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

What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

When there's not enough electric cars by 2030? Do they repeal the law, or is everyone who can't get one on a bicycle?

Re:What happens

[mark-t]

It won't matter....after 2030, all you'd be able to buy (brand new) is an electric car. Gasoline vehicles will become fewer and fewer as the years go by, It will probably be about another 50 to 60 years before they are fully gone.

Re:What happens

[Computershack]

Yesterday I saw a Kia Soul electric SUV here in northern England. When you even have companies like Kia selling them then I don't have any worries that there will be an issue by 2030.

Re:What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope you're able to make enough Lithium batteries for 2 billion cars a year.

Re:What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

That car is a piece of shit.

I can't imagine someone PAID extra for the privilege of having an electric motor in that.

If you're in England, than you know what a good car is. That's not one of them. Shame on you.

Re:What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

Coal, my friend. Clean American coal will power the cars of the future. Elon Musk is working on the Tesla Model C which will be coal fired.

Re:What happens

[ShanghaiBill]

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.

Re: What happens

[slazzy]

Personally while i like the effort i think bans are a bad idea. Instead an increasing levy on vehicles that produce emmissions, with a direct subsidy to zero or ultra low emmission ones. Give people the choice and where possible they can start moving to electric.

Re:What happens

[mark-t]

I'm pretty sure that there won't be 2 billion automobiles in the Netherlands by 2030.

Re:What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

If I could buy a coal-fired car, I WOULD, just to piss off all the POMPOUS ASSHOLES in these electric car threads, that don't even own electric cars.

I'd gladly shovel that coal into the boiler myself with a ginormous shit eating grin on my face.

Re:What happens

[ShanghaiBill]

I hope you're able to make enough Lithium batteries for 2 billion cars a year.

Nonsense. There aren't 2 billion cars on earth, and even if there were they would not all need to be replaced in one year.

There are about 60 million cars made per year. With the expected shift to on-demand SDC taxis, that could decline dramatically.

Known lithium reserves are about 15 million tonnes. A car with a 300 km range uses about 10kg of lithium. So we have enough for 1.5 billion cars, or about enough to replace every gas car on earth.

Of course, new lithium reserves will be found, and as a fallback we can extract lithium from geologic brine, or even the oceans which contain about 230 billion tonnes (enough for 30 trillion cars).

Re:What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope you die from exhaust and lung/brain tumor in your stupid gaswagen.

Re:What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

With the expected shift to on-demand SDC taxis,

Expected by who? (Besides morons and industry shills, obviously.)

Re:What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're in England, than you know what a good car is.

One made in Germany...

Re:What happens

[HornWumpus]

People have retrofit old carbureted cars to run on syngas driven by very rich burning wood fires. Very dirty and doable, so get off your ass.

You will have to figure out a way to routinely clean the intake and exhaust. Mostly intake. Keep it simple, you might be weekly soaking engine parts to keep it running.

The look on the pius drivers faces will make it worth it. When you jump out of the car at a red to feed the fire. Better still, hire a child to ride in the back as a stoker.

Re:What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get an Irish person to shovel the coal, like on the Titanic.

Re:What happens

[Virtucon]

+1 mod this up.

Re:What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

Well aren't you a friendly chap.

Re: What happens

[blindseer]

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.

Re:What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

Like a Leprechaun?

Re:What happens

[kamapuaa]

To be fair Kia Souls are generally acknowledged as being very good cars. They look a little weird but then again so do most Slashdot commentators.

Re:What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're in England, than you know what a good car is.

One made in Germany...

Or one made in Northern England. They may be designed in Japan, but Brits mackem.

Re:What happens

[PopeRatzo]

I don't know. England has been known to make a few nice cars.

https://cdn.jamesedition.com/m...

Re:What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

+10

Re: What happens

[vux984]

" Instead an increasing levy on vehicles that produce emmissions"

I just bought a "new" car. It was $11000, for a 2011 model year with 40k on it in nearly pristine condition, and a mid-level trim level (so it has a few options and upgrades, air, heated seats, etc...)

How much are you going to subsidize a new electric car to make it price competitive to that?

People will flock to electric when it's cheaper. But trying to force it with tax and subsidy... just amounts to, as the other poster said, taking money from the poor to help the wealthy buy new cars, with all kinds of fun unintended consequences.

The poor family living in a rented apartment parking on the street -- they have to buy a fuel car because they can't reliably plug in at night. Meanwhile the rich suburban folks with 2 car garage buy themselves new subsidized electric vehicle because they can plug it in their garage every night. Nice.

Re: What happens

[spinitch]

Agree a blanket ban seems extreme and could balance with other incentives or fees. The silver lining is a small country piloting the concept and they might adjust for special cases if sensible. The Dutch very proactive in agriculture and environmental sustainability. For instance, emphasis on bicycle transport. First, reduce heavy transport energy consumption with conservation. Electric bicycles adoption increasing encouraging. I tried one but preferred to pedal a lighter load, regular bike, and not bother with the charging. Gogoro concept interesting.

Re:What happens

[rtb61]

Ohh yes there will be issues you just don't see them. I have worked with the Dutch before, they are a bid odd in the come off as only trusting other Dutch people, you are not Dutch, it feels very much like they do not trust you and never will. Often that lack of trust is indicative of some one that should not be trusted, they see themselves in everyone else. In this case, you people miss it because you do not live in a country surrounded by other countries with open borders. So why is all that important because the first country that bans fossil fuellers get a major economic jump on all surrounding countries. That economic boost, their citizens being able to dump fossil fuel vehicles on surrounding countries, whilst those values are still high in the surrounding countries rather than crashing, that crash defined by how much government are willing to subsidise conversion costs from infernal combustion engines to battery electric. There is a huge economic advantage in going first, you get to save your citizens major infernal combustion engine losses. Eastern European countries likely to get the burden for the greatest losses bound around corruption ie to dump the used vehicles from the rest of the EU into them, when they collapse to a net negative value, a rubbish burden. Of course from Eastern Europe to Africa but transport costs tend to kill that return.

Re:What happens

[turbidostato]

"I don't know. England has been known to make a few nice cars."

Yes, nice cars, yes.

Reliable cars, on the other hand...

Re:What happens

[turbidostato]

"Who cares? By 2030, most of these politicians will be out of office, so dealing with the consequences will be someone else's problem."

Not only they won't be there to deal with consequences; they won't be there to enforce their rulings either.

In a democracy, any "ruling" that goes beyond the election cycle (much more if it's meant to *start* beyond the election cycle) is basically nothing more than words in the wind.

Re:What happens

[PopeRatzo]

Reliable cars, on the other hand...

That's why God made reliable mechanics.

Re: What happens

[kanweg]

No, the current subsidies help to get relatively rich people to buy electric cars, making their sale profitable to the electric car manufacturers whole now can go through the cycle of improving performance and reducing production cost (as is usual with any new product). In a few years, the rich people will sell their car and affordable second hand electric cars are available then for less affluent people. We are currently in the stage where future second hand cars are bought to be available in a few years. In effect, the relatively rich people are now subsidizing the future second hand market for electrical cars.

Bert

Re: What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't pick it over most other cars of that size, though, even if it weren't hideous.

Re: What happens

[vux984]

the current subsidies help to get relatively rich people to buy electric cars

And where is the subsidy money actually coming from?

In effect, the relatively rich people are now subsidizing the future second hand market for electrical cars.

Sure...they're just not doing it with their own money.

When I buy a GTX 1080 I'm subisizing the development of future graphics cards, and I'm dumping my GTX980 onto the secondary market to boot. But the government isn't giving me a handout to do it, so that system works.

With electric vehicles, the 'poorer' are helping paying for the 'richer' to buy new cars. The idea that its for their own good long term since it'll put more electric used vehicles into the queue is demented.

Re:What happens

[msh104]

To be fair. Self driving taxis are something i would look forward to. Uber at its best. Especially if they could be so cheap that you could take them to work every day. Especially in Europe with its cozy city's with small streets this might significantly reduce car ownership in the city and clean up the streets. Its also better for the environment in other ways. As more people could use the same car during a day. Instead of standing by idle in front of the house or the office. Lower taxi prices during non-rush hours would also give organisations incentives to allow their workers to work at variable hours. ( lower travel cost ) on top of being a further optimization to car usage. We all know this is the future. Its just a matter of time for the technology to catch up.

Re:What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

By 2030 the vast majority of the population will be unemployed due to automation and living in complete destitution. They will have no money or resources to buy a car that would get them... Where? Where should they go? There won't be jobs for them, no better living conditions. We are entering a temporary phase of mass nomadism forced by economics, followed by a permanent state of unescapable poverty.

Re:What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

ln a number of large cities having a car is expensive due to garaging costs, but people accept it due to convenience. If other modes of transport arise that can match most or all of the convenience at lower cost then you would expect a proportion of current car owners to swap.

Re:What happens

[dunkelfalke]

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.

Re: What happens

[Rei]

Calling a 6-7 year-old car a "new car" is funny. You can get a 6-7 year-old Leaf with 40k on it in pristine condition for a lot cheaper than that. And then drive it for a lot cheaper. And pay less on maintenance. And because it's a cheaper car, pay less on insurance.

Re:What happens

[tsa]

I think the real world will be different. These cars will never be clean, be full of graffiti and other stuff like baby poo, animal shit and germs, unless they are cleaned after every trip, which makes them much more expensive.

Re:What happens

[tsa]

Thanks for dismissing all the people in my country based on a few bad experiences with some of them.

About the cars: that happens now already and will not change much during the transition to electric. I don't think fossil fuels will be banned soon. many other things than cars use them.

Re:What happens

[Kopp]

Isn't it what they already all do in the Netherlands ? It's bicycle country there

Re:What happens

[Rei]

You could get a gassifier (like this, although this model is currently out of stock) and feed that to your car. A skilled mechanic shouldn't have too much trouble with it. If you wanted to show off that you were burning coal, you could have a window installed on the stainless hopper.

Do be careful, though - a large portion of the mass of coal gas is carbon monoxide; that's one of the key things that's combusting when you burn it. The combustion plus your cat shouldn't make the exhaust unusually problematic, but because of the risk of leaks, do install a detector.

Now, if you don't want to run on coal gas, but rather coal directly, that's a much bigger project. You'd need an external combustion engine, like a steam engine. But coal gas should be a relatively straightforward retrofit for a pickup truck.

Re:What happens

[drinkypoo]

These cars will never be clean, be full of graffiti and other stuff like baby poo, animal shit and germs, unless they are cleaned after every trip, which makes them much more expensive.

If that is a real concern, then automakers will make low-end AVs for plebes that are trivial to clean, and they will be cleaned more often. City buses are often designed in this way, and while they are nasty and uncomfortable places to be, you'll be able to pay just a bit more to ride in something with upholstery.

Re: What happens

[drinkypoo]

You can get a 6-7 year-old Leaf with 40k on it in pristine condition for a lot cheaper than that.

But then you have to be in a Leaf. He said he got something with a nice interior, and if that was a requirement, then a Leaf was not in the running. Also, an old EV without a transferable lifetime battery warranty is going to have significant additional costs at some point. An ICE-based vehicle might, if something goes badly wrong.

Re:What happens

[drinkypoo]

If I were running my car on wood gas, I'd want to use wood pellets as fuel. You can buy sacks of them at any Wal-Mart or hardware store, and they lend themselves to self-feeding mechanisms.

Re:What happens

[tsa]

I think that will indeed happen but then driving in one of those will still not be a very pleasant experience. So I am not convinced cars that can be used by everyone will become as popular as some people would like.

Re: What happens

[Rei]

Leaf warranties are transferable (although they're not "nice" interiors, to be fair ;) ) For a nice interior on the used market, something like the BMW i3. Eventually there will be Model 3s on the used market, but that day is not today. Also, Teslas tend to depreciate rather slowly compared to other EVs.

Re:What happens

[drinkypoo]

So I am not convinced cars that can be used by everyone will become as popular as some people would like.

The cars that can be used by everyone cheaply will be that. But there will also be cars that can be used by anyone with a couple of dollars to rub together, and they will be nicer, and people will use them. And so on up the chain, until you finally reach people who will still be able to afford to own their own AVs in the future.

Re: What happens

[Trailer Trash]

Congratulations, you have now created a wealth redistribution system that taxes the poor to pay rich people to buy luxury cars.

You do understand that's the system that we have now, right? Electric cars - which are expensive toys for the upper middle class and upper classes - are highly subsidized in every way, including a direct rebate to buyers that comes out of tax revenue. So poor people are paying taxes that goes directly in the pocket of wealthier people.

Re:What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what they told us in the 70's too. But in the 80's there were no electric cars left anymore. The last people driving around in electric cars had to buy non electric when their car stopped working. And now, what would be the reason that electric car will succeed? In the 70's it was the oil that was too expensive and even unavailable. The deal they made with the oil producing countries was to encourage the islamization of Europe in exchange for oil. Now many cities have become an islamic hellhole and there haven't been as many cars as today.
 
By 2030 most large cities in the Netherlands will be islamic cities anyway. Islam is counter scientific. They don't care about the environment nor about women or gay rights. The biggest concern of the Dutch people, the islamization, is neglected. Hence they choose a new enemy we should be all afraid for. "global warming", "the evil white patriarchy", "a growing number of old people", are just created to divert the attention away from the problems many people face every single day over and over again.

Re: What happens

[dywolf]

upfront, more expensive.
but total cost of ownership over the life of the vehicle? same or less.
and subsidies can help poor purchasers too, not just wealthy.
your hypothetical falls apart.

Re:What happens

[Barsteward]

ignorant racist posts on an article about EVs... amazing...

Re:What happens

[Barsteward]

judging by your post, it looks like the problem resides with you and not the Dutch. the articles says "Today, the new Dutch government presented its detailed plan for the coming years and it includes making all new cars emission-free by 2030" - the clue is "all new cars", its not banning existing fossil burners on that date

Re:What happens

[Barsteward]

you could buy a steam train or stream roller.....

Re: What happens

[Barsteward]

don't forget you'll need to take account of the subsidies paid to the fossil fuel industry too because the poor are also paying taxes into the pockets of wealthier people when they buy gas and coal and they've been doing that a lot longer than any renewable subsidy.

Re: What happens

[blindseer]

You do understand that's the system that we have now, right?

Yes. It's a bad idea here and now, and it will be a bad idea in the future in other nations.

Re: What happens

[Barsteward]

they should remove all the fossil fuel subsidies too and make you pay the true price of gas/oil/coal etc. subsidies are normally given to get a tech off the ground so i can't understand that after a century of improving fossil fuel performance that the fossil fuel industry still gets subsidies.

Re: What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you give an example of a subsidy for the fossil fuel industry?

Re: What happens

[AmiMoJo]

Have you looked at the prices of 2011 model Leafs? They are a lot, lot less than $11,000 for a top spec one.

Re: What happens

[blindseer]

I had a college roommate that bought a car for something like $500. Insurance and license was next to nothing because it was a cheap tin box on wheels. Being a little 4 cylinder engine that he just drove around town, and once in a while on a longer trip to visit family, the fuel cost very little. You are not going to find an electric car with a total cost of ownership that low for a long time.

Cheap cars are old cars and there are not enough old electric cars that the poor are going to see an electric car with a lower total cost of ownership than a gasoline burner. Maybe you can find a used electric car for $10,000. I know I can go to any dealer and find a used car for less than $3000. $10,000 - $3000 = $7000 for operating costs. $7000 / $3 per gallon at 30 miles per gallon means 70,000 miles of driving. If it cost nothing to run the electric that's a lot of miles someone would have to drive before the cost of ownership evens out.

Re: What happens

[CohibaVancouver]

but total cost of ownership over the life of the vehicle? same or less.

I have a friend with a Nissan Leaf who was an early adopter.

His wife has a Honda Accord.

His upfront cost to buy the car was about the same, and his cost to operate it are much, much lower.

Fuel costs? Something like $200 per year.

Maintenance / parts? Nada. Although he may need tires soon.

Re:What happens

[BasilBrush]

Remember that they need to be called by an app, so the car company knows who's in them, and there will be cameras. If the person after you complains about a problem, they look at the previous journey(s), catch the culprit and charge them for the clean or ban them.

Meanwhile the person that complains can wait for another car.

Taxis work, even without the facility for banning people. There's no reason these couldn't work with that ability.

Re:What happens

[BasilBrush]

A future government could repeal it or change the data, but there's no reason to suppose they would. This change to EVs is going to happen, and 2030 is not an unrealistic date for cutting off the obsolete ICE car models.

Re: What happens

[BasilBrush]

No. A levy is simply enforcing something on the poor, whilst allowing the rich to do what they like. People need to stop buying ICE cars and that includes the wealthy.

Re:What happens

[BessBeysanmak]

votre article est magnifique. Merci de visite notre article via ce lien machine-de-brique

Re:What happens

[TechyImmigrant]

I think the real world will be different. These cars will never be clean, be full of graffiti and other stuff like baby poo, animal shit and germs, unless they are cleaned after every trip, which makes them much more expensive.

The nice clean ones will be a little more expensive than most people can comfortably afford, like business class is today.

Re:What happens

[TechyImmigrant]

Brick machines are tres on topic.

Re:What happens

[TechyImmigrant]

"I don't know. England has been known to make a few nice cars."

Yes, nice cars, yes.

Reliable cars, on the other hand...

LOTUS : Lots Of Trouble, Usually Serious.

Re: What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

And why do they make faster graphics cards? Because of demand making things profitable. Why do they make electric cars, because of demand making things profitable. Who demands cleaner air.....crickets..... Force car makers to clean up the air by helping demand for electric cars, win win, win.

Re:What happens

[TechyImmigrant]

So can you cook a chuck roast at the same time?

Re:What happens

[Hylandr]

So we are replacing 'known oil reserves' with 'Known lithium reserves' now.

What happens after we reach 'peak battery production'? They guy asking about batteries for 2 billion cars per year was emotionally modded to oblivion but it's a very valid question.

Charging a battery may be renewable, but those batteries need to be replaced after a certain life-cycle as well.

Worldwide Hoomans produce more than 60 million cars. There's presently about 1.05 billion cards on the roads today and increasing. 2 Billion for new cars, and spare parts / replacements isn't too off the mark.

When we run out of Lithium, what will we turn to next?

Re: What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably whatever batteries are made from in 30 years.

I strongly suspect we won't turn to things that aren't used to make batteries.

Re: What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

Inescapable poverty is an immediate precursor to revolution. So either everyone is killed off by the government super-robots, or the post-revolution government distributed the results of automation's increased productivity to everyone (especially the people who keep them in power).

The latter is communism. Given massive abundance from hyper-automation, it might even kind of work. But unless it's combined with some kind of incentive to create new consumer goods, consumer goods will cease to advance. Not the end of the world, but unfortunate.

Hopefully there's enough leftover productivity to let smart people continue working on spaceships and vaccines. Might have to pay the vaccine guys in hookers. And pay the hookers in drugs.

Re: What happens

[painandgreed]

I just bought a "new" car. It was $11000, for a 2011 model year with 40k on it in nearly pristine condition, and a mid-level trim level (so it has a few options and upgrades, air, heated seats, etc...)

How much are you going to subsidize a new electric car to make it price competitive to that?

Why are you comparing a used ICE car against a new electric car? You are not in the market for a new ICE car, then you're not in the market for a new electric car. However, compare the 6 year old ICE car against a used six year old electric car. Sure, people who only buy used cars will be buying ICEs for longer as it takes time for the used market to get older EVs in the supply chain. IF EVs take off, then the poor will probably be still driving older clunky ICEs for quite some time just as they drive older, clunky, less expensive ICE cars now. Eventually, if driving an ICE car starts to signify you are either a collector or poor, EVs will have won.

Re: What happens

[vux984]

Have you looked at the prices of 2011 model Leafs?

Sorry, pricing and location is CAD.

In Canada, where I live, the absolute cheapest on autotrader.ca within 100 miles is $13,600, with the average price being closer to 16,000. It also has twice the mileage on it, has such options as "recycled cloth seats", "unique shifting knob" and "push button start" and is relatively beat up compared to the car i bought.

As a 2011/2012 model it has the less heat resistant battery pack which loses capacity faster, and has older chemistry. Couple the loss of capacity due to age and efficiency due to wear and tear the car has about 60 km range. (40mi)

And the battery pack is out of warranty.

Thanks... but no thanks. This car likely can't go much more than half way from Vancouver to Whistler.

Re:What happens

[Rei]

Yep, sure could. There's plenty of waste heat involved in gasification :)

Are you picturing the ultimate tailgating truck? ;)

Actually, if you ran a company focused on providing big slow roasters for festivals, that would probably be a very environmentally friendly way to travel. And not just because wood pellets are usually made out of waste. The engine will run very efficiently on wood gas (thorough combustion), and almost all energy not ending up in the gases will end up as waste heat for your grill, which you'd be using. You'd need a compressor and storage tanks, however, and it'd get more complicated because of that.

If you really wanted to "go green" (I know, we're now totally on the opposite tack vs. what the AC wanted ;) ), you could only partially oxidize the wood pellets. You'd still get wood gas and waste heat, but a different gas mixture - larger hydrogen, methane and water fractions, lower CO and CO2 fractions. Most of the carbon would remain as biochar, which can be added to enrich poor soils and (probably, although it's still under study) sequester most of the carbon.

Re:What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

Many decisions made by the previous administration here were repugnant to the Constitution, and/or were put in place absent legal authority to do so (executive orders that over-reached). Removing those is not spiteful, it is legally responsible and will hopefully disincentive future administrations from similarly exceeding their legal authority.

Re:What happens

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Economists. Self-Driving Cars are both likely to end up mandated by law (due to less chance of accidents, especially with car-to-car networking) and far too expensive to individually own (by any other than the rich). The obvious solution is ridesharing services, which maintain fleets at a low monthly subscription, and only enough to cover the people in their subscription. Want to go somewhere? Order a car online. Want to move? Order a truck online. With self-driving technology, it comes, picks up you and your stuff, takes you to whatever GPS location you want to go,

Re: What happens

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Inescapable poverty is an immediate precursor to revolution.
 
Do you have any Somalian subscribers to your newsletter?

Re:What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with most of your comment - but I don't think there will be a shift to SDC taxis in most countries.

Lets look at all of interests of the relevant actors:

* The car companies want to sell sell sell, and they obviously will make much more money with selling individual private cars to each citizen.

* Most consumers are used to a car and can afford it. A private car is likely to have an availability advantage over a Taxi, and I'm sure the car companies will come up with some customization options to make it even more attractive (An iCar?).

* Governments make so much money from taxes on cars and want to increase consumption to increase GDP, so they have an interest in a private car model. Sure, they do want to reduce congestion, but I think that will at most translate to preferring public transport in city centres to the point of banning private cars from there, not a general ban/tax on private cars.

Re:What happens

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Not so ignorant perhaps. But I am astounded by his promotion of neanderthal genes,

Re:What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

Although it would be nice to allow the market (aka the people) to make that decision. If electric cars really become all that, attract buyers without taxpayer funded incentives (or disincentives on their competition). If/when sales of ICE vehicles drop enough fewer are made, price goes up, eventually they become boutique options that few people need or probably want, and whose environmental impact is minimal due to those reduced numbers. Then let them go without forcing decisions down the buyers' throats.

But that doesn't give the .gov and its denizens the power they feel they deserve. Can't trust those damn taxpayers to make proper decisions after all.

Re: What happens

[vux984]

Why are you comparing a used ICE car against a new electric car?

a) partly because a 6 year old electric car is risky. You are buying old "leading edge technology" and that's never a good value proposition. Every value buyer knows you don't want to buy 'version 1.0' of anything because it'll take a few iterations to work the early kinks out. A 2011 electric car is pretty much a version 1.0 electric car.

b) partly because there are so few of them. 10 years from now, 20 years from now, things WILL be different. But right now there aren't a lot to choose from.

c) partly because they don't age particularly well. The battery tech is still immature and a 5-6 year old battery pack is generally out of warranty and down a big chunk of capacity, and an even bigger chunk of effective range. I've found numerous sources that cite their 2011 LEAF in 2017 is now good for under 50 miles (1/2 the original 100), one reported theirs was down to 28.

However, compare the 6 year old ICE car against a used six year old electric car.

I just looked at a 6 year old LEAF in response to another reply. Locally its asking $13500 (CAD) (that was the lowest priced one within 100 km); it has twice the odometer of the car i purchased. It's got 'recycled cloth seats' and 'push button start' as "features"... so not exactly optioned out.

And doing the math on the battery aging, and given that its a 2011/2012 model so older chemistry, lower heat resistant battery etc. The battery is out of warranty. At this point it will have a 40-50 mile range or so if you are lucky. That's enough for some people, but that's not enough for me, and that's not enough for most people.

Its also pretty small for a family car, and subjectively my wife thinks its ugly, but those are beside the point... sort of.

IF EVs take off, then the poor will probably be still driving older clunky ICEs for quite some time just as they drive older, clunky, less expensive ICE cars now

The point is taking money from them to subsidize wealthier people to buy electrics is demented.

Eventually, if driving an ICE car starts to signify you are either a collector or poor, EVs will have won.

No. EVs will have won when the poor are driving them, because that will mean they are more affordable and the best value proposition.

Re:What happens

[Rakarra]

I'm pretty sure that there won't be 2 billion automobiles in the Netherlands by 2030.

Look, you don't know what a car-crazy culture the Netherlands are. Every man, woman, and child thinks it's normal to have 1175 cars in their garage.

Re:What happens

[Rakarra]

With the expected shift to on-demand SDC taxis,

Expected by who? (Besides morons and industry shills, obviously.)

Expected by most people who live in the cities and hate the fuss of a car when you don't have a garage, and gas and parking are expensive and hard to find wherever you go. I don't live in a metropolis, but if I did and I wanted to travel from one side of the city to the other, an instance SDC would be far more preferable to a regular car.

Re: What happens

[AmiMoJo]

I don't know why prices are so silly in Canada. In the UK £5k for a Leaf is not uncommon. Who cares if the battery is out of warranty, they are good for at least 200k miles anyway. Typical Leaf of that age with say 100k on the clock would be looking at around 90% capacity remaining, so maybe 80 miles for the old 24kWh pack.

Having said that my old 2 year old one, again top spec, sold for about $15k CAD with 16k miles on it and no noticeable battery degradation.

Re:What happens

[Rakarra]

Taxis work, even without the facility for banning people.

Because there's a cab driver RIGHT THERE looking at you. Even if it was someone miles away looking at you through a camera, behavior would change because the driver is not physically present at the car.

Re:What happens

[BasilBrush]

Sure. But like I said, they'd only get to do it once.

Re: What happens

[vux984]

Typical Leaf of that age with say 100k on the clock would be looking at around 90% capacity remaining,

Based on what?

http://www.carswithcords.net/2...

Reading around I am seeing *lots* of people reporting sub 50 mile ranges on their 2011 LEAFs in 2017.

Re:What happens

[Rakarra]

If I could buy a coal-fired car, I WOULD, just to piss off all the POMPOUS ASSHOLES in these electric car threads, that don't even own electric cars.

I'd gladly shovel that coal into the boiler myself with a ginormous shit eating grin on my face.

I've never understood the "I'll cut off my nose to spite my face" attitude. It's just so damned weird.

Re: What happens

[Rakarra]

But then you have to be in a Leaf. He said he got something with a nice interior, and if that was a requirement, then a Leaf was not in the running.

Leafs are ok, but they're certainly not luxury. I certainly wouldn't BUY a Leaf though -- those are lease vehicles. That's why I leased one, because the battery technology was changing too rapidly. I didn't want to drive the same car for seven years, having the battery with a 80 mile range when every new vehicle had a 200-300m range towards the end of that range.

Re: What happens

[Rei]

That price is utter nonsense. Ship one in from the states. The most expensive 2011 Nissan Leaf listed for sale on Autotrader.com in the entire US is under $9k USD. The cheapest is $5,7k - with 40k miles, BTW.

Surely there's something distorting your pricing figures...

Re: What happens

[Rei]

a) partly because a 6 year old electric car is risky

Why? Pack failures have not been bad - even on Leafs, which don't have cooled packs (they resolved the hot-climate-degradation issues with the "Lizard Pack" and replaced any that had gone bad). Sure, leafs degrade more than other EVs, but "failures"? That has never been a significant issue with them You know what you're getting based on how many bars it has left when you buy it.

Every value buyer knows you don't want to buy 'version 1.0' of anything because it'll take a few iterations to work the early kinks out. A 2011 electric car is pretty much a version 1.0 electric car.

Not true at all. Even ignoring that EVs were really big in the early 1900s, "modern" EVs have been heavily in development since the EV-1 days. Decades.

partly because there are so few of them

That does not give you an excuse to price compare "6-year-used" with "new"

partly because they don't age particularly well.

Even Leafs have done "fine", although they do degrade. Teslas and other ones that baby their packs more have done superbly. A typical Tesla degradation curve is about 4% in the first year, then it greatly slows; total degradation by year five is only 6-7% on average. You'll lose more "range per tank" on a gasoline car than that.

. I've found numerous sources that cite their 2011 LEAF in 2017 is now good for under 50 miles (1/2 the original 100), one reported theirs was down to 28.

Then don't buy one that's "down to 28 miles" (although I really doubt that, unless the had severe hot climate degradation and they never bothered getting the replacement). As mentioned, you know what you're getting based on how many bars it has left.

Also as mentioned, the prices you saw are ridiculous. You can get one from the US that's only a couple years old for the price you were talking about.

The point is taking money from them to subsidize wealthier people to buy electrics is demented.

Yes, that's what farmers in 1900 thought about their taxes paying for road paving for those automobiles owned by wealthy city folk which did nothing but smoke up their air and spook their horses.

The tax credit effectively passes directly to the used market. Vehicle cheaper when new = vehicle cheaper when used. Beyond that, that's not the point; the point is to kickstart the industry. Credits to help vehicles get up to a few percent market penetration have a nearly meaningless effect on your total tax burden, but they have a huge impact on the rate at which EVs can take.

Re: What happens

[oobayly]

Because we all drive Bentleys, Rolls-Royces and Jaguars in England...

Besides, the build quality is often awful. I saw a recent Rolls-Royce at the Bonhams auction at Goodwood earlier this year. The panels were completely asymmetric. A colleague of mine said you could always tell if an E-Type had been rebuilt - the shutlines were perfectly even, and they certainly didn't come out of the factory like that.

Re: What happens

[oobayly]

Funny, I've know a lot of Dutch people and as a people I love them. In fact I've met only one Dutch guy I didn't think highly of - I used to say that he messed up my opinion that the Dutch as a universally likeable people. I've worked with them, dated some, and sailed with one guy I literally trusted my life with.

Re:What happens

[MrL0G1C]

Lithium is one of earths more abundant minerals, there is no running out.

Re: What happens

[AmiMoJo]

That site makes no sense. He lost 2 of 12 bars but 50% of his range?

The GOM isn't very useful for this kind of comparison. Where are the Leaf Spy logs?

Lots of taxis with 200k miles and over 80% left.

Re:What happens

[dunkelfalke]

I don't know about the USA, but in Germany repealing unconstitutional laws is the job of the Federal Constitutional Court. Judical review is what they do for living.

Re:What happens

[cazzazullu]

Unless there is some fusion/fission going on inside the battery, or exhaustion of fumes, the lithium is going exactly nowhere.

Re:What happens

[Hylandr]

-substance x- is one of earths more abundant minerals, there is no running out.

Said every industrialist ever. Crude Oil used to come up in springs fouling everything around it. Now look at us.

Re:What happens

[cnaumann]

One HUGE difference between Lithium and oil... the lithium is not used up when the battery reaches the end of its life. Oil is converted to water and carbon dioxide. The lithium remains in the battery. It can be recycled.

"Known Lithium Reserves" is not an estimate on the total amount of lithium on the earth. It is an _very_ conservative estimate of the amount of lithium that can be economically recovered using known, proven sources of lithium.

As lithium prices rise, reserves increase because if becomes economically feasible because it become economically viable to extract lithium from other sources.

As the original poster pointed out, there is a vast amount of lithium in seawater. Seawater is a lousy source of lithium, since seawater is only about 0.6ppm lithium. There are brines out there that are 300ppm lithium. But there is a LOT of seawater.

We will not and cannot run out of lithium.

Re:What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps they just don't like armchair psychologists who write like retards?

Re:What happens

[HornWumpus]

Sure, if I were doing it as transportation.

If I were doing it as rolling troll, irish child fire stoker. Perhaps something like a K5 blazer with the top off, so the stoker has a legal seat. Not that this contraption could ever pass CA smog, have to find an early smog exempt one...

Re: What happens

[vux984]

What do you want me to say?

Additional Cites...

As a start, let's just look at what it means to take care of your battery. This means don't charge it to more than ~80% of capacity and don't discharge below 20%.
- This takes the 73 mile range down to 73 X 80% X 80% or 46.7 miles
Next, let's assume that after 7 years, the capacity is expected to be down to 80% of the new, maximum.
- This takes the 46.7 miles down to 46.7 X 80% or 37.4 miles for 'battery-kindness"

http://www.plugincars.com/real...

"Nine bars equates to about 70 percent of remaining capacity--meaning that the effective range of a 2011 Nissan Leaf, originally rated at 73 miles, could be down to something like 50 miles."

http://www.greencarreports.com...

In theory, the range of my Leaf is 83 miles when fully charged. In practice, however, that varies widely depending on where you're going and who is driving. My wife, for example, tends to drive more aggressively than I do and she has experienced somewhat shorter range. Similarly, range drops off significantly when you go on the highway or crank the AC.

https://www.treehugger.com/car...

Re:What happens

[thegarbz]

So we are replacing 'known oil reserves' with 'Known lithium reserves' now.

What happens after we reach 'peak battery production'?

The same thing that happens with peak oil, you know the thing that has been talked about for the past 50 years that has never happened.

Mining reserves are based on the same supply and demand as the actual sale of goods. That's why "peak {noun}" won't be reached.

Firstly the GP was wrong, there's 37Mt of know reserves excluding China which is assumed to be sitting on a shitload which are not counted.
Secondly the GP said it right at the end of his sentence. It is possible to extract lithium from the oceans, it's just currently cheaper to evaporate it from a mineral pool or dig it out of the ground. If peak lithium involves the use of 30 trillion cars, I think we'll be alright. As will our kids, and their kids, and their kids, and their kids and the.....

Re:What happens

[thegarbz]

Many decisions made by the previous administration here were repugnant to the Constitution, and/or were put in place absent legal authority to do so (executive orders that over-reached). Removing those is not spiteful, it is legally responsible and will hopefully disincentive future administrations from similarly exceeding their legal authority.

And yet none of them were actually removed from the courts, you know the ones that actually determine the legal authority. What does that tell you?

Re:What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you think Self-Driving Cars will be "far too expensive to individually own"? History suggest mass production will make them cheap enough to individually own like typical Human-Driven Cars - and surely car-making companies have every incentive to do so if at all possible.

Re:What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

As the Brits say

My car may be rubbish but, by God, it's British rubbish.

Re: What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the super robot part.

Re: What happens

[AmiMoJo]

Nissan removed the 80% charge feature years ago, because it turned out to be pointless. Those taxis I mentioned get multiple rapid charges a day, then a 100% over night.

73 miles range is a joke, you would have to border it like crazy to do that badly. I used to do regular 65 mile trips in a 24kWh car in the cold with heavy rain, uphill, and arrive with over 20% left without even really trying.

Anyway, around here you can easily get a used Leaf or Zoe with minimal degradation for under 10k.

Re:What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

The layering of the conflicting legislation were pointed out by a German sociologists Max Weber. He called it materialization. To be fair, how many times has the US rewritten its Constitution during its existence and changed something like the role and powers of the President or the Speaker of the House? In Europe, a rewriting of constitutions seems to be an international past time.

Re:What happens

[rtb61]

How many do I think I interact with, not many and ones I have run across all come off the same. I did not say all Dutch people, just the ones I came across and I assure you in a multi-cultural country you come across all sorts of distinct cultural behaviour. The Dutch one, likely a hold over from world war 2, some of this stuff last generation after generation and I did say, impressions and feelings. To make you happy, maybe, all the business dealings were straight up no cheating, no contractual problem what so ever, it is just the way interactions felt. Make no mistake though, the first to ban is far better off financially than the rest and that has a big impact on the decision to do so, the losses faced by existing owners and not saying anything is keeping those consequences secret.

Re:What happens

[tsa]

You talked about "the Dutch" and "they are" instead of saying something like "the Dutch people I dealt with."

Anyway, let's see what happens with the ban. It's just a plan now, and with Rutte as PM it can still go either way. They haven't shown any real consideration for the environment yet so my hopes are low. But on the other hand, I would be very reluctant buying a fuel-powered car these days, because even if the ban doesn't go through their resale value will drop immensely in the coming years anyway, thanks to the electric car getting more and more affordable and popular.

Re:What happens

[rtb61]

The ban should be progressive ie metropolitan areas first and it really should be done across the EU together and real discussion about what happens to the banned vehicles. Of course still early but they need to discuss the broader issues and not dump problems on adjoining countries and give people lots of warning and help defray the losses at consumer level.

Re:What happens

[turbidostato]

"in Europe legislation can easily survive for centuries."

And that has been modded "insightful"?

Of course it *can* survive for centuries. But also it *can* be repealed by the next government with the same ease.

I'd say you have (by this criterion) three kinds of laws:
1) Merely utilitarian: they tend to be there for ages, sometimes even far beyond its utility timespan. They doesn't rise political concern and no one takes the hassle to deal with them. I.e.: legislation on some technical regulation.
2) Hidden partisanship: they are very contested by the opposition when proposed, because they need to appease their electorate but, either because they really make common sense or because of political corruption, when the former opposition rises to government, they "forget" about those laws. I.e.: regulations on abortion or divorce, big-corps control/no-control.
3) Laws fully driven by political agenda. They tend to vary on a country by country level, but those are the ones that get heavily changed whenever the government changes party colors. In my country, for instance, those related to education.

This regulations on ICE looks to me to be either on 2 or 3, and that they go beyond the current party in government depends heavily on it. In any case, my point stands: any regulation meant to be enforced by future governments can obviously also be repealed by future governments, so no point on too much fanfare when approving them.

Re:What happens

[turbidostato]

"Although it would be nice to allow the market (aka the people) to make that decision."

It's been shown time and again that market, aka the people, is notably bad at taking decisions with long time impact. We see time and again that the product with a lower price tag wins, no matter what its total cost of ownership is.

So if it happened that electric cars were more expensive to build and so more expensive to buy, people wouldn't buy them even if they were cheaper in the long run. For lower impact goods, it's just their money, but if it also happened that electric cars really were a better option for the environment (and I'm not saying any of those two things to be true, I'm just saying *if*) then they would be a good target for specific legislation. Contrary to standard USA thinking, in EU we know "the invisible hand" is not an almighty God, and "communism" is not a rude word either.

Re:What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, just demand payment through credit card. If you report a dirty car, someone checks the video, and if validated, charges the previous occupant for the cleanup.
Not rocket science.

Re:What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

But on the other hand, I would be very reluctant buying a fuel-powered car these days, because even if the ban doesn't go through their resale value will drop immensely in the coming years anyway, thanks to the electric car getting more and more affordable and popular.

I doubt it. There will be demand for internal combustion cars for decades to come. Electric cars are still a tiny part of the market and while that part is growing, that is happening very slowly. Even VW Group (probably the most ambitious car company in electrification) expects electric cars to be only around 25% of their sales in 2025. The average car is around ten years old, give or take, and a lot more in poorer countries, which is were a lot of older cars end up when sold.

Re:What happens

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Lithium is too rare of a mineral to enable mass production cost cutting. If we have to go to ocean evaporation mining, there's plenty out there, but labor, and therefore cost, will increase.

Re:What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

America is on a very dangerous anti-fact, anti science, anti intellectual, anti learning from history bender.
The hangover is going to suck..

Re:What happens

[david_thornley]

What's so expensive about self-driving cars? There's the sensors, the control circuitry, and the software. The sensors wouldn't add all that much onto the cost of a car (my Forester came with what they call Eyesight technology, which along with the power lift gate cost about three thousand), the control circuitry except for the processors is already there, and the software costs can be amortized over hundreds of thousands or millions of installations a year.

The reason we don't have them now is that we don't know how quite how to do it well enough.

Re: What happens

[david_thornley]

And this is relevant - how? According to the Dutch plan, the last gasoline vehicles will be sold in 2029, and by the time they get to be ten years old (you aren't buying anything newer for $500 as a general rule) it will be 2039, and there will be plenty of older electric vehicles.

Re: What happens

[blindseer]

You assume that by 2029 electric cars will dominate the market so that people won't revolt over the inability to purchase new internal combustion cars. If electric cars can't compete in the market then there will be people keeping their gas burners longer, raising their prices. This will make all car prices soar, old and new.

Electric cars just cost more than gas burners. I don't see even 15 years of development fixing this. We are hitting some very real physical limits on battery technology, we can't make them much cheaper, lighter, or more energy dense. For there to be enough used electric cars in 2039 to compete with gasoline cars then they have to be selling in quantity now. Maybe we could see this ramp up in electric vehicles happen in the next ten years, but I doubt it.

They have elections in the Netherlands and if people are unhappy with this policy it will go away. I just saw something about how wind and solar subsidies are likely to end in Australia because people got tired of paying more for electricity and seeing blackouts come more often. Maybe the people making the windmills will be able to dominate the market, it just won't be because the government mandated it.

Re: What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

If electric cars can't compete in the market then there will be people keeping their gas burners longer, raising their prices. This will make all car prices soar, old and new.

Supply and demand within the Netherlands has very little influence on second-hand car prices. It's a small market. As long as other European countries still allow the sale of new internal combustion cars, they will be fine.

Electric cars just cost more than gas burners. I don't see even 15 years of development fixing this. We are hitting some very real physical limits on battery technology, we can't make them much cheaper, lighter, or more energy dense. For there to be enough used electric cars in 2039 to compete with gasoline cars then they have to be selling in quantity now. Maybe we could see this ramp up in electric vehicles happen in the next ten years, but I doubt it.

While the physical limits argument is very true, that doesn't necessarily mean that prices can't come down. Several major car manufacturers, including the world's largest, are preparing to ramp up production of electric cars very quickly and many people in the car industry expect price parity in the next ten years. Electric cars may require expensive materials and a lot of energy to produce, but they are also much simpler technologically and less labour is needed to build them. With sufficient scale and some evolutionary technology development, it is really not that unlikely.

Re: What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

You are forgetting depreciation. Second-hand Leafs are very cheap. I don't know about the depreciation of the Accord (Hondas are rather rare where I live), but I'm willing to bet the difference is more than the maintenance cost of the Accord.

Re: What happens

[david_thornley]

The plan is to not allow new cars with emissions starting 2025, which is a bit aggressive.

If people want to keep their gasoline burners longer, they can. Given the EU, I can't see market conditions in the Netherlands dominating the price for a commodity.

Electric cars may cost more than gasoline to make, but they are in general more economical to run. They're less complex, and don't rely on oil pumping and refineries and international relations.

If there aren't enough electric used cars in 2025, people will buy used gasoline and diesel cars. No real problem.

Re: What happens

[blindseer]

If there aren't enough electric used cars in 2025, people will buy used gasoline and diesel cars. No real problem.

If there's no import of ICE cars allowed then prices of used cars will rise. This will deny the less wealthy access to cars, people will drive cars in poor repair longer, with the lowered standard of living that comes with it as people deal with lowered mobility, higher pollution, and lowered safety of vehicles. If ICE cars are allowed to be imported you'd still see some rises in the cost of used vehicles, and everything that follows from it, but not near as much. But then if used ICE cars are allowed to be imported then they've done next to nothing to reducing the number of ICE cars on the road.

Given the EU, I can't see market conditions in the Netherlands dominating the price for a commodity.

The Netherlands is not unique in wanting to reduce the number of ICE vehicles on the road. The market for used ICE cars will be shared among other EU nations that have similar bans.

The only way to make a ban on ICE cars work is to reduce the cost of electric cars where everyone, not just the wealthy, can afford them. Once that happens then people will just gravitate to electric cars because they are cheaper and the ban is largely unnecessary.

If the government bans something, and people are not offered something they see as a viable alternative, then people will find ways around the ban.

Since people in the Netherlands have the ability to vote out these idiots I don't expect this to get very far. Once people start to see the prices of cars go up this ban will disappear or get scaled back.

Re:What happens

[turbidostato]

"I don't know about the USA, but in Germany repealing unconstitutional laws is the job of the Federal Constitutional Court."

That's a different beast of a law: an unconstitutional law is one that never should have risen to law to start with because it lacks a technicality (abide to the constitution, in this case), just like a law would be repealed if, let's say, there were a mistake counting its votes for approval but wouldn't be known till later or something like that.

The Left Wing

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't like cars and the people that drive them. They hate cars and their drivers. HATE THEM.

They want everything to be like Shang Hi in the 1980. Bicycles peddling all around.

Look a the people on the bicycles. Those are the PEOPLE! The PEOPLE!! Look at them peddle!

Re:The Left Wing

[thesupraman]

Of course not.

They spend all their money on short term feel-good things, and therefore have no savings to be able to own property outside small inner city apartments, therefore they dont need a car to travel day to day.

Goods just magically turn up at their local bespoke coffee shop, organic market, and packages ordered from amazon appear at their door by magic.

They have no friends outside Facebook (and the coffee shop/political activist group), especially none far enough away to perhaps have different opinions, social circumstances, etc - that would be SO uncomfortable.

However they do sometimes get a nagging suspicion that perhaps other people are DIFFERENT, perhaps other people actually do MORE - the sooner that can be stamped out, the sooner they can not worry about that.

Re: The Left Wing

[Anonymous Coward]

Youâ(TM)re brave as FUCK dude! And so fucking right - all of us different people with different opinions should STAMP THEM OUT for living different and having a different opinion from us!

Re: The Left Wing

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a plan from a centre-right government...

Let the free market decide

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't the free market be allowed to decide? This is an attempt to redistribute away from petrol companies and toward electric car manufacturers. I'd really like to know how much money electric car manufacturers funneled to government officials to pass legislation that forces the public to use their charging stations.

Re:Let the free market decide

[Anonymous Coward]

The free market has never decided. Petrol cars were mandated in many places and now the petrol industry makes the majority of the rules that they have to play by. They write their own legislation to pass along to their bought senators. You're acting like this is a new thing. It isn't. When the petrol car manufacturers funneled money to government officials to force the public to use their fuel pumps, I didn't hear you bitching. In other words, you didn't check yo self, so I wrecked yo self, shill.

Re:Let the free market decide

[HornWumpus]

Have you seen the price of whale oil lately? Of course markets decide, technology drives cost changes, some things can't compete at all.

Re:Let the free market decide

[AHuxley]

The market will be swayed by new tax considerations.
Buy electric and its all cool. No new tax.
Dont buy electric and risk having to pay again and again for driving that luxury import.
Then one day its an electric pod, a bigger electric pod. An electric van or truck for people who can really prove they need that kind of transport for work.
The free market feels the full force of socialism.
Free to import a car or drive an antique on select private roads and tracks but a limited selection of new electric pod cars will be all most people can afford to drive.
The wider population does not get to enjoy the car, SUV, truck, van they want. The government moves the tax system to force most of the population to buy a new electric pod.

Re: Let the free market decide

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you and fuck your stupid "fee" market in your stupid n1ggerstan.

Sure... and I plan to be a Billionaire by 2030

[Tulsa_Time]

Good luck to both of us...

There they go again

[RightwingNutjob]

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.

Re:There they go again

[Anonymous Coward]

These are people that just don't like cars.

They don't like the idea of private persons owning cars because that affords them mobility, and by extension, freedom of movement.

That HATE that. It annoys the living fuck out of them.

Re:There they go again

[R3d M3rcury]

I'll admit I can't be bothered to RTFA. But, from what I'm seeing, they're banning gasoline & diesel engines.

It doesn't sounds to me like they're picking "winners." Electric, hydrogen fuel cell, hydrogen IC, and CNG should all pass, as well as cars that run on smugness, self-satisfaction, or pixie dust. What fails is gasoline and diesel.

  So it sounds more like they picked the "losers."

Re:There they go again

[Rockoon]

It doesn't sounds to me like they're picking "winners."

The people with EV patents love retarded fucks like you.

Re:There they go again

[Chuq]

Then it's going to turn out that manufacturing and remanufacturing batteries en masse is a dirty and expensive business

It seems the Koch brothers propaganda and smear tactics are working well on some people.

Re: There they go again

[Anonymous Coward]

Go ahead and demonstrate otherwise

Re:There they go again

[Anonymous Coward]

And where will the electric power come from for all the electric cars? Along with the energy to make the batteries. This is all about making people feel good about solving man-made climate change that does not exist, where the result is more pollution anyway.

I will tell you know, by 2030 this plan will fail or be extended. or ended if people wake up to realize climate change is a lie.

Re:There they go again

[RightwingNutjob]

What will you do when you finally find out that the boogieman isn't hiding in your closet? Where will your snark be directed then? I ask because I care.

Re:There they go again

[deviated_prevert]

I will tell you know, by 2030 this plan will fail or be extended. or ended if people wake up to realize climate change is a lie.

I would suggest that you go preach your bullshit to the people fighting the fires currently ravaging wine country in California. Then get a bullhorn and tell everybody who is running to get the hell out of the fire zones that climate change is a lie and that if they will just listen to the anti-science nutjobs there is nothing to worry about. Tell them they have nothing to worry about because very soon a radical swing to winter floods will start and what is left of their neighborhoods will have plenty of water and mud slides to put out any fires that are still burning.

You sir are an unmitigated asshole and have no idea of the concept of oscillations in scale and how the radical changes and oscillation to extremes in climate patterns we are now seeing is as a direct result of climate change. Whatever you do don't put your brain to work learning anything about predictive mathematical modeling, it is obviously well beyond your intelligence level.

There is a reason why more people are switching to electric cars in California than elsewhere in the US, there they are seeing the results of the radical increases to the earths level of CO2 in the atmosphere to a much greater extent than the rust belt region where the cars are built, I might add largely with the electricity created by the coal belt. Unfortunately a huge portion of the population of the US is essentially fucked in the head with an obsession for gas and diesel guzzling oversized pieces of steel on four wheels and it will take another stupid economic collapse and many more deaths from severe storms for the majority to finally wake up from their stupidity. Either that or some unforeseen consequence from the recent increased CO2 in the atmosphere will bite us all in the ass and thereby reduce our consumption of fossil fuels by wiping the majority of us off the fucking planet.

Re: There they go again

[Anonymous Coward]

Who are the Koch brothers?

Re:There they go again

[blindseer]

Is it just propaganda and conspiracy theory? Let's look at the past, starting when cars started to be "evil", which to be seems to be about the time that there was an effort to remove lead from gasoline. I'm not saying that removing lead from gasoline was bad, I see little evidence to suggest this practice should have continued once we realized the risks it posed. What it did though was seemingly start a cascade of events.

We got our unleaded gasoline, that's good. Then came smaller, more efficient cars. At the same time came improvements in designing safer cars with crumple zones and reinforced passenger cabins. I'm not sure if the two were related in that the smaller cars become more dangerous and the car makers had to compensate for the lack of mass to keep people safe, or just that cars were generally unsafe and this became more apparent as more people got cars on increasingly crowded roads. Bigger cars are inherently safer but smaller cheaper cars mean greater freedom and quality of life. That's good, bad, or indifferent, depending on your point of view.

Then comes natural gas. This didn't catch on too much in some places of the USA but I remember in California and Texas seeing filling stations that offered natural gas. You'd see city transit buses proudly displaying signs on how clean these new natural gas cars ran. The mood on that shifted real quick. Natural gas got real cheap, and gasoline prices rose, and people started to actually buy natural gas fueled vehicles. When people started to actually buy them then natural gas became "bad".

Then we get to what the GPP stated, bio-fuel becoming the new hotness. Then people found out that biodiesel likes to gel up in the cold. Ethanol would suck the humidity out of the air in the summer and into the fuel tank, and then when the weather got cold enough for it to freeze they'd hear blocks of ice sliding around in fuel tank. The bio-fuels were just generally expensive and lower energy density compared to petroleum fuels.

After decades of this roller coaster ride of different kinds of fuels and cars coming into favor and then becoming what's going to get us all killed would it not be natural to at some point step back, look at the pattern, and think we might see another twist and turn? Nothing will satisfy these people. Nothing will ever be "enough" because there will always be something better later. The "better" will always be something just out of reach but close enough we can see it clearly. Once it's something we can actually touch, and use, then it's no longer "new". This looking for something better is as natural as seeing the roller coaster. We should always look for something better. What we should not do is call people murderers because the car they have is not as "green" as the new hotness.

I fully expect someone to claim current batteries are polluting our precious bodily fluids with heavy metals. Once something "better" comes along the current battery technology that was going to save us all from certain death becomes poison that will kill us all.

Calm down people. We'll survive this if we all don't panic.

Re:There they go again

[MrL0G1C]

Unlike you, the politicians recognise that we need to stop emitting extreme amounts of greenhouse gases. And all of the negatives are fixable or no change - gasoline is explosive, it wouldn't power cars otherwise. And China are becoming the new Japan, they are quite capable of producing quality goods if they want to.

Re:There they go again

[Rei]

Environmentalists have hated corn ethanol from the beginning (they've been more mixed on biodiesel, but most are not fans). Corn ethanol has the support of midwest farmers and their senators / reps, not environmentalists. Direct your complaints to farmers and their reps.

Then it's going to turn out that manufacturing and remanufacturing batteries en masse is a dirty and expensive business,

It isn't. Do we really need to go into the endless number of peer-reviewed studies that have been conducted on lifecycle assessments of EVs? The short of it is that while low volume EVs may embody about twice the manufacturing pollution of a gasoline vehicle, a mass-manufactured EV embodies only slightly more (depending on the study and its assumptions, around 15%), and regardless, in both cases, pollution from operation vastly outweighs pollution from usage, and both end up recycled, with about 70% average recovery of embodied pollution on the EV. And all this ignores the fact that many manufacturers are working to have their EV production 100% solar driven.

that riding on a half ton of fuel and oxidizer packed closely together

Sorry, that's not how batteries work; you're thinking of rockets. There is no "fuel and oxidizer" reaction in an EV. Lithium-ion batteries work by the migration of lithium ions across a barrier, either intercalated into graphite and/or silicon on the anode side, or into a mixed metal oxide (such as nickel-cobalt-aluminum oxide) or similar structure on the cathode side. Intercalated = they fill up the interstitial sites in their host compound.

Secondly, you betray a complete lack of understanding of chemistry with your statement. How "dangerous" a substance is is not linearly related to its energy density. Nitroglycerin has an energy density of 6,37 MJ/kg. A block of aluminum has an energy density of 31 MJ/kg. Which one is safer? The volumetric difference between the two is even greater, BTW.

Third, there's an implicit "all else being equal" in your argument. But all else is not equal. In a gasoline car, the fuel is just poured into a big open tank in your vehicle. In an EV, there's a huge array of safety measures - cell expansion space, individual cell rupture isolation, active cooling, passive quench, controlled venting, etc, etc. Rates of EV fires have been much lower than rates of gasoline fires; the packs are so difficult to burn that you can sometimes burn the rest of the car without igniting the pack. And when you do force the ignition of a pack, here's what happens (that's Powerwall, but the tech is the same as in Tesla's vehicles).

Everyone talks of every single fire incident in EVs, while ignoring that ~200k gasoline cars catch fire and burn every year in the US alone. The per mile rate for EVs is much lower.

when it's inside 100k rich-man's toys

While it's possible to buy an EV for 100k or more (just like it's possible to buy a $100k+ gasoline car), the overwhelming majority on the market are far cheaper than that.

lowest-bidder Chinese garbage

None of the popular EVs outside China are "Chinese garbage". The most popular are Tesla, GM, Nissan / Renault, Toyota, Mitsubishi, Hyundai, and BMW. There are some additional brands that sell a lot inside China, but almost nothing outside of it.

Re:There they go again

[hackertourist]

The current road tax system in .nl is based on emissions (more CO2 = more tax). No reason to assume this new plan will be implemented differently.

Re:There they go again

[Anonymous Coward]

For the vast majority of the people buying an electric car will add more CO2 to the atmosphere then buying a regular car. The production of the batteries requires so much energy that the majority of the people will never break even in CO2 expulsion compared to an equivalent non battery car.

Even the hydrogen car emits more CO2 then its fossil equivalent because of the high energy cost to create hydrogen. Even going back to horse and carriage will have a negative effect on CO2 emissions.
 
The wind mills that produce 'free energy' are all made from composite materials whose production requires lots of energy. It takes a pretty long time before the wind mills break even in CO2 emission. On top of that wind mills bring a lot of visual pollution. Everywhere I go there are wind mills. As far as they eye can reach there are wind mills. Yet the majority of our electricity (80%) is generated through the CO2 heavy coal plant central. This is a brand new central because we still needed electricity after the nuclear plants were shut down. This coal plant will be used for at least 40 years.

The proposed solutions to the climate change don't work. When you are skeptical about the solutions proposed by politicians who are not backed up by scientists but by the green industry, you are put in the camp of climate change deniers. Fuck that. There is no more discussion. Electric cars must come. Windmill and solar cell generated electricity must come. More economical alternatives must be banned. Reports that sound less alarmist or not alarmist at all may not be published. Studies about the low or even negative impact on CO2 emission with the chosen path must be kept secret.

I've been following the climate change science for quite a while now, long before Al Gore made it his (well paying) job. Al Gore exaggerated and even fantasized in his awareness movie. His political movie was science fiction. All our current political actions are based on science fiction. Criticize this and you're put in the climate change deniers camp. It becomes even worse when you see that real scientist who warned about too much climate alarmism have been silenced too. The current team of climate scientist are people who realize they can't criticize politicians too much without losing their subsidizes. This is no different then the health scientists who claimed that smoking didn't cause cancer, or the scientists who claimed that lead in petrol didn't have any negative impact on the environment and the air quality. Scientist should be political neutral, but scientific research has become one of the most politicized part of our society. We are heading back to a situation similar to the one when the Catholic church controlled what scientists were allowed to publish.

By the way people in California choose electric cars because they are subsidized and because they like to be better then the rest. The forest fires are not caused by a high CO2 concentration in the air but by the extreme droughts. Droughts that can be caused by the intensive, water hungry farming who pump up millions of liters of water everyday. But nope, that doesn't sell, it is all caused by the people who don't drive an electric car for sure. Keep those golf courts watered, the rich golfers will drive a Tesla to compensate for the destruction of nature...

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:There they go again

[drinkypoo]

It doesn't sounds to me like they're picking "winners."

But, they are. The right answer is to set emissions targets, and anyone who can meet them can sell a product. If you set a lifetime emissions limit that you don't think can be hit by a liquid-fueled car, it still leaves the door open for future technologies. The right thing to do is to base it on lifetime emissions, though, not just while the vehicle is in operation.

Re:There they go again

[Trailer Trash]

Then it's going to turn out that manufacturing and remanufacturing batteries en masse is a dirty and expensive business

It seems the Koch brothers propaganda and smear tactics are working well on some people.

Just as the Soros propaganda and smear tactics are working well on you.

Lithium batteries are very expensive to produce and almost certainly really dirty. It doesn't matter. This is like the tradeoff with nuclear power - it has a nasty waste but we're not pumping that waste into the atmosphere and it's pretty easy to contain. I'm sure mining for lithium is dirty business and manufacturing probably is, too, but that's waste that can be contained.

At least learn how to speak about these subjects intelligently instead of invoking your favorite bogeyman.

Re:There they go again

[blindseer]

1) The bad part of smaller cars is that a smaller car will always be less safe than a larger car, all else equal. Can a car be made safer than a larger car? Yes. What happens though with mandates for greater fuel efficiency cars must be made lighter. Adding safety features to a car, like airbags, adds weight. We've hit a point where we can't have cheaper, lighter, and safer year after year. Now we must choose two.

2) If you've never heard of people complain on the environmental impact of natural gas cars then I can't help you. I did a quick Google search and found plenty.

3) Again, if you've never heard of people claiming that we can run the world on corn ethanol then I can't help you.

4) I see you are thinking logically. The complaints on heavy metal contamination from car batteries is not always logical. What I am expecting is another round of shrill screams on how we are ruining the environment and killing people with these batteries. It's not all that common now, just wait though. It will happen shortly after electric cars start to become mainstream.

5) Go back and read what I wrote. I said we should always look for something better. The complaint is that the "greenies" demand immediate adoption of the next big thing. Trading in a gasoline car for a natural gas car, even though it'd cut CO2 emissions in half, is not good enough. Only getting an electric car would satisfy them. What will no doubt follow, just like we've seen to many times before, is when the next thing comes along then everyone must immediately scrap their electric car for whatever that next big thing might be. Not only can these people not be satisfied but technological advancement has got to a point of diminishing returns. We can cut our CO2 emissions in half only so many times before the reductions become meaningless.

Re:There they go again

[Barsteward]

a lot of it is coming from solar and wind power and this is increasing year on year

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

Re:There they go again

[Rakarra]

They don't like the idea of private persons owning cars because that affords them mobility, and by extension, freedom of movement.

That HATE that. It annoys the living fuck out of them.

I know you love your strawmen, AC, but no, they don't HATE freedom of mobility, no more than partisans and rebels shot at soldiers in Iraq because "they hate our freedoms."

They just don't consider enabling absolute freedom of motion to be the highest societal value, that if it comes in conflict with other values that they cherish, then the freedom that a personal vehicle enables is not the highest priority. IE, it'll be second to air quality, pollution, traffic congestion, and resources (like gas). Even among liberals those folks are a tiny minority, though much like the KKK member at a conservative rally, they certainly attract a disproportionate amount of attention.

Not that this has much to do with a shift to electric from gas, but few people let actual Slashdot stories get in the way of a good political screed. I've certainly fallen for that before.

Re:There they go again

[Trailer Trash]

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

I'm not comparing anything, just pointing out that mining *anything* is dirty business. It just is. I grew up around coal mines.

The issue isn't so much the mining, though, and that's the point. Everything shown in that article is contained, and that's the key. The issue with oil and coal isn't the mining part, although that's certainly dirty. The issue is that when you burn them - which is typically how you extract the energy content - the waste products go into the atmosphere and are uncontained. That is the problem.

You're apparently too dense to understand that I'm very pro-electric. My entire point above is trying to teach a libtard how to properly argue for something without barfing up something stupid about the Koch brothers. We're on the same side of this issue, so it behooves me to teach the libtard how to actually explain something rather than "duh, Koch brothers".

Re:There they go again

[RightwingNutjob]

I'd agree with your assessment, except that that small set of people that we're talking about has a habit of knocking down the priority of personal freedoms below just about any of their pet causes. Here it's personal freedom vs "the environment." Elsewhere it's personal freedom vs "good public schools," or "safe streets" or "economic justice" or "reproductive rights" or just about any left-wing cause you can find. When personal freedom keeps taking a back seat to a whole series of issues, it's pretty safe to say that they hate freedom.

Re:There they go again

[beastofburdon]

Man, don't be promoting things like taking lifetime emissions into account! Then we would have to actually take a look at just how much pollution is involved in the production of batteries, and then we would have to just scrap the whole idea of electric vehicles until we found a better way of making batteries!

Re:There they go again

[beastofburdon]

You forgot about Lithium in the batteries. That shit, while it can be used as medicine in very small doses, is highly toxic. Even the very low doses used to treat patients will destroy the body over time.

Re:There they go again

[david_thornley]

The complaint is that the "greenies" demand immediate adoption of the next big thing.

Then, if you read the summary, you can see that it's a plan to prevent the sale of new gasoline and diesel cars thirteen years from now. This is a definition of "immediate" that I have not previously encountered.

The law also says "emission-free", not "has to use electricity carried in batteries". If someone has a better solution by 2030, they can keep selling it.

Re:There they go again

[david_thornley]

Yup. I'm not sure they hate freedom, but they certainly place a low priority on it. There are counterparts on the right wing, particularly the ones who want to strip civil rights away in order to convict other people accused of crimes.

I don't think any of them have much of a clue that they could wind up on the wrong end of the loss of freedom, because of their undying belief that they're the good guys and everybody will have to agree with them and not arrest them or in any way step on a freedom or right they care about.

Aside from these fringe idiots, nobody's talking about banning cars. There's people who want to make them much less necessary, but that's offering alternatives rather than reducing freedom. What they're talking about is restricting car emissions, and that's been done for decades. There will be cars. Whether there is large-scale car ownership, such as in the current US, seems to me a market issue. If there are good alternatives to owning one's own car, some people simply won't own one and save money.

Re:There they go again

[Anonymous Coward]

If you had read the actual coalition agreement, then you would know that it is no more than a 'target'. They do not propose an actual law that would prevent the sale of non-CO2-neutral cars.

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..

[fluffernutter]

People keep saying EVs are cheaper to make, but then why are they always more expensive before government subsidies? I might be able to consider buying one of these less convenient cars if they actually had a cheaper sticker price.

Re: Driven by manufacturers..

[Anonymous Coward]

People keep saying EVs are cheaper to make, but then why are they always more expensive before government subsidies?

People meaning who? The voices in your head?

Nobody can refute your claim until you actually tell us what you are claiming.

Re:Driven by manufacturers..

[alvinrod]

Parts of them are cheaper. The engine is certainly more simple and if you don't have an internal combustion engine there are other things you can toss out as well. However, petrol-based cars have the advantage in that the fuel is petrol. You just need to break down the hydrocarbons to release the energy and that's entirely contained in the fuel. Electric cars have a more complex fuel system with regard to the batteries and the need to recharge them. If electric vehicles operated under similar principles where you had to chuck the battery after a single use, they'd never catch on. Part of it is just paying for the improved efficiency up front rather than spreading it out over the life of the vehicle as you need to purchase additional petrol.

Because of this, and a few other reasons that don't have a lot to do with cars specifically, the initial electric vehicles are going to be luxury items. The expense in setting up factories and build the new components needed for electric vehicles and the limited production capacity until they can ramp up over several years practically dictates a need to sell at a high price. You can't make mass market consumer products when you have very limited production capacity. Musk at least realizes the need to get to a mass market point, because he saw how Ford was able to reap the rewards of doing just that roughly a century earlier. Until then, it's necessary to add bells and whistles so you can mark up the price even more and target high-end buyers who can afford to pay above raw value in terms of utility.

Re: Driven by manufacturers..

[slazzy]

Batteries cost more, that and evs build more like supercars...

Re: Driven by manufacturers..

[Anonymous Coward]

While this is no doubt a big factor in why countries are having such plans, I doubt it is in The Netherlands, which has no car industry to speak of an extremely high taxes on motoring. There is a simpler explanation: the new government wants the country's total CO2 emissions to reduce to 51% of those in 1990 at some point in the distant future and, at least on paper, this is a very effective measure.

Re:Driven by manufacturers..

[AmiMoJo]

The flaw in your conspiracy theory is that battery electric vehicles are costing manufacturers a lot to develop and cost more to manufacture right now. They also need to get the batteries somehow, which means building new battery factories or doing major long term deals with existing manufacturers.

Given the choice they would prefer to carry on selling the same cars they already sunk vast amounts of money into developing.

Re:Driven by manufacturers..

[tinkerton]

I think it's very worthwhile to know how the manufacturers see it and the overall pattern seems to be that they strongly approve of increasing regulation which forces people to transition to more advanced and more expensive goods. That does not necessarily mean it's bad for us, just that their interests are a large part of it. Maybe too large a part, and they are not deciding everything by themselves, but certainly there is a heavy lobbying part that is kept out of view. Take safety. Car safety creates a market. It raises the bar for cars and makes it harder for competitors to get in. It forces you to switch to a car that takes a lot more energy to make, that is a lot more expensive to make. It does have benefits though, cars become safer. They become safer in such a way that it's good for the leading manufacturers. I'm still impressed by how weight of cars has been going up. It can go down again, by becoming more hightech of course.
A recurrent pattern is people are forced to buy the more hightech solution. They can't say sorry I don't have the budget for that. So I pretty much think these things tend to happen at the expense of the poorer layers of the population.

Re:Driven by manufacturers..

[Rei]

It depends what part of the market you're referring to. Econoboxes? Gasoline vehicles are cheaper. High performance vehicles? EVs are cheaper. The balance point between the two steadily moves down. A base Tesla Model 3 - without including subsidies or accounting for the operating cost price difference - comes with more standard features and space at the same price as a BMW 330i (and just to head anyone off, and whether you want to believe them or not, literally every reviewer who's been in it has raved over the interior quality)

However, concerning the article itself: Denmark is acting schizophrenic about this one. In one breath they say that they have this aggressive electrification programme, but on the other hand, they got rid of the discount on car taxes that they had for EVs, causing the price to shoot up. Everyone who was even considering an EV bought one before the expiration, and the market penetration dropped to less than 0,1% afterwards. They're talking about temporarily walking back their previous decision, but really, they don't sound particularly serious. By contrast, a third of all new vehicle sales in Norway are electric already; unless there's a radical change in policy, they probably will achieve their goal.

My country, Iceland, is #2 in the world, at over 16% market penetration. We also don't have to pay VAT on electric cars (and obviously the CO2 fee is zero); there's a lot of both public and government interest. Our biggest problem is charging infrastructure. CHAdeMO/CCS chargers only extend halfway around the country, and Tesla (aka, actual fast charging) isn't here at all.

Re:Driven by manufacturers..

[Anonymous Coward]

A base Tesla Model 3 - without including subsidies or accounting for the operating cost price difference - comes with more standard features and space at the same price [electrek.co] as a BMW 330i

Great. It's a shame the two are probably worlds apart in handling, fit and finish, reliability and comfort. The article on the Tesla shill site you link to doesn't actually compare the features of both cars, so I am not so sure about the supposed feature parity.

and just to head anyone off, and whether you want to believe them or not, literally every reviewer who's been in it has raved over the interior quality)

Tesla being selective in which journalists they allow to review a car in very limited supply doesn't really say anything about the merits of the car. I'll believe it when I see it.

Re:Driven by manufacturers..

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the choice they would prefer to carry on selling the same cars they already sunk vast amounts of money into developing.

That's not really an option anyway. Car models rarely remain in production more than a few years. Additionally, car makers need to sell large numbers of electric cars anyway to meet EU CO2 targets. If they don't meet the targets, they have to pay billions in fines.

Re:Driven by manufacturers..

[Rei]

Great. It's a shame the two are probably worlds apart in handling, fit and finish, reliability and comfort

Start reading reviews. Here, I'll help - some excerpts and links. Let me know which of these are some sort of Tesla shills:

Motor Trend:

What’s blanching, though, is the car’s ride and handling. If anybody was expecting a typical boring electric sedan here, nope. The ride is Alfa Giulia (maybe even Quadrifoglio)–firm, and quickly, I’m carving Stunt Road like a Sochi Olympics giant slalomer, micrometering my swipes at the apexes. I glance at Franz—this OK? “Go for it,” he nods. The Model 3 is so unexpected scalpel-like, I’m sputtering for adjectives. The steering ratio is quick, the effort is light (for me), but there’s enough light tremble against your fingers to hear the cornering negotiations between Stunt Road and these 235/40R19 tires (Continental ProContact RX m+s’s). And to mention body roll is to have already said too much about it. Sure, that battery is low, way down under the floor. But unlike the aluminum Model S, the Tesla Model 3 is composed of steel, too, and this car’s glass ceiling can’t be helping the center of gravity’s height. Nearly-nil body roll? Magic, I’m telling you. Magic. And this is the single-motor, rear-wheel-drive starting point. The already boggled mind boggles further at the mention of Dual Motor and Ludicrous.

Top Gear:

Gone are the Model S’s projecting doorhandles in favour of nicely crafted aluminium ones that project manually like those on an Aston when you poke one end. Open the door and slide in, and the interior is beautifully simple and uncluttered. The steering wheel features two buttons that adjust everything from the traditional (volume, radio frequency) to the more unique (door mirror adjustment and steering wheel positioning).
***
The car we drove was a Long Range model with all the options list ticked, including the Premium Upgrade Package, featuring leather seats (base models come with fabric), a wooden dash inlay panel that spans the width of the cockpit and the aforementioned glass roof that infuses the interior with a huge feeling of light and space. It’s all simple, elegant, uncluttered and nicely crafted. Before we set off, I jumped in the back and with the driver seat positioned for my 6ft frame, there was still plenty of room in the back for three adults.
***
Our short foray highlighted that the Model 3’s quoted 0–60mph time of 5.1 seconds in this Long Range spec might be underplaying its performance a bit: it’s rapid, and the acceleration is delivered with that lovely linearity and unwavering torque that EVs deliver. The overall feeling of peace and quiet is helped by the minimalist interior but by impressive sound deadening and insulation – the road noise is minimal.

The Verge:

I felt like I was driving in an Eames chair. That was my first impression as I climbed into the driver’s seat of the Tesla Model 3 at the Fremont Factory on Friday afternoon. It took a moment to orient myself — no gauges, no speedometer, no airplane cockpit cues. Instead, one continuous smooth line between myself and the road ahead, offset by natural, unfinished wood. The premium model of the Model 3 caught me off guard. After hearing so much hype about this car, I was surprised that my first reaction was a profound sense of delight. It wasn’t bland, nor sterile, nor cheap feeling. Here was something different. Here was an exercise in min

Re:Driven by manufacturers..

[Rei]

As for why its handling is so good, in large part:

1) It's surprisingly light. The SR version, at 3549 lbs / 1610 kg, is lighter than average for its class, while the LR version, at 3814 lbs / 1730 kg, is still far from the heaviest in its class. Note that the reviewers above were driving the LR - the SR should handle even better.

2) The CG is low. This is standard for all "designed from the ground up" EVs, not just the Model 3, and minimizes body roll.

3) The polar moment of inertia is abnormally low. Diagram here. Unlike the Model S, Model X, and ICE vehicles, the Model 3 has an abnormally low polar moment of inertia. Its battery pack (the largest single chunk of its mass) is positioned between the wheels. A low polar moment of inertia means that it takes relatively little force to rotate the vehicle.

Re:Driven by manufacturers..

[Barsteward]

New tech is always more expensive until a tipping point of quantity sold is reached. There are considerably less moving parts in an EV so when the number of EVs being made is near to the current ICE numbers, it will be cheaper plus battery prices are dropping all the time.

Re:Driven by manufacturers..

[BasilBrush]

Your post shows complete ignorance of the market. The big traditional car companies have been resisting EVs up until the last year. Where California have been forcing them to make a percentage of zero emission vehicles with legislation, they have produced "compliance cars" - EVs that they only sell in California, and only manufacture enough to comply with the law.

It's only now with the success of Tesla that EVs are taking off.

Nope, the legislation is being forced on the car companies, not requested by them.

Re:Driven by manufacturers..

[BasilBrush]

The Model 3 is nice, except for the brain dead idea to do away with all the usual buttons and manual controls in a normal car, and require the use of a tabbed touch screen to access the functions. It means that the driver needs to take their eyes off the road to do things.

Other than that I'd love a Model 3. But as it's the case, when I come to buy an EV, it'll be something else. Maybe an Ioniq or a 2018 Leaf.

Re:Driven by manufacturers..

[Anonymous Coward]

The big traditional car companies have been resisting EVs up until the last year.

The big traditional car companies have been making EVs since the 1970s. Almost no-one bought them before incentives were introduced.

Where California have been forcing them to make a percentage of zero emission vehicles with legislation, they have produced "compliance cars" - EVs that they only sell in California, and only manufacture enough to comply with the law.

I doubt a local subdivision of one country matters much in the global car market. Most EVs are not even available in that country.

It's only now with the success of Tesla that EVs are taking off.

Nope, the legislation is being forced on the car companies, not requested by them.

The fleet average CO2 targets set by the EU are the reason. It's simply not possible to meet them without an increasingly large fraction of new cars sold being EVs. Not meeting the targets means large fines, so developing and building the required numbers of EVs is the cheaper option, especially for manufacturers that specialise in large cars

Re:Driven by manufacturers..

[b0bby]

I don't believe that car manufacturers love this - GM, for example, is only adding about half the manufacturing cost of the Bolt. The other half is LG, for the battery. Do you really think they want to have LG be a crucial supplier, for half the value of their cars? Or Tesla? So sure, the "car" parts are simple and cheaper, but the battery is crucial and still expensive.

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:Driven by manufacturers..

[randallman]

"You just need to break down the hydrocarbons to release the energy and that's entirely contained in the fuel."

Are you counting air and "fuel", because without oxygen, you get no energy?

"Electric cars have a more complex fuel system with regard to the batteries and the need to recharge them."

Fuel filter, electronic fuel injection, MAF sensor, oxygen sensor, TDS sensor, ... vs. BMS and some fail-safes. ???

"However, petrol-based cars have the advantage in that the fuel is petrol."

After owning an EV for a year, I don't agree. Petrol's inherit advantage is that it's portable - you can pour it in a can. This advantage is only used for lawn mowers, etc; rarely for automobiles. Things people consider drawbacks for batteries, like range and charging speed are not inherent limitations and are progressing rapidly. Increasing EV demand increases R&D, which accelerates progress. Today's best EVs (tomorrow's mainstream ones) have a range of 350 miles and can charge at 120kW. Tomorrow's best EVs will have a range of 500 miles and charge at 300+kW. And so on.

Then there's: 1. Charging at home or anywhere there's a plug. 2. No local emissions - cleaner air in the city. 3. Smooth operation - no shaking/vibration. 4. Loads of torque (very addictive). 5. Fewer moving parts.

I got OT a little bit,

Re:Driven by manufacturers..

[Anonymous Coward]

Well hopefully instead of finding a way for us to replace our whole car, they can license us various features via software that has an annual subscription. Then they get their revenue streams and we get a healthy planet...win win

Re:Driven by manufacturers..

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the price difference is due to gas cars' advantage of manufacturing-at-scale. Once EVs and batteries are sold and manufactured at sufficient amounts, the price ought to come down a lot.

Re: Driven by manufacturers..

[Kristoph]

Iâ(TM)ve had a BMW almost my entire adult life. Most recent Iâ(TM)ve been driving 5 series cars. I currently have an X5 for hauling a horse trailer.

When my last 5 series started getting repair bills higher then itâ(TM)s value I replaced it with a Tesla S class. I can assure you that the build quality - exterior and interior is in on par. The handling is likewise on par. The cockpit electronics and acceleration on the Tesla are far superior to the 535xi I owned.

( also, bonus, for an extra $4500 I get a total of 8 years of warranty so I can keep the car for 5-6 years before upgrading again )

Re:Driven by manufacturers..

[amiga3D]

Modern ICE autos are very complex due to the drive to reduce emissions and increase performance and mileage. To see this just open the hood of an original 1957 Chevy and a 2017 Chevrolet Cruze. I believe that all it will take for the ICE engine to become obsolete except for a niche market will be affordable battery packs. When it gets to the point you can just swap packs like people do propane tanks now that will be the end of the competition.

Re:Driven by manufacturers..

[thegarbz]

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

Cars have finite lives. By regulating the supply rather than the demand this isn't doing car companies any favours. Even if you regulate the supply all that's going to happen is those wonderful new car sales are going to be offset by the absolute crash leading up to the new regulations.

It's much the same as moving some of next month's sales into this month's accounting spreadsheet to make the month look good. There's no free lunch.

Re:Driven by manufacturers..

[david_thornley]

You seem to not realize that there is more than one company making electric cars even now.

Approximately nobody's going to buy a car that will have to be scrapped after five years, not when they can go down the street to the place that sells cars made by intelligent manufacturers. Car magazines will note how difficult it is to swap batteries. (One of the recharging ideas going around is to quick-swap batteries.)

There is no planned obsolescence in modern gasoline cars, because they have to be something large numbers of people with alternatives will buy. There will be none in electric cars.

Re:Driven by manufacturers..

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, GM is a bit of a special case. They have basically put all their eggs into the Truck/SUV (and now CUV) basket yet again. Sure, they've got a few side projects going on like the Bolt. But if the Truck/SUV/CUV market takes another hit like it did when gas prices spiked like it did a decade ago, they are going to be hurting pretty hard. Which likely means we all get to bail them out, again.

Re: Driven by manufacturers..

[Anonymous Coward]

Sad but true, meanwhile 100 plus year old electronic cars are still on the road with their origional battery.

WWIII

[Anonymous Coward]

Just disable the power grid and the whole country grinds to a halt! Solar flare; no work today. Stay home and stair at your useless electronic toys. AutoVirus spreads to all the cars slowly then triggers on $EVENT and down goes the whole country. No food in stores; no supplies in hardware stores to make a temporary solution. NO BEER TRUCKS! AAAHHHHHH!!!!

No thanks; I'll keep my old points based auto and motorcycle. Don't know where I'd go thou.

Re:WWIII

[HornWumpus]

Beer warehouse, duh.

Re:WWIII

[MightyMartian]

And when the power to gas pumps stop working, everything grinds to a halt as well.

Re:WWIII

[goose-incarnated]

And when the power to gas pumps stop working, everything grinds to a halt as well.

What a brain-damaged comment: You don't need an electric pump to pour petrol into the car, nor to get it out the storage tank. Any fuel station located in a slightly elevated position can siphon out the last drop of fuel from the storage tank using only gravity.

Besides, I may not even need it due to the range - I can go a month on a full tank. If power is gone for a month we have bigger problems than getting to work.

Re:WWIII

[Rei]

Meanwhile, here's what living through natural disasters is actually like with EVs.

Re:WWIII

[Barsteward]

that'll be fun.....

Re:WWIII

[MightyMartian]

And when you have a lineup of cars a quarter mile long, and your hand pumping gas and diesel into vehicles, how's that going to go for you. Mopst gas stations are not built so they can be gravity fed. Yes, I'm sure there are a few with optimal conditions, but basically, fuel distribution is based upon operating electrical grids.

Re:WWIII

[goose-incarnated]

And when you have a lineup of cars a quarter mile long, and your hand pumping gas and diesel into vehicles, how's that going to go for you.

It'll work better than electric, where you don't have the option of fuel at all. In your mind waiting a day to fill up is just as bad as not filling up at all? Ever seen how water is easily rationed out in disaster areas? Petrol and diesel can work the same way.

Mopst gas stations are not built so they can be gravity fed.

They don't need to be built special. Very few stations are located in the bottom of a valley with no downhill in any direction. Most stations have a downhill in at least one direction. A small difference, a slight grade, is enough to drain the tank using only gravity.

And, let's be honest - power outages of a few weeks does not leave people stranded due to how easily it is to transport fuel to the disaster area. Every disaster area I've seen still manages to have moving vehicles because a single small tanker can bring in enough fuel to power a fleet of light trucks for weeks. I want to see how many batteries you'll bring in when electric vehicles need to move in a disaster area.

We've already seen how well ICE engines cope in disaster areas (no power, flooding everywhere). We see it all the time.

In 2100 I will start to lead a good life

[aberglas]

Promise.

Freedom of movement

[aberglas]

Do not worry, the self driving cars will deal with that pretty soon. No steering wheel.

Re:Freedom of movement

[HornWumpus]

We'll hack bluetooth controllers into them. Day one.

Wait until the GMT drops as the AMO goes cold

[Anonymous Coward]

I am looking forward to seeing the adjustments NOAA will need to make to keep their alarming rate. Anthropogenic signal FTW

In other news...

[LynnwoodRooster]

Belgian, Luxembourgian, and German auto dealers on the Dutch border are acquiring more land to expand operations!

Re: In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, the famous Dutch-Luxembourgish border.

Re: In other news...

[Rei]

Don't make fun of it. It may not be as nice as their border with Iceland, but they're improving it.

Stations

[fluffernutter]

Is there going to be an initiative to build fast charging stations at some point that aren't proprietary?

Re:Stations

[dunkelfalke]

It has already happened with the CCS standard.

Re:Stations

[Rei]

It depends on what you mean.

  * Tesla wants other manufacturers to use its superchargers, even though only ones with power systems designed by Tesla can use them at present. Namely because the vast majority have low utilization, and Tesla would make a profit off of each usage. So far, none have accepted, but they keep trying.

  * Neither CHAdeMO nor CCS are "proprietary" - but again, if the vehicle doesn't support one or the other (either innately or with an adaptor), it can't use them. Also, unlike Superchargers, CHAdeMO and CCS stations are run by a diverse network of companies, each with their own payment systems / restrictions, so it's not as convenient.

I think there's more hope for the future, now that most entities seem to be on board with phasing out CHAdeMO, and Tesla is in CharIN, which will make the next CCS standard. Hopefully they'll listen to Tesla when it comes to connector engineering; they're the only ones that don't make needlessly large frankenconnectors...

Re:Stations

[Anonymous Coward]

There is such an initiative already, CharIN, with wide backing from the car industry, the electric industry, energy companies, universities and institutes. VW, Daimler, BMW and Ford have pledged to build thousands of high-speed CharIN chargers across Europe by 2020 in a new joint venture.

Re:Stations

[Rei]

I'm really excited about CharIN. I just hope they don't make it some small incremental improvement and have to go back and replace it, and its successor, etc, etc five times more as charge powers keep increasing. They better design it for 1-2MW if they want to "futureproof" it (note that to hit the max rate without an unreasonable-thickness cable and unreasonable requirements for vehicle-side heat dissipation, it'll have an optional coolant supply in the cable).

I also hope that they don't make it a giant Frankenconnector out of insistence with backwards compatibility, or require a bunch of pins dedicated to specific uses rather than multiuse pins. Tesla has been a big opponent of both of these things, and kudos to them for that. Imagine what ports on computers would be like if each successive tech had to support the previous; your USB plug would be moulded together with a PS2 plug, a serial plug and parallel port plug ;) Or if functionality for USB keyboards was over different pins than USB mouse functionality, which was over different pins from USB printer functionality.

What I want to see:

1) Two hefty pins for DC and single-phase charging. If coolant is supplied, max ~1000-2000A; without coolant, 300-500A.
2) A third, smaller pin for 3 phase, and another smaller pin as ground/neutral. 3-phase should support at least up to 400 VAC, with 90-180A with coolant, 30-60A without.
3) As few data/sense pins as possible (perhaps even optical)
4) Insulation rated for a max in the ballpark of 1000-2000V
5) Coolant channels (inflow and outflow) filling the space between pins, which can either lead to a heat exchanger (if the vehicle is designed to accept coolant) or just blindly be looped inflow-to-outflow at the connector if the vehicle doesn't.

If they do something like that, I'll be happy. If it's very far from that spec, I'll be expecting another port switch a decade down the line. :P

Re:Stations

[serviscope_minor]

Hopefully they'll listen to Tesla when it comes to connector engineering; they're the only ones that don't make needlessly large frankenconnectors...

I think the most likely thing is that cars will be charged by plugging in 600 USB plugs at once.

Re:Stations

[Rei]

If you let TEPCO and Nissan design it, it very may well ;)

Re:Stations

[GuB-42]

What I see is another issue with stations.
Let's say a fast charge takes about 1h, compared to less than 5 minutes at the gas station. It is about 12 times slower.
If you take the highway during the busiest times, gas stations can be quite crowded. To get the same capacity with electric cars, you would need 12 times more supercharchers than there are gas pumps. I mentioned highways because they typically mean long trips and not a commute where you can charge at home... if you can charge at home. If you live in an apartment complex, you basically need a charger on every parking spot. It doesn't have to be super but that's still a lot to build.

Re:Stations

[Rei]

Let's say a fast charge takes about 1h

It doesn't unless you're stupid about it and try to charge to 100%, but okay.

To get the same capacity with electric cars, you would need 12 times more supercharchers than there are gas pumps.

1) The overwhelming majority of EV parking is done at home. Essentially all gasoline filling is done at gas stations.

2) There is no shortage of parking spaces in the world that can have chargers installed in them. Business owners generally love having chargers added (some do it at their own expense) because it means a captive audience.

You did add the highway caveat, but even there one has to add the counter-caveat that EV drivers leave home full and arrive at their destination low, while gasoline car drivers leave and arrive at arbitrary fuel levels. The longer the trip, the less this matters, but not all "trips" are drive-all-day events. I could also point out that while your 1h estimate is already overly pessimistic, it'll continue to go further and further out of the ballpark with time.

If you live in an apartment complex, you basically need a charger on every parking spot.

Which, when done at construction time, isn't very expensive at all. Which is why it's important for governments to be proactive with regulations on "X number of charging points per Y parking spaces" in new construction, adjusting the ratio over time based on future demand forecasts - because it's cheaper to do things right the first time than to go in later and retrofit. Not that there aren't some rather clever retrofit ideas out there... for example, rewiring streetlight conduit, which is already in place, to higher current / high availability and installing chargers on lamp posts; combo charger/parking meters when you need to add parking meters, since you have to pay for install either way; etc. But obviously you always want to do things right from the beginning.

As for the "lot to build", it will always be in proportion to the number of vehicles, and thus can just be thought of as an extra fee on the vehicle's price. Not a very large one if done at construction time, as mentioned.

Not happening

[blindseer]

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.

Re:Not happening

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't say they would "make all cars emission free", it simply will be illegal to sell petrol/diesel vehicles by 2030.

Re:Not happening

[blindseer]

That's a distinction without a difference.

Re:Not happening

[swillden]

That's a distinction without a difference.

It's a distinction with an enormous difference -- around 90% difference, which is the proportion of vehicles which are not replaced every year.

As for the volumes... The Netherlands buys about 400K vehicles per year. That's not going to be a problem given the number of car manufacturers tooling up for EVs. How they're going to manage charging for all of the apartment dwellers that park on the street, that may be a problem. But, I think, a manageable one. Especially since most of those apartment dwellers will probably just give up having a car before 2030, preferring instead to use self-driving taxis.

Re:Not happening

[AHuxley]

Rail, bus, light rail, streetcar, bicycle. The alteration of city roads to bus lanes, bicycle use and a few trendy electric pods.
Big gov will just keep using taxes and local gov laws to force more people to wait in the cold, sit in the cold, walk in the rain. Save up and buy electric.
Any attempt to keep using petrol cars will be discouraged with more taxation.
The future is been packed into shared city transport with a few private sector electric pods to virtue signal with.

Re:Not happening

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever hear of ethanol? Methanol? CNG? Combustion engines aren't going to disappear because one fuel type gets banned.

Re:Not happening

[kanweg]

There are plenty of places where you can charge at the street. It will just be ramped up and become more common. If you have an electrical car, your town may well cooperate to make a charging spot at the kerbstone. (https://www.anwb.nl/auto/themas/elektrisch-rijden/hoe-werkt-opladen)

Bert

Re:Not happening

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, guess what -- the number of cars sold in the Netherlands is also a tiny fraction of all cars now. At under a half-million per year, they account for maybe 3% of cars sold in Europe and 0.5% of the 80M cars sold worldwide.

I don't think making an additional half-percent of the world's new cars electric over the next decade is going to be a major burden.

I mean, 2030 is 13 years off. Can you imagine 13 years ago telling people that the majority of telephones sold this year would have huge color touchscreens, high-resolution cameras, GPS mapping, and movie streaming over unlimited Internet access?

dom

Re:Not happening

[blindseer]

It's a distinction with an enormous difference -- around 90% difference, which is the proportion of vehicles which are not replaced every year.

So, you are saying that the difference is that instead of replacing all cars, new and old, is distinct from replacing only new cars sold? Cars wear out and get replaced. I recall the typical lifespan of a car is about 10 years. I don't know if that was an average, median, half life, or whatever, or if it wasn't 12 years or 8. My point is that banning ownership of all petroleum cars versus merely banning the sale of new petroleum cars is a difference of perhaps a decade of CO2 emitting cars on the roads. Whether it's 5, 15, or 25 years I don't see this happening.

As for the volumes... The Netherlands buys about 400K vehicles per year.

But it's not just the Netherlands doing this. If you read the article (yes, I know this is Slashdot) then you'd know that UK, France, China, and other nations have similar plans. That's a lot of electric cars.

Let's view this from an economics perspective, basic supply and demand. As governments demand their subjects buy electric cars there will be a rise in demand, and therefore prices. Demand for petroleum goes down, and so would it's prices. These governments may be successful in converting their jurisdiction to electric cars but the rest of the world will still be driving petroleum cars. In fact the rate of people buying these cars might accelerate since existing manufacturing capability for engines just doesn't go away, they'll be looking for new markets. With lower fuel prices more people can afford them.

This isn't going to do much in the grand scheme of things. The oil will still be burned. This cannot be legislated away. It's not like it takes advanced technology to make an internal combustion engine either, we've been mass producing them for a century now. The factories will move to developing nations if banned from Europe or wherever.

The only sure way to stop people from burning petroleum is to give them something better. Right now electric cars sell largely on government mandates and people wanting to show off their concern for the environment. There are very real physical limitation that will keep electric vehicles from outperforming cars that burn hydrocarbons. Only when, or if, electric vehicles can provide a greater value to a large majority of people will they replace internal combustion engines.

We have politicians that think they can legislate the color of the sky. They will have to learn that they can't. Also, we need people that don't run to the government to solve all our problems. If you want to see electric cars replace petroleum cars then make an electric car a product that people would want to buy instead.

Re:Not happening

[Barsteward]

jeez.. if you don't set a target then nothing will be done. Rise in prices because of a rise in demand? that's contrary the more common adage, the more you make the less they cost.. "The factories will move to developing nations if banned from Europe or wherever." - move where? And stop selling cars into europe, india, china etc? thats a big loss of market if they keep building old tech.

Might be best if you think this through a bit longer and research whats happening out there regarding renewables and EVs

Re:Not happening

[blindseer]

jeez.. if you don't set a target then nothing will be done.

There's a name for governments that dictate what people can and cannot buy, that's a dictatorship. The government can set goals all they like. I have a problem when they start telling people what to do to meet that goal.

I saw an interview with Dr. Stephen Boyd, a research chemist, where he was talking about his battery research. He had government funding to do research on the next generation of iron chemistry batteries, until he didn't. One day the government funds disappeared. If the government wants people to buy electric cars then they need to fund the research into making them cheaper.

Rise in prices because of a rise in demand? that's contrary the more common adage, the more you make the less they cost..

Huh? I think you are very confused. There is no contradiction.

"The factories will move to developing nations if banned from Europe or wherever." - move where?

There's something like 200 nations on this planet, pick one.

And stop selling cars into europe, india, china etc? thats a big loss of market if they keep building old tech.

Make cars cheap enough and you have billions of customers all over the world.

Re:Not happening

[Anonymous Coward]

The government can set goals all they like. I have a problem when they start telling people what to do to meet that goal.

Wait, you have a problem with the government informing people what to do to meet a goal?

Kafka wrote a story about you. You weren't the hero.

Re:Not happening

[Anonymous Coward]

We have politicians that think they can legislate the color of the sky. They will have to learn that they can't.

But they can. In fact, they already have. All it takes to change the color of the sky is the right combination of chemicals, or removing the combination of the wrong chemicals.

I'm reminded of the apocryphal story about Canute and the Tides, where regardless of your interpretation of it, the existence of this has put the ability to command the tides squarely within the domain of human endeavor.

Also, we need people that don't run to the government to solve all our problems. If you want to see electric cars replace petroleum cars then make an electric car a product that people would want to buy instead.

I don't want to replace petroleum cars. The goal is to address the pollution of ICE and fossil fuels. That is an injury, upon me, that requires and necessitates government involvement to address.

Re:Not happening

[BasilBrush]

This is deluded nonsense. In the past year most car manufacturers have completely changed their R&D plans, switching teams from designing future ICE car models to EV models. It's an international business, and they see which way the wind is blowing.

Even without legislation in a particular country there will be fewer and fewer models of ICE to choose from and more and more models of EVs.

Your ICE vehicles are going to be as rare on dealers forecourts as CRT screen TVs are now in electronics stores.

Re:Not happening

[swillden]

BasilBrush already replied adequately, so I won't bother.

Re:Not happening

[Rakarra]

There are plenty of places where you can charge at the street. It will just be ramped up and become more common. If you have an electrical car, your town may well cooperate to make a charging spot at the kerbstone. (https://www.anwb.nl/auto/themas/elektrisch-rijden/hoe-werkt-opladen)

Bert

Talk about amazingly expensive! There are a lot of curbstones to put chargers at, and concrete work is especially pricey.

Re:Not happening

[Rakarra]

There's a name for governments that dictate what people can and cannot buy, that's a dictatorship. The government can set goals all they like. I have a problem when they start telling people what to do to meet that goal

It's not a dictatorship. That assumes that the people hate this move but are powerless to stop it. But these are democratically elected representatives. The country may be small enough and enough of a monoculture so that the people are united behind this. You might have a small minority who doesn't like that decision by the majority, but that's a different political problem than dictatorship.

Re:Not happening

[petermgreen]

I recall the typical lifespan of a car is about 10 years.

According to http://www.latimes.com/busines... the average age of a car on the US in 2016 was 11.6 years and that number has been creeping upwards over recent decades.

Furthermore most cars are scrapped not because they can't be repaired but because the cost of the repairs are more than the value of the repaired car.

If people really want ICE cars and the government bans new ICE cars then the logical outcome is that the value of used cars will increase and it will become viable to repair cars that would otherwise have been scrapped.

Re:Not happening

[david_thornley]

There's a name for governments that dictate what people can and cannot buy, that's a dictatorship.

Just to make this clear, you do think it should be legal to buy weapons-grade U-235 and nuclear waste and weaponized anthrax, right? Otherwise, the government would be a dictatorship.

(Have you ever priced depleted uranium on eBay? Pricey stuff. I suspect that weapons-grade U-235 would be more expensive.)

Re:Not happening

[swillden]

There's a name for governments that dictate what people can and cannot buy, that's a dictatorship.

By this definition, every government in the world is a dictatorship.

Re:Not happening

[drsquare]

How will it blow up in their faces? Holland is a small country, made for cycling and public transport, if supply doesn't meet demand it doesn't actually matter to them. They don't have a car industry anyway so they have nothing to lose by banning polluting cars.

No more diesel/petrol cars!

[PPH]

Lets hear it for bro-trucks!

Re: No more diesel/petrol cars!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bro-trucks usually run on petrol or diesel.

Re: No more diesel/petrol cars!

[PPH]

But they are not cars. So exempt.

Re: No more diesel/petrol cars!

[Anonymous Coward]

When Americans say 'truck', they often mean a pickup or an SUV rather than an actual truck. 'Bro-trucks' are usually pickups. They wouldn't be classified as a truck anywhere outside of North America.

Re: No more diesel/petrol cars!

[PPH]

They wouldn't be classified as a truck anywhere outside of North America.

I suggest you take a look at the chassis in my linked picture. Trucks of this size are sold and classified as cab/chassis combinations. The box, bed or other enclosure is added by fabricators afterwards. An F650 is large in comparison to many delivery vehicles used in the USA. Enormous compared to those in the Netherlands. Ban vehicles of this class and food will cease to be delivered to population centers.

SUVs were born over regulations that attempted to control passenger vehicle sizes and fuel consumption. Every time the greenies tried to squeeze the car market, the repurposed trucks just got bigger to sidestep the rules. That picture isn't a joke. There are dealers in my area actually selling these things. And if the regulations eliminate them, the Kenworth plant is just down the road.

Re: No more diesel/petrol cars!

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing in your picture is the size of a van, not a truck and it seems to be designed to function as a van, but with an open cargo compartment. I don't see why one would buy one over a Transporter or a Sprinter, though.

The coalition agreement uses a Dutch word that nominally includes every motor vehicle on four or more wheels (except very small ones with a moped engine typically used by the handicapped), so this would include both vans and trucks. But then, it also says that it is merely a target and that vehicles will have to be 'CO2 neutral', which could also be achieved with an internal combustion enigne and some CO2 compensation arrangement. Electric vans won't be impossible, they exist already and battery developments may make electric delivery vans practical in almost all situations by 2030, but I don't see practical battery-electric trucks for long-range applications happening beore 2030. I do get the feeling that the coalition parties are mainly aiming towards passenger cars and even then it's only a target set long beyond the end of this government. The agreement does not suggest a ban.

Re: No more diesel/petrol cars!

[petermgreen]

In the UK pickups are classed as goods vehicles.

Want a big gas guzzling 4x4 in the UK but don't want to pay the sin tax on gas guzzling cars? get a pickup!

Re: No more diesel/petrol cars!

[PPH]

The thing in your picture is the size of a van, not a truck

Oh no. A Sprinter parked next to that would be tiny.

Re: No more diesel/petrol cars!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh wow. Good luck finding a parking spot with that. And paying for all the diesel...

True, but

[HBI]

The retarded leftists on this site all are convinced they can bend reality with willpower alone. Some of them will never figure out that they are wrong.

As for motorcycles...

[burhop]

... The link also says "The cabinet is banning criminal motorcycle gangs."

I'm glad the legal gangs with their electric scooters aren't being targeted.

(Just gave up my right to mod this article for this post)

Re:As for motorcycles...

[SciCom Luke]

This is specifically about Saturadah, the Moluku motor gang and the Hell's Angels, who's members have been in the news for being suspected of crime.

trollk08e

[Anonymous Coward]

These rules will its corpse turned = 1440 NetBSD OpenBSD, as the Design approach. As Walk up to a play Surprise to the

Powered by ... what, exactly?

[Migraineman]

I hope their electric car initiative comes with a bunch of nook-you-lar plants to provide power, along with the attendant upgrade to the power distribution network. Transportation consumes between 3x and 10x your typical residential application. I need about 11kWh per day to run the homestead. I would need 35-50kWh for my car, and another 35-50kWh for the wife's car. YMMV, but the distribution network in our area can't handle a 2x increase in load, much less a 10x increase.

Re:Powered by ... what, exactly?

[kamapuaa]

You and your wife both drive 150-200 miles/day? Like, 60,000 miles/year? While consuming only 11kWh/day for your home? Surely your numbers are off...

Either way, if your home is capable of running a clothes dryer you should be able to re-charge electric no problem. I drive 50 miles a day (which I consider a pretty shitty commute) and recharge off a standard 110v no problem.

Re:Powered by ... what, exactly?

[fluffernutter]

I'm quite nervous though about the time it takes current EVs to recharge. It is conceivable as they get more popular, people get left without enough charge to respond to an emergency or do something they need to do. You get home from a long commute to work and back, and your friend calls you to join them for coffee across town. Now you have to do distance calculations on whether your car can get you there or not? That's kind of a pain.

Re:Powered by ... what, exactly?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is the electricity issue indeed. Many residential complexes have to check and rebuilt their systems before installing the loading stations. Then it becomes a metrics issue: the loading stations need separate metering and billing. There is no way that the other residents with their gasoline, natural gas or other cars, or without cars would want to pay for the refilling of the batteries. I would shudder to think of the Dutch residential council meetings (or equivalents) for this issue. 13 years is not a very long time.

Re:Powered by ... what, exactly?

[kamapuaa]

Yeah, I think this is a legit (if overblown) concern with the 80 miles range cars, depending on how far you drive. But once you get to 220 miles (like the low-end version of Tesla 3), who spontaneously drives 220 miles?

Furthermore, at least in the Bay Area, there are several hundred chargers in the city I'm in and surroundings. Including a bunch of them at my work. So if by some chance I do run into an emergency it's not really a problem.

There's no denying that having the ability to quickly re-fuel is an advantage of ICE. But on the other hand, being able to charge the car overnight and start each day with a full tank is an advantage of EVs.

Re:Powered by ... what, exactly?

[Rei]

I'm quite nervous though about the time it takes current EVs to recharge.

Give us numbers. What is "across town", for example? Let's say you meant 15 miles on the highway (non-highway driving goes further for a given amount of energy). And let's say you're driving a Tesla Model 3. Adding 15 miles at home on 32A charger (the minimum AC charger) takes only half an hour. By contrast, adding 15 miles of range at a supercharger takes only 3,5 minutes on the SR (2,6 minutes on the LR).

Re:Powered by ... what, exactly?

[dywolf]

you forgetting to consider how much less the Danish drive in general ?

Re:Powered by ... what, exactly?

[fluffernutter]

That's the point, I don't ever want to have to think 'in numbers'. I just want to be able to fill up in ten minutes if I need it.

Re:Powered by ... what, exactly?

[Rei]

If you're asking us to "guess" what you want, then the guess is above: you can fill up in 3,5 to 2,6 minutes. So there you go.

Generally, though, it's stupid to engage in a conversation where you ask people to guess what you want.

Re:Powered by ... what, exactly?

[fluffernutter]

Ok so my vacation home is 250 km away. When I get there I find out the pump is broken and I need parts to fix it. The nearest town to get parts is 100km away.

Re:Powered by ... what, exactly?

[Rei]

Ok so my vacation home is 250 km away. When I get there I find out the pump is broken and I need parts to fix it. The nearest town to get parts is 100km away.

Again, not very specific (I don't even know your goal - was your goal to be at the "0 kilometers remaining" mark when you got there, and do you do that with gasoline cars?).

I'm going to have to fill in a bunch of random details, all pulled out of thin air, because you don't seem to feel fit to say them. So don't complain if I'm wrong.

I'm going to guess that you get a Model 3 LR. No, let's say that you're cheap and get a Model 3 SR, just to make the range lower and charging times slower just to make it more challenging - why not, right?

I'm going to guess that you live in... oh let's see, you use kilometer, so let's pick somewhere in Europe... let's say that you live in Frankfurt and your vacation home is in... let's pick a town 250km away... Horb am Neckar. None of these places were picked with looking at what charging infrastructure may be nearby. Now I have to guess, how empty do you like to arrive at a destination? I don't bloody know... I'll guess 20% remaining? So I pull up A Better Routeplanner and punch it in. It recommends the following plan involving one 15 minute charging stop break:

Destination Arrival Charge Depart Charge Charge Duration Drive Duration Distance Total
Duration
Frankfurt 100% 00:51 93 km
  Autobahnraststätte Am Hockenheimring West 64% 81% 00:15 01:18 148 km
Horb am Neckar 20% 00:15 02:10 242 km 02:25

So, you've gotten to your vacation house at your desired level which you made me pull from thin air. Oh no, the pump is broken! So, where is this town? I have to pick another random town 100 km away without looking at a charger map. Um, "100km to the nearest town" isn't working at all from here - I mean, you can get to freaking Stuttgart in 2/3rds of that - you must really be out in the middle of nowhere if the "nearest town" is 100km. But let's ignore that, drive you right past Stuttgart and bring to you... I don't know, Backnang? That's about 100km away. Let's say that you were only home and plugged in for five minutes before you discovered the pump problem and left. In that 5 minutes you got only a bit over 1% range. So you have 21% range when you set out. And let's say that because you (from the sound of your writing) appear to be in a rush that you decide to get at your destination with... I don't know, 14% remaining? Plugging that into A Better Routeplanner we get:

Horb am Neckar 21% 00:18 31 km
  Autobahnraststätte Schönbuch Ost 8% 27% 00:15 00:28 34 km
  EnBW Ladesäule 19% 23% 00:03 00:20 28 km
Backnang 14% 00:18* 01:07* 94 km* 01:26*

Note that I picked the shortest range, slowest charging vehicle that Tesla makes for this.

Now, if you don't like the assumptions I made, how about not making me guess at what you want and actually telling me?

Re:Powered by ... what, exactly?

[Rei]

Oh, and FYI: looking over the route, ironically, the locations I picked just happened to turn out to be bad for Teslas - all of the above charging was on CHAdeMOs, which are much lower power than Superchargers.

Note that this is all on currently active charging stations and not accounting for the rapid expansions underway. For example, on the second hop, a Supercharger instead of a CHAdeMO would have cut the time spent charging to a third of that. And that's today's superchargers - ignoring the higher power ones planned for the future.

Re: Powered by ... what, exactly?

[Anonymous Coward]

GP said the nearest town to get parts is 100km from the holiday home, so it is most definitely not in Germany or anywhere else that is reasonably populated. If it is in Europe, it would probably be in northern Scandinavia, but Australia or Canada seem more likely.

Re:Powered by ... what, exactly?

[b0bby]

I just got a Leaf, and I'm averaging about 4+ miles per kWh, without really trying to hypermile or anything. If you really both have 70+ mile commutes each way then you will probably be late adopters for pure EVs. Most people won't need anything like that, and most of the charging can be done outside of peak hours. My utility has an off-peak plan just for EV owners; from noon to 8pm M-F I pay slightly more, but other times I pay less. So I'm keeping my charging overnight; with the L2 charger I installed I can "fill up" between 1 & 5am, even if I'm almost out of charge.

Re:Powered by ... what, exactly?

[b0bby]

Well, I have a 40 Amp charger - 10 minutes on that gives me about 5 miles. But I start every day with a full tank.
For 98% of what I need a car for, it's perfect. But I do need to think about it once in a while.

Re: Powered by ... what, exactly?

[Rei]

Scandinavia is more sparsely populated, but it's also Ground Zero for EV adoption. I mean, Norway has a supercharger network almost all the way up to Nordkapp - let alone slower chargers ;)

Parts of Australia and Canada would work for the analogy, however. But then again, eventually you get to the point where you're specifically trying to design something to be hard for EVs ;) "So, if you drove your EV out onto an oceangoing barge, and then shipped it to Point Nemo...." And the areas not covered by EVs keep shrinking. For example, with Superchargers (which generally well lag low powered chargers, because they're more expensive), Tesla is already started on the Trans-Canada electric highway and the Brisbane to Perth route is now over half done (the Outback will probably be a while, however, as will the northern Canadian territories.. you can do both, but not at Supercharger speeds - in Canada, for example, Tesla only goes up to Edmonton at present)

Trivia: the furthest north dedicated EV charging station in Canada is in Yellowknife. Doesn't compete in terms of "Northerness" with Scandinavia or even Alaskan charging stations, but certainly rather remote! :)

Re: Powered by ... what, exactly?

[fluffernutter]

Im in canada. Nothing along the way.

Re:Powered by ... what, exactly?

[Anonymous Coward]

To a European, 11kWh and 'only' seem odd together.

Re: Powered by ... what, exactly?

[Rei]

To elaborate... here's why using Scandinavia would not have been a good idea if trying to make an argument that EV charging can be hard to come by ;)

Re:Powered by ... what, exactly?

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who just got a volt, yea you really don't need that much for most people. I'm averaging no gas 6 days a week, weekend trips where I drive to the next town to go out, then the mall and then doctors then dinner and home I'll do 20mi over my battery (80-100mi in a day).

However, my typical holiday is drive to my grandmas in the morning (100mi), then my moms (40mi) and then home (120mi) (yes it's one day, about 4-5hours of driving, and maybe 5-6hours at my moms and she doesn't have a charging station). With the current EVs, that's difficult, especially if it's Christmas or something where it's 10'F outside. 250mi EV just won't cut it. A 350mi EV might feel safe.

Re: Powered by ... what, exactly?

[Rei]

Yes, "Canada" sure helps us narrow the trip down a lot. :

If you don't care to be specific and want us just to keep guessing at what you want a car to do, why should we bother? Why not just say "Earth" while you're at it?

Re: Powered by ... what, exactly?

[fluffernutter]

It it matters that much then you have already lost. I have enough things to plan when I go on a weekend to the cottage. I don't need to strategise my route, I just don't. With an ICE I know I'll see a gas station at some point after my tank passes 1/4 full no matter where I am and it won't impact my timeline when that happens. When the same can be said for an EV then I will be less concerned about them.

Re: Powered by ... what, exactly?

[Rei]

I'm sorry, but it doesn't work like that. Saying "if it's too hard then it won't work" when you're the one making it hard is totally unfair. You're saying it doesn't work. Either prove it yourself or give us the information needed to prove or disprove your case for you.

I don't need to strategise my route, I just don't.

And you probably don't. But you refuse to give any actual details, so who the bloody hell knows?

What you're doing is like saying "My site won't load in browsers on Android. I haven't tried, or even collected any data to find out whether it would or not, but I'm just going to assert that it won't. And if you ask me for my site's URL, I'm just going to assert that the very fact that you have to ask for details proves that android is not up to the task of displaying my website."

Sorry, but this game you're playing is over.

Re: Powered by ... what, exactly?

[fluffernutter]

No, it's more like how people don't use linux because they know straight away that it is more complicated than using macos or windows and don't want to deal with it. That seems to be what an EV is for the moment. Nothing wrong with liking how things work now. I get that you are an EV crusader or something, but you can't keep denying that EVs are less convenient than gas for the time being. Hopefully one day they won't be; I suggest you focus on making that happen.

Re:Powered by ... what, exactly?

[Rakarra]

You and your wife both drive 150-200 miles/day? Like, 60,000 miles/year? While consuming only 11kWh/day for your home?

If you're never at home because you drive 5 hours a day, then maybe your home doesn't consume a lot of power. :-D

Re: Powered by ... what, exactly?

[Anonymous Coward]

11 kWh per day is well over average for a residential home.

Re: Powered by ... what, exactly?

[david_thornley]

Sure. Suppose you live in the Netherlands, and like buying cars new and selling them after a year. In that case, you'll be forced to consider electric in thirteen or fourteen years. By then, there's going to be a lot of electric infrastructure, and presumably a lot of stations where you can get a fast partial charge that will last you long enough.

Zero Emission?

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole "electric cars are zero emission" is such bullshit. Al they do is move the tail pipe into someone else's country because electricity is still primarily generated by emission producing sources. We should concentrate on making zero emission power plants before we go for electric cars.

Re:Zero Emission?

[jlar]

In 2015 28.8% of the EU (EU-28) electricity (not energy) production was renewable and had doubled compared to 2005. So EU is on a fast trajectory towards renewable electricity consumption. A reasonable estimate may be that by 2030 40-50% of the electricity production in the EU is renewable.

This will of course mean that a similar proportion of the energy spent by electric cars is from renewable sources. Furthermore a large number of people die due to particle pollution from cars in Europe (we have a lot more diesel cars than in the US). When the tailpipes are substituted by tall chimneys these numbers will also drop dramatically.

Re:Zero Emission?

[Anonymous Coward]

Furthermore a large number of people die due to particle pollution from cars in Europe (we have a lot more diesel cars than in the US). When the tailpipes are substituted by tall chimneys these numbers will also drop dramatically.

Diesel cars emit fewer particles than petrol cars nowadays. More importantly, only a reasonably small fraction of all particulates in the outdoor air is due to road traffic and most of it is due to tyre and road wear, not exhaust gases.

It creates other problems....

[Anonymous Coward]

If we suddenly stop using petrol, for every barrel of oil that is produced the part that would otherwise be refined into petrol would be potentially wasted. It can't be refined to something else, so we're potentially wasting a source of energy that is readily available to use.
The power needed to charge your electric car then has to be generated elsewhere. By what? Some countries have good renewables infrastructure, others use nuclear reactors. Either way, a sudden move to large numbers of electric cars then need to be accommodated for by the power grid. Is that actually more efficient than carrying the energy source with you, in a fuel tank?

It can be, but maybe not. Electricity produced always incurs a loss. When you burn something you always lose some energy via heat and noise, minus energy required for production etc. Line transmission also incurs a loss. Storage in your car battery incurs a loss. Conversion into motion incurs a loss.

And yet the oil to produce the fuel is still being produced, even if the fuel isn't being used.

All of the above, especially with engines like Mazda's upcoming compression ignition petrol engine which promises impressive efficiency gains, actually make this a really complicated picture. It may not be of any benefit at all depending on the country and how much they're willing to invest in the infrastructure to make it worthwhile.

Re:It creates other problems....

[kanweg]

There is a branch of science called chemistry. There is a subbranch dealing with catalysts. And these can be used to change chain length. Refining oil is more than just distillation.

In short, it doesn't get wasted.

Bert

Does not matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone it too stoned to bathe, let alone drive.

Definitions, power requirements, other rants

[Anonymous Coward]

The term "car" will just be redefined in 2030 to mean whatever makes sense / actual reality.
"Your vehicle is over XX meters long / YY meters high this is not the car you are looking for"

Imagine everyone in the country getting home and plugging in there super fast charge cars ... the power drain will be huge!
You could argue "charge the car over night" - I think most people will want charge ASAP, just in case they want to go out again/emergencies.
I need to get to the hospital ! - Well we'll have to wait till the morning dear, the car is still hasnt started to charge yet.

Run out of power? No problem just walk to the nearest battery dispensing station and bring back a few 100kg of batteries - hmm.

Doesn't exist

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no such thing as a pollution free car. Even if it's a totally electric car. generating the electricity to charge it causes pollution. While its true that trying to control that pollution at a single point will be more efficient, be aware that there will still be a massive amount of pollution to deal with.

Re: Doesn't exist

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't about pollution. It's about carbon dioxide emissions.

Re:Doesn't exist

[Barsteward]

yes, maybe you haven't noticed that the change over to renewable power generation is happening too. It takes time to change infrastructure but its happening. a lot of the people who can afford the current range of EV probably have Solar power at home too to charge their cars. I can choose where my power comes from at home too, the company i use lets me draw all my power from wind and solar resources.

Re: Doesn't exist

[Rakarra]

Potato potato.

Wait, that's hard to write.

Potato potahto.

Ugh, that's just misspelled.

So the average Dutch family drives 400 miles/day?

[Brannon]

EVs get 3-4 miles/kWh. Learn math.

Life in the Netherlands

[eminencja]

In Netherlands the number of cars per capita is the lowest in highly developed countries. The public transport is very good (easy to do in a country with such a big population density) and bikes are everywhere. People that commute by trains will often have two bikes - one at each station. In Amsterdam it is simply not practical to have a car. You need a parking permit to park it in front of your house (and parking permits are a sparse good), parking in the city center is 5EUR/hour. That being said, I am curious what they are going to do to (Royal Dutch) Shell.

Re:Life in the Netherlands

[guacamole]

This sounds horrible. Why don't more Dutch people move to Texas.

Re:Life in the Netherlands

[Anonymous Coward]

Diversify into charging infrastructure, sharpish, or get left behind selling bunker fuel and industrial feedstock.

Re:Life in the Netherlands

[Anonymous Coward]

guns...

Re:Life in the Netherlands

[Barsteward]

I read recently that Shell is investing heavily in EV chargers at their gas stations now. Most old Oil companies are becoming "power" companies as they move into renewables.

Re:Life in the Netherlands

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it isn't as bad in the places sane people actually want to live. Amsterdam may be a lost cause, but thankfully the country is a whole lot bigger. My daily 40-minute commute to Utrecht is quite doable, whereas the train takes over an hour just to travel from station to station. Both at home and at work, the nearest train station is about a 15-minute walk away (although to be fair I need to walk 10 minutes to and from my car at work if I want to park it for free), so in practice a car is twice as fast as the train. I do have the advantage of being able to avoid rush hour traffic, which not everyone can.

Re:Life in the Netherlands

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they are used to having water nearby.

Big f***ing deal

[eminencja]

I would be impressed if they banned bikes.

Re:Big f***ing deal

[SciCom Luke]

As a Dutch dude, you can take my car, although it will piss me off severely. However, hands of the bike, or you will not see another sunrise.

Re:Big f***ing deal

[Barsteward]

peddle or E-bikes?

Two words

[Anonymous Coward]

Coal Gas

New government

[SciCom Luke]

is fucking up the country in any way it possibly can, so no surprise there. However, the next government will do things completely different, and so on..

Great news!

[Anonymous Coward]

I take heavy metal pollution over CO2 any day!

Re:Great news!

[Rei]

What heavy metals are you referring to? The lead in your lead-acid battery, maybe?

Stop all the banning

[trawg]

Reading about every country's new plans to ban gas/diesel cars by some totally arbitrary date in the future makes me weep thinking of all the lawyer time that is no doubt going into drafting the legislation, all the politicians time going into debating and discussing with it, etc. This is money going down the sink that is not helping a problem that we need to solve now. And we can!@#

If they're going to put their fingers on the scales, why not just stop doing all this shit and put every dollar you'd spend on this kind of legislation and effort into better incentives for electric cars? Build more charging points in the cities and car parks. Tax incentives for the whole supply chain.

Re:Stop all the banning

[BasilBrush]

Because as you will see here and on other forums, there are some people that will simply refuse to move on from gas to electricity, no matter what. Idiots that won't accept the reality of global warming, and are simply incapable of change. The option to buy ICE cars simply needs to be taken away,

Re:Stop all the banning

[trawg]

:(

I was already on board the electric car movement but nothing has convinced me more than moving to London and seeing how simply disgusting the air is here. The diesel fumes are everywhere. It is revolting.

Re:Stop all the banning

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, nice to know we have elites who can do our thinking and choosing for us; whatever would we do without BasilBrush to tell us what to do and how to live!

Re:Stop all the banning

[david_thornley]

Alternatively, it's a prisoner's dilemma type of situation. If I were to change my entire lifestyle to cause zero CO2 emissions (dying would work), it would make absolutely no measurable difference to atmospheric CO2 content or global warming or anything like that. One part per million of CO2 in the atmosphere is something like 8 billion tons, which could be created by burning something over 2 billion tons of fossil carbon. In a back-of-the-envelope calculation, driving 20,000 miles a year with a 20mpg vehicle takes a thousand gallons, which amounts to about twenty thousand additional pounds of CO2, or ten tons.

So, if my family and I drive gas guzzlers, we're not directly hurting ourselves in the slightest measurable way. If we like them better than electric vehicles, we're better off with the gas guzzlers no matter what other people do.

Prisoner's dilemmas like this are normally dealt with by changing the payoff (in this case, raising the price of gasoline a lot), or legally requiring a certain choice.

Re:Stop all the banning

[drsquare]

This is a stupid comment. Passing legislation is what the government does, nothing is going 'down the sink'. And it does solve a problem because it gets polluting vehicles off the road whilst forcing producers to make cleaner vehicles.

Re:Stop all the banning

[trawg]

Hey dude! Thanks for the reply. First, I would agree that passing legislation is what the government does. But that process is often very time consuming and can be expensive if they need to bring in external counsel (for weird legal issues) or external expert advisers (to understand if what they want is technically possible at all).

As a result there is a strong opportunity cost for everything they do. Every bill they are debating to try to pass is another bill that is not getting worked on. So there is some importance into what they're talking about.

My argument however is mostly that they are /not/ solving the problem - they're kicking the problem down the road by over a decade. They're basically putting the problem on the backburner so that in a few years it becomes the problem of the future government, who - for whatever reason they can justify - can just unwind those laws or change the deadlines or whatever.

So I don't see this legislation as helpful to actually solving the problem, whereas they /can/ pass simple, lower impact legislation that will work literally tomorrow by helping to make the conditions for electric cars a little bit better.

You'll have to tear out much of Europe's housing

[trickyb]

Most of Europe has a vast swathes of old houses - built when cars were a luxury, or even didn't exist at all. So no off-road parking space, and very limited parking space on the street. As an example: I used to live in such a neighbourhood in the UK, the houses were over a 100 years old - every evening I would hunt for a parking space, sometimes parking 2 streets away from home. How could I run an electric car? It would be simply impossible. The only options would be:

1. - Give up on a car. Which means entirely rebuilding the work environment: tearing down the edge-of-town office blocks and moving them to the centre of town - so that I can use a bus or bicycle to get to work.
2. - Tear down all of the historic houses that make Europe beautiful, and rebuild instead modern homes with a garage.

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

[Rei]

1) Look at high-adoption-rate countries, like Norway. Public parking becomes EV charging on the large scale. This is done via a combination of retrofits of existing parking, and requirements on all new parking construction.

2) Superchargers. Indeed, the newest variety of Supercharger is designed specifically for apartment dwellers; they're positioning them at popular shopping areas, so that your car can charge while you shop. The same thing can apply to CHAdeMO and CCS, but it requires longer (or more frequent) shopping trips as they're not as high power.

3) Workplace charging. Again, the higher the EV adoption rate, the more often workplaces provide charging. It's a relatively cheap incentive that employees who drive EVs really appreciate.

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

[drinkypoo]

How could I run an electric car? It would be simply impossible. The only options would be:

Ah yes, clearly there are only two options. They couldn't implement PRT, you couldn't use an automated taxi...

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

[trickyb]

Ah yes, clearly there are only two options. They couldn't implement PRT, you couldn't use an automated taxi...

So, your answer is that I have 2 alternatives... neither of which actually exist.
So you don't have an answer at all then.

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

[drinkypoo]

So, your answer is that I have 2 alternatives... neither of which actually exist.

Many things will soon exist which do not exist now. This change won't be implemented overnight, either, so there's time to implement something different. Instead of crying about how a change which may not actually even come is going to ruin your life tomorrow, why not do something about promoting positive change today so that it can happen later?

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

[trickyb]

1) I almost never use public parking. I get our weekly groceries delivered, and for the (very rare) times that I need to go into town for clothes/shoes/etc I will never use the car, as parking is hard to find and ridiculously expensive. And I hate shops, BTW, so I spend as little time there as I can.

2) Same as 1.

3) Possible. Except for all the offices and factories that are already short of parking spaces, forcing workers to park on the street of an industrial estate (this is very, very common).

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

[trickyb]

Thanks for conceding that my point.

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

[Rei]

I almost never use public parking

I'm confused. You don't have private parking and you don't use public parking. Where do you park your car, in the air?

And I hate shops, BTW, so I spend as little time there as I can.

Unless you have your groceries shipped to you, you at least have to do that. How often do you go to the grocery store and how long do you spend there?

3) Possible. Except for all the offices and factories that are already short of parking spaces, forcing workers to park on the street of an industrial estate (this is very, very common).

Public or private? Again, if public, the city has the incentive to have charging there when penetration is high. If private, the owner has the incentive to have charging there when penetration is high. This isn't theoretical, we see it play out in the real world in places like Norway.

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

[trickyb]

I'm confused. You don't have private parking and you don't use public parking. Where do you park your car, in the air?

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.

How often do you go to the grocery store and how long do you spend there?

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

Public or private? Again, if public, the city has the incentive to have charging there when penetration is high. If private, the owner has the incentive to have charging there when penetration is high. This isn't theoretical, we see it play out in the real world in places like Norway.

Not sure that I understand? My point was that very often there is insufficient parking spaces for staff. 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.

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

[trickyb]

Private = Owned by private citizens Public = Owned "the public" (city, federal government, etc) It has nothing to do with how parking is arranged.

Your use of the word 'federal' suggest to me that you are in the USA and speak American. I'm British, my vocabulary is different to yours. You can't argue that you're "right", because we're speaking slightly different languages, and words mean different things to us. That's why I suggested "There might be a vocabulary mis-match here".

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

I have worked on industrial estates with cars parked everywhere: in the official car parks, on the street, on grass verges, etc... You cannot equip a grass verge with an electric plug. Hence my comment that a lot will have to change (more concreting of land).

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

[Barsteward]

as all lampposts get converted to LED they will also become car charge points and at some point stand alone chargers will appear like parking meters along residential roads.

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

[Rei]

Actually, I'm in Iceland, but not like it matters. And no, "public" does not in any way, shape, or form mean "not a parking garage". The word "public" has a very specific meaning. Just like the word private does. They're antonyms.

You cannot equip a grass verge with an electric plug

Yes you most certainly can. It's actually easier to install charging stations in grass than concrete. You run a trenching tool down the grass, lay down conduit, fill in the trench, and install the posts. And hey, if you don't want the posts for aesthetic reasons? No problem.

Look, the fact that you're arguing that something "can't be done" where there are places that it already is abundantly done should clue you in to the fact that you're wrong.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Most lamp posts are not anywhere neare a parking spot.

Don't fall for it

[Xenna]

In the Netherlands governments sit for 4 years. This is not a law, just a statement of 'intent'. A lot can happen in 13 years.

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

[BasilBrush]

You sound like you don't actually use a car that much. Just to work and back. So a 200-300 mile range car would probably go for days between you needing to recharge it. And you're looking at about 30-45 minutes for an 80% charge at a supercharger.

And that's today. By 2025 or 2030 or 2040 when the bans come in in various countries, ranges will have gone up and charge times for a given distance down.

They are starting to put superchargers in petrol stations now, along with cafe areas whilst you wait that half an hour.

Another option for people like you will be cars as a service. Order a car, just like an Uber, and it'll drive you to work. Only no driver needed as it'll be fully autonomous. Parking and charging are not your problem.

Then again, if you own your own autonomous car, then you could tell it to go to a public charger and charge itself without your needing to go with it.

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

[BasilBrush]

He didn't concede anything. He's absolutely right that there are many transportation options, and the ones you use in 13 years time will differ from now.
The most obvious is that you buy an electric car, and simply charge it up at a public charger. But there are several more.

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

[trickyb]

A law that is being passed now, will be successful... thanks to several technologies that do not exist yet, even in prototype form.
I admire and respect your sunny optimism.

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

[trickyb]

Again, we have a communication issue: I am speaking in British English, while I think that you are using American English: the fact that you shout "no, you're wrong"... and quote dictionary.com back at me, tells me that you still don't understand that American English is not the same as British English.

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

[Rei]

Would you prefer the Oxford English Dictionary then?

public ADJECTIVE

1 Of or concerning the people as a whole.
‘public concern’
‘public affairs’

1.1 Open to or shared by all the people of an area or country.
‘a public library’

1.2 Of or involved in the affairs of the community, especially in government or entertainment.
‘he was forced to withdraw from public life’
‘a public figure’

2Done, perceived, or existing in open view.
‘he wanted a public apology in the Wall Street Journal’
‘we should talk somewhere less public’

3Of or provided by the state rather than an independent, commercial company.
‘public spending’
‘public services’

4British Of, for, or acting for a university.
‘public examination results’

Public and private are antonyms.

Or if you want specifically the term "public parking", your countrymen seem to disagree (just some quick Googling)

Maybe it's a London thing to use "public" to mean "not public"?

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

[DogDude]

I almost never use public parking. I get our weekly groceries delivered, and for the (very rare) times that I need to go into town for clothes/shoes/etc I will never use the car, as parking is hard to find and ridiculously expensive. And I hate shops, BTW, so I spend as little time there as I can.

Why does an admitted shut-in need a car?

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

[BasilBrush]

Bullshit.There are more than 2 options that exist now. I went through some with you already.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's a London thing to use "public" to mean "not public"?

Technically yes, that IS found in London.

But you're wasting your time arguing over details, the real story is that trickyb is already ill-served by the existing situation regarding parking.

Emission-free

[Anonymous Coward]

Electric cars aren't emission-free.
Electric cars are just transfer of emissions.

It's just a fad

[Anonymous Coward]

I know a guy who was an early Tesla buyer sold it and went back to gasoline. He missed the handling of a lighter internal combustion engined car.

Re:It's just a fad

[Rei]

Wow, do you also know a leprechaun?

Towing? 4WD?

[HuskyDog]

I drive an electric car quite often on business (Nissan Leaf) and when I next come to buy a car I am sure it will be an all electric one, but my needs are mainstream. What about those with more specialist requirements?

My neighbour has a caravan. How much range would he get with that on the back? What about farmers using landrovers and similar to haul trailers full of hay out to their animals?

Now, electric vehicles will certainly improve between now and 2030, but how can governments know that they will improve enough to cover these less common use cases (yes, I know that the actual answer is "They don't know and they don't care").

Interesting

[Xman73x]

I never liked gas or diesel because I have asthma with other allergies ðY"

Then why donâ(TM)t they just do it now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they donâ(TM)t want to pay the political price of screwing everything up. Just keep your eye on the little red ball. Youâ(TM)ll never figure out which walnut shell itâ(TM)s under. These con artists will take all your money and leave you with nothing but a complete economic distaster. I hope and pray your people can overcome it.

People are idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone think about the effort and environmental impact required to mine and build the batteries?
Does anyone think about the environmental impact on disposal of the batteries?
Does anyone think about where the electricity for this coming from and environmental impact?

Re:People are idiots

[Rei]

Yes, and these things have been endlessly studied, and are not problems; EVs still beat gasoline vehicles handily in life-cycle analyses (and the difference grows every year as EV tech advances and they get lighter, more efficient, and with more streamlined production processes and recycling). Do yourself a favour, go to scholar.google.com, punch in search terms, and start reading. If anything is behind a paywall, there's always SciHub.

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

[fatwilbur]

Where I live (Canada) there is already a long running need for a plug in at every parking spot, for a similarly critical need: making sure your vehicle starts when you come back to it (block heater). In this case it's a fight against cold weather, there's very few electric vehicles here. A block heater is standard on pretty much every new car purchased in Canada, and each has an electric plug in coming out of the front. People here are used to plugging in their vehicles when they get home for a good portion of the year.

So I'd say I already live in a society that has aimed for maximum plug-in parking penetration for a long time. Some observations:
- You're straight up wrong if you think most public garages will supply them. Comes down to cost. Very few parking garages here have plug ins, as important as it may be.
- Only until it reaches a certain point will you find free charging anywhere. That will disappear very quick. How do we handle short term electric billing?
- Putting in a new charger or outlet might be reasonable for a private homeowner, but fat chance in hell apartment building owners will install that many outlets (which have to be wired back to each unit's power to bill correctly). Many, many people live in rented apartments. I do, and we have plug ins, but if it weren't a requirement when built it would never be done. Also, guest spots do not get plug ins.

Lithium reserves

[Anonymous Coward]

The stat of 15 million tons of lithium is completely incorrect.. it is not a rare commodity at all.

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

[Rei]

- You're straight up wrong if you think most public garages will supply them. Comes down to cost. Very few parking garages here have plug ins, as important as it may be.

For money they absolutely will. Which has been repeatedly demonstrated in countries with high EV adoption.

- Only until it reaches a certain point will you find free charging anywhere. That will disappear very quick. How do we handle short term electric billing?

"Yes", and "The same way we handle electronic billing everywhere else" - by any of over a dozen different possible payment mechanisms. IMHO, ones built into the car are most convenient (charge connectors have data pins)

- Putting in a new charger or outlet might be reasonable for a private homeowner, but fat chance in hell apartment building owners will install that many outlets

That's like saying "fat chance in hell apartment building owners will install that many parking spaces". Literally every argument you could make applies to both equally. Ex: "People don't want to rent from me if they can't park" -> (future) "People don't want to rent from me if they can't charge"; "The city makes me install this many parking spaces" -> (future) "The city makes me install this many charging spaces." Etc.

Furthermore, home charging isn't the only way charging can be done; there's also workplace charging, and fast chargers at shopping centres / grocery stores / etc.

Re:Towing? 4WD?

[Rei]

Towing trailers absolutely can be done (see Model X or any of the electric freight trucks available today), and just like with gasoline or diesel vehicles, trailers reduce your range. So they simply require larger batteries and/or faster charging. EVs have more than enough power to tow trailers; if there's one thing they're not short on, it's torque.

If you want to see someone tow a heavy boat up a mountain, for example, here you go :) Here's one towing a caravan. Model X is expensive, but Tesla's next vehicle after the Model 3 will be the Model Y, another crossover (it's still not clear whether the Model 3 will end up with a trailer option, but it'd be shocking if Model Y didn't).

Scaling issue?

[Anonymous Coward]

Currently these cars exist for the wealthy few. Expanding this to the general populace is going to have serious implications on the power consumption. The grid might not be able to support it unless additional power generation is built. If this is not done in a green way, then this entire idea to ban petrol and diesel is going to miss the point.

There are scaling issues with electric cars not only in the burden on the power grid, but also in terms of the cost to produce those lithium batteries. The worldwide supply should be large enough, but it is not evenly distributed. When everyone is going to switch to battery-powered cars, the cost is undoubtedly going to rise for buying this from countries like Bolivia. The battery cost is already one of the drawbacks to an electric car. If it increases, they will be priced out of the budgets of the average household.

There is a lot of work to do to make this feasible. 13 years may not suffice considering the infrastructure that will be necessary.