Hacker News Reader

Comment by dragonsh | Hacker News Reader

In Singapore they have monopoly on car servicing and distribution. C&C takes care of Benz and Performance motor for BMW. Then Japanese and Korean cars are also by single distributor entities. They control the price and the market.

Also Oil and Gas is core industry for Singapore economy. So when anyone fills gas it helps government revenues and generate jobs. Climate is not the primary concern given the small footprint of Singapore.

Also if Tesla comes in Singapore as it is perfect place for its range BMW, Benz which are the primary brands will suffer heavily. Also thousands of jobs repairing gasoline engine, oils, filters will be lost. Since electrical car do not have as many mechanical moving parts as traditional gasoline car it will reduce maintenance costs and car servicing and parts related business.

So Singapore won't let Tesla setup up easily. It will be taxed higher than other electrical car companies which works on fringes and do not threaten the oil and gas related automobile jobs and taxes.

View on HN

Singapore already has an excellent public transport system (such as the electrified subway & light rail), so the "threatening the oil and gas industry" theory doesn't make sense.

Owning a private vehicle is in fact usually a status symbol there. Source https://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/31/asia/singapore-cars/index...

So what. Just because they have good public transport system they don't seem to be urging to ban cars. Cars will exist and it's way better to have them electric than gasoline.

They don't seem to be in any urge to get electric buses either.

>They don't seem to be in any urge to get electric buses either.

In that very article we are commenting on is a photo of an autonomous electric bus being tested at Nanyang university and as the article points out they're planning to build out an extensive bus and train network throughout the city up until 2040, to shorten any trip from A to b down to 45 minutes.

Singapore is very much in the e-mobility business, they're just not in the habit of encouraging every citizen to carry around two tons of steel wherever they go.

Uhm, Singapore not banning cars? Wasn't there some news recently... and the top search result is https://www.lta.gov.sg/apps/news/page.aspx?c=2&id=377d8c25-6..., which starts "In line with Singapore’s move towards a car-lite society, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) will introduce" and goes on to describe with various new rules.

Singapore is also one of the places where paying money isn't enough to buy a car. You have to purchase a license to drive that car, which currently costs about €25000 for a ten-year, one-car license, and you have to show that license when you buy the car.

https://dollarsandsense.sg/complete-guide-buying-car-singapo... FYI.

"Cars will exist and it's way better to have them electric than gasoline."

If we're talking about direct air pollution in cities I agree.

For climate change, I mostly disagree:

With an electrical car you're starting with a CO2 debt for the production of the battery.

Then, if you want to offset this debt, you have to use the car frequently and be in an area where the electricity production does not generate much CO2. There are not many areas like this yet (France, Sweden being the famous examples).

> If we're talking about direct air pollution in cities I agree.

What about PM2.5? Do EVs do not use breaks and tires?

Regenerative braking cuts these down a lot.

brakes ? rarely

I am sure that tires (in the city where is majority of cars electric) will not cause PM2.5 mayhem :)

Also VW prepares this technology : https://www.motor1.com/news/346653/brake-dust-particle-filte...

Tires generate a lot more particulate matter than brakes do, like 95% or so.

Tyres yes, brakes not so much. The brakes are needed only to come to a complete stop, most normal braking is handled by running the motor as a generator to dump the energy back into the battery.

I sometimes wish people who make this argument would go sit in a sealed room with a running electrical car and then a running petrol or diesel car and tell me which one was the better experience.

I would prefer sitting in a sealed room with my bike.. Always something to tinker with.

I think the argument here though is sit in the car with the vehicle's emissions from non-existent to end of life.

I do agree that point-source emissions of the electricity being generated is a big advantage. Nothing sucks more than being exposed to vehicle emissions in traffic/city/etc.

Well, to be fair, you need to be sitting in the room during the production of the battery, too ;-)

As long as you also sit beside the smelter that makes the metal for the engine, drive shaft and gearing.

Sure. I'd even allow that you could share that experience with all the steel being smelted for both cars.

The pollution from the production of the battery, the steel and the aluminium can occur well away from major population centres. They are centralised and immobile so there is a much better chance that in the future they can utilise more efficient methods or at least capture some of their emissions.

The only report I've read about that side issue assumed that producing an ICE/petrol engine and transmission caused no CO₂ emission, or the authors just forgot.

Do you know anything about that? What is the CO₂ cost of producing a typical battery+electric engine compared to that of producing a typical transmission, ICE engine and the minor ICE-related parts that electric cars don't need?

Citation needed. The literature I've seen suggests that an electric vehicle easily makes back any deficit quite early in its life.

An easily digestable version of this calculation is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RhtiPefVzM

No, it doesn't make up the deficit, it does end up slightly better than a ICE one after the projected life cycle of 12 years.

The problem is that unlike ICE cars Teslas are much less likely to be reused for 12 years, as far as other EVs go it's still an open question.

If the only two options are an ICE or an EV, it's likely better to have an EV despite the likelihood of PCO2E being underestimated in the supply chain especially when it comes to rare earths.

But if the option is to have an EV or no car and use public transportation or communal transport the latter is always better.

If anything, electric cars have the potential to last incredibly long. Combine with composite or aluminum body and the body won't rust away on an otherwise perfectly fine car.

Yeah, I'm confused as well. Generally in a 10+ year old car you're looking at possible transmissions issues(or engine depending on the brand, hello Subaru).

We're just about to crack 100k mi and 5 years on our EV with no sign of stopping. From a power train perspective swapping motors is dead simple and you have no transmission. I still see good capacity at ~91k. There are electronics/accessories that will fail but that's no different on an ICE.

Anecdata aside, the average car gets taken off the road around 11-12 years due to body rot, not drievtrain problems. EVs are unlikely to be immune to that.

Except Teslas which are aluminum.

The majority of Teslas are made primarily of steel, with some aluminum parts. Just like other cars.

There's still some decent physical shielding of the underside of the pack(which runs whole body). It'd be interesting to see the long term impacts that would have on the frame/etc.

Where can I learn more about this?

The ALH version of the Jetta TDI is a pretty good example. I personally owned two ICE vehicles that lasted well over 15 years and 250,000 miles. I have a 2017 Civic with 44,000 miles now. I average over 40 mpg even just driving around town. When we travel extended distances I can some times hit 45 mpg if traffic cooperates. The math behind the ICE vs electric isn't familiar to me, but I wouldn't be surprised if you're closer to right than most people want to admit. I do fully believe the math will slide greatly into the electric vehicle's favor eventually.

I drive a 2000 Civic with 205k miles (it was purchased used). It only gets about 25 mpg, likely because of a part failure in the fuel system that has been too expensive to fix.

I estimate 1000L (264gal) of fuel burned in it per year. That's about 755kg, and 35000 MJ (9800 kWh equivalent). The combustion produces about 2300 kg CO2. That's half the EPA estimate for "a typical passenger vehicle" [0]. An equivalent electric car likely uses less than 35 kWh/100 mi, so an all-electric power budget would be 2300 kWh, which at typical US power production is about 1400 kg CO2, about 60% my current footprint, on a strict operating basis. The battery represents about 5000 kg CO2, so it would be about 5.5 years until my "CO2 investment" pays itself off.

Given the current money-price differentials, and dearth of electrics in the used market where I always buy my cars, it doesn't make sense for me to replace my current car.

I'd also like to see a hybrid with a 20 kW I-2 free-piston linear alternator (probably from Toyota) before committing to battery-electric.

[0] https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-t...

Like I said previously, citations are needed for these assertions. You might be right, but at the moment it looks like opinion.

> With an electrical car you're starting with a CO2 debt for the production of the battery.

In what way is this bigger than the production of the many components needed in a gasoline car? Internal combustion engine (as an example) is not exactly CO2 natural to manufacture either.

>In what way is this bigger than the production of the many components needed in a gasoline car? Internal combustion engine (as an example) is not exactly CO2 natural to manufacture either.

He literally said "for the production of the battery". Don't build a strawman. It's pretty well accepted that batteries are environmentally dirty to make.

An ICE drivetrain and electric drivetrain sans motor are both big lumps of metal. I'm not sure what the difference is between the carbon footprint per pound of copper vs steel (both cars are gonna have a lot of aluminum but I'm assuming they're within an order of magnitude of even). In either case the manufacturing carbon footprint it pennies compared to the energy required to move the damn thing its whole life (except in the obvious case of the electric an in an area where electricity is low/zero cabon).

I suspect the EV is going to be just barely more carbon heavy to manufacture simply because tech is at a point where the EV needs to place a much higher priority on weight (because it has the heavy battery to compensate for by being light everywhere else and reducing weight increases range) and that priority will result in different part choices throughout the car and that is where the extra carbon will come from (e.g. forged aluminum control arms and rims vs stamped steel).

Obviously the EV is far superior to the ICE vehicle in operation so it would make that back quickly.

I also was talking about the _production_ of the component. Not sure what you mean.

In any case if there is some comparison made between CO2 footprint of _production_ of an EV vs gasoline car, I would love to read that.

There was some info in Wikipedia:

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

So production CO2 impact is bigger (no only because of the battery) but total lifecycle is somewhat less than gasoline.

Best option is obviously no car produced.

Ok but the value used in the table is for a quite dirty electricity. The value used is 500gCO2/kWh when the OECD mean value in 2013 was already down to 430gCO2/kWh, and the value for my country (Switzerland) is at 24gCO2/kWh... Based on that you get completely different result based on where you leave.

The first column, which is about production, doesn’t use that value.

I'm not even talking about the first column as there is no such thing as a standard electric car, is it a Zoe or a Tesla model X?

Moreover, production needs energy and the carbon intensity should be mentioned (so we suppose that they used the same value). A battery produced at the Gigafactory is going to have a smaller carbon intensity as most of its power supply is solar... By the way this study is very pessimistic. For example if I take the efficiency of the Tesla Model 3 (16.4kWh/100km) for the whole 150'000km we get 12.3 metric tons of CO2 (500gCO2/kWh), far from the 19 tons of the figure.

Both are bad. Good is not buying a car when you have one in your driveway that does the trick. Better is never having a car in the first place and biking to a transit hub.

Also, what about disposing the battery when it reaches its end of life.

I mentioned the same in another comment about public transport and car prices. Given very high COE cost which allows people to have a car for 10 years and to pay for new COE to renew. A COE can range from SG$ 32,000 to SG$76,000 or higher depending on demand.

But focus on public transport is one thing, still there is a large automobile market with related oil and gas related automobile industry. Moving to EV will threaten them and related jobs.

Singapore's oil refining industry isn't threatened by some of the few COE owners switching to Teslas.

The government would be much more bothered by the idea their public might expect non-polluting personal vehicles to be made more affordable and available, and the resulting implications for traffic

For those confused, COE = Certificate of Entitlement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_of_Entitlement

"The Certificate of Entitlement or COE is the quota licence received from a successful winning bid in an open bid uniform price auction which grants the legal right of the holder to register, own and use a vehicle in Singapore for a period of 10 years. When demand is high, the cost of a COE can exceed the value of the car itself."

So you say that it's a conspiracy?

The first line reads: Taking mass transit is a better climate-change solution than tooling around in one of his Tesla vehicles.

I don't know, I can't really see how this can be a conspiracy aganinst Tesla by BMW and others when they argue that it is better to use mass transit that also runs on electricity. How can anybody argue that it is more efficient to transfer people in 2 tons, 3 metres long 2 metres wide boxes with chemical batteries instead of much more denser electric systems like metro trains and no chemical batteries.

I like what Tesla is doing to the car industry, I want dinosaur smoke out of my living space ASAP but please stop gunning towards public transport. Poblic transport is great and it doesn't make any sense whatsoever to replace it with private vehicles no matter how dinosaur free they are.

So yes, electric cars are a lifestyle choice. Maybe a health choice too if we are to ban the fossil fuel from the cities.

I recall Elon Musk bad-mouthing public transport but public transport is great and cannot be replaced by Tesla vehicles. Maybe he will finally come to that realization when Hyperloop's final version inludes ride-sharing :) I cannot wait for fancy looking metro syst... I mean Hyperloop ride sharing.

it is ridiculously expensive to drive in Singapore. The saying is always that the license to drive a car in Singapore can cost twice what you paid for the car itself. As a result, driving is an absolute luxury. For its population of 5.6 million, there are only 600,000 cars licensed to drive on Singaporean roads[1]. Even if all of those cars started running on electricity it would be a drop in the ocean compared to the ~ 68,100,000 tons of oil SG exports[2].

[1] https://money.cnn.com/2017/10/24/news/singapore-car-numbers-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_industry_in_Singapore

>Climate is not the primary concern given the small footprint of Singapore.

I would have thought that given its geographical location, climate would in fact be a primary concern of Singapore. So why is it not? One could hardly accuse Singaporean government of short-sightedness.

Car in Singapore is already more expensive than a house in USA. So numbers are already limited. So emissions produced by them is not as bad as other large cities in Asia.

One more point is that majority of the cars are discarded when they finish 10 years. So newer car with better technology produce lesser emissions.

Singapore government is far sighted that's the reason they focus more on public transportation.

The cars are not really discarded after 10 years, they just wind up in Malaysia or Indonesia. That impact should be considered as well.

> ...climate would in fact be a primary concern of Singapore. So why is it not?

Literally the second sentence in an article that was submitted:

> The city-state, which has said its efforts to cope with climate change are as crucial as military defense, has prioritized greater use of its trains and buses, Masagos Zulkifli, minister for environment and water resources, said in an interview Wednesday.

But climate change is global, not local. So it would seem that worldwide adoption of electric cars would be in Singapore's national interest, assuming they genuinely see an existential threat to Singapore from climate change.

And yet, they make statements like this which seem counterproductive. So, why?

It's in TFA. In their opinion good public transport has a much larger impact on climate change than personal cars. Which has been proven to be the case countless times.

> But climate change is global, not local.

And Singapore can't do shit to the way the rest of the world combats climate. It can have an impact within its own borders. It (correctly) identified that the public transport makes more sense in a city-state. It incentivizes public transport while de-incentivizing car ownership in general (electric or not) because there's not enough space for the supporting infrastructure.

You'd learn all of this and more by reading the article before commenting.

I would guess Singapore wants to encourage a local electric vehicle industry and will shelter it from competition in the early years.

No. Singapore is a tiny city state with a service based economy

Dyson is setting up an EV plant in Singapore.

It is a priority because the country is threatened by rising sea level (about one third of the country is on reclaimed land).

I think the control of Singapore's cars is a reason why they can make a shift away from petrol/diesel cars, not against it. Electric vehicles primarily move pollution from the daily usage in dense urban areas, to remote production and recycling. For Singapore this is ideal as it means cleaner air. The local environment is very much a concern for Singapore.

The market effect on BMW, Mercedes, etc... is probably not much of a concern on them as most car manufacturers are introducing electric models, with BMW having a major share of the electric car market in some places. Tesla currently has a good market share in the prestige range but that is decreasing.

The oil & gas companies are also getting in on the act, so they're reducing the impact on the introduction of electric cars. The first charging station in Singapore is in Shell petrol station. They might prefer hydrogen fuel cell cars as it maintains the need for their distribution network, but they'll adapt either way.

As to maintenance, Tesla's quality issues mean there's no shortage of work. I used to live near a Tesla workshop and it was always overfull with cars needing expensive repairs.

> The market effect on BMW, Mercedes, etc...

It will have an impact, moreover for BMW and BENZ electrical line up to come close to Tesla in quality, range, reliability might take another decade.

> Oil and gas industry

Singapore oil tax is not same as electricity. Moreover electrical charging station is not a competitive advantage any decent company do it, indeed blueSG and SP Utilities have more charging station than Shell in Singapore. EV and Tesla will affect this industry directly.

> Maintenance

In general, AEVs require less maintenance than conventional vehicles because there are usually fewer fluids (like oil and transmission fluid) to change and far fewer moving parts.[1]

[1] https://www.energy.gov/eere/electricvehicles/electric-car-sa...

> for BMW and BENZ electrical line up to come close to Tesla in quality, range, reliability might take another decade

Whilst I admire Tesla's ambition, the work they've done to advance electric cars, plus they certainly make nice cars, a lot of people fail to see Tesla's fallibility and the potentially weak position they're actually in.

- BMW plans to have 25 models with some battery capabilities by 2023, at least 4 all electric. Daimler (Mercedes-Benz) are aiming for 10 all-electric models by then.

- On dollar for mile range basis most manufacturers are catching up with Tesla with their new models (or are premium Jaguars, where that's less of a factor). The Chevy Bolt is about equal to the (yet to be released) standard Model 3 in price and range.

- Consumer Reports in the US calls Tesla's reliability "weak" and does not recommend the Model 3.

- Legacy car manufacturers can scale up the bulk of the manufacturing process for an electric car quicker than Tesla, which is still struggling to run a production line that meets expectations.

I like Tesla but it is by no means the clear winner of the electric vehicle race.

> -BMW and Benz plans

I am aware of their plans. But still Tesla has a significant lead as both were still sceptic in full embrace of electric until Tesla outsold them in USA. Also it takes time to master running an electric motor by Software and constantly improve along with battery. Tesla has much longer experience of running a car on electrical motors.

BMW and Benz can sale cars based on strong brand. But to make really good electrical car with a decent range will take some time.

I am pragmatist not a fan of specific brand. More competition the better it is. I will be more than happy to see a real good electric car from established brand. But I don't think BMW i8 and i3 can come close to Tesla's current line up. So is the case with Jaguar and Audi with their new luxury EV. You can't go easy with legs in two boats. So if there is a real evidence of change I will change my views.

Your argument is speculative at best and ad hominem at worst.

> Also if Tesla comes in Singapore as it is perfect place for its range BMW, Benz which are the primary brands will suffer heavily.

Citation needed. Model 3 has performed very poorly beyond initial demand from early adopters/fans.

> Since electrical car do not have as many mechanical moving parts as traditional gasoline car it will reduce maintenance costs and car servicing and parts related business.

And yet Tesla repair and maintenance costs are astronomical.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com