VW sees EVs making up 90% of Norway sales in 2021 | Hacker News Reader

VW sees EVs making up 90% of Norway sales in 2021

europe.autonews.com

64 pointsclouddrover92 comments

The Norwegian EV incentives:

No purchase/import taxes (1990-) Exemption from 25% VAT on purchase (2001-) No annual road tax (1996-) No charges on toll roads or ferries (1997- 2017). Maximum 50% of the total amount on ferry fares for electric vehicles (2018-) Maximum 50% of the total amount on toll roads (2019) Free municipal parking (1999- 2017) Parking fee for EVs was introduced locally with an upper limit of a maximum 50% of the full price (2018-) Access to bus lanes (2005-). New rules allow local authorities to limit the access to only include EVs that carry one or more passengers (2016) 50 % reduced company car tax (2000-2018). Company car tax reduction reduced to 40% (2018-) Exemption from 25% VAT on leasing (2015) Fiscal compensation for the scrapping of fossil vans when converting to a zero-emission van (2018) Allowing holders of driver licence class B to drive electric vans class C1 (light lorries) up to 4250 kg (2019)

https://elbil.no/english/norwegian-ev-policy/

The fact EVs are successful is great! But don’t pretend it isn’t because taxpayers subsidize their success.

On the other hand gas and diesel vehicles are effectively subsidized by getting to release CO2 for free.

I wish it weren’t the case, but the mining of rare earth materials is quite hazardous as well as the electricity production that powers EVs. We are mostly moving the environmental damage to other places.

However if we can get to renewable energy (nuclear power, as solar panel manufacturing has a lot of damage as well currently) then we can truly be carbon neutral.

The best thing to say about EVs is that air quality in dense areas is better, at the cost of electricity being produced by dirty methods in (hopefully) more sparse areas.

Am I right in believing an EV has a lower carbon output per unit distance than an ICE vehicle even if charged by thermal coal power?

Possibly, the relatively new Polestar marque has published it's transparency report about lifetime emissions, and references 'Global' and 'European' power mixes along with 100% wind in it's sums about after how many miles it will have produced less CO2 overall (inc. production emissions) vs. a ICE equivalent. Polestar's figures for the 2 are (vs the XC40 on the same underlying platform):

Global power mix: 112,000 km (69,594 miles) European power mix: 78,000 km (48,467 miles) Wind power: 50,000 km (31,068 miles)

The electrical emissions data comes from GaBi, but I can't see reference to the specific mixes they mention in the GaBi professional database, so I don't know what the exact breakdown of the mixes are.

Thanks for the numbers.

I didn't realise the numbers were so high!

Many EVs will be carbon-better only once their second hand vehicles!

Sorry, forgot to post the link, which contains a reasonably detailed white paper alongside the headlines on the webpage: https://www.polestar.com/uk/electric-sustainability/transpar...

I expect you're right about the equilibrium extending beyond the first owner in many instances. Volvos are renowned for their longevity (100,000mi is not uncommon) so will be interesting to see how Polestars fair with battery degradation. It would be interesting if Polestar go the way of Apple and try to recapture cars at end-of-life to recycle them and reduce subsequent generation car production emissions.

Doesn’t most of Norway’s power come from hydro?

I don’t know, but Norway has profited immensely from oil and gas through their sovereign wealth fund, which is also used as a model for how other countries should establish social safety nets.

If Norway was truly sorry, they should liquidate all of their oil profits and use it to invest in research to make a carbon neutral future. As it stands they ruined the environment and now will profit off the backs of the rest of the world through the legacy of their fossil fuel extraction.

I doubt Norway is "sorry". Also, they're barely on the 13h place... what does US do, at the policy level?

https://www.worldometers.info/oil/oil-production-by-country/

[edit] For all those who scale with population: it doesn't really matter for production. Population matters for consumption, and emissions (if they were producing 5% of US CO2, it would really look bad for Norway; but they don't - per capita the emit half than what US does per capita[1]). I guess it could matter in "benefit per capita"... if that were a thing (outside Norway maybe). I.e. how much did you benefit from US oil production, vs. how much Exxon benefited? I mean, yeah US citizens benefited from cheap gas - but that's because of middle-east production, so in reality the production elsewhere in the world should count on the US as "pollution".

[1]https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/norway?country=~NOR#p...

I think you should somehow scale that by country size. For example, there are about 5½ million Norwegians. I think that, in production per capita, only smaller countries such as Kuwait and Qatar score higher.

Having said that, because of the law of large numbers, in any ranking scaled by size, the outliers typically are the smaller entities.

I know nothing much on this topic, but worth considering Norway's population is 5 million, versus 330 million in the US.

All of a sudden it doesn't seem that impressive if Norway is only producing 15% the amount of the US

Norway's sovereign fund doesn't invest in companies which only carry out exploration & production, and invests in fossil fuel companies only if they also fund renewable research (although that may be token efforts for some). In all that's about 6% of the fund. It also invests a lot in renewable focused companies. Not perfect, but steps in the right direction and Norway is very aware of the contradiction in it's energy usage and fossil fuel production.

About 96%-99% of Norway's power come from hydro.

True, 96% of their power is produced from hydro, but two things have to be considered

- Norway has a population of 5 million

- because of the incentive to use electricity, the annual electricity consumption was about 26-27 MWh per inhabitant during 2004-2009 when the European union (EU15) average in 2008 was 7.4 MWh. Norway’s consumption of electricity was over three times higher per person compared to the EU 15 average in 2008

For comparison, Italy makes 41% of its power from hydro, but have to serve a population of 60 million

Moving the environmental damage from "everywhere in the atmosphere", to mining sites and power plants is a good thing. Power plants can be replaced with carbon free energy sources, but synthetic fuels have such terrible efficiency that they only make sense for niche applications.

I mean if you don’t care about African mines and Chinese rivers that factories dump their effluent into, sure. But there is absolutely an environmental cost, just less to the wealthy nations that pay to move the damage elsewhere.

If you're talking about cobalt you should know that it's also used to refine oil. Battery makers are moving away from it and Tesla have already invented batteries that use no cobalt at all (see battery day)

I think his point was that the damage moves from "everywhere" to certain places like factories and mines. Than you can add better filters/cleanup to the factories and mines.

It's a simpler problem to tackle if you have a few thousands polluting agents than billions of polluting agents everywhere.

Mining problems have the huge benefit that they're relatively localized and get a lot less severe when you choose to stop mining there. Fixing environmental problems from mining also doesn't require global coordination.

Global warming on the other hand threatens the whole biome and stopping the release of CO2 doesn't stop global warming once tipping points are reached. You also need global agreement to meaningfully do something about it.

(You also have to keep in mind that fuel for ICEs doesn't magically appear. Extracting oil and transporting it isn't particularly good for the local environment either.)

Off topic: Nuclear power isn't renewable energy. If we keep it up and cannot find methods to extract it more efficiently, the current rate of consumption would consume conventional uranium reserves by 2080. Some say we can add 100 years for potentially undiscovered ones, but it is certainly limited. Especially if we increase usage further, currently NP just serves around 12% of energy worldwide.

I know that NP is hip right now, but it really has its own problems at scale.

At scale we'd probably switch to breeder reactors once fresh Uranium becomes too expensive. Normal reactors only extract a few percent of the energy in the fuel.

That's not true.

EU has very strict policies about emissions.

The most immediate and obvious cost is not being able to drive those cars that do not respect the limits.

Also: in many EU countries fuel is heavily taxed

In Italy 75% of the price to the pump is taxes.

Definitely not free.

Norway isn't a part of the EU.

Does it matter if 700 million people are under the same rules if a country of 5 is not?

ICE cars are not releasing CO2 for free, that's the point.

in Norway gas is heavily taxed as well

Too simple a take on the relations between EU and Norway, here is a more comprehensive view: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway%E2%80%93European_Union_...

In short, as much part of EU you can be without being part of it. Norway keeps the freedom on key areas like fishing rights and agriculture while essentially being part of everything else without voting rights. And in some partnerships also having voting rights due to their structure.

>Too simple a take on the relations between EU and Norway

It's just the truth. Norway is not a member of the EU. But I agree that it is good to have a strong understanding of what exactly the relationship is between Norway and the European Union.

Some of you may be noticed that the EU tends to make decisions that are acceptable to the countries that pay.

The truth is that except for some quite narrow fields, the EU decides a lot of things and Norway has to accept those things.

They're like Switzerland, which hemmeded and hawed about immigration from the EU, held a referendum deciding to block it, and then when the EU put an economic gun to their head, backed down and all EU citizens now have freedom of movement to Switzerland.

We've spent almost three decades negotiating and harmonising with the EU and still have plenty to work out afresh every year, so if the UK thinks it will tie up its divorce with a bowed ribbon in three months, the only word I have for that negotiating position is: brave.

Freedom of movement (and a lot of other things) is guaranteed in the Bilateral I agreements [0] between the EU and Switzerland which are protected by a so-called guillotine clause [1]. The latter meaning that violation of any part of the agreement would void all of it.

The result of the referendum would definitely violate part of the agreement and the EU just reminded Switzerland of the consequences.

If anything it could be blamed on the initiators and supporters (SVP) of the referendum to not properly inform the populace of the consequences of a successful referendum.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland%E2%80%93European_U...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillotine_clause

Norway isn't part of the EU but is part of the EEA. It is through that membership that it's bound by the same as other EU countries economic agreements that through simplification people tend to associate with the EU.

Carbon emissions and units of currency are not fungible.

So unless some of that tax is intended to be a carbon tax and works to incentive cleaner alternatives, then this is a pretty weak argument.

Also, the producers aren't paying he cost, end users are[1] and without much in the way of alternatives.

1. always do, but you get where I'm coming from

> So unless some of that tax is intended to be a carbon tax and works to incentive cleaner alternatives, then this is a pretty weak argument.

Of course the incentive is towards cleaner alternatives, in my country is public transport (trains, trams and subway are electric here).

> Also, the producers aren't paying he cost

fiscal incentive for EV go straight to car producers pockets, I don't see the difference

taxing owners is a way to drive them to buy a different product, cheaper for the buyer and more profitable for the seller

it works both ways

Germany plans to introduce a CO2 price and it won't end with cheaper fuel even though it is already quite expensive. The existing taxes aren't high enough to cover the CO2 price.

> The most immediate and obvious cost is not being able to drive those cars that do not respect the limits

Wishful thinking. You can still drive the most extreme of polluting vehicles as long as they're old enough, or as long as their manufacturer cheated at emission tests (many recalls are still pending for years).

> as long as they're old enough

old enough as in 30 years old at least

there are very few of them

and usually they can't be trusted to commute everyday

> as their manufacturer cheated at emission tests

that's universally true.

there was an article yesterday about Tesla Y built with cheap material and rooftop flying away while driving

I guess it can be considered dangerous too

Free? Maybe in the US, but over here, 40-60% of the cost of fuel is taxes (Dutch source: https://www.unitedconsumers.com/tanken/informatie/opbouw-bra...).

Bonus taxes ("accijns", also raised on alcohol and tobacco) makes up 12.2 billion of the country's income (https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/prinsjesdag/inkomst... at least a billion is spent on CO2 and nitrogen reduction, and reducing the dependency on natural gas in favor of electricity (that can be produced in a renewable fashion).

Why the downvotes?

The taxes on fuel need to do a lot of heavy lifting, pricing in the cost of road building and maintenance, the effect of road congestion and air pollution in cities, and the effect of increased global warming. I’m sceptical they cover those factors.

Although, it probably would be better to move more of the tax burden to car use in cities, and away from fuel. Driving a car in the countryside is much less damaging than in a city centre.

We also get taxed for owning the car itself (Road Tax). Which is meant for road maintenance in the Netherlands.

We pay a lot of taxes.

There are a number of studies that show that there are still many externalized costs for cars. A lot of course also applies to EVs (e.g. accidents, noise).

not true, each gallon of gas has about 75¢ of state/federal taxes. this revenue is lost on evs

Completely burning one gallon produces about 10kg of CO2. Sequestrating it would cost around 5$ at today's prices (500$/ton).

Electric vehicles cause much more CO2 emissions during production as compared to cars with internal combustion engines due to complicated manufacturing process of the battery.

If you’re comparing CO2 emissions, you have to consider the full lifecycle.

That's interesting, and self-defeating I might add!

Do you have any data to share supporting the claim?

https://www.allego.eu/blog/2019/october/circular-thinking--c...

Really fascinating if true

It is also something a lot of people keep saying, but I have never seen proper documentation for it. So at this point I just think it is people repeating rumors.

But it would be interesting to read a proper documentation of it.

Most of the reputable reports I've seen put the payback time at 12 to 18 months.

I can't help but feel the CO2 released by any manufacturing process is either:

a) Due to the factory power source which will probably (hopefully) be renewable soon

b) Due to some processing step where carbon capture should be a lot easier to perform than the direct air capture necessary to capture car emissions.

So the method of emissions needs to be considered as well.

Not only CO2 but a lot of toxic fumes as well.

> But don’t pretend it isn’t because taxpayers subsidize their success.

I wish my government were doing the same here

I guess, there should be a good charging network in Norway too. 2 years ago I was looking for a car and no available chargers close to the house was a big show stopper. Closest one is like 0,5 mile away, that makes no sense.

Norway has a decent charging infra, at least in the area where I'm at. It's been improving recently as well. Circle K (the petrol station chain formerly known as Statoil) has started installing chargers near where I live, so I would assume they are rolling this out nation wide. A lot of people have individual charging stations at their homes as well. I'm not sure of the state of charging stations in the smaller towns though.

I had been assuming norway would have decent charging infra because I'd thought their parking lots already needed to be wired for engine heaters? Or are those only a swedish thing?

I have never heard of this existing, but I'm living at a coastal area, far away from the swedes.

Some residential parking lots have these but they're not ubiquitous. They're often old or broken and not many people use them (modern cars are better engineered for winter starts).

However the wiring for these cannot handle what an EV car chargers requires, so they're useless for charging a car. For EVs typically new charging points are installed and this can be costly. It depends upon if the residents' association agrees to pay for them to be installed.

> Closest one is like 0,5 mile away, that makes no sense.

Really, you can't walk 1 mile once a week to park your car at a charger?

There's little point owning an EV if you can't charge it every night in a garage/driveway/street.

Reformatted to be more legible and some notes added.

VAT is the largest item here, but others are potentially worth quite a bit too.

Taxes:

No purchase/import taxes (1990-) - would be 25% VAT, plus 2,400 NOK (260 USD) scrap duty tax, greenhouse gas tax for a/c of around 730 NOK (80 USD)

No annual road tax (1996-) - would be approximately 2960 NOK (350 USD)

50% reduced company car tax (2000-2018), 40% (2018-) - company cars are provided as a benefit taxed at around 30% of list price otherwise, however there are reductions of 25% for all vehicles over three years or cars used for work driving of 40,000km per year

Exemption from 25% VAT on purchase (2001-)

Exemption from 25% VAT on leasing (2015)

Tolls and Fares:

No charges on toll roads or ferries (1997-2017) - typical ferry fare for a fjord is around 100 NOK (11 USD), tolls are around 20 NOK (2 USD), so this could be a significant benefit if living near a toll road or ferry crossing

Maximum 50% of the total amount on ferry fares for electric vehicles (2018-)

Maximum 50% of the total amount on toll roads (2019)

Parking:

Free municipal parking (1999-2017)

Parking fee for EVs was introduced locally with an upper limit of a maximum 50% of the full price (2018-)

Bus lanes:

Access to bus lanes (2005-)

New rules allow local authorities to limit the access to only include EVs that carry one or more passengers (2016)

Vans:

Fiscal compensation for the scrapping of fossil vans when converting to a zero-emission van (2018)

Allowing holders of driver licence class B to drive electric vans class C1 (light lorries) up to 4250 kg (2019)

Also, very cheap electricity, one of the cheapest in Europe.

Lots of empty mountains where it rains a lot and water can be stored in dams for power production.

Meanwhile comparison NZ's(country where ~85% of power is renewable) EV incentives: - lowest yearly registration fee which will be changed into surcharge once over 2% of cars are EV (because they don't pay road taxes via fuel)...

Or is it their sovereign wealth fund is effectively subsidizing their success?

I understand all this, Norway is able to print money as they sell oil (so others can freely emit CO2), and they don't really need those taxes, but this point:

"Allowing holders of driver licence class B to drive electric vans class C1 (light lorries) up to 4250 kg (2019)"

Is this a good idea? Is this save? There are C class driver licenses for a good reason, those heavy cars just behave differently on the road, there are different regulations for them. Sounds strange.

> Is this a good idea?

If you want electric delivery vans, yes.

Delivery companies that own their own vans and pay their employees hourly are in price competition with 'gig economy' delivery companies where the driver brings their own vehicle and gets paid per-parcel - so traditional companies are limited in their ability to absorb or pass on higher costs.

A diesel class B van with a 3.5 tonne weight limit, set up as a delivery van, can carry perhaps 1 tonne of cargo. In inner-city areas, where the density of deliveries is high, vans having a shorter range isn't a problem - but the vans will leave the depot at the absolute maximum weight capacity.

If electric vans have 20% less cargo capacity due to the weight of the batteries? That's a profitable business turned into an unprofitable one.

While there are some delivery companies (UPS for example) that use a lot of class C1 vans, and hire employees with the special licenses required, the supply of people with C1 licenses is much lower than the supply of people with B (i.e. car driver) licenses and the hourly wages are higher accordingly.

Depends on why these C1 classes exist. But I reckon there is a difference between driving a heavy van, and driving a heavy loaded van. Or maybe they need to make a C0 ;) that has just enough of C1 to make it "safe" again.

It is true that Norway has an advantage, having the money to allow them to make this sort of investment. But rightly or wrongly, the entire economy is currently awash with credit to fight the pandemic-induced economic crisis.

But money is not the only reason it has worked. Norway is generating 95% of their electricity using hydro. A KW/h is cheaper in Norway than it is in France (which is notoriously cheap due to nuclear). People want to have an electric car, because it makes sense for them. Once the economy is converted, they will reduce the incentives, and they will be in a very good place.

Now we can say that that is also an unfair advantage (a geographic one). But they did build all those plants. Norway did play the long game.

We can all continue to say that there are no solutions to climate change, or we can take a leaf from their book and start playing the long game. The best moment to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best moment is today.

Wikipedia page on Norwegian Electricity sector: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Norway

Eurostat statistics on electricity prices in Europe: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

They're already increasing some taxes from 2022 for EVs.

Basically, EVs has to pay an insurance equivalent to what motorcycles pay. Which per now is 2135 NOK or USD 230.

Governments writeup: https://www.regjeringen.no/no/aktuelt/pa-veg-mot-ei-framtid-...

Current Norwegian BEV registrations:

https://elbilstatistikk.no/

Volkswagen currently has 7 models in the top 25 selling BEVs for 2020: Audi e-tron, VW e-Golf, VW ID.3, Skoda Citigo, Volkswagen e-Up!, Porsche Taycan, and SEAT Mii.

But three of those 7 models (eUp, Citigo, and Mii) should count as one, beucase they are the same car, manufactured at the same assembly line with different badges.

Top 5 2020

  Audi E-tron 8022
  Volkswagen Golf 4971
  Nissan Leaf 4451
  HYUNDAI Kona 4183
  Tesla Model 3220

https://elbilstatistikk.no/

Wow Tesla is not doing too great there. Wonder if that is supply or demand problem.

At the moment they aren't, true. Most likely a demand problem. But there are more Model S on the road in Norway than Model 3.

I guess when you combine all of them they still in the lead. Unsure how it's gonna play out in the future tho. Pretty much every manufacturer got an EV car now and it's not built in a tent in California.

I kinda feel Tesla should licence their strong suits (infotainment, batteries and motors) or outsource their weaknesses (voice control, body/panel, service).

3,S and X combined are 3944 for 2020 if I haven't made a mistake, still 5th - but unsure what you wanted.

Yes around 16%, 21k S and 18k 3 (according to the website).

How does this compare to non-EV sales?

Great stuff. Would be awesome for you to share this with the community over at https://collective.energy if you're willing OP

The VW emissions scandal and them being forced to switch to EVs in the US as part of the settlement/punishment (which by the way was also a suggestion Elon Musk made before it happened), is probably what will save VW in the long-term.

It really started a fire underneath them that they couldn't just ignore, as most other carmakers, including VW continued to have the ingrained thinking that EVs are just a "fad" or a "niche market" that they need to address "somehow", but mostly not put a lot of effort into it.

Tesla Model 3 having 400,000 pre-orders in week 1 probably freaked out most carmakers, too, though. I'm glad VW, as well as other carmakers have realized by now that EVs are the future of the vast majority of road vehicles, and there is nothing stopping it.

>>The VW emissions scandal and them being forced to switch to EVs in the US as part of the settlement/punishment

Has that actually happened? From my perspective the ongoing exodus towards EVs is due to EU enforcing incredibly strict emissions standard, basically from this year every manufacturer has to have a fleet average of 100g of CO2/km traveled, with very heavy fines paid for every single car sold above that level(it has already led to Mercedes completely stopping sales of AMG vehicles since September until the end of the year, because they are so badly over the threshold), and then in few years the required average drops to 75g of CO2/km and then 50g. Those targets are bonkers, and impossible to achieve on pure ICEs(the 100g target is maybe just possible, but definitely not the 75 or 50g ones). So every manufacturer who sells cars in EU has to innovate and has to move towards PHEVs and BEVs, because otherwise it will be simply impossible to sell any cars at a profit over here. VW of course knows this and that's why there is such a strong push from their entire group towards electric vehicles.

I have no idea what impact the US market had on this, but from my perspective it was zero - just like American manufacturers have pulled out even further from EU, European manufacturers are simply cutting out all models that are hard to sell in US due to their regulations.

Hybrids are great! So setting a goal that's impossible to meet with pure ICE isn't bonkers.

You're misunderstanding me. The goals were bonkers in the sense that the average goal was set way below pretty much every vehicle on the market - so the day it was announced, there were maybe 2-3 compliant models. Bonkers as in - "crazy" low. Not that they are bad. I myself drive a PHEV and my next car is definitely going to be a full electric.

Do you know when are those reductions to 75/50g set to go into effect? I've been hoping to move to electric vehicles for a while now but unfortunately the infrastructure is lacking, it's simply not practical to do so. I'm hopeful though that with these changes there will be more investment in electric recharging infrastructure.

One thing I don't understand is how the EU public will afford this. I drive a Plugin Hybrid, but since moving from my old place and living in an apartment, I have no where to charge it. The closest charging station is around 12km from me and has 2 plugs (it is in an Aldi). After that there is another on 4-5 km after also with 2 plugs and one is mostly out of service.

I am all for lower emission vehicles, but most people in my country live in apartments, a lot of them without garages even. What will people do? (I end up charging my car at my parents when I need, but even so it is a PITA as I have to leave it there for a few hours and then walk back home for 10-15 minutes)

Wireless charging would be the best solution. Charge where you park and no cables on the street:

https://witricity.com/products/automotive/

My local council barely has enough money to patch potholes in the streets, they are switching the lights off at night to save money. Yet somehow.....they will build this expensive to build and maintain infrastructure?

I imagine the first answer people will have is "it's simple! We will just let the private sector handle this!" - to which I say, this is an absolutely awful idea. The charging infrastructure is already handled like this and it's an absolute mess - every charger requires a different app, from a different provider, they all have different rules and requirements, if you turn up to a charger that you don't already have an account for, good luck spending the next 15-20 minutes setting up an account and hoping it actually works(instead of giving you "unknown error occurred" like it happens in my experience, just yesterday I wanted to use a "public" charger but failed because the 1 star android app by that provider kept crashing - it's a shitshow basically). The best thing that could happen to it is either all charging infrastructure being nationalized, or at least the government introducing very strict standards like they do with petrol stations.

> Yet somehow.....they will build this expensive to build and maintain infrastructure?

Sure. Ghent is: https://www.themayor.eu/ga/ghent-speeds-up-the-transition-to...

New York is: https://www.nypa.gov/services/clean-energy-advisory-services...

Tulsa is with chargers with built-in batteries for lower installation cost: https://freewiretech.com/news/electrifying-the-heartland-tul...

The problem is that there is no infrastructure at all. Inductive charging is already a mature technology even for EVs. It's not going to change things up if nobody installs chargers.

Year by year there will be more infrastructure. Like these on-street pop up chargers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb5aA3Qepe8

Or lamppost chargers: https://thedriven.io/2020/03/24/siemens-converts-all-lamp-po...

Yeah I also drive a PHEV and it just doesn't work if you can't charge it at home - you might as well not bother at all.

However, I think the idea going forward is that proper BEVs will charge at stupid fast rates - 150-200kW charges, giving you 200-300 miles range in just 30-40 minutes of charging.

And which point, for majority of commuters, it's not completely inconceivable that once a week you just go to a "fuel station" where you plug in for 30 minutes to fill up and that lasts you the whole week of commuting, even if you can't charge anywhere in between. We're not quite there yet, but I think that's the ultimate future.

I agree with you.

But once people start having en masse these problems, things will change ASAP. It's like bike infrastructure: if there are 2 bikes on the road, nobody cares, if there are 20000 bikes on the road, everybody cares.

The hardest part is getting people to care. Once you do that, they will everything in their power to make things go their way.

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