Electric vehicles record data about where drivers and their passengers go and how long they stay. They can track Internet searches, purchases and voices. Car companies sell this data to corporations. Do all new vehicles track users' data equally? Besides not buying or riding in a data-tracking car, how/can drivers and passengers avoid surveillance?
Headlight glare
High spec LED headlights produce glare that can temporarily blind other drivers-- and compromise road safety risks. According to UK's Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, between the ages of 15 and 65, recovery time from glare increases from 1 to 9 seconds. At 60 miles an hour, a car travels 250 yards in 9 seconds. Call that a dangerous distance for traveling blind. Don't headlights need standards and regulation?
It takes 500 to 1000 gallons of water to extinguish a gas-powered car fire. If an EV catches fire, its battery can re-ignite several times-- so firefighters must watch it for 24 hours to ensure that the fire is out for good. Extinguishing one EV fire can use more than 30,000 gallons of water-- the same used during one average month by one Texas city of 100,000 people. Toxins emitted by the battery get into firefighters' lungs, skin and clothes-- and seep into groundwater. Would the Consumer Product Safety Commission create mandatory standards to help prevent EV fires?
Waste
While the vast majority of waste of every industrially-produced item occurs during manufacturing (during mining, smelting, doping, assembly, intercontinental shipping of raw materials, etc.), end-of-life waste is also significant. For example, where do you discard a 1000-pound lithium battery? At the battery's design stage, would manufacturers plan for its second life-- when it can no longer lug a four-ton vehicle, but it could provide power for a household with minimal electricity?
Taking clues
I looked at a few fifteen-year-old two-seater cars. They start at $7500, which is way over budget.
Engineer-friends insist that keeping an old gas-guzzler in good repair is way better for the environment than buying a new one. They talk about William Jevons's 1861 book, The Coal Question, which explained that efficiency actually increases energy use: whenever a product becomes efficient, its cost goes down, and more people buy it. More consumption starts with more production; and that translates to more energy use, more mining, more chemicals, more water use, more toxic waste.
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