Dutch Government Confirms Plan To Ban New Petrol, Diesel Cars By 2030 (electrek.co)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Today, the new Dutch government presented its detailed plan for the coming years and it includes making all new cars emission-free by 2030 -- virtually banning petrol- and diesel-powered cars in favor of battery-powered vehicles. The four coalition parties have been negotiating their plans since the election in March and now after over 200 days, they have finally released the plan they agreed upon. NL Times posted all the main points of the plan and in "transportation," it includes: By 2030 all cars in the Netherlands must be emission free. While some local publications are reporting "all cars," we are told that it would be for "all new cars" as it is the case for the countries with similar bans under consideration. The potential for the ban has been under consideration in the country since last year. The year 2025, like in Norway, has been mentioned, but they apparently decided for the less ambitious goal of 2030.

Comments

Driven by manufacturers..

[thesupraman]

Dont forget where this legislation is coming from.

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

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

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

Just follow the money. Sad but true.

Re:Driven by manufacturers..

[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..

[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: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: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:What happens

[Anonymous Coward]

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

One made in Germany...

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: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: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.

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: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: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

[Rei]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Rei]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Re:There they go again

[Barsteward]

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