Israel Aims To Ban Gasoline, Diesel Vehicles By 2030 (cleantechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CleanTechnica: 2030 seems like a long way off, but it's really just around the corner. And when the bell tolls at midnight on December 31, 2030, you may not be able to buy a gasoline- or diesel-powered vehicle in Israel. After that date, all passenger cars will be electric and all trucks will be powered by electricity or compressed natural gas, if a proposal currently under consideration gets approved by the government. A final decision is expected by the end of this year. Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz [told Reuters last month] the biggest challenge will be creating a "critical mass" of electric and CNG powered vehicles before the deadline arrives. "We are already encouraging [the transition] by funding ... more than 2,000 new charging stations around the country," he says. The plan was set in motion one day after the United Nations issued its latest climate assessment that finds nations must do far more than they are currently doing in order to stave off warmer global average temperatures that will put the environment at risk. In order to reach the goal, the Israeli government will "reduce taxation on electric cars to almost zero, so they are going to be much cheaper," Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz said. He expects there will be about 177,000 electric cars on Israeli roads around 2025. By 2030, the expectation is that there will be nearly 1.5 million EVs in the country. The country has a ways to go though, as there are less than 100 electric cars on the roads today.

Comments

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Harlequin80]

Doesn't necessarily require the renewables / nuclear first. If you have more and more EVs on your network they act as storage capacity. Combine with smart meters and you can use EVs for load shedding vs dumping to heat. Even if you don't ever recover any energy from the evs increasing or decreasing charge rates will allow you to stabilise the network.

Once you have that stabilisation effect in place you can increase your % of renewables.

Makes sense

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Israel is small enough that current EVs should be able to go border-to-border on a single charge. Given that range anxiety is one of the major reasons why people don't want EVs, it seems a small country can convert much more easily.

Re:Makes sense

[Mal-2]

It also pins their hopes on a proven but not entirely mature technology, and it just happens they've got a pretty big investment in battery chemistry research. Maybe they know something the public doesn't, or maybe they just like the idea of selling more domestically made vehicles and shutting down the purchase of vehicles from neighboring countries -- unless those countries are also going electric. They have enough financial pull in the region that others might lean the same direction for purely pragmatic reasons. Even if nearby nations don't, individual businesses will, if they can sell across the border.

Twenty years ago it was stupid to drive an EV unless you were out to prove something, or you lived in Avalon. Now it's viable, but not ideal for everyone. By the end of the 32-bit Unix time epoch, 20 years hence, internal combustion vehicles will be like CD players or chrome tapes. We'll remember what they're for, and be glad we no longer require them, even though they were nice at the time.

Re:Go Israel!

[rkordmaa]

Volumes of oil products used in chemical industry, plastics and everything else, pale in comparison to use as fuel. Sure, oil will be useful forever, but the price will be next to nothing if / when electric transport takes over. And at current pace, ~2030 seems like a reasonable tip over point, give or take 5 years. If electric transport keeps taking off like it does right now, then in a decade oil economies will be gutted, majority of income will just be gone, leaving only gaping holes in the budget. On the other hand, anyone who is today in battery manufacturing business will be stinking rich.

I wouldn't have said so even a few months ago, but a recent visit to Shenzhen forced a mental recalibration. Anyone visiting there, keep an eye out for green number plates, all these buses, cars and small delivery trucks are electric and most of them weren't there a year ago. Blue is gasoline and yellow is diesel. Never mind the electric bikes etc, these are old news. When we look back at history a decade from now, we'll mark 2018 as the year that electric cars really started going mainstream. It'll take years to get to world scale and reach every corner, never mind phasing out majority of gasoline cars, but right now is the moment this process really takes off.

Re:But bombs are okay

[jittles]

Because you can't spell war without bomb. (In Hebrew.)

If you think about it, Israel is the perfect country to go all electric. Small enough that you can drive the entire country in one charge. Best of all, none of your neighbors like you so you don't have to worry about taking a road trip to neighboring areas. It's like the US, but on a smaller scale.

Re:Go Israel!

[DigiShaman]

Personal automotive EV transportation will never go mainstream. It's delusional to think so. If anything, renewable sources of energy (solar, wind, nuclear, hydroelectric) will go into the making of synthetic hydrocarbons. There's already the transport infrastructure (pipelines), and hydrocarbons offer the densest form of energy per volume. It's also quick to refill. With electric, you're looking into a complete overhaul of the grid in addition to a societal change of accepting long recharge times as the "new normal". And then there's the whole range aspect which is crucial for rural transport.