Japan mandates cars to be 30% more fuel efficient by 2030 | Hacker News Reader

Japan mandates cars to be 30% more fuel efficient by 2030

asia.nikkei.com

31 pointsreddotX11 comments

Here in the US we have the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety fighting to go the other way. For example the new requirements for roof strength add weight. It's for nothing too, since safety is impacted by the thicker roof pillars creating bigger blind spots.

My bet is to stop some corner cutting (literally) cheap non-US brands.

So they still expect a significant portion of new cars in 2030 to have ICEs? Not very ambitious.

What would you consider ambitious?

Mandate that ICE cars be 30% more fuel efficient in 2025 OR 80% by 2030?

And is it better to have ambitious goals vs realistic goals? What might the impact of society be if we put up very ambitious goals but fail them all massively, what will happen to the trust of government institutions?

P.S I have a B.Sc in Energy engineering and working on a M.Sc in a field of renewable energy and I'm very skeptical of the goal politicians make, many goals who should be fulfilled when they have long since left office.

this. exactly why no one trusts their governments anymore.

Personally from what I've read and seen in terms of progress by governments and manufacturers, I think it's a stretch to even entertain the notion that by 2030 the majority of cars won't still be internal combustion powered. The amount of electric vehicles on the road is certainly increasing day-to-day, but I'll just be impressed if even half the cars sold are purely electric by 2030.

Switch from horses to cars where rather abrupt, like within 10-15 years.

I'd prefer if the LTO (Land Transportation Office) would stop permitting old commercial vehicles with incredibly filthy exhaust from passing inspection. Basically a business-focused "cash for clunkers" program.

I get crushed with higher shaken costs for my sports cars while I sit behind 30-year-old diesel-powered trucks that spew black smoke in my face. -_-

I know that feeling. I believe they allow those trucks because they are a part of economy in the sense they provide jobs and the companies that own said vehicles would "go away" if they had to buy new ones. That kind of logic is absurd but I bet that is the card they play to get protection.

What does this mean exactly? It is easy to say an electric car is more fuel efficient, the energy is expended somewhere else. Same with hydrogen fuel cells. I think the most likely thing that will happen is increased usage of the stored energy methods mentioned above, and smaller gasoline engines. It's not easy to just make an engine more fuel efficient. You think people haven't been trying to do this since the combustion engine was invented? Never mind that electric vehicles having smaller carbon footprints over their lifetime heavily depends on the electric power source (in some cases they produce more carbon). BTW, Japan has a great mass transit system that most people use so the actual carbon difference in the next 30 years from this law is highly suspect. I get it - we have to do something right? This is not the answer. We need something better.

FTA: "The new rules also begin considering the carbon dioxide emitted when generating the power to run electric vehicles. These emissions will be converted into a fuel economy figure and included in the average, giving carmakers an incentive to improve the performance and range of their electric offerings."

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