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.

Comments

Driven by manufacturers..

[thesupraman]

Dont forget where this legislation is coming from.

Car manufacturers love this idea.
Phase 1 is to move all new cars to electric - its actually quite a bit cheaper to make (engines/drive trains are horrible complex)
Phase 2 is then, of course, to ramp up 'pollution taxes' on the existing fleet of non-electrics, to 'transition' everyone to electric.

ie: a huge force to push people to purchase new vehicles.

It will be interested to see where they will build the obsolescence in to the new cars, so we need to buy a new one every 5-10 years.
I am guessing it will mostly be in the battery packs initially, with a lot of work going in to making sure they cannot be economically swapped,
and their lifespan is not too much to get in the way of profit.
Longer term I would expect new regulations to 'remove unsafe older electric vehicles' from the road for a bunch of made up reasons.

Just follow the money. Sad but true.

Re:Driven by manufacturers..

[Rei]

That's not actually how it works for the major functions. Station controls, volume, fan speed, etc are handled by steering wheel controls; control via the touchscreen for these things is intended mainly for the passenger (and there's also voice control). In the case of wipers, the vehicle has rain sensors. That said, if you want to override the sensors, you can flip the stick up for a manual wipe, and that automatically triggers the wiper settings on the touchscreen if you want to change it. The car obviously has a thermostat and uses that as the primary interface for temperature control.

Currently some features are disabled (the car is basically in beta right now, whether they want to call it that or not - not like the current owners much care ;) ), such as FM (rather than streaming) radio and voice. Also, currently the right steering wheel control (both are dual axis + click) is disabled; eventually you'll be able to assign all the controls to whatever features you want.

As for the touchscreen itself, it's not your typical automotive touchscreen (and I'm not just talking about responsiveness). The two main differences (which I'm sure you've noticed standing out in pictures) is that A) it's very large, and B) it's out on a stalk. The latter places it immediately to the side of the steering wheel, putting it easily into your peripheral view and means you don't have to "reach" for anything. This, combined with A), also means that the buttons are very large - far larger than a normal car manual controls. The vent control box, for example, is about 4" / 10cm wide. Anyone who doesn't have the coordination to hit a 4" box immediately beside their steering wheel without leaning in and staring doesn't have the hand-eye coordination to be driving in the first place. It lets you control both of your vents at once (rather than one at a time), and without any leaning and searching for a little guide nub.

The screen real estate is laid out based on how close it is to your peripheral. The upper left is the prime real estate, around the same point where the right end of a wide dash display would be. This displays your speed, range, and any status indicators. The area immediately below this is the area for controls that the driver may want to push when driving - all large large buttons, and which can be triggered by driver actions (such as the example of the wipers). Since the rim itself is a physical guide, there's also "always on" buttons in fixed positions at the bottom of the screen. The rest of the display is for "lower priority" information that doesn't expect much interaction - the nav display, information about the music you're listening to, etc.

Yes, it is unconventional. But it's also not a normal car touchscreen. And the "early adopters" have all described it as very easy to get used to and interact with. This wasn't just something tacked on without having been tried it out.

Model 3s are just beginning to hit showrooms - only a few have gotten them so far (just the past couple days), but most expect them by December or January. Do give it a try if you're not sure. :)

Re:There they go again

[Rei]

1) All cars have greatly increased in safety over time, not just smaller cars. How anyone could interpret this as a bad thing is beyond me. And vehicle sizes vary alongside the cost to purchase and operate them, which should surprise nobody; no conspiracy or "value judgement" is required.

2) Since when has anyone seen natural gas vehicles as "bad"? They've never been popular, but that's not the same as "bad".

3) Corn ethanol has never been popular among environmentalists; they've been someone of the most adamant opponents. Some support other biofuels, such as algal biodiesel or switchgrass ethanol, but others don't support any biofuels at all. As for corn ethanol, it's popular among farmers (and consequently, their representatives in congress).

4) No, EV batteries don't contain heavy metals (like your gasoline vehicle's battery does). The worst things that they contain (and which aren't a fundamental requirement) are nickel and cobalt (like you find in stainless steel alloys - minus the much more problematic chromium). Nickel has contact sensitivity, but you're not going to be wearing EV cathodes as earrings. Both have health effects as dusts or soluble salts (not at abnormally low concentrations, mind you) - but neither are in the form of dusts or soluble salts, they're in the form of inert oxides (less prone to leaching than even stainless steel). Minor leaching from battery packs would actually be a good thing, mind you, because large chunks of the world's grasslands are cobalt deficient, which hinders B12 production (cobalamin). Not that you'd actually leave them just sitting around, because nickel and cobalt are valuable ($10 and $50/kg, respectively), and the cathodes are surprisingly similar to rich nickel-cobalt ores already.

5) Yes, there always will be something better because that's what the advancement in technology leads to. If you don't like that, go Amish.

Re:You'll have to tear out much of Europe's housin

[Rei]

There might be a vocabulary mis-match here. By "public parking" I mean purpose-designed buildings/spaces where tens/hundreds of vehicles can be parked. I don't include "parked on a residential street" as public parking.

Private = Owned by private citizens
Public = Owned "the public" (city, federal government, etc)

It has nothing to do with how parking is arranged. Secondly, why would you assume that only on-street parking would get chargers but not parking garages? In Norway there are entire parking garages dedicated specifically to EVs. And this is just the start - while now 1/3rd of all new vehicle sales in Norway are EVs, due to the lag, they're still only a relatively small fraction of total vehicles on the road. The higher the penetration = the more EV parking. And they're not just slow charging garages - countries starting to move into fast charging garages as well.

Just shopping for fresh foods (meat, lettuce, etc...) so only a few minutes each time.

That didn't answer the question. 1) What is your total average time, in minutes (not just "few") between when you park, and when you get back to your car; and 2) How often do you go to the store?

(not that I actually believe that you only spend "a few minutes" on a grocery store trip and that covers all your groceries)

So if you go for 100% EV you'd have to force companies to build more parking spaces. Could be done, but it will mean more concreting over of green spaces.

It takes no more parking spaces. It takes the conversion of parking spaces. It means that parking spaces have plugs, nothing else.

At high penetrations, this change is inherently incentivized for the exact same reason that having parking at all is inherently incentivized.

Re:There they go again

[Barsteward]

digging up oil, transporting it, refining it, transporting it again at least once, and then burning it is a lot more dirty than batteries. Battery costs are dropping all the time, year on year. here's a link to explain lithium "mining" and the myths on the web about it ... https://cleantechnica.com/2016... Perhaps you need to research it before saying "I'm sure mining for lithium is dirty business and manufacturing probably is", guesswork or myth believing is not a substitute for researching