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Denmark Is Killing Tesla and Other Electric Cars (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous shares an article: The electric car has dropped out of favor in the country that pioneered renewable energy. Sales in Denmark of Electrically Chargeable Vehicles (ECV), which include plug-in hybrids, plunged 60.5 percent in the first quarter of the year, compared with the first three months of 2016, according to latest data from the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA). That contrasts with an increase of nearly 80 percent in neighboring Sweden and an average rise of 30 percent in the European Union. Denmark, a global leader in wind power whose own attempt at an electric car in the early 1980s famously flopped, used to be enthralled with them. Its bicycle-loving people bought 5,298 of them in 2015, more than double the amount sold that year in Italy, which has a population more than 10 times the size of Denmark's. The figures suggest clean-energy vehicles still aren't attractive enough to compete without some form of subsidy. However, it turns out that those phenomenal sales figures had as much to do with convenience as with environmental concerns: electric car dealers were for a long time spared the jaw-dropping import tax of 180 percent that Denmark applies on vehicles fueled by a traditional combustion engine.
It's all about price and market demand? If everyone who can afford an electric car already has one, of course the demand is going to drop.
What drug-induced hallucinations do people teach in business schools? Infinite growth is impossible, once the growth phase is over the target should be a nearly flat equilibrium.
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Why were the subsidies removed?
Cheap, long range EVs are available now (e.g. the Renault Zoe) but I guess there needs to be more choice in the market for them to really sell well on their own. The new Nissan Leaf is due later this year, Tesla Model 3 probably late next year for Europe and a few others.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
electric car dealers were for a long time spared the jaw-dropping import tax of 180 percent that Denmark applies on vehicles fueled by a traditional combustion engine.
Well, that's impressive... they've developed cars that burn combustion engines as fuel??
You meant to say 'great' cars with 'some' quality problems. Autocorrect can be a bitch...
OK a new size TV
Can someone explain *why* a 180% import tax ever existed in the first place? It's not like Denmark has a large domestic auto industry it needs to protect. And I assume the fee is only for cars imported from outside the EU (not Denmark), right? I can't imagine they'd be that interested in artificially propping up the Swedish and German auto industries. I just don't understand this.
Of course the electric vehicles should be subsidized in the form of reduced taxes, but completely eliminating them isn't the right answer either. Lower the duty to something like 20%, remove it for EVs, but still charge VAT for both.
It's not an import tax but a registration tax. Applied to all cars, not just imported ones.
Something rotten is going on in Denmark.
I'm amazed electric cars sell as well as they have done thus far. They are incredibly expensive, generally have a double digit range between multiple hour chargings and every single time you charge that battery you know your maximum range is only going to go down. That's not even mentioning the cable which, unless you park in a garage or inside a gated driveway, is likely to be out in public for any retard to unplug/cut/trip over.
They are a fad and people are beginning to realise that. The people that want one already own one and for everyone else the negatives far outweigh the positives.
Unless you can make an electric car with a 400 mile range, a 10 year battery life capable of over 3500 charge/discharge cycles with zero reduction in charge or output while costing 10k eur then they will never be bought by the masses.
It's more about the fact that consumers using gasoline cars do not have to pay the costs directly. Instead, the costs of their choice are socialized to everybody. If gasoline users had to pay enough gas taxes to cover all the costs associated with their use of gasoline that market would evaporate in a couple of years.
The graph explains what happened.
and for the blind:
In the fall of 2015, the Liberal-led government of Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen announced the progressive phasing out of tax breaks on electric cars, citing budget constraints and the desire to level the playing field.
[...]
The new tax regime "completely killed the market," Laerke Flader, head of the Danish Electric Car Alliance, said in a recent interview. "Price really matters."
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Coal and nuclear are mediocre fuel sources. To convert into electrical power, coal requires a high temperature steam generator, and pollution scrubbers. Nuclear requires expensive containment vessels, and difficult waste handling. In contrast, gasoline can provide high efficiency, low pollution power, with a small, cheap engine and catalytic converter.
If gasoline can be replaced by coal or nuclear, I consider it a good thing.
It's more about the fact that consumers using gasoline cars do not have to pay the costs directly. Instead, the costs of their choice are socialized to everybody. If gasoline users had to pay enough gas taxes to cover all the costs associated with their use of gasoline that market would evaporate in a couple of years.
First of all, you forget that most countries charge taxes on gas purchases. In fact, these taxes were supposed to be earmarked for road improvements and to offset other expenses. The problem is that governments then discovered ways of diverting this money to other things like pet projects. Plus, the cost of scrubbers, etc. used in gas refinement are included in the price of gasoline. Gasoline is just one product of many that comes out of the refinery. The same process creates a ton of other things like propane, etc.
Second, you are a bit naive if you thing that electric car owners are paying for the full ride. We don't know what the environmental impact is going to be from producing all of those batteries and how to deal with the resulting waste.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Woah... I wasn't aware that Teslas could detect where your electricity came from, and reject electrons coming from hydro, or wind farms, or rooftop solar.
Even so, nuclear and even coal are still cleaner than powering your car by gasoline. You might find it interesting to crunch the numbers yourself sometime if you don't believe me... electric engines are very efficient, and a coal power plant can produce a lot more power per pound of carbon than a car engine can.
the jaw-dropping import tax of 180 percent that Denmark applies on vehicles fueled by a traditional combustion engine.
No, goddammit.
The tax is 105% on the value up to ~$16K, and 150% (used to be 180% until about a year ago) on the value above that. There are also adjustments to reward good fuel economy.
Yes, the tax is high. But please get the numbers right.
Eat the rich.
Funny how much owners consistantly rate their "shit cars" incredibly highly. Including even in your link trying to argue that they're shit cars
We gotta go to a crappy town where I'm a hero.
The government of Denmark is NOT banning electric cars.
No they aren't. According to the headline, they aren't just banning them. Denmark is "killing" them.
Apparently auto-pilot has become self aware and is now considered alive. Perhaps they are putting the car on trial for murder in cases where the driver is killed in a crash. I'm pretty sure Denmark doesn't have capital punishment for humans, so it must just be for AI.
This is probably what will push Skynet over the edge.
I use an old style quartz watch (Casio). I need to change the batteries like once every 5 years. At one time I had an old style winding watch but got bored of winding it up every day. Apple iWatch users have to recharge theirs like once every day as well. Guess which watches are more profitable and more of a fad right now.
"If gasoline users had to pay enough gas taxes to cover all the costs associated with their use of gasoline that market would evaporate in a couple of years."
Yeah, because the 400-ish percent gas tax in the UK has totally made everyone switch to electric cars.
I don't think EVs are a fad. The batteries are still kind of expensive but the prices are coming down. You don't need a 400 mile range. There's like no one who regularly drives that distance. It would only add extra battery weight, expense, and decrease efficiency for no good reason. I could see a battery rental business becoming available for such users but other than that it makes no sense for most users.
200 miles range is quite enough. The advantages? Much lower fuel cost per mile driven, higher acceleration, and more comfortable driving experience overall.
However, it turns out that those phenomenal sales figures had as much to do with convenience as with environmental concerns: electric car dealers were for a long time spared the jaw-dropping import tax of 180 percent that Denmark applies on vehicles fueled by a traditional combustion engine.
That's not convenience, that's price.
Nope, no sig
For 150% the price of a Tesla, I'd just drive it without registration and just pay fines for an unlicensed car.
That is, if they could catch me to give me a ticket... :-)
For everyday use without getting stopped, just print up a registration place yourself using a 3D print of a plate, paint it, and drive carefully.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
OMG TRADE WAR WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU!!11!.
So here's the thing.
Your country can produce cars for $40k. The next country can produce and import equivalent cars for $30k. Let's assume that you have wage-equivalence (not US vs China), so the next country over just has a better infrastructure (e.g. they have water, ore, and other resources close enough to expend less effort getting the same result; given the same technology, you're always going to spend 1/3 more to make the same cars).
People in your country buy those cars for $30k. You have like 5% unemployment (the U.S. constantly trends toward that; it's 2% for Japan; more on that in a minute). That's cool.
Now you slap a 100% tariff on those cars. The import cars now cost $60k, your domestic cars cost $40k. People begin spending $10k more on new cars; however, they can't spend that $10k on much else. Jobs are lost; fortunately, because you're working on wage-equivalent labor in both countries, the extra $10k spent on cars supports the additional jobs required in your auto industry to meet demand. Your country makes fewer things; people buy less stuff; and you're overall a poorer nation.
The nation on the other side, meanwhile, has lost your population as an auto market. They're also somewhat poorer: they don't have the market, thus no revenue stream, thus employment bumps up a bit. That's a problem.
Fortunately, in a few short years (it's like 1-3), the rate of early entry to the workforce (dropping out of college) goes down; the rate of early retirement increases and the rate of late retirement decreases (average retirement age falls); and, as a final saving throw, immigrant labor slows. Long-term, the birth rate falls a bit. Unemployment goes back to its normal (which was also 5% in that country). That's Malthusian growth.
The people selling you cars are no poorer nor richer; you're poorer, and you can't resolve that without restoring trade.
Should the people who were selling you cheap cars then retaliate with their own foolishness, cutting their own noses to spite their faces, making themselves poorer by restricting imports from your nation? It will make them poorer as well, and give you the temporary ache of a swift kick (same as you gave them), but ultimately not harm your economy in the long run.
Of course not. How ridiculous. They should just complain about the temporary economic situation, continue to lavish in the wealth obtained by importing from your country, and let you enjoy the bitter fruits of your own self-destruction.
Note: in the event that you were trading on a wage differential, cutting off imports will diminish your job market. Importing from a country with cheap wages supports domestic infrastructure markets such as shipping and retail; blocking that trade and increasing the prices of those goods by tariff or by shifting to expensive domestic production means a dramatic reduction in purchaseable goods, and no reduction in the amount of goods shipped and retailed by the same number of labor-hours. In other words: you lose tons of jobs in moving goods around, and create fewer jobs in making goods (if you're making them domestically at all).
Imports give you a trade advantage in efficiency (reduced cost of goods, increased amount purchaseable per labor-hour worked). Exports give you a trade advantage in size (population growth). Losing either of these hurts; losing imports hurts more and hurts everybody in your country, while losing exports hurts specific industries and thus specific people.
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Tesla's are normally very expensive cars so yes it was surprising they sold so well. Still I wouldn't exactly call this a subsidy, seems to be more a tax break because it seems regular gas powered vehicles have a massive tax on them. I own a Volt, and in Ontario-Canada thanks to an actual subsidy of about $7,000 which is similar to the hybrid subsidy that existed for years before it, it became affordable for me. I have absolutely no regrets over it, compared to my Corolla which I also bought new at the time it is so much of a nicer car thou at almost twice the price. Given the choice again I'd do it again!
I think part of the problem is that folks want EVs all at once where a Volt will get you 99% of the way there without the limitations or more than double the cost. Sure it won't do 0-60 in 2 seconds but seriously who drives like that all the time. I run on pure electricity all summer and some gas in the winter or if I cross-country travel.
PHEVs have a double-digit range (e.g. the Volt has 58 miles, 420-ish total). All-electric cars have multi-hunded-mile ranges. Tesla's early vehicles were 180-ish miles; Chevrolet has the 238-mile Bolt.
Charge times on a home charger (220V) at 30A put on about 20-25 range-miles per hour (3-4 miles per kWh; I get 3.3 in the winter and as high as 4.2 in the summer). 220V at 40A gets you 25-35 miles; the popular 9.6kW all-electric on-board for 240V at 40A is 29-36 range-miles per hour. The Bolt can take an 80kW charger; at 40kW, it pulls 120-160 range-miles per hour.
ChargePoint supplies chargers that can easily spit out 130kW (390-520 range-miles per hour) or even up to 700kW, but no cars support that; even using an off-board charge circuit, the TMS generally can't dissipate that much heat. Future EVs capable of accepting high-rate charging will need a liquid-to-liquid heat exchanger and off-board TMS, such that the charging station will couple and begin pumping coolant through a second coolant loop in your TMS radiator, and follow up with an air flush (to push the coolant out).
This would allow a larger radiator or a heat pump to chill the coolant, while your TMS can conduct directly to a liquid cooling loop instead of an air-cooled radiator. The amount of load this can handle is immense: a small counterflow exchanger can easily take in coolant at 140C and bring it to 10C, so the limit is generally based on if you can cycle coolant fast enough to get it to the exchanger before it boils.
Batteries don't degrade as quickly as expected. There are Chevrolet Volts with 300,000 miles and no range loss; Teslas fare less-well due to heavier duty cycles, losing some 4% in 100,000 miles (20% was predicted).
The difference is largely headroom and the BMS, especially TMS. That last 5% on a Lithium battery pushes you from the near-flat voltage curve to a steep voltage curve (e.g. 3.29-3.31V 5%-95%, then when you pass 95% charge you suddenly shoot up until 3.7V at full charge). Unbalanced cell charges cause more strain even within low-stress operating ranges; a BMS will balance the state-of-charge. Likewise, without a TMS, the battery gets really hot and generally experiences severe temperature swings, which is why the Nissan Leaf practically destroys its battery, sometimes losing as much as 40% of its range in 3 years or ~50,000 miles.
I bought my Volt second-hand for $12k and have driven it pretty much only on electricity. These cars will be attractive to the masses when you can get a $21k all-electric Cobalt or Focus instead of having to spend $35k. They'll likely ship 6.6kW chargers, which will give the capacity to come home from most commutes (~30 miles each way, though ~18 miles covers 70% of all commutes) and have the car topped up in an hour or so; high-power onboard chargers will be an option, as it adds a thousand or three to the cost of the car. Long-range drivers will need to go with offboard charging as described, as that's a hell of a lot of heat to dissipate and you don't want to pay an extra $10k to have an enormous charge and cooling circuit you only need on long trips.
It's actually happening faster and more-reliably than I predicted. The pieces are all falling into place.
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electric car dealers were for a long time spared the jaw-dropping import tax of 180 percent that Denmark applies on vehicles fueled by a traditional combustion engine.
Wow, so electric cars get their government approved advantage (a MASSIVE one at that), and their sales drop? What did you think was going to happen? Why do you think the subsidies exist in the first place?
Not that any of this matters because the 180% is not an import tax, it's a registration tax and Denmark doesn't have a car industry they are protecting, but those are the same people making those comments for a reason:
USA person: Look at them Europeans protecting their jobs with tariffs and taxes. We need that.
USA person: You want me to pay how much more for my stuff? Why are you taxing the things I like. Screw you government!
Meanwhile as neutral third parties we say all free trade agreements with any nation not an equal is a bad idea which will cost you in the long run.
.. gasoline cars do not have to pay the costs directly. Instead, the costs of their choice are socialized to everybody. If gasoline users had to pay enough gas taxes to cover all the costs associated with their use of gasoline that market would evaporate in a couple of years.
Tell me how (in the UK at least) the costs of my gasoline choice (as opposed to electric cars) are "socialised to everybody". EVs are practically exempt from running tax in the UK while I am paying about 0.1 GBP per mile in annual excise duty plus about 0.14 GBP per mile tax on the fuel; about 1200 GBP per year for me. How is this spent on "costs associated" with my use of gasoline? I am massively subsidising EVs, which need just the same road mantenance, policing, signage etc.
Hardly anything in that summary is accurate.
Firstly, the nominal tax rate for vehicles is 150 % and that's only for the higher parts of the value of more expensive vehicles. Second, starting in 2016 taxes for electric vehicles started being gradually phased in. As such the tax on electric vehicles went from zero to at most 20 % of the tax on non-electric vehicles in 2016, plus there is a deduction on top of that effectively making anything cheaper than a Tesla still tax free (the tax system is progressive and value based, but the deductions are fixed value).
A lot of vehicles were hoarded towards the end of the zero tax period ending in 2015, making the sales numbers artificially high by displacing sales that might otherwise have come in 2016 to 2015 due to the foreseen tax hike. A lot of those vehicles were bought to subsequently sell for profit once the taxes kicked in, which is evident in that many have since been sold or exported. In 2017 the tax rate rose to 40 %, though through deductions still pretty much only Teslas (and some expensive hybrids) are actually taxed.
Lastly, since late 2016 and all the way up until mid April 2017 there have been very public political discussions about extending the tax breaks for electric vehicles. This means that during that time, only an idiot would have bought an electric car, knowing that it was highly likely for taxes to be cut on them again shortly. This is in fact what happened, and rates were lowered from 40 % back to 20 % for two more years. This makes sales naturally very weak in Q1 2017.
So in short, you can't compare 2015 to 2016 or 2017 without taking into account what happened during that time politically and the market forces that drove the 2015 spike. Basically the article is bad, and you should feel bad. ;)
Source: I drafted the legislation and can read.
"socialised to everybody" ...
Via the health care system
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Three things :
A. check the title (not TFA, not even the summary, but the title).
It's *Denmark* we're speaking about.
They have invested so much into turbines that in 2015 wind alone accounted for 42% of its electricity needs.
They're *very far* from the US' over reliance on burning fossil. (As are several others among the european countries).
(Don't trust all the propaganda coming out of your PresiDunce entourage about clean coal, or about ecology not being economically feasible)
B. this myth has been debunked over and over, just google it:
even in countries like the US,
despite its strong reliance on burning fossils for electricity,
due to the much better yield of a big fixed plant,
and even if you factor the manufacturing of the car (yes, batteries are bit more complex to produce than a ICE, but on the other hand, manufacturer is only a small part of the total production over the whole lifetime of the vehicle),
in most countries electric cars such as Tesla *are still* worth it.
The only exceptions are a few countries with the most extremely unclean energy production (of the top of my head: China, Inda and Australia, if I'm not mistaken. you can easily google for the results).
So yeah, US Teslas and their batteries aren't as clean as Denmark's once you factor in energy production, but they're still cleaner than ICE.
C. Yes nuke is radioactive.
But the yield of energy per kg of fuel is about millions time better than coal (exact number can be googled or found in wikipedia - around 2 millions I think).
Or another way to put it : a single 1 kg bar of uranium will produce as much energy as a freight train loaded with 2'000 metric tons of coal.
At that crazy difference in amount, even the traces of radioactive isotope in coal start to get significant: Yes, coal is a *lot* less radioactive than uranium, but you're burning such an insanely bigger amount of it, that it ends up releasing lots of radioactive ashes in the environment over its lifetime.
And that only about radioactivity, it's completely ignoring the fact that the crazy amount of pollution you're emitting will cause tons of pulmonary and cardiac diseases, too.
So nuclear incident might look frightening in the TV news flash (because it's sudden and concentrated in a small recognizable region), but coal is the actual big silent insidious killer.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The DK government changed the taxation on electric cars, to make it more equal to gasoline cars. It is a disgrace.
uh no.
Coal is MUCH dirtier than Gasoline. Thankfully, the only nation that has to worry about this is China.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
...it could just be market saturation. There's only so many electric cars you can sell until everyone who wants one, has one. And then they're good for a couple years and after that there's the used market (e-cars are slowly coming to the used market. When I first had the thought that a Tesla would be cool, there was a supply of zero on the used market. Last time I checked, there were four or five).
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
They make it sound so bad, then tell you it wasn't even 6,000 cars.
Who cares.