Ireland to ban new petrol and diesel vehicles from 2030 | Hacker News Reader

Ireland to ban new petrol and diesel vehicles from 2030

bbc.com

213 pointsclouddrover222 comments

The first thing which needs to change:

"Coal and peat continue to be used for power generation. In 2017 coal and peat accounted for 49% of carbon emissions from electricity generation, despite only accounting for 19% of electricity generated.The result of this is that the carbon intensity of the Irish electricity was the fourth highest in the EU in 2016, despite all our progress on using renewable energy."

https://www.seai.ie/resources/seai-statistics/key-statistics...

Peat? Seriously? Peat in Tasmania (Australia) is protected, because it occurs in national parks. This suggests it is a big deal for biodiversity. Yet apparently people are burning it for energy...

Peat is a reasonably common domestic fuel in parts of Ireland and Scotland - also the "peaty" taste in whisky traditionally comes from drying malted barley using peat fires.

However, I agree that for a variety of reasons that peat should mostly be left where it is.

It is pretty polluting for the amount of energy you get out of it but I don't think it necessarily follows that because it occurs in national parks in Tasmania that it is important for biodiversity on the other side of the world in Ireland.

Bogs can play a major role in capturing and storing carbon. I think it's safe to say that they play an important role in the ecosystem no matter which side of the planet they're on, and should remain unmolested.

I'm Irish; many of us are ashamed of how we treat our bogs. We have tiny peat-burning power stations which:

  * Are extremely polluting
  * Destroy a unique ecosystem
  * Are loss-making

all for the sake of "protecting" a few local jobs.

Is all peat created equal? How are we going to make whiskey when the peat is all gone?

I suspect the requirements of the whisky industry for peat are probably pretty tiny - as far as I know its only the smaller higher end distillers that actually burn peat.

Peated whisky is a specialty product, with rather small production scales compared to unpeated Highland and Speyside malts. So yes, it is quite sustainable, given the regrowth rate.

Many years ago when I was a student I had a summer job working in one of the huge industrial scale maltings that supplied quite a few of the popular whisky brands - I can't remember if they produced peated malt but I do remember their analysis lab having gas chromatography equipment for analysing such things.

Not all whisky is peated. At the current rates, there is enough peat for hundreds of years of whisky production, even if no new peat was formed, and it regrows at around 1mm/year, which is quite sustainable, if we stop using it for power generation.

All of the makers of peated whisky are committed to protecting the peat, as far as I know. And their peat usage is absolutely miniscule compared to its current use in power generation.

Bruichladdich has a good summary: https://www.bruichladdich.com/faq/is-peat-sustainable/

I believe peat use is rare in the malting for Irish Whiskey. More common in Scotland but still not the majority.

But presumably you could burn other fuel and get a similar result. The traditionalists would be grumpy though.

It is quite rare, but not nonexistent. I believe there's only about three to five distilleries who produce or will be producing peated Irish whiskey, at least one of which isn't yet in production at the moment.

> But presumably you could burn other fuel and get a similar result

I'm not so sure about that. Peat smoke has a quite distinctive smell.

Peat is a renewable resource, like hardwood forests. It grows, but it is very slow so it's more expensive than other renewable resources. Someone here quoted 1mm/year but in active areas it's closer to 1 inch (26mm)/year

>all for the sake of "protecting" a few local jobs.

a lot like people that give out about fishing it appeals to petty nationalism.

Ireland has been burning peat as a source of heat in homes for hundreds of years. It's the only abundant fuel source in Ireland. In recent years much of the raised bogland has been protected for conservation, and stripped bogs being converted into solar and wind farms.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braunkohlebergbau

In Germany they have relocated some 100.000 persons over the years, just to mine and burn lignite (not peat - corrections) for electricity. I think that's crazy. (The irony is that the Green party is currently the strongest political party in Germany, but the energy sector seems to have a stronger influence, go figure)

Braunkohle isn't peat.

Peat == Torf

Not a big difference to the environment, is there?

Peat is worse.

That's not to say lignite is in any way "good", it's still a horribly inefficient way of getting energy. But peat stores large amounts of methane and carbon which gets released when drying it. Mining lignite coal also release some of that, but in much smaller amounts.

A quick estimation about the environmental impacts (with data for Germany only) shows peat is at least 5-20 times worse in terms of surface destruction - I have no idea how to compare the ecological impact of removing a biotope vs. moving a town.

Lignite:

- thickness of a lignite bed 11-35m [0]

- surface destruction per metric ton: 220-700 cm² [0]

Peat:

- thickness of a peat layer 1,5-2m [0])

- surface destruction per metric ton [1]:

-- at least 3,850-5,130 cm² (using the same density for coal and peat)

-- 6,000-8,000 cm² (moist peat, 0.8g/cm³ [2])

-- 10,000-13,300 cm² (dried peat, 0.4 g/cm³ [2], considering the higher calorific value for peat [4])

-- at worst 12,000-16,000 cm² (dried peat, 0.4 g/cm³ [2])

[0] (Data from 2015 for German mining areas; page in German) https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/daten/flaeche-boden-land-oeko...

[1] There was no data for the surface destruction for peat in [0] so I estimated it using densities from [2]:

thickness lignite bed x surface destruction lignite x density lignite / density lignite / thickness lignite

e.g. 700 cm² x 11 m x 1.25 g/cm³ / 0.801 g/cm³ / 1.5 m = 8011 cm²

[2] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=peat+lignite

[3] https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/fuels-higher-calorific-va...

[4] The gross calorific value for peat is 5-20 % higher than for lignite [2]-[3]; though I guess that does not exclude the energy needed for drying the peat.

Just had very quick look at coal subsidies in Germany, it seems stone coal alone is getting 3.2 Bn per year... Not verified the source, so. Based on the last Wp prices for solar modules of roughly 0.3 €, doubling to cover installation, that amounts to 5 GW, give or take a little bit... Not too bad I think considering that in 2017 or 2018 world wide installations amounted to roughly 100 GW. And you would have jobs to get the plants installed and maintained.

Hey, we got a lot of coal in Australia, maybe Ireland wants some!

Yes, peat. Ireland does not have significant coal deposits, and our forests were chopped down for, amongst other things, our next door neighbour's collection of boats, which is part of how your ancestors likely ended up in Australia in the first place. That left peat as a fuel source up until recently.

We do not see the fact that we've been so dependent on it as a fuel source as a good thing.

Bleh. Meanwhile England has been cheering itself recently for going days/weeks without burning any coal for electricity...

But burning a lot of natural gas instead. Still fossil fuel!

Current national grid status meters/graphs:

  http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

CCGT == "Combined cycle gas turbine"

A fair chunk of which gets piped over from Ireland these days.

Hello from the south island!

This happened in the Netherlands as well until coal was found in the province of Limburg. Quite a few of the old polders are actually dug up peat (veen) reserves which were originally converted into a lake and then afterwards dammed and drained.

This is whataboutism - just because Ireland hasn't solved all of its problems doesn't mean they shouldnt get credit for doing the right thing in other areas.

But yes, peat needs to go!

Exactly. If this was a story about solar or wind it would be about how electricity generation does not include transport! We need to do lots of things all at once.

Whataboutism? Why is that?

It's pretty hypocritical to propose mandating electric cars for a cleaner environment while power companies are still burning coal and peat.

I wonder how many electric car owners give any thought to the source of their electricity?

Because it ignores the relative amount of carbon produced by each approach. With electricity it’s fairly easy to have a true understanding, which takes summing from each source not just listing the worst offenders.

However, Oil is expensive in part from the vast amount of energy used for exploration, extraction, refining, and transportation. Just looking at carbon produced when burning gas is a vast underestimate of it’s true impact.

Even in Ireland going fully electric would significantly reduce their carbon footprint.

Claiming hypicrosy for something not directly related to the subject is the definition of whataboutism.

> I wonder how many electric car owners give any thought to the source of their electricity?

Valid question, and I don't know. Given that Ireland announced thr ban from 2030, and the average age of a car on the road in Ireland is about 8 years, they have 15-20 years before the average car is electric there - plenty of time to wean off the nasty inefficient sources. Having the population on electric vehicles means that clean power generation will have an even stronger impact on the world.

Also Dublin needs to get serious about public transport. This will be difficult and expensive, but the city is already gridlocked at rush hour.

I honestly don't even remember traffic when I was in Dublin, it is one of the most walkable cities I have ever been to; so when you say "gridlock" it makes me wonder what you've experienced because in my mind the city isn't even capable of what I would consider traffic coming from Atlanta.

According to the INRIX Global Traffic Scorecard, Atlanta is ranked at 71 while Dublin is worse at 52.

How long were you in Dublin?

http://inrix.com/scorecard/

9 days

The same policy which would introduce a ban on new non-plugin vehicles by 2030 also requires that the renewable percentage in the electricity grid will increase from 30% today to 52% in 2025, and 70% in 2030. And electric vehicles will mostly charge overnight, when the percentage of renewables is higher than those average numbers.

https://static.rasset.ie/documents/news/2019/06/climate-acti...

So the changes to the grid are being made before the ban comes into force. And any electric vehicle bought now will over its lifetime get significantly more than a majority of its electricity from renewable sources.

For Ireland this makes total sense. It is a small country on an island, so 99% of the cars do not travel the distances we do in larger countries/continents. Almost every electric car in production in 2019 can cover any city pair in Ireland. Looks like a smart move to me.

> "The weighted average trip distance is 9.4 miles. Vehicles owned by urban households averaged 8.5 miles and rural vehicles averaged 12.1 miles." [0]

In the U.S, a considerably larger country than Ireland, greater-than-EV-range journeys are outliers.

The same purchasing decisions that are applied to vehicle capacity will get applied to range. People don't own large vans for the once-in-a-decade they move house with all their furniture. Owning an EV that can do 200 miles might be the norm, but the regular journeys are <10% of that.

[0] http://www.solarjourneyusa.com/EVdistanceAnalysis7.php

Average journeys are incredibly short, but also not really relevant. If I get a car that can only travel my mean trip distance, half of my trips can't be traveled without refueling during the trip. Even the 95th percentile, as analysed by the linked article, isn't very useful. A car covering 95% of trips still can't make 1/20 trips. The car needs to cover at least 99% of trips, making me refuel only during 1 out of 100 trips. Some people will even demand covering 99.9% of trips.

The borders of an island simply cutting off the long tail of trip distances does a lot to reduce required range.

It's not the length of a single trip, it's total travel between chargers. Even if you're lucky enough to have a locked private garage, that might be a full day of commuting and errands.

Not if electric recharging stations are common because businesses expect large numbers of people to have electric cars.

Charging still takes time, a lot more time than putting the hose in.

With the current lithium-ion technology, high speed charging (over-volting) causes battery degradation due to extra heat. I suppose batteries can be actively cooled to mitigate the process.

Cars spend more than twenty hours a day parked. If most parking spots had a charger, keeping the car full wouldn't be a problem.

the amount of power lines needed would be quite astounding; say - 30A at 230V (or 3x 16A for 3 phase) per parking slot.

Also it'd require to hide them under + a way to pay for (but that's trivial compared to the power lines).

Yet, all cars would need standardized plugs too.

It's doable but I'd consider it a futuristic idea. --

Again, it doesn't solve the issue with long trips. Last summer my family took a trip through Europe (central/west), often driving 600-800km a day. The range would have not been sufficient, esp. with the high speed German highways.

Saving the climate requires quite ambitious plans, but for normal parking spots you don't need fast charging. You need just enough power to recharge typical usage over night.

For long trips Tesla's supercharger network seems to work okay.

> "the amount of power lines needed would be quite astounding; say - 30A at 230V (or 3x 16A for 3 phase) per parking slot."

Not really, because not all parking spots would be charging at full capacity simultaneously. For that reason you can have a lot more charging-enabled parking spots than you have electrical supply for: in the event of unusually high demand, the outlets can throttle themselves to ensure that breakers aren't tripped, etc.

Norway has some experience building these sorts of facilities already: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktNKWLwjQJM

> "Last summer my family took a trip through Europe (central/west), often driving 600-800km a day. The range would have not been sufficient"

That's where high speed charging comes in. The new charging networks currently being built by Ionity (in Europe) and Electrify America, for example, are capable of 150-350kW charging. At those speeds, you only need one charging stop - of under 30 minutes - to complete that 600-800km day of driving.

We've all got to eat and take toilet breaks, so few people would drive that far without stopping even if they could!

> Charging still takes time, a lot more time than putting the hose in.

But not a lot more time than the average stop already, accounting for human necessities such as stretching, restrooms, food, etc. Full 30 minute or so breaks every 4-6 hours are good for the humans doing the driving, and would reduce some forms of road rage among other psychological benefits.

Around here, quite a few employers also provide charging stations at work.

You can always rent a car with a higher range for long distance trips. We could build much more efficient cars if we optimized for normal usage, that is, 1.1 people in the car, short trips, city speeds and moderate acceleration, instead of building 250HP monsters that can tow a house and using them to sit alone in traffic jams. If you have exceptional needs, rent something for the day.

You can rent a cruise ship if you want. If you are only going to own one of something it makes more sense to go for the Swiss army knife approach, hence the proliferation of crew cab pickups and crossovers. Also, 250hp really isn't that much in this day and age. As someone who rents various kinds of trucks and trailers every month or so I have plenty of sympathy for people who's use case is narrow enough that they can fill it with a single vehicle, even if it is a crew cab F150. Yes, it's a luxury but it's a luxury a lot of people can afford and justify. Renting equipment is a massive hassle and nobody is going to do it to pick up plywood or furniture if they have any other option. You're basically complaining about people rationally choosing to spend their extra income on a luxury that has a big impact on their day to day lives.

It's a luxury many people can afford because they don't pay for the externalities.

I just have to laugh at putting "250HP" and "monster" together....

I'm a gearhead, I daily drive a ~320HP car and am building a 600HP car, so I realize I'm a statistical outlier when most people just wanna sit in their appliance and commute to work as cheaply and safely as possible. A future of nothing but minimum-range electric toasters on wheels is probably resource-efficient, but definitely sounds depressing and boring to me.

Different strokes for different folks, and all that.

My sole car is a Prius C, which I think is in the neighborhood of combined gas/electric 100HP. A co-worker of mine has a Charger with a ridiculous amount of HP and a large SUV. He likes to tease me about my the hamster under my car's hood, and I like to remind him I've spent less than $500 in gas in the past 24 months.

I don't need a fun car to get to work, and I can rent trucks for hauling. To each their own.

I would think that a gearhead would love e-motors given their torque and general performance.

Telsas generally trounce all other cars off the line. The (still vaporware) Rivian has a 200hp e-motor at each wheel.

Most folks won't ever use this type of performance, and most folks won't buy high-spec EVs, but to write them off as an entire class seems silly IMHO.

I have nothing negative to say about the raw performance of electric motors. As you've said, the torque delivery is simply insane, there are very clever applications of using them to cover the "low points" in the torque curves of turbo-charged petrol engines and whatnot. Putting an electric motor in each wheel gives independent torque vectoring with probably less complexity than a traditional AWD system. From a competitive racing standpoint they have value and very interesting applications.

But from a driver experience/driver engagement standpoint....they are lacking. Same reason why car enthusiasts would rather have a manual transmission than an objectively faster-shifting dual-clutch trans. It's about how your interaction with the machine makes you FEEL.

Huge swaths of America never encounter cities when driving, particularly out west. The population density of states like Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho are so far from solvable with electric vehicles that it's honestly funny to see this topic discussed as if there's some feasible path there. And other western states aren't far behind. Nevada, Utah, Colorado, the Dakotas, they're all extremely sparse. 100+ mile trips aren't uncommon and are rarely pre-planned for.

The other half of the equation is that many people have trucks as a dual purpose vehicle: work and every day use. People need to get grain buckets out to cows, or tow back hay on a trailer. People need to get down the street when it's snowing from October to June. Probably 20% of the roads aren't even paved.

Any kind of sweeping legislation like has been discussed in these comments would basically grind life out here to a halt. Which wouldn't be good considering how much food comes from this area.

I'm in favor of a steep carbon tax. That would allow people who currently have no alternatives to still do whatever they need to do, but provide a strong incentive for finding alternatives.

> The car needs to cover at least 99% of trips, making me refuel only during 1 out of 100 trips. Some people will even demand covering 99.9% of trips.

Most households have multiple cars, and most (90%) of people's commutes are less than 50 miles (75 km). So for most households, having one car that is EV with a range of (say) 150 miles will cover your most common situation: getting to work and back. It would also probably cover a good portion of errand running on weekends.

The second car can either be full-ICE, or a hybrid. If the latter, if it has a 100 mile battery range, it would also basically be EV-only for commuting.

Personally I'm off the opinion that all vehicles should be full-EV by default, and have an option for a range extender (small generator) for those that need extra distance.

"In the U.S, a considerably larger country than Ireland, greater-than-EV-range journeys are outliers."

Well, for me thats nearly every weekend in the Summer where I go hiking and I need 300-400 miles roundtrip.

i doubt most americans travel outside of state by car that often

But they can, and taking that away scares many. It's easier in Ireland, the only way to drive farther is by taking a ferry where you could charge anyway. That means that you can effectively reach all of Ireland, most of the UK and most of France without any additional stops.

> by taking a ferry where you could charge anyway

Charging off bunker fuel, ouch. How common is it for Irish cars to take a ferry?

Anecdotally, the average person would do it once per year at most. More perhaps, if you have relatives in the UK and like to drive there with small children in tow.

The next step may have to be electrification of the ferry. Orkney has actually been looking at an intermediate step, the "plug in" ferry while docked for the MV Hamnavoe: http://www.orkney.gov.uk/OIC-News/UKs-first-large-ship-to-sh...

Ferries in the Irish sea or the North sea can't use unrefined bunker oil because of the Emission Control Area:

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

Thanks, that is an answer I like to hear, just like the others (paraphrased "not often enough to make much of a difference").

Still, between the hectic on- and offloading and the acute awareness of fire hazards customary on ferries, I have a hard time imagining boatside car charging ever becoming mainstream.

It should scare them. We will have to give those journeys up anyways. It was only 100 years ago that such journey's even started being plausible for large numbers of people unless a train was involved. Society did just fine without the luxury of personal long-distance transport.

climate change should scare them more

I wonder how much was driven by them missing all their 2020 EU targets, and the prospect of ever bigger €??bn fines on the way to 2030 targets...

Still, the whole plan is reasonably well thought out. They have considered that the need to retrofit most existing buildings to bring them to acceptable standards, they are suddenly keen on community heat and power, and that business will be reluctant participant and so on.

Going from 30% to 70% renewable, and closing all coal and peat in ten years might be a challenge, but it's in the plan.

A couple of glaring holes around plastic and agriculture, but a bloody good start.

This is only a proposed policy, it is not a law, it hasn't even been voted on by parliament.

And with elected representatives like this, I wouldn't be putting money on this becoming law any time soon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2e-gOeN3DM or if it does become law, expect it to become a rolling target that gets kicked down the road rather than a fixed one.

That's Danny Haely-Rae; he's an idiot, yes, but not in the ruling party and generally politically irrelevant. This agreement is government policy and will very likely become law.

Good, and I'm also not sure that EVs are the answer anyway, because I don't think cars are the answer.

Good. Measures like this are finally starting to approach the level of urgency required to have any realistic chance of averting the worst climate disasters.

Obviously Ireland is a small country and won't have much impact alone, but at least it's dawning on some policymakers that this isn't a problem for "the next generation".

I agree this is good. But 11 years feels to long, I wish it were sooner. Remember this is only the sale, not usage.

Cars is but one small measure of their pretty comprehensive - and challenging - 2030 plan. Not sure they could go much quicker.

Ireland has some excellent wind resources. They already seem to have over 4 gigawatts of nameplate capacity.

That is something Germany should have done years ago. They have an industry to shift.

Won't happen. Automobile companies are so deep into our politicians, you sometimes see them looking out from the throat.

For example the federal state of Niedersachsen has more than 20% of the shares of Volkswagen. They will not do anything that might harm VW.

Increasingly, not switching to EVs will harm VW, regardless of what German states do.

After Dieselgate VW has been the most committed major auto-maker when it comes to EVs, problem is there have been some hiccups [1]

[1] https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/audi-recalls-model-year...

German brands have acknowledged it a bit, enough to make some cars and try the mainstream market too.

I know Porsche also made a version with gears so they can retain their high speed property.

Volkswagen is investing 80 billion euros in EVs:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-electric-insig...

Yeah, but only lately. They should have started 10 years ago.

Now it's probably too late. Not only for VW but all the others, too.

Volkswagen is one of the biggest car companies in the world:

https://www.jato.com/global-car-market-remains-stable-during...

They'll be fine. They don't care what drive train they use. They just want to sell cars.

They have just now started developing all of this, while lots of manufacturers only need to ramp up their production, see Hyundai, Kia, Renault, Tesla, which are all already selling full electric cars and just struggle with fulfilling the orders.

If those manage to scale their production (probably of batteries), VW will have a hard time.

They'll release multiple models of electric vehicles across multiple brands every year from now on.

You want a fanciful narrative that somehow ends in Volkswagen's ultimate doom, but it's not the practical reality.

We'll see, up to now it's only talk and pre-orders.

An 80 billion euro investment from a company that sells over 10 million cars every year is not just "talk".

You're clinging to a fantasy.

Show me cars built on that new base driving on the street and I'm fine with it. Up to now it's just talk and mockups and nothing more.

> Show me cars built on that new base driving on the street

Sure.

Audi e-Tron: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uHlohyKLlQ

Audi e-Tron GT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvNw15W_EK8

Porsche Taycan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrVkOQojN4Y

VW ID Neo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2Tqw9LX3QE

> and I'm fine with it

I don't think it matters if you're fine with it or not.

Won't really make any environmental difference since they'll have to produce more energy. Since germany utilizes gas and coal you will basically shift to that from petrol since they shutdown their nuclear power plant

Last time I looked we are gradually shifting to completely renewable energies. It might yet take some time, but we will get there (hoping that we do not elect dumb politicians).

Well this wouldn't be a problem if you didn't shutdown your nuclear power plants. Now Germany is polluting more than ever.

But but but atomkraft, nein, danke. I swear, these people are exactly like PETA, exept they are dealing real damage to the planet.

Radioactive waste is doing real damage to the planet. After decades of evaluation storage facilities germany has no option that is considered safe. We have a responsibility towards the following generations. This includes not warming the planet beyond no return and not polluting it with deadly waste. Both can be achieved with a shift towards renewable energy sources.

Renewable energy sources needs to be supported by power plants that can produce constantly. The only clean option is nuclear and hydro. Sweden has developed a safe storage which is used to stored used fuel.

> Renewable energy sources needs to be supported by power plants that can produce constantly.

Do you have a source for that claim? Keep in mind that there are also renewable energy sources that do not rely on weather events (water and biomass).

In combination with energy storing and a reduction of the total energy needed it is afaik considered possible to go fully renewable [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy

EDIT: I misread your comment. I thought you were arguing that "unclean" power plants are nessecary. However my point about not needing nuclear still stands.

> Renewable energy sources needs to be supported by power plants that can produce constantly.

Varying power sources need to be combined with adjustable power sources. So do constant sources, unless you want to force consumption to correspond to availability. Shutting off nuclear plants and going fully renewable would require bringing more adjustable sources online, though. Hence the quest for better storage technologies.

Really? No problem in providing massive sums to build solar and wind power stations alongside the fossil fuel stations that already exist and will have to be maintained 24/7? As an example, difficult to see how huge swathes of EU country Romania would survive as habitable zones. Who will inject the cash needed? Moreover six months of winter conditions are not exactly conducive to energy production via solar and wind. What the heck do people do?

> Now Germany is polluting more than ever.

That's incorrect. While Germany failed to make its reduction goals, it still reduced emissions while simultaneously increasing production.

The climate impact would be limited in Germany because of the large amount of electricity produced from coal. But it would still make an environmental difference: German cities have a big problem with particulate matter, which seems to be a major cause of lung cancer and other resparatory diseases. Moving pollution out of the cities into electricity plants would be very beneficial, even if there was no climate effect at all (which there will be because the power mix is consistently changing for the better, with coal becoming uneconomical).

There is still a problem with electric cars, the tires also produce particles that are carcinogenic.

"Electric vehicles emit no NO2 but do produce small particle pollution from the wear on brake discs and tyres and by throwing up dust from roads. A recent European commission research paper found that about half of all particulate matter comes from these sources."

EVs use their brakes less because of regenerative breaking. The particulate matter of tires is for the most part comparatively big an heavy, so a larger part of it stays near the ground and gets swept away by rain, and could be cleared in problematic locations by wetting the street (also bigger particles seem somewhat less problematic for health).

You're right that EVs don't fully solve the problem, but they are a giant step in the right direction.

EVs are also generally concerned about overall weight and have smaller tires on average than non-EVs in their respective categories.

Normally they use break discs only at speeds of about 0-10 km/h.

Coal is the most deadly form of energy production. It's cause thousands of germans to die prematurly each year

It's time for germany to stop relying on coal and open up to nuclear like France and Sweden

https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy https://www.euractiv.com/section/health-consumers/news/repor...

Planning a nuclear plant, getting the necessary permits, fighting challenges to those permits from NIMBYs etc takes at least a decade. Constructing a nuclear plant takes another decade. So the earliest expected benefit would be in 2040. Also nuclear plants are extremely expensive to build. On that time frame and with those capital expenses basically any other solution would work just as well with much less opposition.

Well yeah but the problem is that since energy production needs to be constant, the only real alternative to nuclear is coal,gas or hydro. Nuclear and hydro is the only option that doesn't lead to extinction due to global warming

- Gas is already a big improvement over coal, so it's not all that bad as an intermediate solution

- If we count hydro as an option we also have to include wind with pumped hydro storage (which comes with the same problems as hydro: geographic requirements and ecosystem disruption).

- Wind/Solar with Li-Io storage is technically a possibility and likely will become cost effective within 20 years.

- Within 20 years better grid-scale storage for use with wind/solar might become widely deployed, like molten salt. Especially if we would be willing to spend equal amounts of capital as would be required for deploying nuclear

- Energy consumption could be much more closely coupled to solar/wind availability by changing electricity prices from a fixed price to a dynamic price coupled to real spot prices. We already shift electricity use into the night by charging industrial consumers less for off-peak use, the same strategy can be used to shift consumption anywhere to any other time of day.

Intermittent power sources can be combined with storage and peaker plants to cover base load. Gas plants make nice peakers, and while not ideal, they are certainly superior to coal (less pollution, 40% less CO2) and allow the eventual transition to power-to-gas solutions.

Power plants are much more efficient in converting fuel to energy than the combustion engines in vehicles, so, even if we use fossil fuel to generate the power that electric vehicles need, we will be in a better spot than the one we are right now.

(And I'm not even considering the energy that we need to expend to refine the oil to make fuel that vehicles can use).

And also - even with a coal power plant you are producing electricity outside of major cities, so areas where people live are less polluted by cars driving through them. Everyone who has ever had a taxi driver idling their shitty diesel outside of your window at 2am should immediately understand how energy production moving to outside of cities is a good thing no matter how that energy is produced.

Yes, but you can turn it around and tell that people that use cars mostly in cities would have little to no incentive to be more efficient, because this externalizes harm to areas far away from them.

I suspect this is much easier for a government to demand when they don't have a car industry to support.

First I think we need an offering that is at least as good as the original you are trying to replace. How long can the best electric car go with one charge? Germany is a bit bigger than Ireland and you might want to drive 600 km in one go. Not saying I do not agree with you I am just saying in certain cases we are not there yet. The other question is about electric cars: what is the source of energy? Germany owns 7 out of the biggest CO2 production facilities in Europe.

https://www.statista.com/chart/17582/megatonnes-of-co2-equiv...

While I absolutely agree with the goal of reducing our species carbon production and associated impact on the environment, I have a more personal and selfish concern with these proposals. The only way I’m able to have a reasonably nice car with good handling and entertaining performance is by buying a used car from probably 10-15 years ago. The sorts of cars that have nice leather seats, a sunroof, maybe a v6 or smaller v8, think the 2004 Subaru Legacy.

Given the rate of failure and failure modes inherent in current battery technology in things like Teslas and such this market simply wont exist leaving me with a choice between keeping a petrol powered nice car going with whatever tax and fuel increases are decided, or buying the absolute cheapest electric car available with whatever comforts, safety features and plain enjoyment I lose in the process just being part of the deal. I’m sort of disappointed that my personal hobby is going to disappear soon and what’s left for people like me will be the Hyundai i10 of electric cars forever more.

I’d still prefer that to not having a planet to live on though...

PCPs for everyone! (joke, but seriously I think this is what they expect/want)

> While I absolutely agree with the goal of reducing our species carbon production and associated impact on the environment, I have a more personal and selfish concern with these proposals.

Congratulations for summarizing one of the main challenges of climate policy. Everyone's for it, except if it affects them personally.

This is a real dilemma because it's not always about choice in any reasonable interpretation. Some people may need a car for their livelihood but simply cannot afford anything better than a polluting clunker.

Sometimes it is about choices made unwittingly. Imagine people who buy an EV because they think it's the best way to do their part even if 99.999% of their usage fits perfectly for bicycle and public transport (increased efficiency + added benefits not strictly related to global warming).

In the end everyone will draw the line sooner or later. The point is to drop the bar and making it easier for most to take action. But people who expect everyone to be able to do it (usually based on the "I did it so if you don't you're just selfish" thinking) aren't very reasonable.

> Some people may need a car for their livelihood but simply cannot afford anything better than a polluting clunker.

I think we can agree that no one _needs_ a sport car for their 'livelihood'. There are plenty of affordable new cars, they might be small and slow but at least they're safe and meet the current solution standard.

And yeah people need trucks to tow or move things around, but that's something other than "entertainment".

> I think we can agree that no one _needs_ a sport car for their 'livelihood'

That's why I considered the "old clunker" case. But even the sports car part is debatable somehow. Look around you now. How many of the things in your line of sight are actually needs, and how many are wants? How many things have changed inside each layer of Maslow's hierarchy of needs over the past half a century or more?

Do you need HN? Imagine if someone told you it's going down because you can save xxx KWh. :) I agree that a sports car may be a step too far even for this line of thinking but the point stands.

>There are plenty of affordable new cars, they might be small and slow

Define affordable, because I'm never going to spend more than €2000 on a car so at the moment drive a small-ish but slow 1.6L petrol car from 2004.

At least it was the smallest I could get away with while having to fit 190cm skis in the car everyday.

I can't wait to go electric, but I think I'm 10 years away from being there myself. Also moving between rented accommodation in rural areas often with only street parking makes the whole "charging at home" thing quite a pain. I'm hoping by then things are better, but in the countryside I still think electric cars are going to be a tricky thing to migrate to.

A simple fix. 50% yearly increases in petrol tax. :)

How to kill your economy 101.

Doesn't this ban just apply to new cars? I would think the used car market would keep going mostly as it always has...

They also said they'll stop renewing the NCT (annual license required for cars older than 10y) after 2045.

I think this is the thing - it will take some lifestyle and leisure changes to make that happen, and individual freedom is simply not as important as fixing this - given that not fixing this is equivalent to losing all individual freedom via horrific means.

Where I live cars are already somewhat unwelcome - and everyone bicycles or takes trams, metro, buses and trains. They are removing parking spaces by the thousands. Cities are gradually ceasing to be built around cars.

The notion of high car ownership in the future seems questionable at this point full stop.

Spot on, especially in cities where you really only use a car on weekends or other ‘special’ occasions. If I could rent a nice electric car for Saturday and Sunday for a reasonable price, that would largely offset any potential lifestyle changes that such a law would introduce, as well as encouraging more people to reconsider personal transport during the week if possible.

If there were enough electric cars for everyone who wants one to rent one on Saturday and Sunday at a reasonable price, they may as well be used as personal transport during the week instead of left idling during the week, right?

I do 4x4-ing so a relatively big engine is often a must, unless you compromise in other ways. Since I don't really want to lug around a beast on mud terrain tires all day, I have a few other vehicles that I drive to offset the environmental impact, and also the fuel bill. My daily transport is a BMW 530d which is very efficient on diesel, although I wish it were gasoline to be honest.

I envy you. It's the other way around in the third-world country where I happen to live. As the people climb out of poverty they deem it necessary to buy bigger and bigger cars. I think easily half of transport on the roads are giant SUVs, which are built like tanks and take 1.5 lanes. Each car takes ten times then space of one fat-ass behind the wheel.

Also, I personally know a guy who makes a decent living from knowing (and applying) how to circumvent pollution controls on many car models. He has a large wait list from locals who want to up their fuel consumption by 20-30% to be able to make that 100 km/h one second faster.

Absolutely nobody I ever talked to gives one flying fuck about environment pollution. They don't even care if it affects them personally (and it does, judging from the constant cough you hear from everybody all day long, and my sore throat, which has been sore every day for the last I don't know how many years).

That sounds pretty grim! Which country are you in?

I am pretty sure that ICE cars will survive as a hobby, that is: on the dedicated racetracks.

On one hand it might get prohibitively expensive (track days are, already), on the other: since it will be the only way to enjoy driving a V8, etc. – it might get way more popular, and cheaper in the process.

Do you really think the hobby of the automobile is going to disappear with EVs?

Most top-end sports cars have either implementated a hybrid system or have gone full electric (think Formula E). Car manufacturers will follow at the consumer level and the Subaru fandom with them[1].

Obviously the petrolhead generation will have to adapt to the new cars but you shouldn't worry about a sunroof and leather seats.

Right now the biggest barrier to entry is the capital cost of buying a new EV but 10-15 years down the line the second-hand market price shouldn't be much different than it is right now.

[1]https://www.google.com/amp/s/electrek.co/2019/06/06/toyota-s...

Sure, some EVs are fast, but they don't deliver the same experience EMOTIONALLY, which is a very big part of what makes auto enthusiasts so attached to their hobby. And I'd argue most of that is the aural experience of roaring internal-combustion engine. It's why I prefer Inline-6 engines over most other configurations: they SOUND better.

I have a fairly small-displacement (250cc) motorcycle with carburetors, objectively slower and less performant than some of the sports cars I've owned or ridden in, and yet it delivers a totally unique and stimulating experience. As a neophyte rider it still makes my spine tingle to go >100kph on this thing, while I don't bat an eye at bouncing off the electronically-limited top speed (~185kph) in my Evo. It wasn't until I experienced a motorcycle that I came to look at driving as just a little bit.....bland.

And from a spectator perspective, not many people wanna watch EVs humming almost silently around a track. I think most gearheads will feel similarly: even if they are fast they are underwhelming as an emotive experience.

> "Given the rate of failure and failure modes inherent in current battery technology in things like Teslas and such this market simply wont exist"

It's true that batteries degrade over time, and might even need replacement in 10-15 years or so. But the rest of the electric drivetrain will last far longer than combustion counterparts: Tesla claims they're designing for 1,000,000 miles.

Now, suppose it's the 2030s and you're in the market for a cheap used vehicle. There will very likely be a thriving 3rd-party industry upgrading the battery cells in old used EVs using the latest 2030s technology. And batteries will be much cheaper by then, too.

If anything, electrification will mean better and more reliable used vehicles!

> There will very likely be a thriving 3rd-party industry upgrading the battery cells in old used EVs using the latest 2030s technology.

I have doubts that third parties will be able to do much work on modern vehicles at all, due to proprietary software and vendor lock-in.

I'm a bit more optimistic. But if necessary, "right to repair" legislation can be enacted so that specs, documentation, etc are made available to repairers and parts manufacturers.

Being very honest: if you care about the environment you should forget about owning a personal car.

I love cars, I raced in karting, I did some racing classes in GT cars ranging from 300-500 hp and had lots of fun with it, I used to drool over cars and specs and engines and dreamed about buying and maintaining my very own rally Subaru to be able to run some courses as an amateur and all of that jazz.

I care much more about the environment than about cars, this hobby as it is should die if we want to live in this planet, personal cars are an abomination and a waste when people let them sitting parked for 90+% of the time, the amount of resources wasted to manufacture and maintain all of this fleet is mind-boggling...

I understand in the US where people with families NEED a car because urbanism there sucks but if you don't NEED a personal car and can live with a car-sharing service or at least reduce from a car per person in the family to a car per family it's already a huge change.

Check a bit your entitlement, a lot of things will suck in this transition to a more sustainable economy, everyone will be a bit inconvenienced but in the long run it's a much smaller inconvenience than having to deal with mass dying of fauna and flora, mass famine, droughts, migration and social unrest. And wars.

EDIT: Also adding that another huge change that I've done for the environment is stopping consuming meat. There is no point, we eat it because it tastes good and that's it, some people might need some nutrients from meat but for the vast majority of the population a meatless diet is completely fine, if you want to eat meat then make it count, stop eating that shitty hamburger from McD and save yourself to eat meat as a treat, a very nice dinner with a steak that you know the origin.

I'm originally from Brazil and I feel disgusted about how much mindless meat we eat there, every single day for multiple meals a day, it's staggering that no one bats an eye on the impact of that... And when I bring the topic up it's like I'm offending people personally, like eating meat is a right, it's the simplest way to change your behaviours and have some impact as it doesn't depend on anyone else nor any major change in industry.

/rant

I don't have nor intend to have kids. That will be far more beneficial than any of the measures that you propose.

In the long term yes, reducing population is a very effective way of reducing environmental impact. Unfortunately climate change is by now such a pressing problem that we don't have time for that.

At what point do you see the transition where genocide becomes preferable to uninhabitable earth? Ever, or never?

At what point does "the enemy" strike first, not because they want "our" resources, but because they need us to stop using resources so they can survive at all? Ever, or never?

I think that there will always be better options than genocide. Killing people only buys some time until you have to switch to a sustainable way of life, eventually you still have to do it. I think an all out war for extermination will always be more expensive than just killing the leaders who prevent change.

If everyone is pulling in the same direction, wants the same outcome, and traditional warfare is all, maybe. What if you wakeup one day and $continent is hit by biological weapons and $country is looking suspiciously healthy, and just bought themselves another hundred years.

There's better options for us than killing other people; where's the cutoff where other people think it's better to genocide us? Ever or never?

Probably never. If times are desperate enough that you'd seriously consider eradicating significant parts of the population, the ecosystems are already fucked beyond repair.

Yeah, me neither, so I'm also adding that to the list. Happy?

When I am eating meat, yes.

Enjoy living in your hypocrisy.

From the article, petrol cars won't be totally banned til 2045; you'll be able you have your 10-15 year old 2030 reg car.

Is it just my misplaced optimism, or are many countries suddenly now 'aware' of our climate change issues?

They are aware that a shift in the car market is happening. Therefore they can legislate that this thing that is already happening must happen and claim credit when it does.

Bureaucratic mandate of technology is probably an important step in making people think not just of themselves.

Yeah, not buying it until I see the plans on how they're going to increase the national grid to power this.

I'm not familiar with Ireland's grid, but if it's anything like Britain, there is already more than enough capacity to power a fully electric vehicle fleet, provided a significant portion of charging happens at off-peak times.

This is something that has been studied in some depth in the UK:

https://theenergyst.com/millions-electric-vehicles-sooner-pr...

https://www.nationalgrid.com/group/case-studies/electric-dre...

That's not what your links say. The first link says nine million electric vehicles might require 4GW or 8GW of extra generation capacity (depending on smart technology)

But there are 38 million vehicles registered in the UK [1]; and even the optimistic 4GW is greater than the power output of the proposed Hinkley Point C nuclear reactor [2].

If 9 million vehicles need 4-8GW of generation capacity, 38 million would need 17-34GW, i.e. 6.5 to 13 nuclear power stations' worth (or the equivalent in wind or solar)

[1] https://www.racfoundation.org/motoring-faqs/mobility#a1 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_...

All of the National Grid forecast scenarios assume >30M electric vehicles in 2050. You might be confusing the peak power demand (in GW) with the total energy consumption (measured in GWh/TWh).

Clearly if everyone charged their vehicles at peak times there'd be problems meeting demand. But that's not the case: EV charging is a flexible demand, and with "smart" chargers and incentives in place to encourage off-peak/overnight charging, demand peaks can be managed.

Here's the link to the full Future Energy Scenarios document where you can dig in to the figures in great detail:

http://fes.nationalgrid.com/fes-document/

I'm reading the second paragraph of your first link which states "Nine million electric vehicles on UK roads might require 8GW of extra power generation capacity if people charge them when they like. But smart charging could cut that to 4GW, potentially less, according to National Grid’s EV lead, Graeme Cooper."

I don't think I'm confused about that - it seems pretty unambiguous to me.

Right. That's a worst case scenario for peak power demand if everybody was charging their EVs at peak time. The solution is to install smart chargers, and incentivise off-peak charging so that a high proportion of charging happens at off-peak times, when there is plenty of surplus generation and grid capacity available.

Or, to put it another way: It doesn't make sense to spend billions on building new power plants just because everybody is plugging in their cars when they get home at 6PM every night and causing a huge demand spike. Smart charging and demand management is a much cheaper way to solve the problem.

The 8GW figure is for everyone charging at peak time; the 4GW figure is for smart chargers (i.e. dynamic internet-of-things off-peak charging)

So smart charging halves the need for new power stations - but doesn't eliminate it.

You're talking about electricity generation, not about the grid (which is the distribution network). Generation has to increase (by 4-8GW for 9 million cars), but the distribution network doesn't need much extra capacity because most of the charging will happen offpeak.

When they say "extra" they mean extra generation, not new capacity. The grid isn't running flat out all the time. The highest output this year was 48GW. At night, it does about 22GW. That leaves plenty spare capacity for charging cars if required.

Its pretty simple. Change power pricing to be cheaper at off peak times and have car chargers wait until the price drops below x before starting charging so everyone's car charging is spread out overnight when the grid would be mostly unused.

> Change power pricing to be cheaper at off peak times

That's already the case. But with 2 million or so cars sucking juice at night, that will no longer be "off peak" and of course the grid needs some downtime which will be harder to do then.

Ireland's electricity is quite dirt. Coal and peat are being phased out, so they already need to replace existing grid generators and now top up with lots of new generation too.

As said, I'm sceptical about it all until I see the grid plans.

Remember, the internal combustion engine is terribly inefficient. It was attractive because it's small enough to fit in a personal vehicle and the liquid fuel has so much energy that you can throw most of it away without bankrupting yourself, but that means there's a big difference between how much energy is used by a conventional ICE car and how much electricity is needed (and thus passes through the grid) for an electric car with the same power.

You might easily get rid of 10GW of ICE cars and only need to buy 2GW of electrical grid capacity to replace that.

There are lots of more immediately noticeable consequences while you wait decades for any global climate effects, the air on city streets is better, a bunch of land used to store incredibly dangerous liquid fuel where people want to buy it is released for new housing, maintenance costs on cars fall. I don't think it'll take long for the story to be "Why didn't we do this sooner?" rather than "Why did we bother trying this?"

FWIW I'm not arguing against it.

I suspect a market for „used” imported cars with under 1000 miles will emerge to circumvent this law.

Most European countries will be working towards a ban around the same time, or shortly after. So there won't be a ready supply of such vehicles for Ireland to import.

Besides, given the economic advantages of electric (especially if petrol taxes are gradually ramped up to discourage their use), there won't be much demand for combustion technology past 2030 anyway, except amongst vintage enthusiasts.

Don’t we need to like more than double our current level of power production (+capacity of the power network) to be able to ditch ice cars? I wonder how more than doubling of the number of power plants is supposed to get funded. Is there some proposal that is grounded in technical and economical realities?

No. In the UK it's around a 30% increase on current electricity demand by 2050 for a near-100% EV vehicle fleet. But as a significant portion of EV charging can be done off-peak/overnight, in terms of new generation capacity it's even less.

This is something that has been studied in some depth by the UK's national grid:

https://www.nationalgrid.com/group/case-studies/electric-dre...

https://theenergyst.com/millions-electric-vehicles-sooner-pr...

We also need to significantly upgrade transmission and distribution. That might be even more capital intensive, than building new production capacity.

Not to mention the supply of cars will be limited to RHD vehicles. Britain is the only nearby car market[1] with RHD cars.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-_and_right-hand_traffic#/...

There already is, largely because VRT[1] ends up limiting the kinds of models of car sold new in Ireland.

[1] Vehicle Registration Tax, a tax that's illegal under EU law, but the Irish government have never been seriously dinged on.

I can't help think Tesla instigated all this kind of stuff.

How about veteran cars?

veteran cars are not new petrol or diesel vehicles, so they are not impacted.

Article says the opposite. Cars without an NCT are not permitted on the roads, and they won't be able to get one any more.

Do an electric conversion. Here are two examples:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-16/vintage-rolls-royce-c...

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

Rather not be alive to see air-cooled, rear-flat-engine Porsche 911's from the 70s go electric

It'll happen eventually. Allow the Porsche Taycan to make up for it:

https://www.automobilemag.com/news/2020-porsche-taycan-turbo...

So will China or India follow suite?

Bureaucratic banning of technology is the beginning of the downfall of civilization.

Well, those things stink.

If you like smells then we maybe should unban the bureaucratically banned pooping on the streets.

I appreciated when they banned lead pipes for water.

I guess we have usable alternatives to lead pipes. For electric cars let's see where is the externalization of emissions.

While I doubt this will go into effect, this is simply bad policy.

The economic shocks that will accompany a hard ban make no sense when compared to the option of a gradual phase out (gradually increase fuel taxes? gradually increase taxes on the sale of new petrol vehicles?)

I think announcing a ban is part of a phase out policy. The problem with relying just on gradual mechanisms is the "boiling frog" effect acting against you. A drastic announcement spurs people out of complacency. By the time you get to the deadline, the ban might not even be needed.

The ban is on new vehicles. ie: New vehicles sold after 2030 must be zero emission.

Not that all existing petrol and diesel vehicles must suddenly be scrapped.

Vehicles tend to last about 15 years, so even with a ban coming into effect in 2030, it'd likely be around 2045 before the vast majority of fossil burners are off the street. That's pretty gradual.

Government investment in charging infrastructure, increasing fuel prices/registration fees on ICE vehicles, etc., those are approachable and realistic options, and things we can do right now.

I personally believe, that come 2026, car manufacturers will sound the alarm, that they simply won't be able to produce enough EVs come 2030 to meet demand. The policy will then likely get postponed till 2040, and so on for a couple of decades.

Yes. Some realism on the subject!

Agreed. I'd tax the fuel, personally, because if you taxed the sale of "new" vehicles then people would soon find a way of getting vehicles that are practically but not officially "new".

Ireland don't make cars so most of the economic shock will be felt outside the country. I seem to remember they already have high purchase taxes on cars.

What is the economic value of having a livable planet?

Ban fucking cruise ships.

Cruise ships or shipping in general has quite a low impact on the climate. You're probably thinking about those articles which say that 8 ships produce more pollution than all cars in the world, but that is Sulphur Dioxide, which is a local pollutant, but has no impact on climate change, it has nothing to do with Carbon Dioxide or any other greenhouse gases.

Also, the only reason they produce so much more Sulphur Dioxide is because road vehicles have strong regulation which require that Sulphur is almost eliminated from their fuel as part of the refining process. Regulations limiting Sulphur in ship fuel have already been introduced and are in the process of being phased in through the International Maritime Organization, and strict regulations already exist for areas close to ports (since 2010) and then in territorial waters in most of the developed world (since 2015).

http://www.seatrade-maritime.com/images/PDFs/SOMWME-whitepap...

Yay so we can switch to batteries that produce more carbon emissions in their production than the fuel the vehicle is spitting out. Ultimately just make the problem worse if you think about it.

Do you have a source?

And are you saying that production of electric cars produces significantly more emissions than petrol?

https://www.greencarfuture.com/electric/2018/12/12/are-evs-h...

The actual production of an EV _can_ result in more emissions (along the whole supply chain) than petrol cars, yes.

Although the vast majority of car manufacturers (and supply companies) are geared up for producing petrol cars and not EVs, so it's no real surprise that _right now_ electric cars aren't as efficient to build.

The more that electric cars are produced, and the more that Li-ion/solid-state batteries are developed, the better the picture will be at the building stage.

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

It appears to be quite a nuanced picture.

That table is interesting, it looks like we get the same benefits from switching to PHEV as going to full electric.

I've always been slightly sceptical about the claims, just because the costs are so high. If you assume money is a reasonable proxy for energy then the high acquisition costs imply more emissions.

> If you assume money is a reasonable proxy for energy

Everything points to money being a very poor proxy for energy. Part of our problem with climate change is that energy is usually one of the smallest contributors to cost, making incredibly wasteful supply chains economically preferable.

Yet GDP per capita is strongly correlated with energy consumption:

https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/figures/correlation-...

Note that in small print that table assumes 500g/kWh which is _very high_. If your electrical grid was entirely supplied by mediocre natural gas power plants (no hydro, no nuclear, no solar, no wind, nothing like that) you'd do 500g/kWh. Anywhere doing worse than that is burning coal, or as in Ireland, peat to make power, which is totally crazy independent of whether you have electric cars.

Put a bunch of hydro, nukes, solar or wind in the mix and you're rapidly down to 200 or 300 gCO2/kWh. Nobody's ambition for 2030 ought to be as high as 500 gCO2/kWh electricity, if that's what you're expecting we're screwed.

No. Every serious study shows that this is not the case. Especially when NOT talking about Teslas and their giant batteries. And even if electric cars would NOT be emitting less carbon emissions, they would still have positive health effects as cities will be quiter and have less polluted air. Even without any CO2-discussions, electric cars make sense (and who says there will be no fuel cells in the future).

Technology alone isn't enough - you can't just switch ICE cars to EV cars and solve all transport and envrionmental problems.

It needs to become normal (and desirable) to walk and cycle short journeys, and to take public transport - especially in urban areas that currently suffer from poor air quality and congestion.

Do you have data to support that statement?

The only way to carbon neutrality with ICE cars is synth-fuels. Making those consumes a lot more energy than manufacturing and charging batteries. It doesn't help that ICE have terrible efficiency.

Now: if you buy a car made from batteries produced with electricity from coal etc. then the CO2-break-even of the car is a long way into the lifetime of the vehicle. And that's bad. But manufacturers will keep building battery plants and they will build them to take advantage of cheap and renewable energy. Hydro is already cheaper than coal in most cases, and the manufacturers avoid the risk of future fossil fuel taxes by using renewable. So manufacturers will place their battery factories in locations where cheap renewable energy is available. For example https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northvolt-funding-electri...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com