Norway's electric cars zip to new record: almost a third of all sales

I get your point, but to be fair, the numbers in your comparison are a bit off, since a $40-60k tax credit would make many electric cars effectively free. That would be a much bigger incentive than what Norway has.

Even if it's just "legislative decisions", it's fucking incredible that a country did what it did to get there. Do you really think the US is 2 inches away from shutting out it's internal big-oil?

Even if tech isn't the solution, and it's just decisions, it can still be remarkable.

Your facts are correct, but that makes it no less interesting or incredible.

> I'm sure of the US govt increased the federal tax credit for EVs from $7.5k to $40-60k, you'd see similar adoption in the US too.

Okay. And if such an event happened, you'd not think it incredible?

EVs are free (or significantly cheaper) on most toll roads, parking, and pay at most 50% of regular fees for ferries.

Owning an old short range EV as a second car can easily save you 1800€ a year[1] in toll fees alone. Even an old electric wreck is easily worth 10000€ just in reduced toll fees if it's able to do 5 more years of just rolling past that toll station barrier. Even banged up and with a 50% degraded battery the car is still valuable, as long as it can get you to work and back home again.

There was a time some years ago when you could essentially cover the down payments for a Tesla Model S from saved ferry fees if your daily commute crossed Trondheimsfjorden (cost like 30 USD per way, this "bug" has since been fixed, you now have to pay 50% of the ticket).

[1]: https://www.nrk.no/rogaland/dette-vil-bomringen-koste-deg-1....

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/09112016/washington-state...

> Washington State Voters Reject Nation's First Carbon Tax

> The measure was unpopular with social justice groups and divided environmental activists, many arguing it did not go far enough in promoting clean energy.

> Among those who decided not to support the carbon tax were Sierra Club, the Washington Environmental Council, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Climate Solutions, and 350Seattle.org.

https://crosscut.com/2018/11/washington-voters-reject-carbon...

> Washington voters reject carbon fees for second time

But I agree, getting popular support has been very hard and will continue to be problematic.

Ars Technica writes that although this bill failed, it will help shape the debate to come.

Oh and Exxon Mobile spent $1mm to support the group lobbying for the Carbon Tax.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/12/bipartisan-carbo...

That's an impressively terrible rating for something with the curb weight of a 90s 1/2 ton pickup. I suspect the vehicle could comfortably handle far more considering how much better the power and brakes are than a 90s pickup but they don't want to be replacing certain parts under warranty (my guess would be CVs since the S has plenty of torque and traction to hurt them with).

I just got a Model S actually, and am considering installing a hitch for carrying bikes. But I would NEVER pull a trailer..

What if I do, and my trailer collides with something/someone, and I become liable for millions in damages, not covered by my insurance...

At least in Norway, how large a trailer you can pull is regulated in the license of the car. For a Model S this number is 0 kg. And insurance covers what the license says.

(IANAL, but Norwegian Tesla forums seem to agree that hitches are for carrying bikes only around here, until Tesla is bothered to officially submit trailer crash tests or similar)

And kayaks too.

Tow bar: Not sure what others do without them. Furniture shops lend out trailers for free so that you can take your new sofa with you back home. I recently transported the materials for building my new front deck on a trailer. I tend to rent a trailer for taking things to the landfill/recycling facilities especially when renovating my home (and Norwegians do a lot of home renovation..). When helping young people move a trailer is all it takes. Etc etc. I used a tow bar at least five times a year for misc errands. (Now I have a Model S and have to leech on neighbors)

I am not sure why this is different and how e.g. US or German or French culture would be digferent.. I guess the alternative is paying others for delivery/disposal, doing less handiwork oneself, and (in the case of US) buying pickup trucks that in no way will fit on Norwegian roads and parking lots.

Buying large things such as a sofa, lumber

Need to do this a handful of times per year, probably 5-6 on average. Everyone with a house does this.

Roof rack is for bikes/skis/kayaks.

IMO anyone buying a fossil fuel car at this point is the one being duped by marketing. (excluding circumstances such as nowhere to charge).

First, it's fossil fuel that has a marketing issue. First of all, you have to pretend the second hand value of your car is not going to rapidly tank as EVs take over. If you are buying Diesel, I hope you factor in that it will be a hard sell in a few years and you might have to write off a lot more than you bargained for when you sell at a much lower price than you hoped. IMHO Diesel is the canary in the coal mine here; the same will happen to petrol cars in a few years. This will rapidly kill the market for new ICE vehicles as there is no point in buying them if you can't pass them on at a reasonable price a few years later.

Secondly, fossil fuel cars benefit from all sorts of government protection including tax benefits for big oil, tax funded expensive wars in the middle east (at trillions $ cost), silly subsidies for things like bio diesel, etc. And that's before you factor in the damage burning fuel does. Which people seem to be allowed to get away with for absolutely free. If you stop all that overnight, ICE based cars would become a really hard sell because fuel prices would rise, and manufacturers would be retrofitting cars with expensive fixes to make them stop being a health and safety risk in fear of action law suits. Think tobacco industry here. Why not? Diesel/petrol, fumes kill people, by the millions with long term health affects and measurable life time decreases. There's no good reason for any of this to continue to be the case as EVs become widely available commodity products available at competitive prices. This is more than a little marketing challenge as governments world wide seem to be cracking down on this with taxes, vehicle restrictions, etc. And that's of course aside from the whole co2 business. I know, not a popular topic but it's having real effects on fuel prices and vehicle taxes in most civilized places at this point. I don't see that ending any time soon; rather the opposite.

Norway is leading here, but plenty more countries are following. This will kill demand and increase cost for ICE based vehicles. That's why GM and Ford shut down a lot of their ICE business last year and why the likes of VW are making tens of billions of investments in production capacity for EVs over the next few years. In fact, most major manufacturers are effectively divesting their ICE business for a few years now. A few percent now, doubling every 18 months or so creates a nice exponential growth curve for EVs. Meanwhile, everything else is dealing with shrinking markets, declining ASPs, increasing taxes, government pressure, etc. There's very little future in ICE based vehicles, judging from how major manufacturers are behaving in the last year.

Charging infrastructure is just fine. There's plenty of it already and more is on the way. Actually, most of it is under-utilised most of the time (<10%). So, there's plenty of room for growth short term and plenty more long term as there are continued investments in charging infrastructure happening everywhere. Sure, in the utterly unrealistic scenario that everyone would switch overnight to EVs this would indeed be a minor challenge for grid providers. But growth as per even the most optimistic scenarios, provides plenty of room for continued investments in infrastructure, clean energy, etc. You say problem, I say business opportunity. Most healthy businesses would consider predicted growth spread over multiple years/decades to be fantastic news. Of course it kind of sucks if all you know is burning coal/gas and all the cool new hip kids are undercutting your prices with solar/wind.

Battery life is not really a problem for the vast majority of commuters. Even with the unimpressive/limited range of already obsolete first generation vehicles like the Nissan Leaf or Chevy Bolt. Long distance travel indeed requires annoyingly long charging breaks; but on the other hand taking a break after 200-300 miles is not the end of the world. And if you drive those kind of distances daily, your life sucks much more than that of most drivers stuck in perpetual traffic jams. Luckily, faster charging high end vehicles with longer ranges are becoming available as well. And that's before you factor in battery R&D over the next few decades that will decimate cost and double/triple capacities.

But most people rarely need to rely on public charging points since their car will be fully charged when they unplug it at home in the morning. And coming back to the charging infrastructure, most people see a measurable but not spectacular increase in their electricity use while charging almost exclusively at home. You have to drive a lot to double your usage. So if that's the same for most people, we're talking probably much less than 2 x increase in total electricity demand. And that's spread out over the next 10-20 years. Also, charging happens mostly off peak at night. And you can do some interesting things such as use charged cars to provide power back to the grid during peak hours. In short, this is not an issue now and unlikely to become one.

Finally, battery life span seems awesome in first generation vehicles. Mostly their batteries get reused rather than recycled after their vehicles are written off. Tesla guarantees 100K+ miles for their drivetrains + batteries at or above 70% capacity: reason: they know full well, they can do at least double that. I think Elon Musk was actually boasting numbers closer to 500K miles recently. Most ICE cars would go to many expensive maintenance cycles every few tens of thousands of miles.

Also their grid is 100% renewable and per capita they are around half of US emissions and on par with most of Europe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sUjHUTpZdA

Oslo-Stockholm is ~530km mostly flat.

You probably need to charge either way.

Very much a signal.

Power plants are similar in terms of cost and time consuming to upgrade. There are around 30 million cars in the uk. Assuming an average electric car cost of £20,000 that equates to £600 billion and cars tend to be replaced every 15 years (average car age is 8 years). A powerplant costs about £2 for every Watt installed and the uk needs about 100GW or around £200 billion. A typical large scale nuclear or wind project can take 5 to 15 years to complete but on average a powerplant can last 50 years.

A better argument is that in some countries already a large proportion of electricity comes from renewable sources such as hydroelectric in Norway. Sadly this doesn't translate to the whole world: China is mostly powered by coal.

Also, car to grid is becoming a thing where car batteries provide power back to the grid when they are not needed. This can add a lot of flexibility to the grid and better utilization of capacity. IMHO, deploying GwHs of battery capacity on the roads in the next few years is creating a massive opportunity for electricity companies to improve their economics and decrease their dependence on gas/coal.

There are many countries that have large reserves, the US included, China has a monopoly because it subsidizes processing, in particular through dumping costs on the environment through little regulation of pollution, not because they are the only country with reserves.

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

I'd also guess that if any government in the US would increase gasoline taxes to European levels (more than doubling the gas prices), they would be quickly voted out in the next elections.