round
It’s healthier, people do exercise not because they went to the gym, but all day every day with their bikes
It cuts the noise pollution
It’s cheaper because no taxes, no gas needed, maintenance is a fraction of that of a car.
It’s way less wasteful
It lowers aggression. Though it may or may not exist, I’ve never heard of bicycle road rage
Need more?
Less cars is less parking spaces. Parking spaces get cities barely any taxable income. Instead of these ugly ass concrete wasteland parkitsoaces you can now have restaurants with outside patios which can be taxed. Couple that with the cheaper infrastructure, and that alone should be an obvious reason as to why do this
It’s really not that much slower. For typical short trips, bicycles usually only add some 10-20% of required time to your trip.
For any trip over say, 5-10 kilometers, use good public transportation
For those once in a lifetime trips where you actually need a car because you need to transport something huge, use one of those Evo rent-a-car.
In the Netherlands, a huge amount of people don’t have a car. Not because they can’t (they totally can) but because it’s stupid to have one. You can go everywhere by bike, you can jump with your bike in a train when needed to go further, cars are expensive and bad for everyone, why even have one?
mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca 17 hours ago
I agree with all of this and personally I have replaced as many car trips as I can with a bicycle
however I also recognize that that’s simply too far for most people right now, at least in my area. people love their cars. I would just love it if they weren’t so damn dangerous and offensive, and I wasn’t nearly killed every time I go out and they come near me. that’s literally a 50/50 chance when I bike to the grocery store that somebody nearly kills me (actually in the past 3 weeks that ratio is a little bit safer, but history shows that I’ll have a bunch of things happen in a short time to bring it back to even).
first we need people to recognize that they don’t need massive vehicles. then an extension of that logic is that they don’t need a motor vehicle for a lot of things.
DarkSirrush@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
That works in the city but i live in a remote area, and have an hour and a half round trip to work every day because its not economically viable for me to move closer.
Since I doubt Canada/BC will spend the money putting in viable public transit/high speed rail, I just want them to do the bare minimum to allow me to afford to stop burning gas to afford my next meal.
While striving for turning every small town into a walkable city sounds great and amazing on paper, the reality is it won’t happen, so we should push for baby steps in the right direction instead only focusing on the absolute ideal.
mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca 17 hours ago
stuff like this is why I want to focus on the wide, sweeping generalization of “smaller vehicle is better”
there’s no need for someone in your position to drive a massive crossover for your commute in case you need to pick up 30 lb of groceries after work. you can do that with a hatchback, and pretty much the biggest reason that people don’t choose to do it with a hatchback is that they’re afraid of the bigger heavier vehicles on the road
I still push bicycle infrastructure, but I’m not going to push for everybody to get on bikes. I’m going to push for everybody to stop having such goddamn offensive dangerous vehicles (yes please drive at me at 90 km/h with blinding headlights in a 4,000 lb vehicle with a hood that is above my eye level when I’m in a vehicle with 8 in of ground clearance), and try to get them to realize that no it’s not okay because it came that way, you bought it and you have a responsibility as the owner and driver
Medic8teMe@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
Us as well. I am disabled. One hour drive one way to the hospital. Grocery store is half an hour. A train would be awesome but they keep ripping up tracks here so that’s not likely.
freebee@sh.itjust.works 22 hours ago
Bicycle road rage does exist, between road bikers and regulars, between fast electric and regulars and in general because plenty assholes do also ride bicycles if the infrastructure is good enough.
Other than that, all valid points!
gian@lemmy.grys.it 2 days ago
Not everyone live in a big city where there is everything you need in terms of grocery and services.
Living in a small city, I can walk to do most of my day by day routine, but I need a car to be able to go where there are services/shops that are not present. And being a small city the public transportation or every solution where you just rent the car/bike/whatever to use a couple of hours are not really present since it is not economically sustainable (too few people spreaded on a relatively too big area)
TwinTitans@lemmy.world 2 days ago
🤣🤣🤣