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>I can't imagine that the UK government and the private sector will get their act together and somehow, in 9 years, the infrastructure will be amazing, and they will find answers to questions like how do you charge at an apartment or a house with no dedicated parking space. I'm eagerly awaiting to hear about these solutions.

They have much longer than 9 years to get the infrastructure right.

The average car age in the US is roughly 12 years old. I imagine is is roughly the same in the UK. That means even if they stop selling new ICE cars in 2030 the average car might still be an ICE into the 2040s. Assuming no further restrictions it probably wouldn't be until the 2050s that it would become truly difficult to find a used ICE car.

Obviously the UK would need to improve in the meantime, but they would basically have 30 years to get their EV infrastructure into the position it works for every car owner.

> They have much longer than 9 years to get the infrastructure right.

No, these seem like pretty solid questions to ask if you are going to be forced to buy an electric car, not just if society is going to go all electric. Unless we're trying to convince people to just stop buying cars altogether in 2030.

>if you are going to be forced to buy an electric car,

That was my point. You aren't going to be forced to buy an EV. The used market for ICE vehicles can be expected to be robust for some 15-20 years after the ban on new cars goes into effect.

Being forced to buy an old ICE car rather than a new one is still being forced to do something.

Newer cars will have improvements in other things besides motive power, like safety features. Are we going to force people who are not in a situation where EVs are usable, to forgo safety measures as well?

No one is being "forced" to do anything. You want an ICE car, you can keep your ICE car or buy another used one. I am sure when it comes to it, there will also be a thriving niche market to keep these cars roadworthy for even longer than the normal 15-20 year lifespan. That also probably includes aftermarket modifications to make the cars safer.

I'm also sure at some point someone somewhere might be inconvenienced by decisions like this, but we are going to have to just accept that if we want to combat climate change. Maybe you object to it for a political or ideological reason. However it doesn't make sense to blame that objection on the lack of currently existing infrastructure when it would be 20-30 years before we truly need that level of infrastructure.

> when it would be 20-30 years before we truly need that level of infrastructure.

I don't agree. Where I currently live, there are often waitlists for rationed time at workplace charging spots. The person who you initially responded to also has massive issues charging anywhere outside the home. We are already at a point where electric infrastructure is woefully inadequate to deal with the influx of EVs in the current market, which isn't all that EV friendly; this will be catastrophic once all new cars are required to be EV-friendly.

The correct choice to combat climate change would be to actually make credible, large investments in national EV charging networks, not pooh pooh the issue and tell motorists to eat cake.

You are miscategorizing my comment. From my first post:

>Obviously the UK would need to improve in the meantime, but they would basically have 30 years to get their EV infrastructure into the position it works for every car owner.

I acknowledge it needs to improve. However conversion of infrastructure doesn't need to be completed by 2030. A gradual increase in infrastructure over the next 20-30 years can get the job done and is eminently doable.

> I can't imagine that the UK government and the private sector will get their act together and somehow, in 9 years, the infrastructure will be amazing, and they will find answers to questions like how do you charge at an apartment or a house with no dedicated parking space. I'm eagerly awaiting to hear about these solutions.

This isn't what's "works for every car owner", this is "works for even a majority of car owners". The current setup is terrible, the current investment pace is terrible, and there are currently no actionable plans to do better. And here we are talking like a ban is supposed to be feasible and this is going to get bearable in a nine-year timeframe.

We're not talking about the conversion of infrastructure, we're talking about the existence of adequate infrastructure. Other countries with electric transitions have clearly put public funding for infrastructure in place, and that's why it's not punishing for them to mandate it, because they are already ready.

I don't know what to tell you. You are acting like I am saying something that I'm not saying. Here is a simplified timeline that would meet the criteria I am talking about.

2020 - EV infrastructure works for a minority of drivers.

2030 - EV infrastructure works for the average driver.

2045 - EV infrastructure works for all drivers.

Also I was talking about conversion because it isn't like the ICE infrastructure is going to persist in perpetuity. That real estate can be converted over to public EV chargers as the ratio of cars on the road change. Right now Tesla's fastest chargers can do an 80% charge in less than 30 minutes. If the industry is able to cut that in half over the next 20 years, recharging an EV isn't really going to be any less practical than refueling an ICE vehicle. We aren't going to need a dedicated parking space with a dedicated charger for every car by 2030.

I just don't think that the UK has announced any sort of substantial public investment that would enable what you're saying in 2030 to actually be a reality. The free market is not going to deliver an EV infrastructure that works for the average driver by that time period given current levels of investment; ergo, without public investment, a 2030 ban is unreasonable.

It is a mistake to judge what the free market is currently doing as an indication of what the market will do as the share of EVs on the road increases. That is why it is important to point out that it is possible for gradual change to be enough. However there is no way to really know for sure how this will turn out, so I guess we just have to agree to disagree.

You're wrong about the 12 years — that's the average age at retirement, so the average car on the roads is six years old, not 12.

But I think you're right about the bigger issue — Norway's further along the road, and has been able to fix the infrastructure enough that people don't complain much, and has done so in much less than those 30 years. There are complaints, e.g. about building coops that won't let people install chargers in shared garages.

>You're wrong about the 12 years — that's the average age at retirement, so the average car on the roads is six years old, not 12.

Here is my source[1]. Average age for vehicles in operation is 11.9 years. 1 in 4 cars are at least 16 years old. Do you have a source on your claims?

[1] - https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/28/25percent-of-cars-in-us-are-...

"in 1994, 6.3 per cent of cars on the road were over 13 years of age...(in 2019) the percentage of vehicles over this age is 19 per cent."

"according to the research, the average age of all cars on UK roads has increased from 6.7 years in 1994 to 8.3 years in 2019."

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-8739771/Bri...

So the average car is getting older, but still far from 12 years.

Total cars on the road divided by new car sales.

I seem to find useful pages only in German now (I am in Germany), which I expect wouldn't help you much, but statista.com and wikipedia.org has both, and if you wade through all the irrelevant graphs on statista you'll typically see that total/new is in the low teens for western countries (I checked three now, e.g. 47m/3.4m for .de, almost 14y lifetime or 7y average age).

Nio's car is capable of battery swapping. There is a swap station and a robotic arm take out the battery from your car a change a new one in 3 mins. What is interesting is that they have this program where when you buy a car, you don't buy the battery, you pay a price for the car, then a subscription fee for the battery. And then you can do unlimited free changes at these battery stations. The idea is that you use the entire battery like "fuel". You don't care the ownership of a battery. They make sure the battery is always healthy and full of charge. It also allow you to upgrade to a bigger capacity battery on your car just buy changing a tier in the subscription. Back then nio cars were launched with 75kw battery. Now users can upgrade their car to a 100kw battery by changing a tier of the sub on their phone and pay more monthly fee. Oh you can also downgrade the tier too, say you don't need the single charge range of the 100kw, you can switch to the 75kw and have lower per month fee. China population mostly live in dense apartments, and many old apartments cannot be retrofited with car chargers. This is vastly different from the US where people live in houses. This system allow nio cars to be used like gas cars. And if your swap speed is fast, you don't need as many "energy refill" stations. The way I see it, it's really hard to get ev charging speed equal to gas refills. But it's not technically difficult to a build a robot that changes out battery fast. There was another car company that made a prototype battery change station that can swap battery in 1 mins. And you can always charge the battery as well. So fast charging, destination charging, at home charging for the capable. The combination is able to cover more scenarios and more flexibility. I think it will be interesting to see how this system gets developed in the future. See if it could work well. It will bring a new solution to this industry problem. So far, it seems to work well for both nio and consumers.

This seems to me the only way possible to solve the charging problem. Not only it neutralizes the need for charging stations in your house but it makes the refill out of your house easy as gas one. The problem again is the adaptability and compatibility , if we can make smartphone companies use the same cable good luck making car manufacturers use a common battery type.

> and somehow, in 9 years, the infrastructure will be amazing...

It doesn't have to magically be "perfect" on Jan 1, 2030.

In the UK around 2.3 million vehicles are sold per year[1]. Which means in 2030 about that many electric cars will be sold, and so on for each year. The ICE vehicles that were sold in 2029 won't magically stop being used, they'll just slowly fade out.

So in reality they have until well into the 2030s (even 2040s) before the very vast majority of vehicles will be all electric.

Of course this is a big challenge, and it will require effort. Anything worth doing is difficult.

The other choice is we sit around and do nothing. I know which option I prefer. And at 38 years old, it isn't up to me. Talk to people who are 15-25 and ask what kind of air they want to breath and what kind of world they want to live in. This is a decision for them, not for us.

[1] https://www.marklines.com/en/statistics/flash_sales/salesfig...

> and ask what kind of air they want to brea

I don't know what kind of air they want, but it doesn't look like they are doing much to stop polluting.

If they wanted to, they could stop buying so many clothes or wear them for more than a season...

https://indigohoneycomb.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/fash.png

https://assets.weforum.org/editor/4DxwPKr6vDnGTAjAheQiVQrcrv...

See?

Nobody likes a bit of truth

People only want to believed the stories they already believe in.

As I've written in another comment

"Praise EV and you'll look cool, blame fast fashion and they'll hate you"

Point proven.

Maybe I'm engaging in magical thinking, but I can't help think after a policy like this is implemented, apartments without electrical service next to your parking spot will rapidly become virtually unlettable. Supply follows demand.

Houses could have their own charging stations. I guess all the cars will need to be charged during the night, in parallel.

Parking garages could add charging stations for all their customers and get paid for that.

Parking places on the streets could be equipped with charging stations, one per place. It's going to be more complicated than laying fiber optics but doable. It's a new grid as big as the current one and for higher wattage.

Finally, if you have to park where there are no charging stations, oops.

Gas stations that can refill N cars per hour will be able to recharge a fraction of them, bad news for those businesses.

Of course this is true only if we'll have to charge. If battery swap becomes common then the problem will be solved. Yet, the volume and the weight of a battery is still greater than the volume and weight of the gasoline storing the equivalent energy. The logistics will be more complicated. I expect to see power plants dedicated to charging: charge batteries -> load them on a truck -> deliver to "EV stations" -> bring back the exhausted batteries -> check if they're still OK -> loop again.

And following that assumption, the most recent version of the national electric code in the US calls for there to be a drop for a EVSE at every N parking spots in new apartment buildings (there's a formula based on how many spots). It doesn't require for an EVSE to actually be installed, but the building has to have the capacity for it. That's important because adding say 20 30 amp EVSEs is a non-trivial increase in the total capacity a building needs.

BTW, even a 30 amp EVSE isn't great in an apartment. Because commercial service is almost always 3 phase, you'll only get 208v. That's 6.2 kW. In my townhouse, I have a 40A 240V circuit (50A at the breaker, but the 80% rule means the EVSE only puts out 40A). That's 10 kW. A 61% increase.

Norwegian experience is that you only need on average 1-2 kW on a load balanced system (individual chargers are 22 kW). I hope the regulation allows for that?

How do you expect this to change? Whatever the downsides of electric cars, rampant global warming is clearly much worse. (And yes, stopping it will require more than just switching to electric cars.)

Perhaps if electric vehicles were mandated, fast charging stations would be more widely available...

Btw, that's not me arguing against electric vehicles. They are absolutely fantastic. I think in the next ~10 years everyone who can aford one and has a place to charge one should get one. There will be a massive shift towards them. I just don't see a total ban in 2030 to be necessary -the market will shift towards electric anyway, but if you are in a situation where an electric car just doesn't work for you for whatever reason, I don't see why you shouldn't be able to buy an ICE car. Especially since I imagine they will start being in minority by then, so their impact will be smaller and smaller every year. With a total ban you aren't solving the situation for people who can't work around the limits of an EV - you're just making them pay higher and higer prices on the second hand market for existing ICE cars(as pre-2030 cars are meant to be allowed for as long as they work).

I would also prefer a very strong carbon tax (or something similar like cap-and-trade) over a blanket ban on specific products, but I'm not sure it makes much difference in practice. Isn't forcing people to pay more on the second hand market more-or-less equivalent to adding a tax?

And, eventually, you'd need the number of ICE vehicles to be low enough that ubiquitous gas stations won't be economically viable anyway.

two words: public investment

Norway has already shown the road to getting to mostly EVs. It costs money. But they can easily ban ICE cars because they've put their money where their mouth is.

Look, we're all trying to do something for the future, we're on the same boat. But you can't just simply waltz to mankind and actively make their lives measurably more miserable 'because future and polar bears', suck it up. People will react very negatively and you will lose the cause, maybe for good. In next elections some populist will win and revert any progress (I believe I don't need to put names here, do I).

It literally doesn't matter that everybody on Hacker News would agree with this, HN is definitely not a representative sample on many topics.

If you think mankind is smarter, look at politics of lately, look at covid-related deniers, folks rejecting masks due to some wacky conspiracy, 5g/chipping and so on and on.

Forcing folks like this while we give places like China, India or other polluters a free pass? Not only are people expected to pay the bill (research, transition), but it literally won't matter on global scale that they do.

> But you can't just simply waltz to mankind and actively make their lives measurably more miserable 'because future and polar bears', suck it up.

It's not for the polar bears, it's for us. Massive droughts and rampant storms are going to be far worse than needing to charge electric cars.

What is your alternate plan? I would love to have a less disruptive path forward.

UK going away from fossil fuel-powered cars will not affect climate change in any mesurable way. The way to go forward is to get everyone (or at least a majority of countries) to agree on a reduction program. Otherwise, UK's population will suffer for nothing.

Funny, one thing one hears in these discussions in Germany is: reducing the amount of CO2 emitted in Germany isn't affecting climate change in a measurable way. Now replicate this in most other countries... One has to start and other nations are going to quickly join in.

Yes it will, because the UK is hosting the United Nations Climate Change Conference in 2021 at which a lot of vital decisions will be made or ratified.

By the same logic, we shouldn't spend money on the police to investigate murders in $TOWN because even if we did, it wouldn't down the global crime rate all that much.

That's really not analogous at all...

Where is the negative externality in your example?

I think you are correct and the responses are missing the point. But I don't think a petrol ban is forcing people to do anything. If it really would negatively individual transport, there would be a huge backlash. But I think the scenarios are realistic enough so it doesn't come to that.

Switching to electric cars will make the life better for most of us. Even ignoring the fight against climate change, they don't emit bad smelling and most importantly toxic exhaust, create much less noise. In most cases, they drive way better than ICE cars.

> they are loud, having to have gears is stupid,

It's the beauty of driving

I'm all in favour for people to stop driving if they don't like it, I can't wait for the day where I can be among the few owners of a mechanical car that I drive when I need to relax, outside of the cities, just don't call what other people enjoy stupid, please

Before anybody jumps at me, I quit driving for commute or day by day activities 7 years ago and when I need a car now I use car sharing (I spent around 25-30 euros a month, it really is nothing compared to what I used to spend when I owned a car).

But please don't tell me that one of those electric smart is a real car

The feeling is just not there

>>just don't call what other people enjoy stupid, please

I enjoy it too, my last car was a Mercedes AMG with a modified exhaust and a tune map. I loved it.

But no, it was stupid. The climate is fucked and I literally had a car where the ECU would inject fuel and cut ignition just to produce the loud BRAP BRAP BRAP noise when changing gears. Literally burning fuel to make a noise and not move the car forward.

Like, these two are not mutually exclusive. It was incredibly awesome and incredibly stupid at the same time.

For driving experience of course I would pick the AMG over my electric car. But it's not a sustainable position to be in.

> The climate is fucked

Not because of manual gears...

Or because people love to drive

But because we move too many things burning fossil fuel

Pleasure is never stupid, before considering driving stupid, there are many things I would call it first

For example drinking beer, to quote you "you are literally burning fossil fuel to produce something that poison you"

The war on ice is wrong in many ways similar to the war on drugs: it is punitive only for the final user.

Do you really want people to stop using cars?

Instead of putting public money in private companies to help people buy the expensive new electric cars, give the money directly to people to not use the car and see what they use the money for, so you can better understand what their needs are, instead of creating an artificial one.

> Do you really want people to stop using cars?

Stop? Nope. Vastly reduce reliance? Yep. Remove all subsidy to this mode of transit? Yes.

Global warming in my opinion is only the tip of the iceberg of "things car-based society has hurt". The massive sprawl induced by subsidized car infrastructure has many societal impacts, pollution is only one small item of a huge list.

> Stop? Nope. Vastly reduce reliance? Yep. Remove all subsidy to this mode of transit? Yes.

We agree

You make an important point, the exact one that makes me doubtful that EV transition should be subsidized, again.

EV incentives will go to the same actors that created these conditions and is going to pay for the same infrastructure that made our cities a living hell.

Instead of banning cars, remove the need to use them.

Instead of subsidize car makers, subsidize the rethinking of the entire mobility plans

If people won't need cars, they won't use them

If people feel that they invested in new "safe" EV cars, even the young people who show no love for cars (not wrongfully) will start using them, because they are new, they are modern, they are safe and probably smell good too and for sure they signal that you care about the environment, so you won't keep them hidden in the garage, you'll use them as much as you can (also to maximize the investment)

Which will bring us to the same point we are now: much of the cities public real estate is eaten by roads and parkings while walking is disincentivized because everything useful, from IKEA to the shoe shop, are in some giant mall out of town unreachable without a car

We need to get rid of cars as a social need, EV or not, it is a really bad habit to rely on them other than for fun and the occasional emergency

Soon some madlad will create a kit with pedals, a shift knob, and some noise makers for under the car plus a sweet software patch that will perfectly replicate the manual petrol experiece.

A bunch of purists with then argue that despite the fact they can't reliably tell the simulated electric from the original in blind a/b testing that the original is still better because it has "soul".

It's already a thing in China - they created an electric car that has a clutch and 6 gears - that don't actually do anything, they are 100% simulated, including stalling the car. Why? For a training car, so people who want a manual driving licence can train on an electric car.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/jalopnik.com/this-chinese-elect...

It's not about soul, it's about safety

Engine braking is an important part of driving safely because it avoids losing control of the steering wheels and can be used to drive at constant speed or slow down on slippery surfaces (snow, ice, water etc.)

There's a reason if trucks are still mainly manual and even the automatic transmission in trucks is not the same used in cars (it's much more advanced and it's more a computer activated gear than simply automatic)

I don't understand your argument at all. Again, every single electric car(including my own) has a regenerative mode, where the car applies gentle resistance to the electric motors when you lift your foot off the throttle - I can absolutely guarantee that if you drove one you wouldn't see any difference between this and engine braking with a manual. It provides the same level of safety in slippery conditions as a manual would.

The reasons why trucks don't usually have automatic transmissions is that the torque needed to move such a huge mass would destroy nearly every traditional hydrokinetic transmission, only recently dual clutches have started getting good enough to be installed in trucks, and indeed most new tractors you can buy now from Volvo, Mercedes or Scania are all automatic. It has nothing to do with safety, it was a technical limitation. And for braking trucks have a separate engine retarder that has nothing to do with the transmission.

> where the car applies gentle resistance to the electric motors when you lift your foot off the throttle

are you chosing it or how much?

the answer is no.

you can't become an expert if you aren't allowed to control the parameters.

> The reasons why trucks don't usually have automatic transmissions is that the torque needed to move such a huge mass would destroy nearly every traditional hydrokinetic transmission

that's another point, automatic transmission is more expensive, less robust and increases the cost of the vehicle without adding any other benefit than being 'easier' to operate.

would you fly on a plane where the pilot only knows how to use the autopilot?

that's where safety comes in, when things take more time to master, people tend to become better at them

Manual gear is not stupid, it is simply technically superior (it costs less and lasts more).

That doesn't mean we should have levers and clutches, that's the simplistic view of wannabe futurists, trucks have something much more similar to a semi-automatic (with 10, 12, 13 gears) than a full automatic one.

Truth is car makers need to sell more cars and will gladly make them do all the work "automatically" so people don't have to learn how to do it properly.

If they don't do something now, the 15 years old of today will grow up without cars and in a generation cars would be a thing of the past (that would be great!).

How to make them survive? Well, first of all don't make them useless, make them electric and costly and cover the added cost with people taxes that go directly in car company's pockets.

Secondly make them "easy" and "cool" and "sexy" so that a teenager doesn't have to learn to drive, that's scary and dangerous, like... do you really still practice to learn? what are we, cavemen?

And make them as complex as possible, so that the price won't ever go down and a Renault Zoe will cost as much as a Tesla (a Model 3s cost about 35k, a Zoe around 33k. It's just ridicoulus!).

We live in the era of the iPhones where the promise is that anybody can do what any other people can do, even though there are people that spent their lives learning something and other that did not (I did not, for example).

Of course it is possible when what you can do is dictate by the manufacturer, because "it dangerous out there, think of your old parents! would you give them a smartphone that let them do whatever they want? of course not"

Would you give your children an ICE car?

With manual transmission?

Are you a criminal?

The whole idea that you don't know how to not destroy the planet and the car needs to teach you how to drive responsibly, while the same car has been built by those that profited from destroying the planet's environment, always fascinated me.

How did it become a good idea in people's minds?

>>are you chosing it or how much? the answer is no.

Uhm, yes of course you are, at least in most cars you can chose the level of regenerative braking, the same you would in a manual car. The effect is the same as if you were going downhill and decided to stay in 4th, 3rd, 2nd or even 1st gear - it's up to you. The mechanical result of it is exactly the same as when using engine braking, so I'm really not getting what you're trying to argue here.

>>you can't become an expert if you aren't allowed to control the parameters.

Except that you are, I honestly think you aren't very up to date with what the current designs are, and almost certainly you haven't driven an electric car.

>>that's another point, automatic transmission is more expensive, less robust and increases the cost of the vehicle without adding any other benefit than being 'easier' to operate.

Again, you operate on "common knowledge" from at least 10 years ago. The "traditional" hydrokinetic automatic - absolutely, sure. But those aren't really being used in most cars nowadays. Modern Dual-Clutch automatic is as light as a manual, marginally more complex than one(because in fact is is a manual in operation), and indeed, has other benefts like improved fuel consumption and vastly faster shift times than any manual transmission can even dream of having. Again, I doubt you have actually driven one recently or at all.

>>would you fly on a plane where the pilot only knows how to use the autopilot? that's where safety comes in, when things take more time to master, people tend to become better at them

Sure, if your goal is to have everyone on the road be a professional driver, then yes, I 100% agree with you. I think people should be trained like in Germany, where a part of training is going on the Autobahn and driving at 200km/h+ for a little bit. I'd love that. I also think that my opinion on this topic is irrelevant because like I said earlier for most drivers this level of skill is unnecessary. Funnily enough, the exact same argument has been used to argue against autopilot in planes though - that its introduction will lead to pilots becoming inept and unable to act in emergencies. And that has actually happened in at least one documented plane crash - the autopilot disengaged and the pilots couldn't figure out why and the plane crashed. But....that doesn't change the fact that overal the introduction of autopilot has decreased the amount of accidents by several orders of magnitute - it made flying safer for everyone, even if it meant that pilots are now slightly worse at flying without it.

>>Manual gear is not stupid, it is simply technically superior (it costs less and lasts more).

Yeah except that in practice it doesn't, because people wear out manual transmissions all the time by being crap at using it. My dad used to have a car repair shop and someone who isn't "passionate" about cars will destroy a manual by just being an idiot at how they shift gears. People constantly break them by not using the clutch properly, shifting at the wrong moment, staying in the wrong gear for too long.....you physically cannot do this in an automatic, because you don't get to change the gears yourself - so in practice and for "an average consumer" they last longer.

Besides, I just want to point out - I love how you took my argument against a blanket ban on ICE cars, and you turned it upside down into an argument about manual cars and the love of driving. I have started by, and continued to argue that the ban is stupid because: 1) people will need ICE cars

2) There are enthusiasts who should be able to keep driving them if they already own them

For my enthusiast driving needs, please give me a good MX-5 or a roll cage equipped Impreza, any day please. But for most cars for average consumer shouldn't be anywhere near like that. They should be electric, they should be full of safety tech, and they should baby their drivers and passangers. Like, again, like I said multiple arguments ago - these are not mutually exclusive positions to take.

> and almost certainly you haven't driven an electric car.

Of course I did.

And if you compare features and prices, they offer a way worse experience than a traditional car.

I've also driven rally cars professionally and on track sometimes with semi automatic gears.

I just lack the vocabulary to talk thoroughly about it in English (sorry, I studied business English and then computer science, not mechanical engineering...)

The state of the art is absolutely better and has been for decades, but the state of the art is not what people drive everyday.

The most popular EV right now in Europe is the Renault Zoe, which honestly is good, but far from great (and you can buy the same exact car with an ICE engine for 10k less, it's 30% less!)

Smart EQ is on the rise given the small size which is a great quality in many EU cities, it's as bad as the ICE one. At least it's affordable.

Except for Tesla all the other offer a very bad experience for the price, even the BMW i3 is not what you would expect from a 40 thousands euros car.

> People constantly break them by not using the clutch properly, shifting at the wrong moment

As I said I grew up in a repair shop too, imagine what they do to their cars when the same people think that an automatic is easier to drive so they put even less effort to it.

They destroy every other piece of the car, irresponsible people will be irresponsible.

I am not rooting for ice cars, but for letting cars go as a necessity and think of something else.

Electric cars are just another way to keep producing the same old product in a slightly different way.

They give a false sense of security and of progress.

But we are gonna have a black market for hacks and modified parts (batteries probably) anyway and they will be as dangerous as the traditional cars we have right now for pedestrians and other road users.

The problem with cars is barely the pollution, it's the effect that they produced on our environment, especially the highly dense urbanized areas of the World

If they were harder to drive and operate there will be less of them around

We got rid of people dying by falling from horses by not riding horses anymore as a standard way to travel

How many people do you see flying a plane?

A Cessna is not more expensive than a high end Tesla

P.s. flying without autopilot is barely possible, using an autopilot without mastering flight first is unimaginable

P.p.s. the same people not using the clutch correctly are going to mess with the engine controls on their new electric cars. How is that going to be better? Are they magically going to be better at operating machinery? Or will they care less because "EV are the future they almost drive themselves?"

P.p.p.s. the number of fatalities is constantly going down because there are more and more mandatory safety devices on cars, but the number of accidents is almost steady (at least in Italy) also considering that the number of km driven went down due to 2 global economic crisis and a pandemia in 20 years and the increase of restricted areas in cities. But, and this is the bad news, there were more cars in Italy in 2019 than ever before, 1.4% more than 2018.

In red goal for 2020 victim reduction, in black actual number of victims

https://www.pneurama.com/ew/ew_articolo/images/weekly_it/ima...

I don’t disagree with your pessimism, but at the same time 9 years is an eternity to just install electrical infrastructure. Hopefully laws like this will put a fire under people’s asses.

On the other side, would anyone start a business to lay power cables under the sidewalks of a city and create tens of thousands of charging points and be able to start selling it fully only in 2030? Probably not unless countries, states or cities pay for the setup. Will they start doing it closer to 2030 if they see that the adoption of EV is ramping up? More likely.

While I fully agree with your points and I truly have set my expectations for long-distance EV-travel to be as cumbersome as yours (you have to plan for that, because you can't know in advance). Still, I don't think that is enough to be against it.

I live in an apartment and charging an EV would cost way more than gas. Even the cost of having a charging pole would be more expensive per month than I pay for gas (charging not included and likely also expensive). And, as you mentioned, be way more inconvenient in some situations.

But can't it still be worth it? It is just one, very minor, out of countless sacrifices we will undoubtedly have to make.

Why fight this one?

Buy a Tesla everything else is shit. Others need to catch up but it's going to take a while. If you buy a Nokia phone today it's not going to work as well as an iPhone. I'm presuming the electric car you have is from a company who isn't as good.

That has nothing to do with my argument though, unless we're willing to assume that by 2030 people will be only buying Tesla vehicles.

Their competitors aren't good enough. It's going to take them a while to catch up so yes, for the next decade, Tesla will have first-mover advantage. From what I can see in the market, Tesla and NIO are leading the charge, the rest of them should just file bankruptcy now.

With all this said, I am presuming what you have. If you tell me the car you drive, I can look at their stock and give you a more informed statement.