China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks | Hacker News Reader

China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

wsj.com

214 pointsjseliger334 comments

Just came back from Shenzen, seemed like most of the taxis were electric. You can tell because they're blue vs the red gas taxis. Another ingenious thing they do is there's an added fee to ride red taxis, so people avoid them like they're plague-ridden when they have other options. I thought that was a brilliant use of taxing externalities, you let customers decide whether paying the fee is worth it.

It works in china because CCP thinks, "if it's better for business/control/money/people, we'll do it, doesn't matter if some of us loses in this"

Basically, if you are in goverment and you've stock holding in Gas cars, and they are lobbying, gas cars stay.

But in China, CCP will simply acquire controlling interest in new winning EV firm if it's better from the perspective of power/money/control over an industry, so they'll completely ignore the gas car companies.

In China, Government is Business and business is Goverment who have to think about their bottomline above all.

Less pollution = more tourism and more content public with air quality = more incoming revenue from other countries/ Less outrage from public.

EVs = No need of importing Oil as china has enough hydropower capacity and electronic and software/AI/ML industries along with rare metal industry = less money going out of the country

> EVs = No need of importing Oil

I've been harping continuously on this for several years. Countries grudging accept importing oil and the geopolitical strings that come with that because they have no choice. But electrified transportation gives them a choice.

That's an argument against framing this debate based on the preferences of US political leaders, oil companies and guys who sees his pickup truck as an extension of his identity[1]. World wide picture those guys opinion and power is unimportant.

[1] I also think you put a guy like that in an electric pickup that can smoke the tires and he'll never go back.

w.r.t. the US specifically, the US is poised to become a net exporter of oil in the near future.

And yet, in a weird way it's working in a way that aligns to wider, long-term, individual interests.

By making the government the controlling monopoly, China ends up with a form of capitalism where externalities apply to other countries rather than surrounding corporations and citizens. That's kinda interesting compared to how most other capitalist nations are handling their shit right now. You can do 'common good' stuff like force meme EVs on a significant national scale, where other developed nations are absolutely floundering.

What's even more interesting is how rapid that has occurred as compared to how recently China was an absolute polluting demon. Still are, but the rate of change/velocity towards addressing it is worth paying attention to.

> where externalities apply to other countries rather than surrounding corporations and citizens

Not according to the devastated ecosystem, flooded archaeological ruins, and 1.3 million people once living around what is now the three gorges dam.

But those costs may have been worth the benefits. We weren't part of the decision-making committee, so we don't know what factors were weighed. It certainly doesn't look like an obviously bad decision to me. There was a big loss, there was a big gain... which one was bigger, I don't know sitting here 10,000 miles away.

This is kind of similar to how the USSR industrialised in the 1930s. Western nations were simply stunned at the rate of change, and while we now know it was underscored by unspeakable atrocities, it still applies that such a tightly controlled economy can be very agile and responsive to threats such as climate change.

The atrocities were very much avoidable and unnecessary though.

Yes, while reading the Gulag Archipelago about the forced labor camps and how people would be worked to death or freeze due to inadequate clothing, it definitely seemed the atrocities held back faster progress rather than promoted it. If they had been more humane they might've industrialized even faster.

A tightly controlled economy is better able to do whatever the leaders are interested in. The capitalists response is yes, but a less regulated economy gets there only a little slower anyway, while because it is trying more things it can get to something better instead. It is easy to see what we gained by whatever was done in the past, but it is hard to see what we gave up because we didn't choose to do something else.

Assuming the best ideas can get funding.

Of course. However your have a better chance because whoever funds the best idea gets the rewards for doing so. It is chance in the end.

This falls down when the costs are things like environmental externalities though, because the companies exploiting these make more money despite producing less overall value for society.

>On a weird way it's working in a way that aligns to wider, long-term, individual interests.

Only so much as the interests of individuals align with those of business and the state. Anything threatens stability (e.g. individual freedoms, business models that allow people to circumvent state authority) is a threat to the state and to business by proxy and is struck down.

Completely agree. My post is by no means a love letter to the CCP. Rather, an observation that in some aspects the marked difference in corporate/government relationships between China and most western nations is producing some synergies between the state and individual interests which we don't see elsewhere.

It's called national socialism. Nobody wants to say it but modern China has essentially copied the economic system of Nazi Germany. Capitalism is simply a tool to be used rather than some great ideal of free markets and competition. You can see it by the way they criticize the US for protectionism while actively being the most protectionist country on earth.

The way EV's have been forced is similar to how Hitler created Volkswagen, the People's Car. Hitler wanted an affordable German made car for the German citizens.

They've copied it right down to the extreme ethnic self-interest if the Muslim concentration camps are any indicator and the fact that foreigners aren't allowed to own companies in China. Also copying the seizing of neighboring lands.

That is an apt analogy even if most people aren't going to be able to process and discuss it earnestly. You can extend the analogy even further with China's approach to social engineering, they actively pursue the censorship of content they deem socially harmful (such as pornography) as much as they pursue the censorship of dissident political content.

It's interesting to see an authoritarian government use tools normally associated with poltical oppression to enforce social mores. Whether you believe those social mores are positive or not doesn't really matter to the part I find interesting and that is the questions and moral quandaries posed by the use of such powerful tools to ostensibly change society for the better. That is a subject that has gone completely ignored and undiscussed in the Western world. That's concerning because we're watching a live demo occur in the world's most populous nation but no one is talking about it.

None of that is new, though; the social liberalism of Western countries is a relatively recent and localized aberration. Censorship of socially harmful content was and is very common, particularly in more religious countries (which describes basically all for most of history, and many nowadays).

I'd say that's the fascist and corporatist roots of Nazism, rather than Nazism itself. Franco, Salazar and such were all critics of liberal capitalism as well, and market participation within their countries was heavily controlled and managed.

Of course, all countries are to some extent. The US government wanted cheap mortgages, so it created Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac; it wanted cheap education loans, so it created Sallie Mae; it wanted a strong internal agricultural production, so it created the Farm Credit System; etc. And the EU is certainly not lacking in such mechanisms.

They are exporting more petrol vehicles than ever before.

That's because those the countries importing them make that proposition economical.

For the Chinese, producing a car is like producing a hammer: only the production costs count.

Driving a polluting car in China seems to be getting more expensive. That's why they do it less.

Driving a polluting car in, say, the US, is not getting more expensive, so they import those cars.

The air quality in other countries doesn't effect them as much.

First, air moves, so that is not totally correct.

Second, the local air quality is related to local policy: if other countries want to improve their local air quality, local policies are needed.

China seems to be working in that direction, although they are by far not yet there.

They are also exporting more electric vehicles than ever before.

That type of taxation of externalities is really a no-brainer in the West too, but there’s just not democratic majority for implementing it. A tragedy. Tragedy of the commons, really, on a spectacular scale.

A general CO2 tax wouldn’t be hard to implement if we were a dictatorship.

Taxes are hard to implement in many countries, including the USA, because people have seen that the tax money is not spent on what proponents say it will be spent on.

You'd have a hard time getting a CO2 tax passed because it would just end up going into the general fund and get spent on pet projects, not on anything that really addressed CO2 emissions, or helped with the cost of alternative fuels or vehicles.

A carbon tax is a pigovian tax, which works purely to internalise negative externalities into the price of the good. Any purported bonus that could be achieved by directing that money, somehow, is just that: a bonus. It would still work without it.

A carbon tax would work if you burned the money. Bonus points if you captured the CO2 from the fire :)

A carbon tax serves to connect our intuition to our logic. We logically know that, somehow, the sum of all our disparate little actions is responsible for global warming. But the feedback loop is notoriously long, and complex. And humans are no-to-ri-ous-ly bad at properly valuing that. We couldn't do it to save our lives, or that of our species.

Furthermore, it helps break free from the tragedy of the commons, where every independent agent makes a game theoretically optimal move, to the detriment of the global system. No amount of proselytising or appealing to humane sensibilities, no amount of ecological lucidity or sudden flashes of intuitive insight into that awful feedback loop, would ever solve that problem.

No weapon works better against overfishing than quotas. Not necessarily a tax, but leveraging the market similarly.

No weapon works better against carbon emissions than a carbon tax.

Pigovian taxes are powerful weapons in a market oriented society. Very, very powerful. This is why vested interests will do absolutely anything to prevent them.

Doing something useful with the money is just a tiny cherry on top of large cake of success.

> A carbon tax would work if you burned the money.

This is very under appreciated. A lot of potential taxes aren't actually collected because people alter behavior to avoid them. For a carbon tax that's the point.

I'll also say the behavior you want to alter is not 'buying carbon based fuels'. The behavior you want to stop is people buying gasoline powered cars and natural gas fired furnaces. Which means what you want is a excise tax on those things not the fuel itself. Because when someone buys a gas powered car they commit then and there to emit 100 tons of CO2. So make the pain point then and there, not in the nebulous future.

Even more good could be done if the money were spent well, but the fact that the tax must be paid at all serves as the incentive that pushes behavior in a more environmentally friendly direction.

There are less regressive ways to incentivize change. Taking money from people hurts the people that rely on money more. Rather, investment and encouragement of particular industries is less punitive, but again goes back to valuable spending of public funds.

It would be great if someday those who want to "make a change" or "progress" society understood that succeeding at actually changing their neighbors' minds is more effective than succeeding at getting laws passed that confiscate their neighbors' wealth so that some government program may or may not end up being effective at getting to their end goal. The effort to defend political tribes is so high - imagine if it was used to help create a natural demand in various markets to achieve a given outcome.

That's the genius of a carbon tax that returns 100% of the collections as a citizen dividend, like the bipartisan bill recently introduced https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Innovation_and_Carbon_D...

In the Netherlands they’ve just reversed subsidies for electric vehicles, increasing bijtelling for them which makes them a lot more expensive for business purchases and leases. It’s a step backwards.

Yes, it is very frustrating. The Dutch are exceptionally good at talking the talk, when it comes to renewable energy transition, having years-long talk about the opportunity to become the best, most innovative player (e.g. in solar), and then not walking the walk. Suddenly stopping subsidies because of 'unprecedented success' is the norm, leaving all businesses who had invested out in the cold.

Netherlands is now a laggard in sustainable energy in the EU. I guess we have 'pro-business' liberal-democratic ruling party (VVD) and greenwashing-only companies such as Shell to thank for that. They prefer 'lobbycracy' above democracy.

Electric vehicles are excempt from the road tax in The Netherlands. E.g. in Nord-Holland you'd pay 1400 EUR/yr just in road tolls for a Tesla Model S (according to my searching around 2,250 kg), but you pay 0 EUR because it's an EV under the current policy.

Over a period of some years this easily adds up to what other countries such as the US have been paying out in EV subsidies, add to that that fossil fuels are much more expensive than say the US and it's a very significant subsidy.

Given that the thought of the Netherlands conjures images of happy families in bakfiets {and jealousy on my part) I was startled to learn their per capita greenhouse gas emissions are among the worst in the EU.

They're an almost completely urban population with a high standard of living. Of course that needs energy and greenshouse emissions to make happen.

An urban population should emit less GHG than the same population being spread out. And standard of living is not that much different from Denmark (20% less) or the UK (30% less).

You're right for the Netherlands and the developped countries, of course. I confused this rural pop with developping countries' rural pop, which of course is a lot less energy intensive.

As for the standard of living differences, are those numbers similar to the energy-per-capita differences between the same countries ?

Urburnites claim that city living is cleaner (co2 wise) that living in the country

Living near the people and things you need, walking, cycling, and taking electrified public transport to said things, and multi-family dwellings allowing the use of district heating (or heat pumps powered by renewable energy) can drastically reduce your carbon footprint compared to living in the burbs and driving to everything.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/mar/23/city-dwe...

Of course, you _can_ have a low carbon footprint in the country, but it's really hard, because those places are hostile to cycling and walking.

Our many consecutive right-wing governments aren't very eager to meet our CO2 reduction targets. Bad for business, they think. Some tax reduction for electric vehicles and green electricity is the best we got, and they're constantly looking for an excuse to end those.

A big incentive for electric cars comes from cities, though: in Amsterdam, if you get an electric car, you get an electric charging spot in front of your house, which is effectively a private parking spot if you're the only one with an electric car. With the constant shortage of parking spots, this is huge.

The reversal is only for cars priced over 50 000 euro (~ 57000 usd). Even for those cars, you can still get the subsidy for the amount up to 50 000 euro.

The subsidy mostly helped people get a Tesla Model S as a company car. And it is still subsidized for about 17% of 50k, which is 8000 euro a year. While the Tesla Model S is more environmentally friendly than a similar sized gasoline car, buying of smaller electric cars (like the volkswagen e-golf, tesla model 3, etc) should be encouraged more. I don't think it was a bad idea to cap the subsidy at 50 000 euro.

Fair point, I forgot about the cap. The Model 3 is arriving just in time for Tesla sales.

Same in Ontario, our generous EV subsidy was killed by the new right-wing-populist provincial gov't, cap'n'trade eliminated (leaving a $3b hole in the budget), and various green programmes turfed.

Then they had the gall to turn around and promote the fact that Ontario has dropped its CO2 emissions by 25% in the last 10 years. All due to the actions of the previous government that they railed against with "lock her up" type chants.

This. Just see the "Yellow Vests" riots in France because of the tax raise on fuel.

Worth mentioning that while that is indeed how that movement started, its difficult to say that it's about just that nowadays. More a general culture war between cosmopolitan and rural/less fortunate france if I understand correctly

> Just see the "Yellow Vests" riots in France because of the tax raise on fuel.

Problem with the French protests is that the fuel tax raise didn't take care of poor-ish people.

Most "eco" politics doesn't care about these people either - no matter the country - and that's the reason why Trump and other right-wingers can hate so successfully against anything environmentally-friendly.

The problem is that getting off of fossil fuels (or solving pretty much any other large politically charged problem) will cost a lot of money and in society it's always the people who have the least power and influence who are left with the bill so until the middle and upper classes can figure out how to stop screwing poor people at every turn there will always be opportunity for populist leaders to gain power by promising to actually solve people's problems, drain the swamp, etc, etc.

It's not a left vs right thing. It's a the people calling the shots are out of touch with what the day to day problems of the masses are thing.

> It's not a left vs right thing.

It very much is. Take a look at ANY right-wing political party and look who gets screwed over: always the lowest class people first. Women, PoC, migrants, poor persons.

The right-wing strategy is to distract the masses with "it's the fault of the foreigners/the Muslims/Deep State/Swamp" while at the same time enacting policies that benefit only the ultra rich.

Lots of Western countries have heavy tax on gasoline. This passes the cost for the externality on to the taxi owner instead of the customer, but comes to pretty much the same thing.

The taxes for gasoline are way below the cost of pulling the CO2 back from the atmosphere, so they don't pass the full cost of the externality on the owner.

I wouldn't mind if we had a slowly increasing tax on all fossil fuels, that grew slowly to the full cost of pulling the CO2 out of the atmosphere. Then use the revenues from that tax to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere.

That creates a tax incentive as well as a new industry to fix the problem. Grow slowly so not to immediately cripple the industry, but long before the tax reaches 100% of the cost, will most people have switched to something cleaner.

Yet none (?) have a tax on kerosine. Which is arguably worse for the environment for multiple reasons. Airplanes are a lot less efficient than buses, ships or trains. Also airplanes release their exhausts up in the atmosphere which is worse for global warming.

There's a problem in that it's effectively banned by international treaty as part of the ICAO. I believe people are working on changing this but it will be slow going.

It requires full international cooperation, otherwise carries will tend to tank where taxes are lower. Not that that is always possible: if you land in Frankfurt and your deposit is empty, you will still need to tank in Frankfurt.

But, without international cooperation, fly routes could become distorted because of kerosine tax effects.

Doing it just on internal EU flights would already make a big difference.

The UK has the Air Passenger Duty. Which is kind of similar (you are charged more for flying a farther distance). So there are ways of structuring it legally.

Not great, as it's passenger based there's no incentive to fly on a cleaner plane, or on a busier plane. A 747 that's only 25% full will cost the same as a 787 that's 99% full.

There are lots of taxes (and subsidies) on air transport, and no real alternative to fossil fuels for powering planes. Adding a kerosene tax - instead of, say, a "landing tax" or a grant of land to build an airport - would just slosh the money around a bit, it wouldn't create an incentive for people to take electric planes.

Some alternatives are skyping, VR and bullet trains.

It might be if your most powerful general owned the national oil company.

You mean like in the US? Oh wait...

Why stop at a CO2 tax? All kinds of problems could be solved with a dictatorship.

It's not having a dictatorship -- it's having a national economic strategy and a popular will to make decisions without letting very particular selfish interests get in the way.

It does not require an authoritarian central leadership.

But it does require stopping and rolling back the capture of political bodies and the public sphere generally by private interests.

Respectfully, it's a pipe dream.

If gas, energy, or home heating prices double, whoever's in power is going to be voted out. It's not the capture of political bodies that drives that--it's normal people. It'll take a suspension of democracy or a long time to make a measurable impact on climate change.

Not if the tax revenues get distributed back as a carbon dividend - then the only people against it are heavy polluters who lose out.

(And since emissions are not distributed linearly, the losers from a cost-neutral carbon-tax with per-capita-dividend will always be a minority.)

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but:

From what I'm being told, fundamental changes need to occur in our consumption to have a measurable impact on climate change. That won't happen with normal people continuing to consume at the same rates they have.

Could a carbon tax be designed such that normal people are effectively reimbursed and heavy emitters pay more? Yes. But you're not going to measurably impact climate change without somehow incentivizing people to use less. At some point, people need to use less, and when you force them to (through taxes or restrictions), it won't be popular politically.

Redistributing money from people who use more to people who use less is an incentive to use less. It can be an arbirarily large incentive depending on how much you decide to redistribute. It's not like the money is destroyed or something.

Its not impossible, vehicle fuel prices in Europe are over twice what they are in the US because of taxes.

People don't use nearly as much vehicle fuel in Europe as they do in the US.

More clearly stated, my point is that what's really needed is people to adjust their consumption downward dramatically, but the taxes necessary to cause that will be politically infeasible.

> People don't use nearly as much vehicle fuel in Europe as they do in the US.

And you don't think the difference in prices has anything to do with that?

I'm sure it contributes, but I think the key reason it's more politically feasible is because it doesn't hit as many (especially poorer) Europeans as hard (EDIT: I meant to imply here there are a lot fewer miles driven).

Looking up the statistics on miles driven, the gap isn't as big as I expected, though, so I'm probably not giving the tax as much credit as it deserves.

Increasing fuel prices will only incentivize people to drive less if there are alternative means of transportation. Those are absent in most parts of the US.

You could double the price of gas in the US and driving would not change much, because people would have no other way to get to work and get their kids to school. The most you could hope for is that people would buy more efficient cars.

Maybe a similar situation is traffic in large cities, if time = money then there's an increased cost to driving during rush hour. Yet most people clearly chose to pay this price rather than trying to structure their life around cheaper (less time consuming) hours.

There seems to be an 'if only' tone to your stating the obvious.

So do you think Saudi Arabia will introduce a carbon tax anytime soon?

Might be wise for them to do so - https://phys.org/news/2010-05-future-temperatures-livable-li...

A general CO2 tax wouldn’t be hard to implement if we were a dictatorship.

It's ideas like this why Americans are heavily armed. Nobody can explain how a "co2 tax" would actually do good, yet you implicitly advocate killing people to enact it.

A CO2 tax would do good because it would reduce demand for goods and services that cause the release of CO2, proportional to how much they release, while also providing the funds necessary to clean CO2 from the atmosphere.

Not that hard to explain.

I don't see how heavily armed Americans change anything. Personnal weapons would not change a dictatorship. If anything it would just justify killing opponents for armed rebellion/terrorism. It's not like your gun will stop tanks...

A CO2 tax would reduce the following: pollution, resource depletion, suburban sprawl, commute times, obesity, loneliness, traffic related deaths. So there will be less people killed with a C02 tax.

I agree, but it’s not such a no brainer. You’re making a common purchase more expensive. Meanwhile EVs are only similari price because they are heavily subsidized by governments all around the world.

How is it so ingenious? It's very common to tax the things you don't want your citizens to use much of. Like taxing alcohol or drinks with sugar, etc.

In the case of taxis, the additional taxation of fuel for example would affect the taxi owner more directly than the customer.

Applying the additional charge on-top of the original taxi fare itself, affects the customer more and directly influences the market dynamics better than a tax, which does it indirectly.

All the buses are electric too, they finished replacing them at the end of the last year. Like you said taxis seem to be about 95% replaced now (was only about 30% last year, this city moves crazy fast, there are around 20000 taxis in the city). It helps that BYD is a Shenzhen company and all the electric taxis and most of the buses are made by them.

The plates are green for EVs. The blue electric BYD taxis are newer, quieter, cleaner and better maintained, and - significantly for foreigners - substantially more spacious. It's not just the cost, it's the comfort.

Even London's black cabs are going electric, thanks to the Chinese. The London Taxi Company's Chinese owners (Geely) opened a £300m electric taxi factory in Coventry, UK last year. I'm not sure how many of these are in active service but I see them driving around all the time (presumably testing) as the factory is not far from my office.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/03/22/london-taxi-...

Thank goodness for the Chinese.

The old cabs had old engines in them that the Polish army rejected as too polluting and inefficient. For some reason these monsters ended up in the black cabs.

I am pleased that the black cab business has been able to get investment from China instead of being asset stripped from the UK city where no money is ever invested for the long term in British business.

You see them regularly in London, I’d say 5% of taxis have switched or thereabouts. It only launched in the last year.

From January 2018 all new taxis had to be zero-emission capable (ZEC), with an official CO2 emissions figure of no more than 50 g/km, and a minimum zero-tailpipe emission range of 30 miles.

You're not allowed to have a taxi older than 15 years.

That's great to hear, I have to admit it's over a year since I was last in London.

That said, the odds of getting run over by a black cab were already quite high so hopefully they're not totally silent. ;)

When I picture a black cab I don’t picture it actually moving, their traditional role is surely to line the streets or sit in traffic with the engine running, decorating the air with particulates.

Also allow wealthy (usually white male) businessmen to beat the traffic by clogging bus lanes.

There are also a few electric-only buses rolling out. Along with a lot of them being hybrid with auto start-stop now so they aren't polluting while in traffic. Id like to see more of them move to electric only though!

Why don't we bring trolleybuses back? They rock! You don't need polluting batteries in order to run them, just some copper to put the wires up, and we've been master of this "technology" for almost a century now. Also, we should extend or re-introduce the tram network.

Simply because electric buses are the superior technology right now.

Metro bus services is actually an ideal application for electric vehicles: The needed range is short, charging facilities can be in one place (depot), stop-start driving suits the propulsion system, and low noise and no emissions are a bonus in the highly populated areas.

Not to mention infastructutal redundancy - trolleys are a bit worst of both worlds in that they require roads, tracks, and overhead wires while often causing manuevering and congestion issues. They are kind of awkward road sharing wise.

They are a way of dodging the battery expenses but unfortunately have their own set of issues. If you already have a great cable car infastructure by all means keep on doing it but they are rare and often more curiosities or secondary transit components.

Trolleybuses don't need tracks, they just need overhead cables.

We use them in Vancouver. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_buses_in_Vancouver

I am from city with trams and trolley buses as main public transport. Trams are often deployed on roads (rails are in roads) and when there is car accident trams just have to stop trolley bus can atleast partialy manuever around obstacles.

You are confusing your terminology here. Trolley busses, trams, and cable cars are all different things.

> Not to mention infastructutal redundancy - trolleys are a bit worst of both worlds in that they require roads, tracks, and overhead wires

Streetcars (one kind of trolley) require tracks but not roads (though they often share space with roads for convenience purposes, hence the name, but this is not required, and is often for only for portions of their route.)

Trolley coaches (aka, trolley busses) require roads, but not tracks.

Trolleybusses are electric, they just get their electricity from overhead wires, similar to a railway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus

They are but they need more infrastructure than battery vehicles.

Exactly. The high cost, inflexibility, and maintenance requirements of overhead wires all make them unattractive for new installations.

Battery electric buses, on the other hand, can operate anywhere that diesel buses can, and a fault with one bus or one section of wire will not break the whole route.

Many cities also consider overhead wires to be visually unattractive. Birmingham's new tram network is being built to use overhead wires on suburban tracks, but switch to battery power in the city centre to avoid having to install overhead wires there.

Are a few overhead wires actually more expensive than the massive batteries electric buses require? They are certainly less damaging to the environment.

Good luck rerouting them when you change their path thru the city.

Not so obvious this is a downside. Apartments with good transport links often earn higher rents, and the builder cares about rents decades into the future... and an immovable tram line is a stronger indication than just a bus stop.

>Simply because electric buses are the superior technology right now.

Trolleybuses were invented because at the time electric storage technology wasn't good enough.

Trolleybuses still require infrastructure wherever they run, hence in many cities in Europe they got replaced by trams as they seem to be more efficient (because they're much longer than a bus).

In Berlin there are already electric buses in operation on several lines (manufactured by Solaris, a Polish company and EVO bus, a Mercedes Benz subsidiary) and they will start experimenting with inductive charging soon. The idea is that you have a charging pad beneath each bus stop, where the short stops the bus makes would be sufficient to recharge the bus enough to keep it running all day.

A single electric bus with charging station costs them about 600.000 € (https://www.morgenpost.de/berlin/article215300097/BVG-Busflo...) btw. So about 1000 times my annual subscription :D They ordered 30 more that will be in service next year and plan to have their whole fleet electrified before 2030.

Braunschweig has inductive charging for buses in active use for 4 years already. [0]

[0] https://www.verkehr-bs.de/fileadmin/user_upload/downloads/Em...

Inductive charging is only 90% efficient at best. Doesn't really matter for portable devices with their tiny batteries, but it seems wasteful for vehicles.

It does matter if it means for don't have to drive 10000lbs of batteries around all day.

It could significantly reduce the required battery size though.

Yep electric buses running around Schiphol airport area since last year in the Netherlands. They are great!

Some places are bringing them back, e.g. Prague started using them again this year, after 46 years. The modern ones often come with a battery that allows them to run sections of the line without overhead wires.

They've been in continuous use in Bratislava since the 1940s, and they also have the hybrid ones. They're especially suitable for steep slopes where rail-based transport doesn't work. Absolutely iconic vehicles!

Do the hybrid ones have any clever way to re-connect?

All the busses I've seen have this system where the driver has to walk to the back and pull on some rubber bands to put the tentacles back on the wires. If this could be automated, then perhaps you could omit wires at big junctions where it's most messy, needs lots of points, etc. Building & maintaining wires with 90% coverage might cost half as much as 100% coverage, I would guess.

Yes, where the hybrid buses connect to the wires (usually at certain bus stops), the wires have sort of "tentacle catchers" on them, shaped as upside-down Vs.

The driver just has to stop on the usual spot, press a button, and while passengers are boarding and exiting, the "tentacles" unfurl, and are guided by these "catchers" towards wires. The driver just watches for a light to go on on his dashboard.

It works pretty well - in many years, I have only seen once that the tentacles did not end up where they should, and the driver had to get out and manually correct it.

If you search YouTube for “trolleybus automatic” there are a couple of videos. Looks like there are special locations where the catenary has a little plastic guide on it. It also looks quite slow.

Why don't we figure out this remote business? If more people, just 10% of the population work remote full time, can you imagine the difference?

Because the roads then fill up with commuters that come in from even further away. Imagine your typical city - jobs in the centre, housing on the outskirts, everyone doing the rush hour thing. People might be prepared to give up three hours of their day for the required commute.

Now if a magic wand is waved and people start to work at home then those desks in the city centre will still be there. If the roads are that bit - 10% - faster/clearer then that tempts people from neighbouring towns to commute into the big city as they can now afford the time to do so due to the roads being quicker.

Rather than work remote the far better idea is to have people work local.

Imagine you have a programming gig on the other side of town and commute across town taking an hour or so each way. Coming the opposite way is someone else who lives near where you work and they are trying to get to an office down the road from where you live. They are a programmer too.

Now what if you could swap jobs with them? In that way you might have a ten minute commute and they might too. In that way a far bigger difference can be made. But the thing is that we don't have a means of matching these job swap opportunities up.

Time for a YC job swap for lazy commute startup?

I dunno, you're pinning your dismissal of the initial idea on 'those desks in the city centre will still be there' when it's entirely feasible they'll just reduce over time in-line with demand. In fact, we see that right now with the trend towards unallocated desking and flexible working, where desk numbers within the same floor space is being reduced in favour of deploying more collaboration spaces and allowing more staff to work away from the office in a manner than suits them. That's what that reduction in office density downtown looks like in practice.

Then your counter proposal depends on people being able to 'swap jobs' while handwaving away the complexity that would involve. Most knowledge worker roles aren't that fungible.

> Why don't we bring trolleybuses back?

After decades of contraction, Lyon[0] re-started expanding its trolleybus network and converting ICE lines (sometimes back) to trolley a few years back. In the near future they're intending converting half a dozen ICE lines using IMC trolleys for more flexibility (able to run on batteries between overhead transmission segments, and to opportunistically recharge at bus stops).

[0] the premier French city for trolleybuses and one of only 3 cities which still has a network

Quite a few cities in France have been developping trams line this past couple of decade.

In "Ile de France" (Paris and its metropolitan area) the last tram line was closed in 1938 but it's coming back and there are now 14 lines planned, 10 of which are already opened (8 of those opened between 2006 and 2017), the oldest one opened in 1992 and the last one in the current plan should open in 2023.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tramways_in_%C3%8Ele-de-France

Nantes was the first city in France to have a tramway [0] :) ! It was very unsafe and thus got the nickname "Péril Jaune" (yellow peril) because of it's color.

Today, Nantes still has a wide Tram network and I really enjoy it. I find it more enjoyable than metro. They tend to smell less and you can enjoy the scenery will traveling :) .

[0] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancien_tramway_de_Nantes

> “Péril Jaune" (yellow peril)

Seems to be a common theme in France

They have been and still are in use in most Swiss cities. They have a backup ICE for emergencies, but mostly run on electricity. Works really well, and makes for a rather silent ride.

US cities with lots of hills still have trolley bus routes (San Francisco, Seattle, even LA has a few routes). Switzerland has them because of the hills as well (eg Lausanne). Electric + rubber has really great torque for climbing hills. Even replacing trolley buses with a tram requires the use of rubber tires instead (eg Laussane’s newer metro).

Most electric buses in Zürich now have had their ICE backup engines replaced with batteries.

They are also now able to disconnect and reconnect from the wires from inside the cabin via button press at specific locations.

This is easy.

Diesel buses were more cost effective than electric trolleys, which is why they replaced all the trolleys with diesel buses.

Electric (battery) buses are expected to be more cost effective than the diesel buses they’re replacing.

Thanks to the transitive property of inequality, we would expect electric buses to be more cost effective than electric trolleys.

Inequality is not transitive.

If the cost of everything has stayed the same for the last century, that's correct. In real life, however, the economics have changed; a number of cities are actually bringing back tram lines and/or trambuses. This is partially because (tracked) tram lines can support far greater line capacity than buses, though.

Mixed overhead and battery usage seems to be a very wise idea. The flexibility of a bus and the cheap charging of a trolley.

In general a lot of this has to do with the infrastructure of your city, and the local costs of retrofitting streets to include overhead wires.

They got rid of them in Philadelphia because people hated driving over the tracks and them ruining their tires. Some routes upgraded to to electric buses that still use the existing overhead power lines. I'd assume the driver has to be careful to stay within certain tolerances since he's no longer on a track.

If it has tracks, it's a tram. An electric bus which uses overhead powerlines is a trolleybus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tram

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus

Ah, my mistake. We've always just called them "Trolleys"

Philadelphia still has trolleys running on tracks, though maybe less routes than before.

http://www.septa.org/maps/trolley/city.html

Maybe I am missing something, but trolleybuses do not have tracks, they get power from overhead wires.

They are live and kicking in some countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybuses_in_Belarus

On-street trolleys are the worst of all worlds. They require the infrastructure construction of a metro system, but can get stuck in traffic and can't be rerouted. Just use buses or build a real train system.

Plus the countless cables criss-crossing every major street intersection like a spider's web are quite ugly: https://www.flickr.com/photos/drum118/26380513184

They required overhead transmission wire planning as well, but I do agree we should overhaul trams that we use it to satisfy the need of short distance and constant location travel.

Also recent trolley generations can be equipped with batteries which get charged while connected to the overhead transmission network (or opportunistically at bus stops), allowing some operations on non-wired segments.

Budapest and a lot of parts of Hungary use trams and trolleys a lot, they never went away.

I always thought about them as quirky archaic tech, but you have just changed my view! Cheers

The capital costs are really high, and you lose flexibility.

If you look at the challenges that entities like Google Fiber and municipal wifi initiatives have, one of the major ones is that pole infrastructure is really expensive. In my city, streetlights cost something like $800/yr each.

Battery and associated infrastructure is cheap and effective.

Seattle still has trolley buses, but has been getting rid of them as NG and EV buses are more flexible. Getting off track with overhead lines is annoying, and they got rid of bus overhead lines in the downtown tunnel when light rail went in (electric being previously necessary for ventilation).

They never went away in US cities like SF and Boston, where they are referred to as “Trackless Trolley”.

We never got rid of them in Moldova! Trolley lines must still be running in most post soviet countries.

You do still use (some) batteries for trolley buses, as they have to bridge gaps where the overhead wires are unavailable (roadworks etc).

The overhead wires are the biggest reason to avoid trolley buses. They're expensive to deploy and maintain, a visual eyesore, and constrain the bus network to predefined routes. Electric buses are a great improvement - At the expense of more batteries per bus and deployment of charging stations at depots/terminus, you avoid the wiring hassle entirely and have far more flexibility to change routes as required.

Most likely because you need a whole railway to go with it, and it seems modern societies tend to hate railways and don't have any interested in investing in new ones or even maintaining the old ones anymore.

Toronto still has lots of trams left, and is building light rail. Unfortunately we got ride of hundreds of electric buses in the 1990s.

They're good for high-traffic lines, but the cost of infrastructure makes them impractical for lower frequency lines.

We still have them in Czechia. I doubt they would go away now.

New Flyer, the US's biggest bus maker, is making battery-electric buses. But sales are low - 40 to Montreal, 10 to Toronto, 35 to Los Angeles. In comparison, Shenzhen recently replaced 16,000 of its buses with electrics, all from BYD.

Shenzhen also replaced all of its cabs with electrics.

A few months ago here in Zhuhai I met a guy who works for a UK vehicle conglomerate here in China that sells buses to Canada (Toronto if I recall). May have even been an international parent of the same group. Operations all over the world. IIRC they buy the chassis and bits out of China, and assemble in the US for Canada. He was explaining the chassis design for a Canadian bus is actually quite interesting. Due to the heavy use of salt on roads, it has to be quite expensively produced due to the speed of corrosion.

Edinburgh invested in electric and hybrid buses, but they turned out not to have enough power for some of the steeper routes.

London is planning to have "Europe's largest electric bus fleet" next year .. of 240 buses? https://www.london.gov.uk/press-releases/mayoral/london-to-h...

I'm not sure where Shenzen would manage to run 16,000 buses given that London's TFL only have 8,500. The streets must be absolutely full of them.

> I'm not sure where Shenzen would manage to run 16,000 buses given that London's TFL only have 8,500.

Not sure why it would be very surprising. Shenzhen has a much higher population than London, and probably less private ownership.

I'm not sure where Shenzen would manage to run 16,000 buses given that London's TFL only have 8,500.

Population of London: 8.1 million.

Population of Shenzhen: 12.5 million.

Shenzhen is China's 4th largest city.

It surprises me about the steep hills in Edinburgh. I would have thought that electric would be well suited to that.

You've got large amounts of torque from the electric motor to deal with the steep gradient going up and then you get regenerative braking coming down the other side.

It would be interesting to know the numbers involved.

Hills, torque, all that crap is a non issue.

City buses, regardless of drive-train type, are limited in their acceleration first by what passengers will put up with and second by the amount of friction between the tires and the road. An old clapped out two stroke Detroit can still leave a stop fast enough to result in the passengers complaining.

Shenzen's huge, and probably doesn't have as extensive a metro system as London. A quick Google Image search implies that they don't have double-deckers, too, so probably lower capacity per bus.

There still seem to be a couple of problems with BYD: http://www.thetransitwire.com/2018/05/22/problems-plague-byd... . A story on HN recently mentioned replacing the BYD buses with nonelectrical ones.

Without researching it I imagine New Flyer's buses either have low real range or they are super expensive. Or both.

I grant that there's a lack of electric buses and trucks in western countries but how is a taxi different from a normal car? Build electric cars and you can have electric taxis?

There are counter examples though. The Deutsche Post, the german postal service, wanted to electrify their fleet and bought the company StreetScooter GmbH [0] because there were no other eletric vans available to replace their VW Caddys. They scaled up the production to 10000 vans a year in 2017 and a second factory producing another 10000 vans per year should begin operations in 2018. They are pretty common in cities and surrounding areas now but less so in rural areas as they lack the necessary range.

Demand seems to exceed production at the moment, as far as I know they have quite a number of other potential buyers for these cars.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StreetScooter

> but how is a taxi different from a normal car? Build electric cars and you can have electric taxis?

Aside from interior layout and a few things like a sign on top, the expected design for a London Black cab is a large, tall sedan, capable of city driving for many hours of the day, and with a very small turning circle.

The new electric model London black Cab is https://www.theelectrictaxi.co.uk/

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/first-electric-black-...

https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/car-news/98450/new-tx-electric...

They are assembled in the UK, but the maker is now owned (not sure if part or all) by Geely, a Chinese company.

>The new electric model London black Cab is https://www.theelectrictaxi.co.uk/

Why is that marketing site even needed? It's a product for a captive market

I can take a guess:

Electric Black Cabs are still quite rare on London streets, they don't have a huge market share. Black cab drivers have reputation for being curmudgeons who don't like new things, so good PR will help wean them off polluting diesel engine vehicles.

Black Cabs aren't only sold in London, you will find the same vehicles elsewhere in the UK and abroad.

And I suppose it might be a good promo for Geely's other present or future EVs.

I'm not sure of the exact details but taxis are different. Think of any big city taxi - NYC, London, etc. - you've ever gotten into. Bigger. Boxier. More trunk space, etc.

Now consider GM's plant closing in the USA. Plants are configured to produce certain vehicles. Volume matters.

Yes, cars and taxis are close, but for a number of reasons probably not as close as you think.

Well, London cabs might be different but in continental Europe most taxis are slightly modified cars (signs, taximeter, ...) and not purpose-built vehicles. In Germany for example most common taxis are most likely Mercedes Benz E-class, even though that's changing in the last years.

Until recently, the most common vehicle I saw being used as a taxi was a Ford Crown Victoria -- a large standard sedan with an aftermarket partition between the front and back seats.

Indeed the vast, vast majority of taxis throughout the world are fairly standard large sedans and hatchbacks with either aftermarket or manufacturer-provided modifications.

The UK (and especially London and its famous purpose built "black cabs") is probably the biggest exception (the models are exported and can be found outside the UK, but I doubt that would be the case if TfL didn't have such stringent license regulations that simple conversions are not an option).

The taxis I have been driven in in Germany and Spain didn't even have a partition between the front and back seats. Honestly I would feel weird sitting in the back of a taxi when the shotgun seat is empty. Must be some internalized egalitarianism.

In Ireland, it's normally, or at least common (it's not required) to sit in the front seat if in a taxi on your own. I think it's similar in some other countries.

Most likely because they were mass produced by Ford for commercial fleets - most notably for many (if not most) police departments in the United States and Canada. Ford stopped producing them in 2011, so they've slowly been making their way out of the rotation.

Chattanooga has operated electric buses since the 1990s. I would be surprised if this wasn't known by many municipalities in the US, but still it hasn't taken off. Numbers from late 90s indicate that fuel and maintenance costs would be about 1/4 the cost of diesel( https://afdc.energy.gov/files/pdfs/chatt_cs.pdf). I guess range has been the problem stopping adoption.

Buses seemed to me to be a rare case where they are so big and heavy anyway, that low energy density from a cheap and old-fashioned lead acid battery could still work. But you're right, I started searching, and found a 2005 US DOT analysis that said otherwise: https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/Electric...

> Consequently, powering a full-size bus would require a battery pack that is unacceptably large and heavy, as well as too costly to make a battery-electric bus commercially competitive.

There's only a few places where lead acid batteries have really proven viable for transportation and it's in forklifts where their weight is a benefit instead of a detriment and the actual ranges being traveled are extremely short. Everywhere else they're just way too heavy to get workable ranges at reasonable weights.

Yeah the problem is that there are few opportunities for the bus to recharge, they generally don't stop long.

An interesting alternative is modern In-Motion Charging (IMC) buses: stick reasonably big batteries on a trolleybus, when overhead wires are available the trolley uses them and recharges the batteries; and it can run for some time on batteries so it's not as bound to OHL as traditional trolleys.

So its interesting to think what will happen when they turn their gaze outwards. How long will it take Chinese brands to be a force to be reckoned with?

Yes they might be sniffed at to start with, but that's only the same as Japanese cars in the 60s, Skoda in the 90s and most recently Kia, but other manufacturers won't be able to get away with calling them cheap tat for long (assuming they aren't).

I assume there are more barriers to entry compared to other industries. I know Europe slaps duties on imported cars but Japan worked around that.

We're all looking at Tesla to bring electric cars to the masses. Should we be looking at China instead?

Not long at all, I think. The US (and European) car and truck industries have been doing too much navel gazing, and far too little forward thinking and investment. While they have been selling things like gas guzzling light trucks and marketing them as a desirable replacement for regular cars, only made economical by low fuel tax and fracking, the Chinese have heavily invested in the next big thing. While the US companies focused on the short term profit, they are going to lose really heavily when the rest of the global economy has moved over to electric, and they have nothing to offer. Meanwhile, China will have several generations of experience in electric vehicle production of all types by that point.

Maybe not too late, if they pull out all the stops and seriously invest in both production and infrastructure to match, but it will take a lot to beat China at its own game at this point. Needs investment at national scale not only in the US, but the UK and the rest as well.

Regarding Tesla. They have been a pioneer in some respects, but I have doubts that they will be the ones to bring electric to the masses. That will I think be done by the established companies (local and Chinese) after they switch over to mass production. Tesla won't be able to compete on volume or price in my opinion.

>We're all looking at Tesla to bring electric cars to the masses. Should we be looking at China instead?

Right now, Tesla consumes more than 60% of the word EV batteries and their shares is still increasing. I'm sure most of the world's EVs will be Chinese but the most high-end ones will probably be Teslas (made in Shanghai if need be). One can draw a parallel with the smartphones market :)

The smartphone parallel is what I was thinking of. More particularly the transition from dumb phone, to smart phone, Tha basically destroyed most of the incumbents.

I take it you're saying Tesla is Apple. Perhaps, you don't have the network effects and lock in with cars, that you do with phones, and Tesla don't seem to make 'the best' hardware like Apple do, but I don't have a crystal ball either, so I won't argue.

> you don't have the network effects and lock in with cars

Maybe charging stations is the network effect, Tesla has lot stations across the US so you know you wont run out of juice on your trip.

Are we going to still have branded charging stations going forward ?

It sounds a bit insane to have stations where you can get fuel for a mercedes but not a kia.

Good point.

I wonder what the situation is in China. My impression in Europe and America everyone but Tesla had standardised on one charger.

A top level commenter mentioned Geely-owned London Taxi Company is building electrified black cabs. Geely also happens to own Volvo: I think an electric Volvo will do very well in the high-end against Tesla.

Also, if China decides it needs extra EV battery capacity, expect the total number to significantly increase, and Tesla's slice will shrink (in relative terms).

Volvo's ex-performance brand, polestar, is being spun off into a hybrid and electric only manufacturer. They are starting off with the Polestar 1, a hybrid sports coupe, but after that, the polestar 2 and polestar 3 are planned to be electric (sedan and suv, respectively). Polestar 1 will be out of reach for most ($150k), as well as being in a coupe form factor. its competitors will likely be honda NSX, and maybe DB11 or R8. But it will be interesting to see how Polestars future products do.

Car technology always filters down from high-end models to daily drivers over time - today the tech will be in Polestar, in 5 years, it will be in Volvo's generic platform covering several models. Even Tesla kicked things off with the expensive roadster and the tech filtered to cheaper cars, and this follows a long tradition (power steering, airbags, traction control, cruise control were all premium models features at some point but are now standard)

> Right now, Tesla consumes more than 60% of the world EV batteries

Not sure where you heard that but that is completely false. BYD alone shipped over 100,000 electric cars (not including buses) in the third quarter (compared to Tesla's 83,000). Other Chinese car companies BAIC, Rowe, and Geel all ship over 20k+ plug-ins per quarter.

I think that's referring to total energy capacity and not the number of battery packs.

Tesla's luxury vehicles ship with 75/90/100kWh packs while BYD's model seem to have 63kWh (not accounting for busses which seems to have about 325kWh). No definite information available for Model 3, afaik, but I heard that the long range version has a 75kWh pack (50kWh for the "normal range" model?).

I've heard it. Eg https://www.inverse.com/article/47731-tesla-gigafactory-now-...

But yeah I'm not sure whether China doesn't report battery construction, or under reports or what because it sounds suspect to me also.

Side note, but I don't get the part about Škoda. They have been building cars literally since the onset of the 20th century and have been a well established producer for a long time before the 90s.

Or was there some kind of consumer boom for Škoda vehicles in the US/Canada/Australia/the UK, or wherever you are from, that I never heard of before?

Skoda were the subject of many terrible jokes in the 80s and 90s, thanks to poor reputation and reliability of earlier decades. They were so cheap, but far more basic, compared to the better known makes.

They started to get OK reliability in the 80s which meant they started to become popular as value for money motoring. They got pretty common on UK roads. Popular and reliable enough to become a common choice for private hire use. Which as many at the time noted, meant Skoda had the last laugh.

The price advantage faded after the VW takeover, but they remained popular as private hire cars.

See also my reply to the sibling, but in the country I come from they were well known maybe from some time between the 20s or 30s, and they were generally always regarded as a good quality brand. Usually not as prominent as others, but still decent nonetheless.

I didn't know that until the last decade or so they were seen as poor vehicles elsewhere, to the extent as to become the target of jokes. Thanks for the context – it definitely helps me understand better how this fits into OP's point.

Not sure how much of the joking was simply down to price as they were a lot cheaper than others, or how much was build quality vs reliability.

The context of the era helps too, no 70s and 80s mass market cars were without a weak point or six, and jokes on the back of those.

Eastern Bloc makes had poor consistency, technology, and sometimes reliability compared to others. Applied to Lada, Skoda, MZ motorcycles etc. Simple tech also meant simple to fix of course.

Italian makes were beautiful but rusty before even getting to the showroom, with just as poor a rep for reliability and build.

Japanese makes didn't rust, but they couldn't weld and used bolts made of soft cheese pretending to be steel.

British and French? No one knew, they were on strike. ;)

that I never heard of before?

Outside the eastern block countries, Skoda was the punchline of jokes and generally considered one of the worst cars you could buy up until the mid-late 90's when they became the Volkswagen budget brand. It's really only since the early 2000's that Skoda became a brand people wouldn't be embarrassed on being seen in.

This explains it. I come from a former Eastern Bloc country and Škoda was well established here well before the former regime overtook power after a short occupation by the Red army. Also, they were definitely not unknown in (parts of) Germany from very early on, although I guess not as prominent as in countries who didn't build their own cars, for obvious reasons.

I never knew that until very recently they had such a bad reputation in other Western countries. Thanks for clearing this up for me!

Actually that's mostly the Lada that were the subject of many jokes, such as "how do you double the value of a Lada in 5 minutes? By filling up". "What's a Lada on the top of a hill? a miracle. several Lada on a hill? a weird place for a Lada factory. lots of Ladas on a hill? A landfill" etc.

Recently returned from China. The abundance of electric vehicles of all types was quite stunning. A lot of them seemed very high quality, too.

I'm glad they do.

I always thought, when 1 Billion Chinese will start to drive cars instead of bicycles, we're all toast (literally).

It seems, that also the Chinese government knows this, and they're doing the right thing.

They know that they'll have an easier time producing batteries and electricity than gasoline, that's all.

Is the world running out of petrol? Chinese fuel prices are fairly cheap on a global scale. It has far more to do with public discontent over air quality than petro-politics.

We can have cheap oil and still run out of it.

That's what happens when you replace all ICE with EV until you don't have much oil to extract economically.

"The Stone Age didn’t end for lack of stone, and the oil age will end long before the world runs out of oil." -- Sheikh Zaki Yamani

China became a net importer of oil in the 90s, and the negative externalities of petroleum production would naturally induce them to focus on demand reduction to alleviate that dependency. They also travel far and wide to drill (just as the U.S. does).

Is that "petro-politics", environmentalism, or rational energy policy?

If China had the same petrol car ownership as the USA, they would need more than 100 million barrels a day just for the Chinese car owners. Given this is slightly more than current total global consumption, petro-politics definitely come into play.

Is seems we are running out of breathable air faster than petrol. :)

It will still be a problem, since the energy has to come from somewhere. Just as our energy use is a problem.

https://outline.com/C7Nddc

This is helpful because the article is behind a paywall, but it makes me curious about the ethical/moral/legal questions that arise from a tool that seemingly copies other site's content verbatim.

People might get annoyed with publishers like WJS for putting content behind a paywall, but at least they are trying to find a sustainable model in this post-web world. Putting up a paywall is a pretty gutsy move given the abundance of free news options.

The article have 76 cookies (48 third-party), and send almost 300 third-party requests that violate the privacy of the readers. https://webbkoll.dataskydd.net/en/results?url=http%3A%2F%2Fw...

I think people should be more curious and concerned about the ethical and moral behaviour of these publishers.

This is a good argument for usage of adblockers/privacy tools, or simply not visiting offending sites, or requesting more transparency about the tracking tools, or agitating for stricter privacy laws...

I don't this is a good argument for republishing someone else's work without permission.

> I think people should be more curious and concerned about the ethical and moral behaviour of these publishers.

Can we not do both?

They're republishing a publically accessible document, which is behind "paywall" that isn't actually a wall.

So I'm fine with it. Even if it's technically a copyright violation.

> it makes me curious about the ethical/moral/legal questions that arise from a tool that seemingly copies other site's content verbatim

As someone who pays for journalism, and appreciates quality journalism over clickbait, this thoroughly pisses me off. Particularly when you have users such as this one who seem to single-mindedly comment with Outline links.

How do you feel about linking to the "you're leaving facebook" redirect page that does the same thing, as far as getting access to the content without paying?

I see you making this complaint, and I'm interested to know more about your thinking.

I also pay for journalism, to selected publications. I couldn't afford to buy a subscription to all the publications on which I read just a handful of articles a month, but most of them allow you to read a handful of articles without a subscription. The WSJ is the exception here.

My question to you: would you expect all HN readers who want to read submitted WSJ articles to purchase a WSJ subscription - along with subscriptions to all the other paywalled publications posted here? Given that few will be able to justify the cost of that, do you think WSJ should be banned from HN?

On the face of it, it's pure copyright infringement. I have no idea how the site intends to stay alive once it's big enough to make money. As soon as it attracts a decent user base, it'll be a great target for a lawsuit. Moreover, copyright infringement also carries criminal liability.

So, resident of Albuquerque here. Our city embarked on a plan to modernize our bus system by introducing a bus rapid transit (BRT) system down one of our busiest streets. This plan included ordering 15 buses from Build Your Dreams (BYD), a Chinese electric bus manufacturer.

Very recently, the city sent the buses back and demanded a refund after they failed to meet their advertised miles traveled per charge. They were the only thing keeping the new BRT route from becoming operational. Everything else was in place.

Getting them out of the city was a bit of a challenge. One of the buses broke down shortly after leaving.

China may be the only one in the race, but this experience has convinced me that it could never lead the race.

Just to throw something out there. My city here in Ontario Canada has been running BYD buses for a while. We have been very happy with BYD buses. These buses are clean and don't emit the black smoke. We have had very positive experiences.

And why would people downvote this comment? Agree or disagree, but downvoting a completely harmless comment like this is just bad for the conversations here.

I did. And I don't mean to violate rules or to be insulting, but it set off my skepticism side. The comment, to me, did not seem to be from someone who writes English as a first language. The account is two days old, and has made only two pro-China comments. I mean no offense to the poster, but I'll remain skeptical for now.

Hacker News Guidelines: "Please don't impute astroturfing or shillage. That degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about it, email us and we'll look at the data."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm curious to know more. I tried to look into it but all I could find were news articles and press releases saying that the first electric buses in the province were set to arrive in 2019

https://news.ontario.ca/mto/en/2018/04/ontarios-first-electr...

I am all for electric buses, I have stated many times I think the best route for that would be to Federally mandate replacing all school buses with such. However while mass transit is very heavily subsidized by the Federal Government the same is not true about school bus fleets, that should flip. Fund the school buses and let mass transit pay for itself more. I like EVs in general and think people should make a choice that fits their lifestyle, I own a TM3 myself.

Still I will state that for the most this article overlooks the facts that one of China's big exporters has had heaps of issues with its electric buses. Recently [1] Albuquerque has had to reject their BYD buses because they don't make their range claims and overheat in hot weather. This wasn't the only city to have issues with these buses. so where are the American manufacturers at? Proterra is the only one I have seen mentioned [2] and recently in Forbes their name came up.

[1] https://insideevs.com/albuquerque-reject-and-return-byd-elec...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2018/05/21/ele...

Wait. How are school bus fleets funded? You don't have to pay to ride the bus. Or go to school. So -- from the outside -- it seems like they're completely funded by tax dollars. Are you saying that's not true? How does it work?

We have electric buses in Greece since the mid 50s. The key difference with modern era buses is that they don't work with batteries but rely on an infrastructure of aerial power lines to which they connect with two antennas protruding from the top of the vehicle. One thing I remember from whenever I was on board them is how damn slow they move. Occasionally the antennas will disconnect which means the driver will has to move to the back of the vehicle and reconnect them. They're still in use as to this day.

Pictures of vehicles from various eras can be seen here: https://www.google.com/search?q=%CF%84%CF%81%CF%8C%CE%BB%CE%...

Those are trolleybuses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus

Only place I've seen those in the US is in San Francisco.

There are also some trollebuses in Cambridge, Mass, heading west of Harvard Square toward Watertown. as I understand it, they replaced regular trolleys some decades ago (1950s?)

Also, Boston's Silver Line buses start their journey in a tunnel, running on overhead power for several stops, then switch to CNG to complete their route aboveground.

Different thing from a true electric bus.

I'd say they're truer (but I see what you mean).

I've heard that the environmental impact of building the vehicles (the batteries in particular) and charging them outweighs the savings in emissions.

Basically batteries use lots of toxic chemicals and require LOTS of energy during manufacture.

Also isn't most electricity generation in China still based on burning coal?

Have any experts done any analysis to see what environmental benefit this brings, if any?

> Also isn't most electricity generation in China still based on burning coal?

Xi Jinping is anti-coal, meaning China is anti-coal. The government's been converting coal power sources to natural gas and getting homeowners and businesses to do the same. In one year the level of the most harmful pollution went down by 33% throughout the region, 54% in Beijing alone.

> Have any experts done any analysis to see what environmental benefit this brings, if any?

The 4.8 million cars in Beijing are the second biggest cause of air pollution there, so switching to electric would significantly limit this source.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-02/u-s-china...

They’re still a win even when you use coal to charge. It’s true that manufacturing is more energy intensive, but the breakeven point is in the neighborhood of 10-20,000 miles.

Win compared to old models of gasoline and deisel? probably yes.

Win compared to more efficient modern versions, I'm not sure.

Win compared to hybrids? No way.

I don't think so. The added impact of battery manufacturing is quite small compared to the impact of manufacturing any vehicle, and that in turn is a fairly small proportion of the total impact of a vehicle over its lifetime.

Only looking at driving, a Prius emits about 238 grams of CO2 per mile. A reasonably efficient EV charging from the US's current generation mix emits about 150 grams/mile. If we assume they'll last 200,000 miles on average, that's about 17 tonnes more CO2 for the Prius. The EV produces in the neighborhood of 6 tonnes more CO2 during manufacture compared to a traditional gas car, and this advantage will be slightly smaller compared to a hybrid.

Do you have any references for the break even point?

This covers that and much more: https://blog.ucsusa.org/rachael-nealer/gasoline-vs-electric-...

1. You've forgotten WHERE the emissions occur. Would you prefer it next to children waiting for the school bus in urban neighborhoods OR out in the factory district? 2. Batteries are a new technology, they will get faster much better than ICE engines, since they are already mature tech 3. batteries do not use "lots" of toxic chemicals. Li-ion is the main type of battery used in EV's and buses and the tricky/worrisome chemicals are in the VAST minority compared with Li, Al, and other safe compounds. 4. Yes, experts have done the analysis, many many times. You are perpetuating false myths that climate change deniers like to use.

The chemicals can be recycled and doing so is highly lucrative give how scarce some of them are.

China is also a technology leader in producing the means to clean up their energy act (solar panels, wind mills, etc.) and is also deploying these on a massive scale.

And it's not like it is super efficient to ship oil across the globe by burning more oil to produce fuel (in a process that is not exactly clean either), which then gets transported by burning some more oil, so that you can burn it in a car using a combustion engine that mostly produces noise and heat.

So, no, these are not show stoppers.

Please read that : https://www.transportenvironment.org/sites/te/files/publicat...

That sounds like the kind of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) that would be really easy for motivated parties to spread.

If organizations like the Competitive Enterprise Institute & Heritage Foundation, are willing to produce videos with slogans like "Carbon emissions, they call it pollution, we call it life"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sGKvDNdJNA

Then maybe wait for a proper study by a reputable source before you buy in to that FUD whole hog.

"I heard vaccinations are actually bad for you" https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/23/health/russia-trolls-vaccine-...

"I heard the CIA invented AIDS as a way to keep black people in poverty" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Infektion

Who does your anti-EV talking points serve?

Pretty sure that's FUD spread by parties interested in seeing ICE cars hold on a bit longer.

You have heard wrong.

Source(s)?

https://www.transportenvironment.org/sites/te/files/publicat...

-80% CO2eq emission for an EV compared to a diesel car in my country.

Well, actually in Belgium there is a coöperation between: VDL Bus Roeselare en Van Hool .

They are not as big as BYD ofc, but the first one drove around the 1st of October and i think Belgian/Europe quality > Chinese quality.

Other European alternatives: Finish Linkker OY en Swedish: Volvo Bushet.

PS. They are opening a construction site also in the US.

I've been in Shenzhen since 2009. They had electric buses here back then. I'm pretty certain I saw my first electric taxi over five years ago. Now, they are common. The ROW is behind China in several areas like this.

Has there been any research into safe, electrified highways? I imagine if the car could cruise while essentially “plugged in” it would dramatically increase the range and ability of EVs. Challenging task I admit.

Fixing infrastructure is expensive. Just look at the roads and bridges in e.g. the US or Germany. Just to single out two countries with a mighty car lobby and crumbling infrastructure.

Mercedes-Benz are starting to get in on the act with their buses and trucks.

So they're defying the laws of physics, now? /s

https://electrek.co/2018/02/21/tesla-semi-defies-laws-physic...

"But for now, the same laws of physics apply in Germany and in California."

He might want to have a talk with VW engineers about that.

Let's consider hydrogen cars are the next big thing. Is it a good move to go massively towards electric cars? Especially regarding batteries that will have to be massively replaced in 2 years?

Why 2 years?

Batteries last longer than that.

Hydrogen has problems, hydrogen embrittlement, its extremely hard to contain.

Additionally hydrogen's major strength, that it continues the current fill up at a filling station dynamic* means that it needs to start making gains now, while there are still petrol stations left, to make the switch to hydrogen.

Hydrogen may well 'win' but I don't think its an open and shut case.

*yes you can generate hydrogen at home. In that situation you basically you have the same tradeoffs as a standard battery

>Hydrogen may well 'win' but I don't think its an open and shut case.

How? My understanding is that hydrogen is either produced from fossil fuels (aka non-renewable) or from electrolysis but the latter won't be economical for many decades AFAIK.

Worst, all things considered, hydrogen cars are still far less efficient that battery EV: https://insideevs.com/efficiency-compared-battery-electric-7...

Orkney are in the early stages of moving to hydrogen from electrolysis for the ferries. To replace diesel and because they've already reached 100% of power from renewables so they're actively looking for other fossil uses they can move to renewable.

Germany has some similar projects creating hydrogen as storage for renewables, and replacing some diesel trains with hydrogen.

I'm less convinced it will replace petrol, but there is definitely a case for it replacing many uses of diesel.

Petrol is less efficient, but like hydrogen it is more energy dense. And you also have a tank like petrol cars so people don't have to worry about new fangled batteries and running out of electricity.

You seem to be over estimating my support for hydrogen. My next car will more likely be battery powered, and I'd be buying battery, rather than hydrogen shares, but it isn't without merit.

AFAIK use of hydrogen is inefficient in several ways (creation, storage) and thus there is no reason to expect that hydrogen fuel is the next big thing for cars.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNV8qi_rJBg

IMO the next big things are:

- Fuel like ethanol. https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2017/09/18/solar-fuel-system-recy...

- Quickly charging batteries that are not affected by dendrites.

From that perspective, there will be a strong need for various rare earth elements. Leading to an insane amount of pollution. Are there any breakthroughs in rare earth extraction & treatment process?

Rare earth is not "that" rare. Not every rare earth element is equally rare. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare-earth_element

Quote: Despite their name, rare-earth elements are – with the exception of the radioactive promethium – relatively plentiful in Earth's crust

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neodymium: Although neodymium is classed as a rare earth, it is a fairly common element, no rarer than cobalt, nickel, or copper, and is widely distributed in the Earth's crust.

Good practices and recycling could be very important with regard to costs and environment protection.

There is always progress if progress is financed.

Example: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/11/european-ecoswing-buil...

Quote: A conventional wind generator making 1MW of power will have about one tonne of neodymium in its magnets. The superconductor uses about 1 kilogram of the rare earth gadolinium. It costs just $18.70/kg (£14.50/kg) of gadolinium oxide versus $45.50/kg of neodymium oxide.

I doubt that the rare earth is an important cost factor for such a turbine.

http://www.windustry.org/how_much_do_wind_turbines_cost

Quote: The costs for a utility scale wind turbine range from about $1.3 million to $2.2 million per MW of nameplate capacity installed. Most of the commercial-scale turbines installed today are 2 MW in size and cost roughly $3-$4 million installed.

> From that perspective, there will be a strong need for various rare earth elements. Leading to an insane amount of pollution. Are there any breakthroughs in rare earth extraction & treatment process?

What rare earth elements are you talking about, exactly? I keep hearing about the scarcity of such "rare" elements, but except lithium (which isn't that rare, it's just we haven't invested in the infrastructure), I'm not aware of the lack of any other materials needed for EV cells.

Yes, extraction from "red mud" (a widely available waste product of aluminium extraction): https://kuleuven.sim2.be/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Rodolfo_...

The resulting pollution level is effectively a cost choice.

You've not explained where all this hydrogen is supposed to come from and get transported.

> Let's consider hydrogen cars are the next big thing.

.. let's not? Where are you getting the hydrogen, and how are you transporting it in the car?

>Where are you getting the hydrogen

Fossil fuels (nat gas, more specifically). Betting on electrolysis to produce hydrogen economically from renewable sources is as fanciful as betting on batteries to be made from renewable materials.

Let's not, it cost 80k$ for a Mirai and it use 4 times more electricity than an EV. With a more complex infrastructure to build.

Western media can't see through the veneer, it's true that China has vast amounts of eletric vehicle, but it's due in part to the tax cut and subsidies offered, the vehicles are generally of low quality and little effort put in, some look like ugly plastic toys, no real technology edge across-the-board.

Some cars are just cobbled together to claim subsidies or even defraud the government, since the subsidies are kinda huge, they can ask sky high prices for those garbage cars and make staggering amounts of profit. Just search China EV Subsidy Fraud.

You can say on application side, China is ahead, but on technology side, the US is years ahead.

They are used in Europe as well, for example Liverpool has a fleet of BYD electrical buses

https://www.masstransitmag.com/home/press-release/12371883/b...

And they don't look that bad.

> ugly plastic toys

You were thinking of Teslas, perhaps? ducks

The bodywork of those buses is built by Alexander Dennis, based in Scotland.

We had an electric bus in my city for testing purposes made by Yutong (another Chinese company), and it really looked like plastic: https://www.ville-rail-transports.com/wp-content/uploads/Cap...

I have no idea why it was not retained for further tests, and I never tried it.

Who cares if it looks like plastic? Or is plastic?

> the vehicles are generally of low quality and little effort put in, some look like ugly plastic toys, no real technology edge across-the-board.

Who cares, if they're not pumping out CO2?

If the price of avoiding ecological catastrophe is we all have to drive ugly electric cars for 25 years, any sane society should be thrilled with that compromise.

Beijing’s plate lottery has separate pools for ICE and EV cars, so if you want to get a car quickly in Beijing best to go with an EV. Even though Tesla doesn’t qualify for subsidies in China, they have been very popular as a non crap option for rich Beijingers who would have gotten an Audi instead.

I’ve ridden in a BYD electric taxi before and it felt like a normal car. As long as it doesn’t explode, I guess.

There seem to be a lot of Teslas in Hong Kong, too. I wonder if the same reasoning also applies?

HK has its own regulations on car ownership, but they are also very strict/expensive, so I imagine there is some significant relaxation/discount for EVs. Also, HK doesn’t have high car import taxes like mainland China does, so there wouldn’t be as much reason to go BYD anyways.

New things always came out ugly first isn't it.

"some looks like ugly plastic toys"

I think it was William Gibson who wrote in The Peripheral of cardboard cars?

This is simply because China does not control oil supply, so they do not have a choice.

Control the consumption of oil market is no small power either.

Uzbekistan does not control the oil supply either.

> Uzbekistan does not control the oil supply either.

Uzbekistan does not have ambitions to become a world power.

Tamerlan is going to rise from the dead and conquer the world.

strange. my city got electric buses last year or so. it could be they are chinese of course.

If you run against the paywall, use one of the links posted on Twitter. Twitter seems to be a referrer that gets through the paywall.

https://twitter.com/search?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Fart...

how can I read this article?

Can we add some sort of HN rule that bans sites with paywalls?

This is in the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and there's more explanation here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

Write China scare article -> Get more page clicks.

Are we done with this yet?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com