Denmark to ban petrol and diesel car sales by 2030(euractiv.com) |
Denmark to ban petrol and diesel car sales by 2030(euractiv.com) |
I wonder how some HN commenters would do at being head of state, sometimes. The bar seems to have lowered lately anyway.
Edit: just to clarify and be less dismissive: Banning things everyone uses with little homework is a great way to fail at it. Since this is a tech forum, you can think of it kinda like upgrading your language, framework, kernel and landing a massive refactor, all at once, in production, without testing. It's like that, except you have tens-to-hundreds of millions of users, and their lives are at stake.
Bans take time, otherwise they're not effective. Besides, if they had announced 2020, I'm nearly certain the parent comment would ask for 2019.
"Why don't government simply act without any regard for reality?" is just a weird question to ask.
I've come around though. I think all the bastardized carbon accounting, market based solutions are on average quite bad. The idea of a neutral, "market decides" policy is a myth. These things are complex, and that compmexity is an opportunity for regulatory capture.
For example, most European vehicle tax codes have been altered to reflect emissions.
The upshot is that (1) new vehicles are 20% ish more efficient (2) older vehicles become uneconomical faster (3) people who drive older vehicles clear pay more tax. (4) Switching from a 10yr old ICE hatchback to a new one can easily save you $500 pa. Going from a new "efficient" ICE to an electric will save you a fraction of that.
New car buyers pay less tax, old cars pay more. Vehicles hit junkyards faster. Manufacturers sell more cars. Over a decade we'll see a minor (maybe 20% at best) decrease in carbon emissions.
Very little environmental juice for a lot of poor and middle class squeeze. A nice little sales boost for VW.
There's a lot to be said for the simplicity of an outright ban. Ban ICEs. Ban commercial fishing. It worked for CFCs and market hunting. In retrospect, no one wishes we had split hairs with a complicated policy.
Carbon taxing works well when it's applied - but it's very hard to create the political consensus to impose it. For example, the high cost of fuel in Europe has driven cars to an average MPG equivalent of 45 versus the average of 33 in US. That's nothing to sneeze at, it's 40% more for a given amount of CO2 - and that's after the continous fuel efficiency improvements happening on both sides in recent decades: https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/files/2012/0...
However, the EU fuel taxes are not actually carbon taxes, they are road taxes. Imposing the same tax on industry and power generation, as pure carbon taxes, would have immense political blow back.
So I really wonder how do you think "ban all non-renewable electric stations and cement factories" would work if we can't even accept a 3-10% price increase on these products?
The US, having cheap gasoline, uses gasoline vehicles in far more roles than say, the EU does, where diesel is far more common. "Light commercial" might as well read "should have been diesel" from an MPG standpoint.
At that point bans make more sense.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/20...
Alas, the politics are made by city people (who have access to really good public transport) and paid for by people in suburbia who _have_ to own a car to survive (and no, we can't just move everyone to the city).
EDIT: typos
Those 3 year old cars aren't just scrapped, the used car market is much larger than the new car market.
Do you have any sources for this claim? I think I only know of a single person who changes cars in 3 years due to leases and only did it once.
According to the US government the average age is 11, almost 12 years.[1]
[1]https://www.bts.gov/content/average-age-automobiles-and-truc...
I'm curious, do you think the whole idea of a market-based solution is bad, or do you just think that actual real-world implementations have been lacking so far?
I mean, it seems to me that if you tax emissions strongly and uniformly enough, then at some point it has to have an impact. I think existing schemes have just been pretty weak.
I agree that carbon taxes can potentially hit poor and middle class folks unfairly hard, but this can easily be solved via carbon dividend type schemes.
One way to look at that is that you're saying any market-based solution strong enough to be effective is indistinguishable from an outright ban.
We could, for example, discourage smoking by putting a $500 tax on each pack of cigarettes. But at that point, you may as well stop pretending and ban it outright.
Another way to look at it is that bans are fair because they apply to all people equally. Taxes unfairly punish the poor who have less discretionary income. (A $100 tax on cigarettes would drive most of the working and middle classes to quit, but there are certainly a number of rich folks who would keep on lighting up because $100 means little to them.)
My theory is that the people push for market based solutions the most are usually the same people that are against regulations and taxes so whatever they come up with will usually be very weak. They certainly won't support taxation of carbon emissions to the degree that's necessary for real behavior.
Most existing schemes seem to have been cleverly designed to avoid hitting certain industries with large enough lobbying power.
Taxing/banning/regulating specific polluters rather than pollution itself is just ripe for regulatory capture.
I do think that making stuff more market based to avoid "picking winners" is probably a bad idea. We know what the winner is here, more or less. The winner is non-ICE vehicles. We should be backing that, not 25% more efficient engines.
Bans are just as messy because what is and isn't subject to he ban results in just as much hair splitting as a complicated policy in the first place.
When we "ban" things there are almost always trade-offs. It makes sense to allow market hunting in some cases (wild hogs, whitetail deer in some areas). There's a case to be made for allowing the use of lead paint in some industrial applications.
Not true. From personal experience driving an electric costs one fifth the cost of fuel per km. That's an enormous saving.
not really. They just migrate faster to Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.
Do this and a massive chunk of the population will die shortly after. There is no alternative to farm and transport food at the scale required for the modern population.
Banning CFCs isn't even comparable because all of modern civilization wasn't built on them like it has been with the portable energy enabled by ICE.
There is no viable electric-only solution for the freight rail network, the air freight network, or even the road freight network.
We’re going go have to come up with creative solutions when most vehicles are electric.
Same mechanism can work for electric cars
A carbon emissions tax is the right solution. Just keep raising it until one gets the effect wanted - a wholesale switch to electric.
[0] Perhaps not natives, but that's another story.
Also, incentives to increase sales of electric vehicles are yet to be announced.
Denmark's Scandinavian neighbour Norway is on the other side of the spectrum. Heavy subsidisation has caused every 2nd (!) car sold to be electric (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-environment-norway-autos/...).
BTW, I loved Denmark :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_banning_foss...
Personally, I don't think the ban will ever be enforced. It will create the right incentives and most car sales will be electric, but there will still be fossil fuel burning car sales.
The "DMV" or equivalent will have a very hard time explaining why they are still giving out license plates for new vehicles that are not electric if the ban is made law.
Denmark with their famous 150% registration tax already has cars being used much longer than what I've seen in other countries. I'd love to see the 150% tax waived off for 100% electric cars that are not luxury vehicles. Set strict constraints for a common man car, and incentivize it turning electric.
Also, think about the charging infrastructure....
Currently battery cost and production volumes are the main limitation. As that improves, the market will gobble up whatever is being produced. This just puts the pressure on a bit more. 2030 is not even that ambitious.
I expected to see suggestions about increase in public transportation coverage and frequency to compensate, or maybe steps towards self-driven collective fleets (2030 seems ambitious).
I don't know Denmark, are public transportation already well developed? Or am I not cynical enough and it's just an economically driven decision?
But even rural areas are serviced by trains and bus lines. It may be slower in rural areas than taking the car, but you can make it work. At least you can do with one car per household instead of two.
I was in Denmark last year to see what's going on over there and I observed the infrastructure very carefully: there is no widespread electric infrastructure for cars; it will be a gargantuan investment of epic proportions. Even if the infrastructure is put in, the current battery technology is only barely adequate for daily city driving. Everything else - forget it! So this is banking on future infrastructure improvement in batteries and recharging, and it's especially banking on invention of fast recharging. And it's assuming diesel engines and emissions will stand still, with no further improvements. Just wondering, Danes like to travel and they like to hitch a camping trailer to their cars and drive all over Europe; how will they be able to do that if their government bans sales of cars with internal combustion engines?
Whatever stuff that government is on, it's gotta be potent; I'd like some of whatever they're smoking.
As a "Car Guy" however, there is a small sadness that I won't really get to experience much of the internal combustion engine. I feel like I was born a decade too late and a lot too poor. Similar to some techies who feel the missed the early internet.
It used to be 180% for the high tier, 105% for the low tier. I don't know the cutover points used back then.
Today, it's 85% for the low tier (below ~190K DKK) and 150% for the high tier above that. The cutover point will increase to account for inflation and such.
Further, I think the biggest gains of this are in emerging countries like SE asia, India etc. where the cost of oil fuel is much higher than the US. The market size willing to ride on this tech is insane.
OTOH, do they even need cars? Why can't denmark just use public transportation and abolish cars altogether?
Does he have a point?
If they're so unlivable then why do so many people want to live there that they're crowded? Especially when the country is full of suburbs...suburbs, where, in fact, most people live.
Our cities are way less dense than many European cities. In fact they are way less dense than they used to be in many cases.
> "our cities"
Where is "here" and "our cities"?
/s/public transportation/health care/cars/etc.
For starters, I'd be curious to see a source on whether or not the United States even has a significantly increasing number of homeless per-capita.
Secondly, even if that is the case, the causal relationship between the wealth gap and homelessness would be speculative at best.
First, there is social housing available at a price between €335 and €710. True, you may have to wait a little for a house, but if it's a critical situation you will get priority. As you have no income, you will also get rent subsidies. After those, you'll pay roughly €250 / month for rent.
Second, healthcare. Health insurance is mandatory and covers practically everything, so you'll still have this. No need to worry about healthcare costs. You still have to pay for it. With a €385 / year copay, it costs you €94 / month. With a €885 copay, it'll cost you €75 / month. As you have no income, the government will subsidize your healthcare for €94 / month. Net cost: between €0 and €-20 / month. Yes, you can actually profit on healthcare.
Third, welfare. About €930 / month.
Let's look at some basic needs: heating is about €75, electricity is €28, water is €10, a 50/5 internet connection is €25, a basic 100 minutes, 100 sms, 1 GB internet mobile phone connection is about €7. There are some municipal taxes, but you don't have to pay any of them because you have no income.
This leaves you with about €535 a month for food, clothing, and all your other stuff. Note that I intentionally did not mention any car costs: you don't need it for grocery shopping, and you don't need it for a job, so any use is only incidental. If you even want to keep it, the main cost would be insurance, and that starts at €20 / month.
So let's look at the original question: is there a causal relationship between the wealth gap and homelessness? I'd say there is, because when rich people pay slightly higher taxes, literally nobody has to be homeless because the government will pay for their safety net. So how many people depend on this? Roughly 6%. This means that, on average, every working person has to pay €75 / month in taxes for a guaranteed safety net, including housing and healthcare. If you consider the amount of taxes you pay, that's not such a bad deal.
At the risk of inviting some xenophobic and/or racist commentary, I'll bite. What's your story?
false by definition
While Norway is an amazing country in many aspects, the amount of oil owned by a state company puts it in a rather unique position.
It's not really common. They only have one tunnel that's 24.5km ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tunnels_in_Norway ) and it's not under the sea. The remaining are 10km or shorter.
The longest undersea tunnel is 8.9km and it goes to a city with a population of 8,215. It goes to an entire island though, so a few more people than that benefit.
Your overall point is completely right, but might as well get the facts straight, so people can compare and don't recite wrong information.
Norway doesn't actually show up much on the list of longest tunnels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_tunnels
Creating a national investment fund from the oil bonus seems a far better choice than continuing as usual, or using it to pay for tax cuts (1980's UK).
When the oil runs out, or is considered too damaging to use any more, the infrastructure will still be there, and so will the fund.
https://www.ft.com/content/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feab...
State wealthfare fund and research in various techniques to minimize pollution from oil production.
"Just 1 mile of electric range" is true for most hybrids that don't plug into to charge (from Ford, Chevy, Toyota, etc). Obviously more miles would be even better, but this isn't a terrible thing on it's own.
The base non-plug-in Toyota Prius Hybrid has had "just 1 mile of electric range" for over a decade now, that hasn't stopped it from getting 50mpg ratings (a full 50% decrease in emissions from the current average US fleet MPG at ~25mpg).
Is this the "50mpg under ideal laboratory conditions driven by an AI" or "as driven in a real city/highway by a human"?
Hybrids have a torque curve that starts like an EV, then continues like a gas car. This means great torque from 0 mph through highway speeds.
And then there's idle at stop lights, the biggest waste of fuel and a huge cause of pollution. Modern engines use 6 seconds of fuel when starting, but most cars idle for minutes at a light.
> “In just 12 years, we will prohibit the sale of new diesel and petrol cars. And in 17 years, every new car in Denmark must be an electric car or other forms of zero-emissions car,” Rasmussen said, implying that hybrids will be phased out in 2035.
Any thoughts on converting a hybrid to an EV?
Edit: The engine cavity should be able to hold a lithium battery ~250+ lbs, and the 1.6 kWh NiMH battery is another ~250+ lbs that can be replaced with another lithium battery pack. If a Powerwall were used for each, the car would have 27.4 kWh, which I think would power my Camry Hybrid only about 30 miles. So maybe not very feasible until after another battery technology upgrade.
https://www.landrover.com/Images/HYBRID_FAQ_GUIDE_Intreactiv...
"How far can my Range Rover Hybrid travel using just the electric motor?
When Electric Vehicle mode is activated manually using the EV button, the EV light on the instrument cluster will glow green. The Range Rover Hybrid will drive silently at slow speeds for a distance of up to 1 mile/1.6km provided the hybrid battery is fully charged when EV mode is activated"
Other people have talked about this, but I'm wondering if the change to having electric drive motors and an engine just for generating electricity is more efficient and easier on the engine. (regenerative breaking aside)
Most hybrids use a slightly different engine, which is more efficient but generates less force. The hybrid transmission can add torque when accelerating or going uphill.
The engine must get less wear. My Camry Hybrid only needs an oil change every edit: 10,000 miles.
Why make a 90KwHr battery for a car, if you can make 3 cars out of it. After all current reserves of Cobalt, nickel, and lithium are finite.
Saying the current infrastructure is inadequate for a new mode of transport is a truism. Infrastructure takes decades to build out, of course EV's will not be expected to have huge charging infrastructures while less than 1% of cars are EV.
Long term, It'll be just as easy, if not easier, to get around in the future. Consider all the new transport tech that's emerging: electric bikes, scooters, fully self-driving vehicles, drones which can carry people, VTOL aircraft, hyperloop, etc. They are all more interesting and promising than the current noxious fume spewing transport. I'm excited for even 1/3 of those options to come to fruition :)
But I do wonder how we're gonna cover that last mile. Adding hundreds of miles of range to an ICE car is hilariously simple, just a couple of plastic containers in the trunk and you're good to go.
Can't add extra batteries like that. Energy density is not a truism.
Maybe portable ICE generators, sort of like hybrid addons for full EVs.
I really liked the hybrid tech. I don't know why its not dominating.
Skagen (Northernmost tip) to Flensburg in Germany is ~402km. Skagen to Copenhagen (East) is 410km. The longest reasonable point to point journey in Denmark is in the 550km or so range (e.g. Skagen to Lolland), though you can certainly end up with longer journeys if you pick more convoluted routes for sight-seeing and end up having to charge, this will not be a typical journey for most people. And most of the population is located within a much smaller part of the country.
And this is with 12 years to expand charging networks and for vehicles to increase range before a ban on new petrol/diesel car sales, and in other words many more years before everyone will be forced to use an electric.
You're not wrong. I was just wondering how people would get around.
Factors that made me wonder included:
- when you're sightseeing, it's faster to buy gas (in today's era) than to charge to full battery - the place I parked my car each night was not near a charging station and/or outlet - having infrastructure in place to drive all over makes means there's less friction to go to remote places, and if there's less demand for remote places in the future, there may be less infrastructure near those places
I'm not trying to make argue any specific point here. I was just wondering. And even though Denmark is a tiny country, many other are damn huge!
BEVs are likely to match pure ICEVs (I.e. not counting hybrids) in range in the not too distant future. Yeah you could theoretically put in a bigger fuel tank, or bring extra gasoline. But I mean a standard light vehicle that doesn't sacrifice storage space.
Meanwhile, if you get enough EVs on the road, you'll soon have charging stations everywhere. We already see it here in Norway. Almost every roadside McDonalds have rapid chargers. There are a couple of supermarket chains that have gotten pretty good at having chargers in many of their supermarkets.
Not where I am. I've recently driven several times from Drammen to Trondheim and never seen a charger at any of the supermarkets I passed on the way. I don't mean they don't exist, just that I didn't see them, can you list a few of them?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/12/how-much...
and two maps of the network in 2016 and 2018, showing the effort (by Tesla owners club!) in building out the network:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/12/how-much...
Yep they're not all superchargers, many are just EV friendly 240v hookups. But as the lady in the first article said "the reality is that if you can see the lights on, or that the kettle works, then you can charge".
Got me thinking about my next car. Or campervan. We often camp in caravan parks - with a 15 amp hookup plugged into the vehicle...
Not gasoline...
Regardless, if we force the market, electric cars will catch up. But bans probably won't do the trick, I bet it'll take incentives in terms of higher taxes on gasoline and lower on electric cars.
https://i.imgur.com/dd9Jdzf.png (Orange are high power chargers, green are lower power chargers, source is plugshare.com)
Denmark may have some fairly onerous taxes, but that seems to be more than made up for by the quality of life, healthcare, education and so on. I have two good friends who moved from UK to Denmark, both high earners with families, neither would consider returning to the UK for a millisecond. As UK austerity continues and Brexit nears I'm thinking of it myself.
The USA's ridiculously high subsidy of petrol has struck me as crazy ever since my first visit in the 80s or 90s, and I rented a "standard" car that turned out to be as large as a small aircraft carrier. It handled like an aircraft carrier too.
In Portland, the US's most celebrated cycle city, 6.3% of commuter journeys are by bike.
It looks to me like Denmark has it right; and that taxing polluting vehicles (you know, there's this thing called climate change?) is perhaps a better strategy than sneeringly calling them "clown cars".
It's not as extreme that I'd call it "extremist state of affairs". Fewer cars are for the greater good. However, what pisses me the most is how it is really implemented. There is the famous 150% tax when you buy a car, and then there is a green tax every 6 months/quarter that is based on how efficient &a safe your car is. I'm all for the green tax. Heck, double or triple it, and make the SUV drivers pay. But, the 150% tax IMO is lop sided policy. It lead to too many small cars(VW Up, Seat equivalent, and the like) because that's what common people can afford. Another side effect is that people tend to keep shitty cars much longer than rational, because they cannot afford a better car - throwing away all the emission savings in the wind(pun intended).
I think the law is made by politicians just based on life in Copenhagen, where you can use the trains and bike wherever. Public transportation is A-class, and you don't particularly need a car for the most part.
The rest of Denmark, where I live, public transport is not as good, and car becomes a necessity if you go to work outside the city. We're the collateral damage of the narrow minded policies.
/rant.
Denmark, as everyone here says is an excellent place to live, and I have a bigger list of positives to list, and a tiny list including this car tax to complain about.
You will never understand it because those people have a completely different world view than you or I when it comes to taxation. You will also probably never understand a lot of other crazy things that people with different world views believe.
The idea that taxes and government involvement in everything should be the minimum possible is foreign to them in the same way that a woman is CEO of GM and that's not a problem to us is completely foreign to the Taliban.
Obviously it's a two way street and the idea that someone would want gas to cost $5/L and that someone might not be ok with a female CEO is equally foreign and impossible for us to relate to.
But historically this was a trick to minimize the trade deficit, because we don't produce cars in Denmark.
Today, however, it's hard to get rid off this tax. Because you have to find the money, and as soon as you start talking about this tax people stop trading cars.
IMO, cars isn't where we need tax breaks it'll mean even more congestion in the roads. We need to invest the upcoming surpluses if you ask me.
until you get into an accident severe enough to need extensive medical attention.
I suppose.
On the other hand, the current government could easily announce that starting in 2020 all new government fleet purchases are required to be electric and it would help create a lot of new competition to bid for those orders.
Purchasing electric fleets in order to speed up development and adopting of EVs is leading by example.
Many of the city's other vehicles are electric, for example the vehicles used for collecting litter or moving the workmen who do minor repairs.
That isn't the national government though. I don't know what cars they use.
I don't want to link to the kind of newspapers that report on European royal families, but the crown prince of Denmark takes his children to school/nursery by bicycle. (Last time I saw them, the oldest was riding her own bike.)
[1] https://www.sustainable-bus.com/electric-bus/copenaghen-purc...
In Norway you're going to have a hard time finding a petrol or diesel car that fits the government requirements.
See §5: https://lovdata.no/dokument/SF/forskrift/2017-12-11-1995/§5
Even in the US, the USPS is experimenting with electric mail trucks: https://about.usps.com/what-we-are-doing/green/vehicles.htm
If the ban is the stick, the best return on the carrots would be increasing public charging infrastructure. SF runs chargers in front of city hall, for example.
"Rules for thee and not for me"
The government is happy to tell everyone else what to do but when it comes time to buy their own vehicles they don't have to play by those rules so their decision making process does not reflect the presence those rules and they wind up buying ICE vehicles for the majority of use cases because from a strict numbers perspective those are what make sense in a majority of use cases.
Yes, this requires more energy infrastructure. But note that in the US the majority of new generation capacity added in the last few years has been renewable. And it’s not because we’ve passed any carbon tax, it’s because it’s now the most cost effective form. The bean counters love it.
And of that new generation capacity that is wind, the largest manufacturer of wind turbines is Vestas, a Danish company.
I can't find any solid data, but I'd assume its closer to 10k miles per year, or an eighth of what you're suggesting. That is still a lot, but it is achievable especially with more offshore wind.
Current regulation requires large district heating to produce electricity (which is no longer economical due to abundance of cheap wind power) and this delays the conversion of the last coal plant.
The only parts that sucks about BEVs is that you can’t have a trailer attached and the price.
Charging infrastructure needs to be expanded everywhere but that needs to happen regardless. The need will just be more acute. Also note most in Europe have 230V at home including a lot of places in the Nordic countries that have 230V at every parking space for multi tenant housing for car heaters. Those are very handy for an EV parked overnight.
The holiday issue is a real one. I drive a diesel that does 1000km in one go. I use that range in one day maybe 2-3 days per year during holidays. That would be impossible with an EV. I can get where I want but it would require a lot more planning and longer travels and recharge waits.
Barely adequate? We are reaching almost 500km on a charge now (around 300km is more common). This is Denmark we are talking about, not Russia.
> and it's especially banking on invention of fast recharging
You mean under 30 minutes? How often do you need that? Road trips?
Note that they are not banning hybrids, which will take care of your road trip needs just fine.
Of course and of course!
"Note that they are not banning hybrids,"
Yeah but hybrids suck: gasoline automatics, and except for the Volvo, ugly sedans. If there were more sportwagon diesel hybrids with manual transmissions, that'd be a different story, but there aren't and probably won't be.
And what will happen to car enthusiasts in Denmark if this legislature is enacted?
I mean, yeah, it doesn't have the same growl, but if you want raw performance, I'll take my spaceship whirl over rube goldberg-like thousands-of-tiny-explosions any day of the week.
the ability to get beat on the track 1 weekend, drop a couple grand on new parts the next, then go back and beat them the following weekend.
car shows and seeing a super charged mustang or camaro or twin turbos or something completely different someone came up with an idea for and built.
the same way us programmers tinker and build stuff for the hell of it, is the same was us car guys build stuff and tinker for the hell of it. some take it seriously and go to track, some (me) just do it cause it's a nice break.
spending a day installing a new exhaust can be fun. playing with 240volts of batteries (or whatever it is, lol) (if theres anything to play with) - not so much i'm thinking, lol...
The boring utilitarian combustion engines the large majority of humanity has ever experienced probably won't be missed, though. Boring cars were still boring a decade ago.
In contrast it will no longer be legal to manufacture and sell ICE cars, and so the price of these cars will go up as demand outgrows supply, making it financially unattainable for all but the rich.
Best plan is pick a few "classics" be it 60s muscle cars or current muscle cars, and buy them before they hit scrap yards or are destroyed.
Not an easy thing to do of course - cost of car, storage, restoration if it's old, but they can be saved and kept as toys.
Restoring a 60s camaro has always been a dream of mine.
Also, not every 20% is the same. 20% reductions in emmisions because 20% of the fleet is electric-from-solar is a lot closer to 100% than 20% because of lighter cars and more efficient ICEs.
If you live in the countryside and rarely visit towns, it's a reasonable choice. If you regularly drive slowly through a city, it's awful!
By the way, diesel is now typically more expensive than gasoline in Europe too, and the tax embodied in the price is roughly proportional to the carbon content of both. In the past there used to be a lower tax on diesel in some countries as an aid to farmers and the transport industry, but it is less common now.
Really? Which countries? Not in the european countries I'm familiar with.
There are a lot of forces at play here, among others tax rates (which cause the F150 to get bigger and European cars to get lighter), fuel prices, culture (in Europe a big truck won't impress anyone, you get other types of cars for that), average and maximum distance traveled (in Europe nobody fantasizes about roadtrips), road conditions (high population density makes offroad driving less important in rural Europe than in rural America), etc
According to the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), Europe averaged 46 MPG (US gallons, "normalized to CAFE test cycles") in 2015 [1], compared to something like 37 MPG in the US.
This NY Times article [2] summarizes the report, with some nice graphs.
[1] https://www.theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/201...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/03/climate/us-fu...
Anecdote: several years ago, I got the lightest, smallest-engined, most-efficient car I could find here in Canada, a Toyota Yaris. And using a calculator to convert units, I see that even so, it only gets me ~40 US MPG (real world) - most because of highway speeds. When I drive mostly 80km/hr, it's about 42 US MPG. When I drive mostly 120 km/hr, it's more like 36 US MPG. The same car is sold in Japan/EU with a 1.2 litre engine, vs the 1.5 litre in North America. Similar things happen with many other models.
I've been told that there are people who trade their cars in when the tires are worn out - it kicks the payments down the road a month (they have to budget next month lower than this month, but it doesn't use cash they don't have) Remember, nearly anyone can get a car loan no matter how bad their credit is. Even a credit card has higher standards. Since we are talking about people who are bad with money it is at least believable.
Had a 14 year old car... 225k miles on it... a couple years ago had put in $1k or so, but the last 18 month had put in less than $500 in repairs (tires, oil changes, some other issues).
However, there was an oil leak, and some damage to front-end suspension. Oil leak had been going on for a while, but getting worse. Finding it would have meant taking the engine apart, and the front-end stuff was also expensive. Even without the engine leak, I was looking at probably $1500 to get this to pass inspection this year, and... there's no guarantee that all the fixes wouldn't have left me with something with a broken transmission that needed an overhaul or replacement. Fixing it all would probably have been north of $3k to feel good that it would be road worthy for at least another few years.
As much as a I hate change, I bit the bullet, and got a 'newer' car for $11k. 'used' but still relatively new (2016) and it's far more fuel efficient - getting around 40mpg vs the 25 I was getting before. The fuel efficiency won't totally make up for the entire diff in fixing vs replacing, but I have something that's more modern, more comfortable, gets better mileage and better safety features. The 'brand new car' comparison - yeah, but loads of people are fine getting a 'lightly used' car vs 'brand new'.
A friend went through similar decision within 10 days of my process, and he ended up getting a lightly used car (2017?) but it was $21k - I just can't bring myself to pay that type of money for a car right now. I was looking sub $10k; my wife pushed me to go a little higher.
My Camry Hybrid only needs an oil change every 5000 miles.
That means that investment can take place in setting up charging infrastructure around the country. Now businesses can invest in charging networks, safe in the knowledge that the demand will come. It's not here yet but it will be there.
My employer installed several stations as well at my request when Tesla was still offering equipment for free (equal parts Tesla specific chargers and generic EV chargers), which I plug into when at the office, but only to stay topped up while my vehicle actively keeps itself cool in the Florida sun.
I also support the idea of reducing other taxes in concert, so the tax is revenue neutral.
edit: For some perspective, there are 240,000 water main breaks every year in the US, wasting over 2 trillion gallons of treated drinking water.
https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/drinking-w...
A smaller nation can choose a solution that works better at smaller scales, but doesn't scare well - because they don't need it to scale much. A larger empire has fewer options.
The vast majority of the efficiency gains in city driving from a non plug in Hybrid is regenerative breaking. Sure, slowing down across a huge mountain represents a lot of energy, but making stop an go traffic vastly more efficient takes very little storage.
True, but this car is already so extremely heavy that the added battery is 4-5%.
It would be the equivalent of banning steam engines, which although no longer in normal use, are still running as tourist attractions and remarkable pieces of engineering that are fantastic to see and experience.
Given that we still allow horses and Model T's on the roads (aside from freeways, due to inability of century-old cars to maintain that speed), I can't imagine why we'd bother banning them. The nostalgia is nice and their impact is negligible.
California: 1992.
https://www.audi.com/content/dam/com/EN/corporate-responsibi...
The problem is that the fossil fuel lobby has been exceptionally successful in putting the transition back by 30 years. Had they expended the same energy pivoting to green power then we'd be having a totally different discussion now.
As they have as well a direct interest in saying "buying new/our cars isn't that harmful as you think", their doc makes me even more sceptic... :)
"intended to provide economic incentives to U.S. residents to purchase a new, more fuel-efficient vehicle when trading in a less fuel-efficient vehicle."
Of course this is predicting the future. Nobody does that well. In a few years we will have facts, but that doesn't say much about the future beyond that.
For a base Tesla Model S, that would mean a tax of about 120.000 USD..
Also obviously a 1bhp hybrid would get awful fuel economy figures compared to a real hybrid. If you are a manufacturer and you go to all that bother to build a hybrid, why bother doing a 1bhp motor instead of a 30bhp motor? Whats the point? Just to "get around" the law? Why not just put a proper motor in and make a better, more competitive product? I doubt the cost of a 1bhp motor is much less than a 30bhp in the grand scheme of things needed to build a hybrid car (e.g. batteries)
"“In just 12 years, we will prohibit the sale of new diesel and petrol cars. And in 17 years, every new car in Denmark must be an electric car or other forms of zero-emissions car,” Rasmussen said, implying that hybrids will be phased out in 2035."
It looks like in Denmark electricity prices were 0.30 EUR (0.35 USD) per kWh in the second half of 2017, while gasoline prices are currently 12.26 DKK per liter (7.15 USD per US gallon).
I kinda leave the European prices out of the discussion because what they pay tends to be extremely distorted by local taxes.
Based on a quick bit of TCO research, best I can tell is that without subsidies, EVs tend to have a TCO significantly higher than an efficient ICE vehicle. The market is young, obviously, and lots of EVs are aimed at people willing to pay a premium. A Model S, for example, has a TCO over five years of nearly 70 grand (!!). But, a Chevy Spark EV has a TCO of more like 20 grand, which is really showing how cheap they were due to GM dumping them at a loss and the big tax credit. A Prius is around 30K or so, for comparison.
I want an electric, and will get one as soon as there is something in the right price range with the characteristics I'm interested in (sporty, decent looking, sufficient range, reliable, good ergonomics). The Model 3 isn't too bad but it's more than I want to spend on a first-run car, and I won't buy any car with a single touchscreen as the sole interface.
I don't buy new cars and I don't drive very much in the first place. It's not worth it for me to go electric at present, despite access to cheap electricity and relatively high gas prices here. I'm hopeful that by the time my 2007 Camry is at end-of-life there will be affordable, reliable used EVs.
We have plenty of hybrid buses where I live though (in Norway).
Because it isn't especially efficient.
If most middle class families can get by with just one car, maybe that's good for everyone.
Note. Today cheaper cars and high incoming means many families have two cars.
I'm not sure I agree. I could easily imagine a range of carbon taxes applied to vehicles where most, but not all, users would switch to electric. There could easily be people who like taking long trips far from major roads and are willing to pay a large premium to do so.
> Another way to look at it is that bans are fair because they apply to all people equally. Taxes unfairly punish the poor who have less discretionary income. (A $100 tax on cigarettes would drive most of the working and middle classes to quit, but there are certainly a number of rich folks who would keep on lighting up because $100 means little to them.)
That's a fair point, but I'm not sure your example is all that compelling. If a small number of rich people are willing to pay $100 in extra taxes to smoke a cigarette, is that really so bad?
What is the rational to "letting" the rich smoke (replace with activity "X" if desired), but not everyone else?
For the most part, that is what the policy effectively ends up doing, and so enacting it becomes to an implicit approval of that result.
It's obviously not the only way of looking at the situation, but I think it has some merit. Interesting to think about, at least.
Implies everyone is in the same situation. This is never true. For example, in WW2 we had gas rationing. You got a fixed amount of gas, regardless of how much driving you needed to do. The result was a black market in gas, where those who didn't need all their alotment sold it to those who did (at black market prices, of course, since this was illegal).
I like capitalism, but I view it as a means to an end, not an end in itself. Instead of evaluating our moral against what capitalism produces, we should evaluate capitalism by how well it supports our morals.
From that perspective, yeah, I think it is kind of bad. If we are placing a high tax on cigarettes because our society has made a moral choice that cigarettes are bad and people who smoke are bad, then I think that moral choice should apply equally to all people regardless of wealth. My moral code states that power does not excuse sins.
On the other hand, if the tax is a pragmatic one to, say, help pay for universal healthcare and offset the higher medical costs incurred by smokers, then the tax is a reasonable approach.
In reality, the tax/law is probably a combination of the two goals, which is why I think a tax is kind of bad but kind of OK.
For every dollar that is raised from taxing gasoline, is another dollar that can be used paying for social programs or whatever.
Look, for example, at civil seizure in the US. Police agencies are highly incentivized to do it since they get to keep the money, even when doing so is unjust.
In practice, tax-based solutions have pros and cons and you need to think about the incentives and unintended consequences that they lead to on both the enforcement and citizen sides. Law-based solutions do too, of course.
However, as a sedan, I strongly dispute the "more space for passengers and cargo". The trunk is larger in the camry, but has severe limits that the Yaris, a hatchback, does not. Carrying a mini fridge, for example, is out of the question in a Camry, but easy in a Yaris (as long as you only have 1 or 2 passengers). Also, the camry has better rear-seat leg room, but much less height, such that my head (185cm) touches the roof in the back seats. Finally, the Yaris has better clearance for rough roads, and much better turning radius and visibility for city driving. (Oh, and my cost after 150000km, including purchase, fuel, and oil changes, is just approaching the purchase price of a Camry Hybrid)
I wish the Yaris Hybrid, available in Japan, was available in North America.
And I used to haul my 46" HDTV in my 99 Sentra, pretty sure it will fit in Camry too.
Camry is big for city driving. Moving to Seattle again reminds me how much better a Yaris can parallel park than my 'boat'.
I'm consistently driving 1100 miles a month on 28 gallons. This may change after the upcoming move, since walking will replace driving as primary transportation.
As far as I can tell taking a quick look at your links, the difference can be in two things. First, these are fuel economy standards companies are expected to hit, and not reporting on whether they hit them or missed and paid penalties. Second there's the phrase "Assumes manufacturers fully use low-GWP A/C refrigerants credits". Apparently fuel economy numbers are boosted by these credits--actual fuel economy isn't the same thing, it appears?
(EDIT: Overall fuel economy for cars and trucks combined was 24.8 mpg in MY2015 [1])
[1] https://phys.org/news/2016-11-average-fuel-economy-high-mpg....
The top 4 best-selling passenger cars are the Honda Accord and Civic, and the Toyota Camry and Corolla [1].
Their "combined city/highway" fuel efficiences are respectively 30, 34, 27, and 32 mpg for the base engine [2][3][4][5].
How can this possibly work out to 37 mpg overall? There aren't enough hybrid sales to bring that number up.
[1] http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2018/08/july-2018-ytd-u-s-passe... [2] https://www.edmunds.com/honda/accord/2017/features-specs/ [3] https://www.edmunds.com/honda/civic/2017/features-specs/ [4] https://www.edmunds.com/toyota/camry/2017/features-specs/ [5] https://www.edmunds.com/toyota/corolla/2017/features-specs/
(Perhaps the mpgs were added up and divided by N? That doesn't always provide the answer you're looking for.)
> "skepticism" "It seems obvious"
Pick one please.
I am skeptical of the 37mpg claim because it seems clear to me that the average car sold in the US isn't that efficient. What's the contradiction?
Keeping an older car rather than buying a new one is often the more environmentally sound decision, because it takes a very long time for improved efficiency to break even on the massive environmental investment of manufacturing the new car.
Slightly confused - what's the issue here? Small cars are good. They take up less street space and tend to be more economical. My wife owns a Fiat 500 (which is about as small as you get); it's much easier to park on the narrow streets of our rural town than a bigger car would be, its fuel consumption is stellar, and it's no bigger than we need.
The sooner people shed this silly consumerism mindset, the better.
Here in Norway the car has to pass quite strict emission standards (EU kontroll) every 2 years or it will not be allowed on the road. I think you have the same thing as it's from EU. So the amount of old clunkers that pollute should be minimal, mostly limited to veteran cars (25+ years in Norway) which are exempt.
Buying a new car for proportionally lower emissions is a false economy as much of the carbon footprint of a car is in its manufacture, not just its use. Holding onto older cars that aren't offensively inefficient (e.g. any small hatchback) seems environmentally responsible to me.
But it would be even better if we somehow could tax households higher for their second car.
In practice it's probably an administrative nightmare with too many loopholes.
Obviously, you can stomp on the throttle and get worse numbers if you want. But US MPG ratings are reasonably real-world accurate. (And the US fleet number comes from the same testing from the same group using the same metrics -- so they should be fair to compare)
As for MPG are you talking US gallons or imperial? Also what's your car's segment?
There are no cities with full bans on Euro III diesels or any diesel yet that I'm aware of or been denied entry in Sweden, and those few cities in Germany that do have them have only implemented partial restrictions.
The bans are not real, it's all just political maneuvering in order to get cheap votes.
I trust physics and chemistry, that's what I trust: when you elongate the exhaust manifold and manage to cool the exhaust down enough, you end up not even needing to inject Urea and still have an Euro VI compliant diesel.
It's the only company selling diesel passenger vehicles in Japan right now, with such a good motor that it's beloved by taxi drivers there. Which company is it, and what is the engine called?
As the system is now, it will be 40% of the 150% by january.
Separately Norway is one of the richest countries on the planet thanks to its offshore oil. Their sovereign fund dwarfs Saudi Arabia in comparison so maybe they currently can cannibalize that revenue to build a supergrid.
China is building an ultra high voltage direct current supergrid to accommodate future EV needs (using primarily coal as a power source). I don't see this happening anywhere else?
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/2171432...
Here's a map of the high voltage power grid. I don't think anywhere is more than 50km from a transmission line.
https://en.energinet.dk/-/media/9160AAB5C484432399767220B78D...
The increase will be gradual, and no doubt the power grid company is already planning for it.
If they have 240v outlets, that's half the battle. That is around 31 miles per hour of charge, from a standard outlet (although you have to make sure your wiring is good) without any extra infrastructure.
This may not be sufficient for a cross-country drive across the continental US, but for most european countries? You can drive 300 miles and charge overnight even with no fast charging at all.
Compare this with setting up gas stations (digging underground to install the tanks, logistics to keep them topped off, etc) and gasoline starts to look quite insane. It's just that we have this existing infrastructure built over a century that we take for granted.
If people purchase EV _en masse_, they'll have charging stations everywhere. There's no egg/chicken problem here.
I’m not saying we can’t upgrade production (I’m actually significantly more optimistic than the best case IAE estimates), but it’s not as trivial as just installing some new wires and transformers.
Probably you're never far from a high voltage transmission line.
Map: https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=tesla+s...
I.e. commercial operators who want to sell you coffee/snacks/flowers/other high-markup items as well as fuel/energy. Added bonus for EV: longer dwell time while waiting for a fast-charge means more likely to spend spend spend (perhaps)
That would be me, and I don't want to foot that bill, because at a gas station I can fill up the tank in under five minutes, and at a recharging station I'd have to wait a minimum of half an hour, so I wouldn't be getting the same level of service as I do today. As far as my wallet and especially my time (which is far more expensive) are concerned: no!
P.S. 350kw fast chargers are typically being advertised as zero to 80% charge in 15 minutes - cars that can accept these chargers are due in the next couple of years from Audi, Ford, BMW et al so mainstream "ordinary" cars as well as exotica like Porsche. I cant find any stats online, but I have read that the average time someone spends filling up with fossil fuels is 7 minutes, so an extra 8 minutes is not that outrageous and even that is zero to 80% - if you had say 20% remaining I'd imagine that the time would be in the order 10-12 minutes (guesstimate)
I find it completely worthwhile "subsidizing" personal vehicles. Everything else just feels oppressive in comparison (barring scenarios like bicycling being faster than the gridlock in Manhattan). Quality of life seems much better to me not being forced into transit or having to bike everywhere, so it makes sense to me for the government to invest in it.
How big was that car you rented? Can you remember the make/model? I went from a tiny car I had to lower myself down to get into (98 Ford Escort ZX2) to a Jeep Grand Cherokee and the handling is just as good if not better and the ride is smoother all around. Feels much nicer having the extra space too, and not having to contort myself to get in.
The problem is that everyone ends up with their own vehicle and this gridlocks any road in/out of a city. Which ~big city in the world does not have trafic problems? And what is the average passenger count in those cars. One bus can replace MANY cars. But for some reason i cannot comprehend taking the bus or train seems oppressive to some people. I get this is not an option everywhere but where i live it most definatly is and people still complain about the tolls drivers have to pay to commute into the city and refuse to take the bus/train.
And the train doesn't run on Saturday nights, so if you want a fun night in the city, you're driving anyway.
That could be an interesting discussion. In effect it could be.
On transportation, I'm more for having a level playing field, and discouraging polluters. More so since I've learnt of climate change. To give a UK example the government pays for roads, but not rails - that's a subsidy, yet most would agree the railways need more investment to increase capacity.
I'm happy discouraging individually polluting cars and promoting transport choices - buses, trams and trains, even if I have to pay a little more tax. I'd like to see investment to get more services, more routes, better timetables, adding cycle routes etc. Not just in London. More like the Netherlands for instance. As a car owner I have often taken a bus or train as the better choice thanks to not needing to find or pay parking or be able to have a night out and a few drinks. The UK can't just keep throwing more one occupant vehicles at our increasingly gridlocked roads.
I realise that can't work as easily in the US given how far you built everything around the car. It would take a lot of work to get back to balance or create viable and appealing transport that isn't seen as something you're forced into.
As to what car, at this point I have no memory other than it being a US only make (Chevy maybe), my first US trip was late 80s early 90s. It was referred to as "standard" size before we flew out. I brought UK expectations to that, where a hire would be compact (smaller than Ford Escort, probably a Ford Fiesta), standard would maybe be a BMW 3 series (of the 90s - everything keeps getting bigger!) or Toyota Corola, then large and luxury choices. What I got was something similar in style and size to a NYC cab as seen on so many movies but with a nicer interior. Turns out they're bloody enormous! Thankfully so are US parking spaces. :)
Unless the Escort was broken this seems too rose tinted a view. Large SUVs like that may be comfortable but they definitely don't handle well.
And yet the average age of the car in Denmark is 8.9 years [1]. For comparison Germany is at 9.3 year, and US is at 11.6 years [2]
[1] http://www.aut.fi/en/statistics/international_statistics/ave... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/261881/average-age-of-li...
But anyway, these average ages may be due to little used old cars being taken out of registry, to avoid annual fixed taxes? This has not much impact on the average age of cars used in daily traffic.
FWIW, I'm from Finland, also with a history of high car purchase taxes, and the average in above data is almost 12 years. The oldest cars, however, have lower annual car tax (they had the highest tax at purchase time).
BTW I understand Denmark was about to lower the car purchase tax from 180 % to 100 % or so?
As for your other argument - both reports count "vehicles in use" (ACEA) or "vehicles in operation" (US)
Renault actually advertised this at the time: "will rust like a fish", with a picture of a car immersed in water. Seems to be legitimate: corrosion problems have become much more rare.
This statement requires a bit more detail. It wasn't a flat tax rate, it was graduated, so below a certain price, there was a lower rate (105% IIRC), to incentivize smaller cheaper cars, and as a luxury tax on expensive vehicles.
As it is now, the rate is 85% below ~190K DKK and 150% of the value above that. The cutover has been steadily going up over a couple of years now.
So no, it has not ever been a flat 180%, as some people like to claim. It's still high, but there are tons of cars out there that don't hit the tax cutover point, even family cars.
Edit: And the rates are lower for motorcycles, hybrid cars and such.
I have been wondering for a little while now if the extreme libertarian position on private roads has been vindicated. I am not sure yet, but it seems possible where once it was ridiculous.
Starting with (let us say) World war two, cities and states built out substantial, publicly funded roads and road networks in order to connect up newly developed sub-urban centres that were designed for car owners. These new centres were affordable for the emerging middle classes, who migrated there en-masse. This co-incided with the baby-boom, which was partly possible due to cheap housing.
But this left the inner cities to die slow deaths where immigration was not high. (Side note: This is more true of American towns, in Australia I don't know that we had the dramatic changes seen in the highly industrialised centres of the USA.) So it possibly boosted the middle class at the expense of the lower class (?) and it created huge urban sprawl.
Would private roads, paid for collectively by the developers or residents of those suburbs, have helped to alleviate or reduce the problems outlined above?
I am spitballing here, and it is a little off-topic, but please indulge me!
I live here and have to pay the tolls but I still prefer it from a "user pays" justice POV.
It doesn't have to be privatized though - Singapore is introducing a GPS-distance-based congestion charge on their roads ("ERP 2" if you want to Google it)
In the United States, it was somewhat more complex than that. The highway network was and is primarily part of the nation's military defense infrastructure, so that weapons and personnel can be moved around in a time of crisis. (Something from Germany that impressed the U.S. during WWII.)
This is why the system is named after a general who was also a president ("The Eisenhower Interstate Highway System").
It's also the reason why the rails are not usually removed from abandoned railroads anymore: So they can be rehabbed in an emergency.
There's also a lot of social studies involved, including the baby boom.
Like all large human endeavors, it's messy.
[Edit to add:]
Would private roads, paid for collectively by the developers or residents of those suburbs, have helped to alleviate or reduce the problems outlined above?
One of the many contributing factors to the U.S. Civil War was the notion that the North wanted to shed its remaining privatized roads and federalize the whole thing, while the South wanted entirely private road systems.
You are right. I am not contesting the Highway system, which actually still seems to be a good case for Federal public spending, both because it benefits the military and because it is inter-state.
My point is entirely regarding the roads that were built out from the dense urban cores to connect with sub-urbs, and the roads built to connect sub-urbs with one another, and those inside of suburbs too. If these were paid for by those who used them (and not inner-city dwellers) then perhaps urban sprawl would not have happened, and we would have saved ourselves from a whole host of externalities we are only discovering now.
Can you build a gas station with 50k? How much is just the labor to bury the underground tank?
And that's a quick charger, which you would use mostly for trips. For most purposes you only need easily accessible power outlets (although the level 2 stations are far more convenient). Most cars are sitting in parking lots most of the time anyway.
This is what is usually called "handling". The other things you describe are driving comfort or something like that. "Handling" usually means the dynamic characteristics of the car that would make it fast around the turns in a track for example. The large mass at a high center of gravity makes all SUVs pretty bad at this.
Overall it all revolves, around energy density, inability to store electricity efficiently, charge times and battery degradation (lots of them are not produced in very renewable manner)
The electric version of the vehicle I'm buying costs just a shade over twice as much(!) as the ICE version.
I'm not fine paying more than twice as much for a product that in many respects is "less good".
Of course the top-selling electric vehicles (Tesla and Leaf) don't have a direct ICE equivalent so it's tough to compare...
If you're saying "range", I counter that most trips (e.g. most commutes) are well within the range limits of current BEVs.
"Most trips" doesn't work, the EV proponents want a ban on all ICE cars. Which would force part of the population to buy a truck and commute with it.
Politics is all about compromise. You actually have to start out at an extreme position so that when you meet in the middle at the end, it's still somewhat reasonable.
There will be bans on ICE cars at some point, but with a lot of footnotes.
I think this is a symptom of a larger problem and despite the fact that people have this issue as of now should not strongly colour our perception of what's possible.
If you're commuting more than 2hrs to work by car then not only are you wasting a large percentage of your own life, but you're also harming the environment. It should not be a "given" that it's A) normal, B) done by a large portion of the population, C) hampering the endeavours to adopt vehicles that allow for a more sustainable energy acquisition.
Losing the ability to do a road trip? yeah, I buy that as a concern. But if you're one of the people affected by the range limitations of current EV's for commuting (one-way) then I have nothing but pity for you and I sincerely hope you either enjoy it or that your life improves (not being condescending, I really hope it gets better for you)
Do you think electrics just can't have such an aftermarket mod culture? I mean, yeah, it's not here now, but as the market matures...? ICE's have had custom ECU's that tweak timings for a while now, once the scale of batteries ramps up I'm sure people will find ways of discharging levels of power that the OEM considers warranty-voiding. You may not be able to put in a custom exhaust, but you'll certainly be able to move batteries around and experiment with different weight distributions. Instead of a custom intake manifold you can swap in front/rear motors with different HP's.
I mean, yeah, electric mod culture will probably more resemble edison's lab than a greasemonkey pit (and yeah, there's a danger that the Acme Motor won't work with the Emca Battery Pack because DMCA), but the opportunity to tweak your own machine will still be there I think, if maybe in a slightly different form and with different optimization parameters.
(I'll be pleased when none of these (or the pollution) is within a city, but that's not my main point.)
> Playing with 240 volts of batteries (or whatever it is, lol) (if there's anything to play with) - not so much I'm thinking, lol...
An engineer friend spends all his spare time tweaking an electric motorcycle. There's a lot to control in software, and although there are far fewer components than an ICE bike, he has gradually upgraded them, or will change them for a particular performance characteristic.
Maybe he could ask why you feel so safe with flammable liquids and toxic combustion products.
(Equally, some of my father's friends maintain, repair and operate steam locomotives. Needing a railway makes this far more difficult than for cars, but it's not too difficult to find a similar group in England.)
I've heard such rhetoric before; it did not end well.
While an electric motorcycle might have a fairly simple ECU, something like my Mustang is a bit more complex. While software and hardware to modify the ECU coding yourself is available, as well as the training for it, most in the community highly advise against DIY and paying a pro (which most of us do) to do it for you. $200 to let someone who "knows" what their doing vs 1 wrong value and you blow a rod or crack the block...
> Maybe he could ask why you feel so safe with flammable liquids and toxic combustion products.
It would probably turn into the same discussion I have with friends as to why I'm more comfortable doing electrical work in a house, vs doing plumbing work. I've accepted the risk that if I get electrocuted, it's just me being screwed, vs if I screw up a plumbing solder, I can flood an entire house. With gasoline, I know what precautions to take and avoid an explosion. Vs the voltage / amperage on a tesla style battery pack, yeah, check it with a volt meter and make sure everything is grounded properly - but accidents will still occur.
There are precautions to take on both sides; there's new education on both sides; etc... More than anything, maybe it just falls to nostalgia; working on cars with dad made me work on cars when I got older. I'm not opposed to electric cars - I quite welcome them as a fact - I have a step son who wants to be a diesel engineer mechanic and I told him, may all well find classes for electric motors and get into that / get a head start (hes 15). As dad got me into cars, maybe my step son gets me into electric motors...
Whoever lives in the house could be more upset with your electrocution than with a flooded house, even if raw sewage was involved. That can be true even for strangers, and almost certainly for family members.
You may not be able to drive your ICE car to the track though, might have to trailer it.
Owning vehicle you have to trailer to the track is kind of like owning guns and using them to hunt in England. Yeah you can do it but all the red tape and cost results in practically only the landed gentry being able to justify such a costly hobby.
That's really not the same.
Fundamentally there are difficult compromises to make a vehicle behave well on the street and track, after all - you can often be cheaper overall to have a daily driver and a track car/bike, and make fewer compromises. Also spend less of your time changing tires :)
Also, the "vehicle in use" is not necessarily such a clear definition.
For instance, several of my colleagues own historical vehicles from 1960's and 1970's which are "museum registered", which here means that they must be at least 30 years old, can be used only on 30 days each year, and they are not subject to annual "MOT check" (but a different kind of check every 2-4 years).
Are they included in the "vehicle in use" statistic? I don't know. And I don't know what are the specific regulations for similar vehicles in other countries. Because the cars are 40-50 years old, even a not very big number of them would skew the statistics of average age of cars.
That's an interesting tidbit. I always thought that they did. I thought the automotive term "GT" meant "Grand Tour" and was European in inspiration.
That's what I get for culling most of my European auto culture information from Top Gear.
Even besides the German brands (VW, Mercedes, BMW), there are a huge number of European car manufacturers (Skoda, Peugeot, citroen) > showing ability and demand for cars in Europe. Also, the small size and mostly flat nature of Europe, cultural diversity, and longer vacation time all contribute to Europeans traveling more than Americans. Not to mention excellent roads, family/student hostels for less expensive trips (pre-Airbnb era) and obviously Visa free travel. So yes Europeans might not have the same idea of long distance road trips we have in the US but that is not to say they don't take the same trips or more than in the US
So how do you explain the countless German and Dutch cars driving around forests of Norway and Sweden every summer?
Even then, there are no American size cars. Most sold cars are European or Japanese station wagons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limousine#/media/File:98-02_Li...
So I assume you were using the "sedan" interpretation.
If we need to move mulch or the like, we rent/buy trailers.
The salesman showed me the electric version. They are cool. For my usage pattern it would even be a good fit 90% of the time, lots of short trips from home.
The problem is that 10% of the time I'm on the road, and that's a bit of a deal-breaker.
The absolute killer is, of course, paying an additional $14k for a vehicle where the resale value will fall far more rapidly than the much cheaper ICE equivalent.
I can take pretty much any kind of car to my local independent place - which happens to be less than 1/2 mile away - and they'll fix it for me. They'll stick to using original manufacturers parts unless I instruct them not to. If they think something ought to be covered by warranty and so ought to be looked at via the original manufacturer's servicing network, they'll decline the job and tell me why.
It's hard to imagine a system with less lock-in!
How much does Tesla pre-compensate for the maintenance they won't authorize others to do?
Well, they are. That's the 9/10th of a cent that drivers pay on each gallon of gas they purchase.
IMO, it should be closer to an even five cents, with half of it going to mass transit. But then I also drank milk and Pepsi mixed together when I was a kid, so I'm not exactly reliable.
There are also state gasoline taxes, vehicle weight fees (for commercial interstate trucks) registration fees, and tolls[2].
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_Trust_Fund 2. https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/07/us-transporta...
Edit: colder climates will have a lot of problems adopting EVs, if ever on a mass scale.
I've got an EV in Minneapolis (colder than Toronto but less crowded) and I love it. So does every EV owner I've ever met.
A bus also needs diesel (:-D)
My car is old enough that I could make my own biodiesel with the electricity from solar panels and run on it, so when the rest are stuck, I'll always have fuel. Even if nuclear war hits.
Diesel buses are still the majority, but they are slowly being phased out.
Good luck making your own fuel (N.B. in a lot of places it is illegal or in dubious grey-areas, plus there are the obvious environmental and safety implications which might prevent you from doing it one way or another). Why not just use that electricity from the solar panels to charge an EV's batteries?
Biodiesel has lower emissions of both NOx and CO2. By the time we're in such an apocalyptic scenario where internal combustion engines are a thing of the post, nobody will be giving a damn about some guy driving such an anachronism. And show me where it's illegal to produce one's own fuel.
"Why not just use that electricity from the solar panels to charge an EV's batteries?"
(Car guy here! I just came back from Hockenheim with my racing license not too long ago!)
Because with my diesel, I have a range of at least 1000 km, ~1300 km if I hypermile. Batteries lose capacity. Electric cars have no clutch pedal nor a manual transmission (they don't need it), so for a car guy like me, that sucks serious ass. Acceleration isn't everything: electric vehicles sap all the enjoyment out of driving. If there were electric cars with a clutch pedal and a manual transmission, I'd be willing to trade the range and make a compromise, but there aren't so there is no incentive for me to do so.
This is a reflection of the vehicle platforms they're built on. You take a Civic or a Dart slap on AWD, a lift kit and extra 500-1000lb of body/interior and call it a CRV or a Cherokee and there's not much spare capacity left to haul cargo or tow trailers.
So if you have 400MW of ICE cars you don't need 400MW of electricity to replace that, something more like 80-100MW is more like it IIRC. The infrastructure build cost isn't zero, but it's much less than this 150% metric suggests.
No, they're not. They're, as implemented in a car, a ludicrous example of engineering compromises.
Put a hybrid drive methane spark-ignition high compression engine and you'll have similar CO2 emissions from a e-car powered by a thermal plant (the vast majority of our power). It'll cost as much as a Tesla too.
However, my point is only that we will need non trivial increases in electricity production, rather than any specific number. That point still stands.
Like I said in my original comment: I’m optimistic, I just don’t think it’s trivial.
To put it another way, I think it’s something that requires a government rather than being achievable purely with the private sector. That might mean just incentives and template plans, or it might require government to commission things, but it’s that sort of scale.
Saying "well having a vehicle you trailer to the event is cheaper" assumes a baseline amount of money being spent that is more than most people have to dedicate to the hobby. That cuts out the entire low end of the hobby.
The lowest end of the hobby will change, obviously. Not convinced it will completely go away. I think my point was it isn't a crazy bump in expense to have a vehicle you play with only on the track, though it may not be the same vehicle.
And yes, it means you can't easily drive your hobby car out to a drag strip to see what it will do. Or a bunch of other things. But it doesn't mean there is no hobby to be had - at least I hope so.
4x4 is interesting, i hadn't considered but suspect that will be under more pressure than track days.
