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Dutch Government Confirms Plan To Ban New Petrol, Diesel Cars By 2030 (electrek.co)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Today, the new Dutch government presented its detailed plan for the coming years and it includes making all new cars emission-free by 2030 -- virtually banning petrol- and diesel-powered cars in favor of battery-powered vehicles. The four coalition parties have been negotiating their plans since the election in March and now after over 200 days, they have finally released the plan they agreed upon. NL Times posted all the main points of the plan and in "transportation," it includes: By 2030 all cars in the Netherlands must be emission free. While some local publications are reporting "all cars," we are told that it would be for "all new cars" as it is the case for the countries with similar bans under consideration. The potential for the ban has been under consideration in the country since last year. The year 2025, like in Norway, has been mentioned, but they apparently decided for the less ambitious goal of 2030.
Picking winners and losers with plenty of consequences for the little people and no consequences for themselves.
I remember about ten years ago when biodiesel and ethanol were The Future! and there was talk of quotas on flex-fuel vehicles. Then it turned out that most (if not all) then-available blends of biodiesel congealed in cold temperatures and there was a well-publicized case of schoolbuses in the upper midwest being out of commission for days at a time during the winter months. Then there's the fact that E85 is hydrophilic and has worse mileage and emissions than gasoline in humid environments.
Today they're talking about making all IC engines illegal (no ethanol, no CNG, no nothing) because electric is the hot new thing. Then it's going to turn out that manufacturing and remanufacturing batteries en masse is a dirty and expensive business, that riding on a half ton of fuel and oxidizer packed closely together may work when it's inside 100k rich-man's toys that are built with no expense spared but probably won't work so well when it's lowest-bidder Chinese garbage. But by then they'll have moved on to mandating cars powered by smugness and self-satisfaction.
When there's not enough electric cars by 2030?
Who cares? By 2030, most of these politicians will be out of office, so dealing with the consequences will be someone else's problem.
I'm pretty sure that there won't be 2 billion automobiles in the Netherlands by 2030.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
They want to make all cars be "emission free" in less than 15 years? That's not happening. Electric cars are a tiny fraction of a percent of all cars now. There just is not enough supply right now to meet this demand, and increasing production is not easy. Legislating this doesn't change basic economics.
This is going to fail badly. This is a bunch of feel good legislation that will blow up in their faces.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Here's how I see that panning out. The tax on the gas cars will raise the price. Whether it's a percentage or a flat rate per car the price will become invisible in time, people just won't notice it much like how people don't think much about a sales tax. The same will happen for the electric vehicles, any subsidy on their sale will become invisible to the buyer.
To further cover up the tax on gas cars the car makers will do one of two things. They could make cheaper cars, where the engine is a bit smaller, the seats and stereo not as nice, and so on. They could alternatively make it more expensive with more powerful engines, fancy electronics, and so on. With the more expensive car a flat fee looks small, and any percentage tax on such vehicles is made up for in a car that goes real fast.
Let's face it, electric cars are just more expensive. This would be even more apparent if comparing this to cars that were stripped down to the most basic of a car with just four wheels and a seat. If some leap in technology makes this not true then this falls apart, and people buy electric cars because they are cheap, not because they are "green". At that point the subsidy becomes just paying people to buy cars.
So, people looking for a cheap car will buy the gas car because as it is right now there is no electric car cheaper than a gas car. This cheap car is taxed to pay someone to buy an expensive electric car. These people have enough money to buy whatever car they want. They might buy the electric car because they want to be "green", or maybe because the subsidy means they can now afford leather seats with integrated heating and cooling instead of the cheaper cloth seats.
Congratulations, you have now created a wealth redistribution system that taxes the poor to pay rich people to buy luxury cars.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Maybe in the USA where it is apparently the norm to repeal decisions of the previous government purely out of spite, but in Europe legislation can easily survive for centuries.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap