Scotland plans to make petrol and diesel cars obsolete by 2032
engadget.com
engadget.com
"Come 2032, not all cars will be ultra-low emission, but Scotland hopes that the majority will either be powered purely by electricity or have a hybrid option."
Good goal, bad headline.
If the goal as the article claims is to "phase out all petrol and diesel car sales", then obsolete seems about right.
No longer sold in Scotland does not equate to no longer produced or used, and even at that they do not actually plan to forbid sales of ICE vehicles by 2032.
I agree with you, there are too many nice-to-have features in cars that add to the [unnecessary] complexity of these vehicles. Late 90 cars started with this, adding air-bag suspension and corner-leveling systems and it has since grown into automatic windscreen wipers when it rains, automatic lights when it gets dark (like you aren't sitting there looking out the big window), touch screens and gadgets. Some things are useful, for example electric mirrors, others not so much for example 5 different memory positions for the driver's seat where before you just pulled the lever under the seat to move it forward or back. IN case you think this is not a problem it can cause problems with other critical electronic components: I had a dealership's workshop turn off my electric seats in the BCU (BCU = body control unit, the PC of the car) and this meant that because the ABS is linked through the seat, something to do with collisions and the seat moving, the ABS warning light came on leading to a MOT/EU-control fail. I had to buy a code-reader machine to turn it back on myself. On models of this car without electric seats this is not a problem. So many other things I could mention like this example. Simplicity, as I a m sure HN coders and the like will agree, is best.
None of my cars with hand cranked windows has never failed at getting the windows up :-)
I've had a car that had sensors for everything. Half of the failures requiring expensive repairs were sensor failures. Sigh.
I really do not need a subscription to my car.
Don't be too quick to disregard automation dependency. I agree that a headlight switch is probably quite low-risk, but every action you automate carries the risk of overloading the operator if it fails at the wrong time.
Even two decades later, I find the 'Children of Magenta' talk highly illuminating. Maybe you'll find it interesting as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN41LvuSz10
I really do not like sentences like this one (irrespective of the context). They give the false impression that...
...(1) there is a monolithic thing as "the media"
...(2) "the media" has one - among them - agreed upon agenda
...(3) their agenda is the opposite of what you want or hold true
Maybe not Tesla-level yet, but in five years I'd be surprised if most new cars weren't filled with screens in the place of traditional instruments.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/29/renault-nissan-to-set-up-new...
https://cleantechnica.com/2017/06/06/china-will-delay-electr...
But this is far more significant than politicians legislating 'All bad things to end 10+ years away when many of us have retired'.
This is procastination at his finest and means "doing nothing now".
I agree it's politically difficult to do this slowly - but it's even harder to do it quickly :)
The price of batteries is falling steadily. EV prices are falling as a result. By 2022 a new EV will cost less to buy than an equivalent ICE car. It would be foolish to get to that point and have people wanting to buy the cheaper option but not feel able to do so due to lack of charging points etc.
Of course, if you take into account the lowered fuel costs and maintenance, then the EV car becomes cheaper even earlier (though it depends on exactly how far you drive and the relative costs of electricity and gasoline) but figures like 2020 are mentioned for the TCO to be lower on a new EV.
Of course that figure doesn't take into account costs/benefits like reducing pollution in cities, health impacts, higher imports of fuel, meeting carbon obligations, balancing grid electricity and other externalities, which is why governments are currently subsidizing EVs to make them cheaper than ICEs (and should probably continue to do so, even after they are cheaper than equivalent ICE cars pre-subsidy, though it probably makes more economic sense to further raise gasoline prices and introduce a carbon tax).
The majority of the Scottish population lives in commuter range of Glasgow or Edinburgh. Here in Edinburgh we already have some hybrid buses so I can see a change to pure electric happening gradually as they become available. There's also no shortage of renewable energy to power the things.
But there are also some people who live remarkably remote lives in the Highlands and Islands. In the Highlands "range anxiety" is very real if your nearest large shop is 100 miles away. Whereas the islands may have limited generation capacity. I can see there being a range of exemptions for these circumstances, although once petrol cars start to become unusual the petrol pump prices will go up.
That's half the length of the UK! More realistically the longest journey required for a remote place to be habitable might be a round-trip from Durness near Cape Wrath to Inverness, which might require a 400km range. Or half that if you can rely on recharging. Much of that would be on the A9 which the article mentions will have chargers added to it.
Already you have the dynamic that much of the really hard poverty is urban. People already move to cities if possible to be where the support facilities are or, if all else fails, to beg on the streets.
What I expect we might see a bit more of is modern self-sufficiency and techno-crofting, where people's cash flow looks low but they grow their own food and don't have to pay rent. Already renewables are making this easier on islands. H&I also seems like a good place for medium-range air cargo drones; rather than send a van on a 100km trip round the mountains, send a drone 25km over them.
An EV with a range extender for those emergency unexpected long trips could be the best of both worlds, though a higher capacity EV may relatively soon be cheap enough to make that a poor choice.
I do wonder how it will affect the PCP market though as the future value of petrol and diesel cars will presumably become more difficult to predict?
The only viable route to independence is the legal one. Unless we get the "full collapse" Brexit.
http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Business/TrendE...
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environment...
That's right. I'm setting this goal.
But then it's easy to set goals in the distant future when there are inevitable trends that will already make it happen.
I don't think it's without value.
So one could say yes to your question, depending on what you call "major".
We can electrify land mobility while also moving ocean going vessels to ultra low sulfur diesel or compressed natural gas. All of the above are cost effective today.
That's something that should be taken up with the dozens of reputable newspapers from whom I have drawn that information (e.g. the Guardian, quoted above).
They produce a lot Air pollution of a very specific type because their fuel includes a lot of sulfur. In terms of total pollution ships are actually a small fraction.
Further, releasing sulfur over the ocean does not impact human or animal heath significantly.
- https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/09/shipping...
> One giant container ship can emit almost the same amount of cancer and asthma-causing chemicals as 50m cars, study finds
> Confidential data from maritime industry insiders based on engine size and the quality of fuel typically used by ships and cars shows that just 15 of the world's biggest ships may now emit as much pollution as all the world's 760m cars.
The shipping industry needs to get its act together too but it isn't _that_ significant when it comes to climate change. In terms of sulphur based pollutants it's pretty horrifying, though.
Thanks, that certainly clarifies.
Each passebger jet flight you take likely puts out more pollution than you will do in your car in years, as will a campfire. The hippies are a bit backward these days.
If you look at pollution-per-passenger-mile then jet transport is now more efficient and less polluting than light cars: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_juice/2014/07/dri... and https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2015/09/evolving-clim...
With the ability to travel from JFK to LAX in 6 hours, significantly more people are traveling far distances that they wouldn't have bothered to travel if the only option was train/cars.
Speaking as someone who likes to fly to remote places, planes may be more efficient per mile, but people travel significantly further in them and likely end up contributing quite a bit more to global warming than people who don't fly and just drive to a lake a few hours away instead.
A quick google search found this article with numbers pulled from a 2012 US Energy Information Administration (eia.gov) report: https://www.c2es.org/energy/source/oil
Transportation is the main consumer of petroleum, accounting for 70% of usage, of which 58% is light vehicles alone - so that's 40% of total - that's still far higher than "industrial" use of 25%. Tack on medium/heavy trucks which I assume includes F-150 trucks and giant off-road dump-trucks alike and it's more than half of total petroleum consumption.
So no - eliminating fossil-fuels from personal transport alone, while leaving industry alone, will still have a huge beneficial impact on greenhouse gas production.
But you forget the halo and knock-on effects: as the market adapts to service non-petrol consumers (e.g. fast EV chargers, battery-swap stations, etc) then industries will adapt to take advantage of them too - it wouldn't surprise me this meant the introduction of an EV John Deere tractor powered the same hot-swappable EV battery pack that might power a hypothetical Ford truck.
Calling 250s and 350s Heavy Duty is mostly marketing, although, the current 3/4 and 1 Ton trucks are more capable than ever, so the marketing inflation does have some basis.
Is this true though? Does it matter on the grade of fuel, or petrol vs diesel? I think I read that leaded fuel emits less CO2 than unleaded fuel, but I'd definitely choose more CO2 than lead in the air, tyvm.
IIRC CA had a similar target about electric cars for 2000ish and we all know how that worked out.
It's easy to dream big. That dirty thing called reality likes to get in the way. Being an early adopter is expensive.
That - and the program was open to easy sabotage.
Keep in mind that an EV rated at 100 miles probably won't go for 100 miles for a number of factors just like most ICE vehicles won't go their maximum range. The difference is that most ICE vehicles have far greater ranges so it's never an issue.
My old Honda was rated at 26 MPG city and had a 17 gallon tank so in theory I could go 442 miles. In practice I never felt comfortable going above 330 miles on a tank. The low fuel light came on around 280 miles and at 300 miles the fuel gauge was on empty. That's only 67% of the range it could go. Of course when I filled up it was only 12-14 gallons so there was probably another 100 miles in the tank. The car still cautioned you not to go the full range of the tank.
EVs caution you in the same way as ICE vehicles. When the battery gets too low in an EV it can be damaging, just like running an ICE dry can damage the fuel pump. Most EVs will warning you at around 20% capacity and at a certain point will kick into Turtle mode to prevent you from drawing too much current and damaging the battery. If manufacturers hid that 20% capacity the way an ICE vehicle fuel gauge hide their true capacity then suddenly that 100 miles EV is an 80 mile EV. Maybe that's what they should do but they don't.
My EV is rated at 84 miles and my commute is 25.4 miles. So when I get to work in the mornings I should be at ~58 miles of range. Yesterday I arrived with 60, one time I arrived with 44. That's a big range and a number of factors come into play. High winds or rain introduce drag which sucks range. If you're heavy on the pedal then you're going to get a reduced range. Oddly I get better mileage in heavy stop and go traffic and reduced range on wide open freeways.
Now you might say everything looks good and 100 miles should be plenty but what if I have to take my kid to an appointment after work that's 12-20 miles from home? I have two such appointments each week, one is 24 miles round trip and then other is 40 miles. Suddenly a 100 mile EV becomes a nail biting situation. The reality is that people do more than just commute to and from work, they have lives that demand traveling on occasion.
But I can charge up! Maybe... but not always.
LV1 charging takes 18-20 hours to charge my car from 20% to 100%, it would take longer with a 100 mile EV.
But what about LV2 or DC Fast Charging? It's not always an option for people. I have to pay $4000 to have my breaker panel upgraded and a 240v line run to my garage for LV2. Some people live in apartments and condos and might not even have the option to install LV2. I can pay for LV2 charging and there's a DC Fast charger along the way to one of my appointments so I can make my EV work with my schedule but that can't be said for everyone.
If people were to drive calm, cool and collected all the time, and they had access to LV2 or DC Fast Chargers in most places then a 100-140 mile EV would be just fine. But that's not realistic right now. Perhaps in 20 years when robots drive us around and the infrastructure is there, but not today.
The term "range anxiety" seems crafted to make people not take it seriously. The implication is pretty clearly that range is actually fine and it's your feelings about it that are the problem.
But this assessment completely disregards the times, often at unpredictable occurrences, when I need to drive 100-200 miles (or more) at short notice and when there is not a time allotment to spend 4-8 hours to have the car recharge sufficiently. I would need to rent a car at very short notice in that case - which can be impossible. Things like a family emergency, a server crash at a data-center, a friend urgently needs a ride from Seattle to Portland and back, etc...
Remember, even if an ICE car and an EV have the same range, if both have zero fuel/energy left, the ICE car can be refilled from a hand-portable gas-tank or AAA truck enough to get to the next fuelling station - and you're free to carry additional fuel in your storage space, an EV car does not have that option: there's the prospective of expensive towing and hours waiting for it to recharge. I'd be less concerned if Tesla made some kind of "towable" extended battery or drop-in for the frunk or trunk, or even a portable Honda generator - but it doesn't.
I think it's naive to expect that while the majority of American car owners have no need to travel more than 100 miles per day - that they also have no expectation of travelling that distance - and you only need to travel that distance a few days in a whole year to make the purchase of an ICE vehicle worthwhile so long as EVs take longer to recharge without any kind of fast battery-swap feature.
I'm in the market for an EV myself - I wish I had gotten on to the Model 3 waiting list sooner - but it would have to be a Model 3 because the range of the Chevy Bolt, Volt, Leaf and the Focus Electric is not sufficient for those occasional long-distance journeys, and I imagine that a plurality (if not the majority) of the car-owning public feel the same way I do.