Comment by anovikov | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anovikov | Hacker News Reader

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But on the other hand, this IS indeed a super drastic action and we can't expect any nation on Earth apart from possibly, a few city-states like Singapore, to do as much in the same time frame. Petrol cars will be mainstay of transportation for about 40-50 years and will dominate new car sales for at least 20-30 years depending on the country. Anything but classic petrol and diesel cars will still hold tiny market shares 10 years down the road almost everywhere.

I mean, the climate change situation is hopeless. Some measures may be taken in the name of it, and they are important, but they are mainly a side action: for example, they do a lot to suppress oil-funded dictatorships like Russia or Saudi Arabia - people won't support the measures if they were directed at that openly, but if it's about climate, they are a lot easier to sell. But, we have to just admit that the global warming will proceed and probably faster than even the worst estimates predict, and just plan accordingly out of this assumption. It is too profitable to mine and use fossil fuels, any large nation trying to stop doing so will be competed out of existence by those who don't (and they will have way lower energy efficiency so will displace your uncompetitive products with theirs, in the end INCREASING overall emissions), and largest polluters are nuclear powers so you can't even force them to stop by military action.

Just see where the climate will stand when 3x of the current extractable reserves of fossil fuels are burned (because technology will develop and a lot of new reserves will become available which are now not). And plan for that level of global temperatures, precipitation and sea levels. It will happen, and the nations that win are those who plan in advance.

You are way off. It took about 15 years to go from cities dominated by horse carriages to them being dominated by cars. It took longer in agriculture and rural areas. But the shift to electrical vehicles is trivial in comparison. Technically and economically we could easily prohibit new fossil fuelled cars by 2025.

Sun and wind power is already much cheaper to install than coal powered plants, and once sun and wind power is up the energy is almost free. Fossil fuel companies are currently struggling, just from this simple economy.

[0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-motor-vehicle...

In the field of electricity generation, sure. Technology is there, apart from storage technology.

But, given still higher costs and range anxiety, it will be very difficult to convince most consumers to buy electric cars. It will be most probably only generational shift: people born before ~1990 will still buy petrol cars till they die out, and younger generations will progressively shift, having different habits. It will take whole century to fully switch to electric vehicles in developed countries - and lack of reliable electric grid will make it in places like Africa even slower.

An even harder, and even larger part of the story is industrial heat (needs to be very reliable and cheap), and residential heating (needs to be very, very cheap and available in large volumes). No good non-fossil solutions here exist.

In Norway more than 50% of all new cars are electric. They are heavily subsidised, but it proves that it is only an economic question. I was born in the seventies. My next car will be electric. The only reason I’m holding of is that there’s no model that fit our needs yet (except an very expensive Tesla), but I expect that to change within two years.

For industrial heat they will use hydrogen produced from renewable electricity. See for example [0] where it will be used for large scale steel production.

All the technical and economical components for the shift are already in place. The only thing lacking is political will (and apparently knowledge).

[0] https://www.ssab.com/products/brands/docol/automotive-insigh...

> "industrial heat, and residential heating "

For decades Russia has used distruct heating using waste heat from nuclear powerplants, its the chealest heatsource known to man.

More modern approach is probably hydrogen and heat pumps, but either works.

Range anxiety is a brain bug for folks that have never driven electric.

Yeah right, and those are simply older folks. Most of them will never switch. Those who will be only buying their first car in 2030 will probably buy electric, sure, but it will be another 20 years before these people will become the majority of buyers. These people are in the middle school now.

Your belief that older people won't buy electric is completely baseless and untrue.

I'm almost fifty and looking for buying an electric car. My parents just bought a plug in hybrid, but would have bought a fully electric if any suitable was available to a reasonable price.

There is a HN article about using iron for industrial heat. The only downside is that transportation is expensive. If it can be electrolyzed on site it's going to be a game changer.

> But, given still higher costs and range anxiety, it will be very difficult to convince most consumers to buy electric cars.

Range anxiety is only an issue for long journeys.

Cities went from horse-drawn carriages to automobiles because the incentives made it attractive to do it. The same can be done for for electric vehicles, it’s just a matter of putting the horse in front of the cart.

And the incentives are there. Electric cars are quiet, clean, and much cheaper to drive and to maintain.

But apparently not enough for most people, otherwise no one would want an ICE car anymore.

Teslas are too expensive, and the other car manufacturers are behind on getting a full range of models out. I expect that to change the next two years or so.

It happened because Ford T cost 4x cheaper per mile than a horse-drawn carriage, in a city (less difference in the countryside). It was a no-brainer to switch. When your horse died, it would be stupid to buy another when you had an option to buy a Model T.

Same can't be said about electric cars. So far, it's almost at the contrary.

In Europe where the fuel is properly taxed for it CO2 emissions, the lifetime mile cost of an electric car is already lower than corresponding gasoline car.

> and once sun and wind power is up the energy is almost free.

Except that supply is unreliable...

> we can't expect any nation on Earth apart from possibly, a few city-states like Singapore, to do as much in the same time frame.

Really?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_fossil_fuel_vehic...

> Petrol cars will be mainstay of transportation for about 40-50 years and will dominate new car sales for at least 20-30 years depending on the country.

I disagree. i think the timescale for the switchover to electric vehicles (and self-driving vehicles) will be shorter than that.

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