Electric cars make up 54% of cars sold in Norway in 2020
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Edit: Would governments be starting to implement new combustion vehicle sales bans without robust charging infra and large quantities of EV deliveries quarter after quarter? Unlikely.
One can appreciate Tesla and not like Musk. Even as a Tesla investor, not a huge fan. I see him as a necessary evil. The cars sells, and that’s all that’s important.
The leaf's entertainment system, for example, does the job it's intended to do fine, the tesla one is designed to innovate.
They are empirically desirable because they've sold half a million of them.
I don't need my critical transportation bricked by a failed update, or removing functionality so they can charge me extra to re-enable it, or any of the other nonsense routinely seen from device makers.
Feature. It's a car and software should be finished when it leaves the factory. Any other excuse is nonsense.
> no lane keeping (“autopilot”) on older versions.
That's your job and its called driving. If you cant handle that simple task then you should not be driving.
Ah, the "just suck it up and man up" argument. Lovely. I hope you drive a manual car with no power steering no power brakes and no abs. Heaven forbid the car helped you with the sacred art of driving, right?
It's just lane keeping. It helps immensely with focus on long trips.
If you have trouble keeping lanes and are not fatigued then I suggest you put your fucking phone down or see a doctor. This new trend of passing responsibility to technology has got to stop. It's fueld by greed, built on human laziness and fostered by stupidity. People need to grow up and accept responsibility.
>>As a responsible driver that means I pull off the road at a rest stop and rest.
No one is saying otherwise. This technology doesn't allow you to drive further while tired. It stops you from becoming tired in the first place.
>>People need to grow up and accept responsibility.
And people need to grow up and see that some inventions are not as bad as they think they are ;-)
>>suggest you put your fucking phone down or see a doctor
I've flagged your comment because it isn't how conversations on HN should go like.
You aren't making a unique argument about lane keeping that wasn't made about all these other improved technologies in decades past.
In the near future people might not even be driving their cars at all. What excuse are you gonna have then as for why people actually shouldn't demand that manufacturers provide that feature?
One of Tesla's biggest achievements was that they produced an EV that actually looks like a cool, desireable, premium car.
There are other EVs now that fit that description, but they are significantly more expensive than the Model3 and ModelY.
Tesla's big bet on the supercharger network was the game changer. Before that, EVs we're only a 'second car' for commuting. With the SC network, an EV was parity with ICs, not a set of green/cost tradeoffs.
I think it's similar to how the iPhone is the sexy mobile, but there's actually far more cheapo Android devices and feature-phones out there in use.
The problem was that they never made enough of them because their respective manufacturers didn't believe the market was very large, largely because battery technology when they were first released simply wasn't as good as it is now.
Car manufacturers are masters of marketing. Their choices in how they market these cars are very intentional.
And then Tesla comes along with great engineering and a more conservative body design and eats their lunches.
If Nissan Leaf was sold out in U.S. it's only because Nissan decided not to make enough of them. Or they made exactly the very small amount that people were willing to buy.
Bolt was even worse. They did 23k in 2017 and dropped to 16k in 2019. GM dealers were so desperate to get rid of them that at some point they offered up to $10k cash rebate. At that despite the fact that GM admitted they are loosing money on Bolt even when sold at full price.
20k a year in U.S. market of ~10 million cars is a rounding error. Whatever the reason, no one except Tesla was selling EV cars in US at non-laughable numbers.
In contrast, Tesla sales went from 50k in 2017 to 195k in 2019.
Note that Tesla is also losing money on the Model 3 (and indeed, all models of Teslas) when using the same accounting practices as other automakers. Tesla only has high margins when using non-standard accounting.
Even if they are, so what? Tesla's stated goal was to shepherd in the mass adoption of EVs as quickly as possible. They only need to remain in business long enough for every major auto manufacturer to start selling EVs in mass quantities. Once that happens they can just vanish and they'll have won.
Moreover, CA and the EU have far more to do with EV adoption that Tesla, by creating the market incentives for consumers to buy EVs and other green vehicles, and the clean car credits that have singlehandedly kept Tesla afloat the past 5 years while they lose money making cars.
You have all sorts of excuses to dismiss Tesla's success in the market. Nissan and GM under produced, Nissan adopted Toyota's Prius ugly car strategy, now that EVs are cool the incumbents will out produce Tesla, Tesla is only successful because of everyone else, Tesla only exists because of government handouts, blah blah blah...
You are trying to come up with every angle you can to excuse away the the fact that Tesla has been successful making a product people actually wanted and not a compliance vehicle purposefully made unattractive to ensure only a limited audience would purchase it.
That's not true, people were leasing Leafs for tax credits the dumping them as soon as the lease expired. There was a glut of off lease Leafs on the market as early as 2017. I picked up a 2015 Leaf with 15k miles on it for ~$14k off lease in 2017 before the Model 3 went into production.
Nissan started manufacturing Leafs in 2010 and it wasn't until fall 2020 that they managed to build their 500,000th. By comparison, the Model 3 went into production in 2017 and they built the 500,000th in March of 2020.
Tesla managed to build and sell more EVs in under than 3 years than Nissan did in 10. Either Nissan was stifling production or there was no demand for the product.
By comparison, the Model 3 went into production in 2017 and they built the 500,000th in March of 2020.
BMW, VW, Toyota, and Ford have all launched new models in significantly greater numbers over shorter timeframes and with fewer employees than Tesla. The Passat, for example, went from 50,000 cars made/year (at the Chattanooga factory) to 250,000 cars made/year in just over a year, with 1/5 the employees of the Tesla line, minimal rework required...and here's the real kicker: while making an actual profit per car under standard accounting practices (not Tesla's imaginary profit per car that leaves out costs the other automakers include in unit economics).
No there wasn't. Leaf sales dropped 43% from 2014 to 2015 and were even worse in 2016 for a number of reasons. The first was the Bolt was announced in early 2016 and the Model 3 in mid 2016 [1]. The second reason was the 2016 cost $5000 more than the 2015 because of a larger battery that only gave it 27% greater range (107 miles total)[1]. The third reason was that cosmetically it was unchanged from prior years [1]. The final reason was that there was an influx of cheap Leafs on the market[2].
The only waiting list in 2016 was for receiving your EV Rebate from the state[3].
The waiting list for the original Leaf was only 20,000 compared to the Model 3 which exceeded 300,000.
> BMW, VW, Toyota, and Ford have all launched new models in significantly greater numbers over shorter timeframes and with fewer employees than Tesla.
Ok? Incumbent car manufacturers who have been building cars for 50+ years can ramp up manufacturing of a new model ICE faster than a company that's just over a decade old that had to build an entirely new factory from the ground up. That should surprise no one.
So what about EVs? VW only managed to product around 30k of the ID.3 in 2020, it wants to build 300k in 2021. Ford's new Mach-E is limited to 50k units in 2021. Why? Both are due in large part to production constraints with the battery. The battery problem isn't going to go away and everyone, including Tesla is being throttled by it.
[1] https://www.autoblog.com/2016/02/05/facing-bolt-tesla-nissan... [2] https://www.autoblog.com/2016/02/16/cheap-used-nissan-leaf-e... [3] https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/energy-green/s...
If you had bothered to read your sources, you would have seen that the reason the used Leafs were so cheap was due to battery issues with the early generation Leafs, which is why demand was so high for new Leafs.
Maybe because it's not true?
> If you had bothered to read your sources, you would have seen that the reason the used Leafs were so cheap was due to battery issues with the early generation Leafs...
If that were true then the 2014 and 2015 Leaf would have been fine since they used the new lizard chemistry. It was only the 2013 or older Leafs that had issues and only in hot dry climates like Texas and Arizona.
Leafs were cheap primarily because there was a glut of off lease vehicles. They were leased for federal and state tax rebates, in Georgia you got enough back in rebates to pay for the entirety of a 2 year lease, 2 years of insurance, and still have some left over. Lots of people leased them, and then when the lease was up they didn't want to renew the lease or buy them.
When I bought my off lease Leaf, I was talking with the salesman and he said he bought one off lease with less than 1000 miles on it because it had just been parked the whole time.
And the $TSLA price it's not just some random number mostly irrelevant to daily operations of the company, they sold/issued many shares at such valuations.
So yes, I regret giving money to Tesla, but it is the least bad option out there as far as giving money to these car companies. The only winning move is to not play the game, but unfortunately that same government that is paying for the EV transition is the system that, by law, is denying my ability to live a car-free daily life.
There are no heroes here, nobody is doing exactly the right thing, but Tesla and the government are doing things partially right.
I haven't even mentioned how Tesla is the only company that doesn't sponsor at least one (I think they all sponsor multiple) traditionally powered racing teams, whose development goes into premium powered, traditional gas powered automobiles. Plus the advertisement of said vehicles.
Not exclusively. Formula 1 and Le Mans use hybrid engines. Formula E and Extreme E are battery electric racing series.
Why doesn't Tesla have a Formula E team?
Why would Tesla spend the minimum tens of millions of dollars to get into what is at best a side diversion from their main business? They certainly have better uses for that capital and talent.
Of course they do. They advertised at you and it worked. It's worked so well that you're even parroting their marketing messages for them, including the myth that they don't advertise.
> Why would Tesla spend the minimum tens of millions of dollars to get into what is at best a side diversion from their main business?
Formula E doesn't cost tens of millions of dollars. Team budgets in Formula E are $10 million. And Tesla doesn't need to own a team. They can be a powertrain supplier just like other car companies are suppliers and not team owners.
As for Formula E, that's a great question. It seems like it should be right up their alley, but I'm almost positive AI is verboten and that would be a non starter for Tesla.
Then they can join Roborace which is all about AI:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roborace
Although sometimes the AI is more artificial and less intelligent:
https://www.thedrive.com/news/37366/why-that-autonomous-race...
Thanks for this =)
Based on that conclusion, they decided the best overall strategy is to delay that future as long as possible, by any means necessary.
Basically, it was a bad strategy, as it was practically inevitable that at some point someone would "defect" and do BEVs. Not only did the automakers use a bad strategy, but they failed to pivot from that strategy once it was already blown to hell. Any one of them could be worth a lot more money now if they had simply taken EVs as seriously as Tesla did a decade ago. But none did.
Same problem with Kodak. The new technology is inevitable, and while you may delay it, you're killing your future by doing so. It's short term thinking.
The future might be companies like Hyundai or Toyota, who are investing in "all-of-the-above" technologies rather than betting everything on one idea.
Toyota, Hyundai, Honda are all investing and expanding investment. That’s for passenger cars specifically. Once you go into industrial and heavy transportation it’s a vast group of companies.
People who are paying attention knows that there’s a major revolution afoot. The people with tunnel vision are the people who don’t realize this or are ignorant of these events.
You're saying that without disclosing your financial stake. "HypX" is the name of a hydrogen car company.
So when you say "pretty soon now," you must mean 2040 at the earliest. There's certainly a chance, when you look at the progress of PV solar over the past 40 years, for example, but it is hugely speculative and a long term bet, not a short term one.
Besides, what do companies have to gain by waiting for the technology to be ready before investing? It’s weird how people here lament the lack of foresight in the car industry, and yet on this subject immediately reject any kind of forward planning.
Finally, most of the negative stuff you heard is probably marketing or propaganda from businesses that don’t want to see fuel cell succeed. “2x more energy” is a misleading claim, as fuel cells are technically batteries and should close the gap eventually. Plus, you save energy by avoiding heavy batteries, do better in cold weather, and need less raw materials during production.
By 2030 batteries will haven fallen dramatically in cost. It's not enough to show that electrolyzers are falling in cost, it also needs to be shown that they are falling faster than batteries, and will be able to catch up.
That's the missing logical link, and I haven't seen even the most optimistic hydrogen boosters produce numbers that show it to be possible. Definitely not before 2030.
There is a massive hydrogen PR push right now from natural gas companies with the hope that they can eek a few more years out before transitioning to the modern renewable economy. But even those folks don't say that fuel cell is going to be cheaper than typical passenger vehicle sized batteries.
Every single hydrogen powered vehicle is already going to have a battery in it, to manage variable output. The question is, if hydrogen machinery gets cheaper than battery, at what range capacity does it make sense to include both battery and hydrogen. If it's at 1000 miles, 500 miles, or 300 miles, or 100 miles, and that all depends on the cost ratio of the two, and hydrogen being significantly cheaper than battery.
I don't think people fully grasp that hydrogen is made from water, and has a theoretical lowest possible cost of almost $0. A tank of hydrogen is just a dumb tank too, not a series of sophisticated battery cells. It's batteries that will have trouble keeping up on cost, not hydrogen. In fact, on a cost per range basis, the latest Mirai is already cheaper than competing battery electric cars. This suggests that the crossover point is nearly reached.
So we should stop thinking about batteries as if they have any kind of permanent lead here. The real missing logical link is ignoring the speed of hydrogen and fuel cell advancement, not the other way around.
What about the PR from big battery and electric car companies? These companies might too be dead within a decade or so. And yes, the hydrogen boosters very much say that fuel cell cars will be cheaper than battery powered cars. Toyota thinks fuel cell cars will be as cheap as the Corolla is today.
Some fuel cell cars use a capacitor instead. You only need 1-2 kWh for a passenger car for that purpose anyways. Probably anything past 100 miles will make more sense using fuel cells than batteries.
The laws of physics demand that compressing hydrogen so that a usable amount can be stored in a vehicle requires energy.
So by saying "almost $0" you're saying that electricity is "even less than almost $0". Which might be correct, industrial scale solar PV energy is cheap and will get a lot cheaper over the next decade.
But of course electric cars benefit from cheap electricity even more than hydrogen cars do.
> In fact, on a cost per range basis, the latest Mirai is already cheaper than competing battery electric cars.
Sure, if you use grey hydrogen created from natural gas rather than green hydrogen created from water and electricity. Grey hydrogen is far from carbon-free.
> It's batteries that will have trouble keeping up on cost
That's a strong claim, given that battery prices have historically dropped 80% per decade and show no signs of slowing down.
> These companies might too be dead within a decade or so.
The lack of hydrogen filling stations is the biggest roadblock for this among many big roadblocks.
The notion that batteries are superior than fuel cells at utilizing low cost electricity is fundamentally in error. People have traditionally made the argument batteries are more efficient, but the gap is continuously shrinking and likely will become a non-factor. Meanwhile, you benefit from lower weight, less material cost, faster refueling, cold weather performance, and various other advantages. So it could easily be more cost effective to power a car using hydrogen than with cheap electricity than with batteries in the majority of cases.
> Sure, if you use grey hydrogen created from natural gas rather than green hydrogen created from water and electricity. Grey hydrogen is far from carbon-free.
You're conflating two different things: fuel cells and green hydrogen production. Fuel cell cars are in a lot of ways already competitive with battery electric on their own merits. Hydrogen production is going to be dependent on electrolysis. Even so, as electrolysis costs come down this too will be become cheaper than fossil fuel sources of hydrogen
It's also a lazy argument, as fuel cells have the possibility of being zero emissions the same way batteries have. In fact, this was repeated against battery electric cars historically, since electricity production is heavily based on fossil fuels. So repeating it against fuel cell cars is just playing the role of luddite again.
> That's a strong claim, given that battery prices have historically dropped 80% per decade and show no signs of slowing down.
That's from a very high base and is misleading. Regardless, fuel cell costs are also dropping extremely fast, but unlike batteries don't have the floor of material costs. It's likely that fuel cells will be much cheaper than batteries in the long run. Toyota for instance believes that a fuel cell car can cost the same as a Corolla. Electrolysis costs are also dropping in a similar way and you can expect green hydrogen production to be minimally capital intensive.
> The lack of hydrogen filling stations is the biggest roadblock for this among many big roadblocks.
It's starting to look like the hydrogen refueling infrastructure will be cheaper than the equivalent battery charging infrastructure. Some recent studies are suggesting this.
Crazy rich individuals do.
Do they have police in place to watch if you own/use a car?
There is huge unmet demand for this, which is why cities are so much more expensive than far-based lifestyles these days.
didn't realise Tesla is behind norwegian gov't support for EVs..
Now that Tesla has broken through, the incumbent ICE manufacturers are following suit.
Also there's been some widely known problems where Tesla has failed big time wrt service.
The COVID-19 shutdown disrupted that cycle, so December was really the only month this year that Tesla delivered a significant number of cars to Norway.
[1]: https://ofv.no/registreringsstatistikk (select "Desember" and check out the 2020 "Hittil" column)
[Edit[ https://myelectriccar.com.au/calculator/ confirms this at least for a Nissan Leaf running in Australia.
https://www.goultralow.com/journey-cost-savings-calculator/
I reckon we'd save less than £1000 a year changing my wifes Karoq for an electric Enyaq. Possibly more as I suspect she could charge at work.
So not really worth it purely financially.
Only if you drive a lot. Based on my driving patterns I calculated it would take me a good 10-12 years to make up the difference. Which is a shame because in every other way an electric car would fit my usage pattern perfectly.
It's a gimmick.
Your mileage may vary depending on what you select as a comparable and some of your assumptions, but you save a lot of money on fuel and maintenance and need to factor that in. The resale value of your vehicle is also a huge factor.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/10/owning-an-electric-car-...
I lease my car and when looking recently it’s not the case for me either, even when factoring in associated costs. It’s an extra 150 quid a month on sticker price for a roughly equivalent car. Take fuel, tax, servicing reductions out and you are still no where near parity
However, my Kamiq has Apple CarPlay and a 'virtual cockpit' - the latter I thought would be a bit gimmicky but I really like it.
Edit: Did have to take the car back to the dealer because of a software problem when it was ~2 weeks old - which was a first for me... :-|
Volkswagen has made massive investments in EVs after their diesel emissions cheating scandal. Part of their settlement with the US was that they would spend $2 billion on emissions-free auto infrastructure to offset their diesel emissions. That's where Electrify America (one of the big EV charger networks) came from.
I'm not sure that VW would have jumped into the EV market quite so enthusiastically if the diesel emissions scandal hadn't forced their hand. But now, I guess they figure they're spending billions on all of this EV infrastructure, they might as well try to become one of the leaders in EV sales.
Regulation 2019/631 sets new EU fleet-wide CO2 emission targets are set for the years 2025 and 2030, both for newly registered passenger cars and for newly registered vans.
But: The specific CO2 emission target of a manufacturer will be relaxed if its share of low-emission vehicles registered in a given year exceeds 15% in 2025 and 30-35% in 2030.
More here: https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/transport/vehicles/regul...
I know they're tempering their US launch ambitions a bit, but I wonder if they're seeing lower numbers because something's not working with their reservation system.
Tesla (in the Netherlands) doesnt have the tax incentives anymore because its too expensive, the ID.3 still has that cause its cheaper... So lease car owners choose ID.3 because money.
Edit... just to clarify, nothing against the ID3, just pretty surprised VW could have scaled up production so fast even if they're the largest or second largest car company in the world.
Yes. Volkswagen owns 12 automotive brands: https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/brands-and-models.html
So it includes BEVs from VW, Audi, SEAT, Skoda, and Porsche. Scania and MAN also produce heavy electric vehicles like buses and trucks.
I have no numbers to back this up, just observations of a cyclist commuter in Malmö.
Edit: According to this absolutely awful website[1] it's up to 113,790 EVs in Sweden in 2020.
And according to this[2] much better website jan-nov in 2020 saw 93k gasoline driven cars vs. 21k EVs. So we're not even close to Norway. :(
1. https://www.elbilsstatistik.se/elbilsstatistik
2. https://www.scb.se/hitta-statistik/statistik-efter-amne/tran...
Also, small internet, Hello from Caroli, Malmo!
[EDIT: Cars otherwise being heavily taxed and EV's being Tax free, both at purchase time and with annual car taxes (with additional perks such as no parking tolls and driving in bus lanes) is the definition of subsidised]
That's a form of subsidy.
> Subsidies come in various forms including: direct (cash grants, interest-free loans) and indirect (tax breaks, insurance, low-interest loans, accelerated depreciation, rent rebates).
This is a form of subsidy (namely a tax break). Tesla also benefits from subsidies in the US.
The annual registration, toll road and parking fee exemptions have all been abolished, but there is a goal of it being max 50% of an ICE car
You do have up to 60k SEK *EV subsidy in Sweden: https://www.transportstyrelsen.se/en/road/Vehicles/bonus-mal...
More details on Norwegian incentives (not updated for the removal of exemption of registration tax): https://elbil.no/english/norwegian-ev-policy/
[1] https://cleantechnica.com/2021/01/05/sweden-hits-record-50-e...
There are plenty of people who have heard horror stories about Tesla and are now won't consider buying one. All of the small buy annoying defects were acceptable to the first-mover crowd, but they're an extremely small segment of the market. Once you go mass market, people care a great deal about the quality of something they're spending $30k+ on and which may be their only vehicle.
Also, Tesla's quality problems are wildly exaggerated to distract from their lead in battery and software technology. Look at VW's ineptitude at fixing ID.3 software...
https://eu-evs.com/CLASSIC/index.html
Volkswagen had the first and third best selling cars in Norway in 2020, the Audi e-tron and the VW ID.3.
The ID.3 didn't get a full year of sales because it has only been available since September.
It adds up to much less than 100%. What are the missing brands?
[0] https://www.skatteetaten.no/globalassets/tabeller-og-satser/...
That's not my argument. It would be a good thing if all governments outlawed ICE consumer vehicles. However, headlines like this are portraying Norway as some kind of progressive utopia where everyone just wants to drive EVs.
Obviously you can make people do whatever you want with aggressive enough tax policies. But the goal should be to get EVs to a fair market price point where they truly compete, not reliant on subsidies.
Hybrid 405k NOK [0] Electric 415k NOK [1]
0: https://www.kia.com/api/bin/docDownload?program=brochure&loc... 1: https://www.kia.com/api/bin/docDownload?program=brochure&loc...
That's my whole point. Of course more people will choose an EV when they are at price parity. The problem is that they are not. The Niro EV sells for a ~40% premium in the US over the ICE version, because the government subsidies are far less.
Headlines like this are portraying Norway as some kind of progressive democracy, where the majority wants to have laws to drive up EV sales.
It's a representative democracy, so it's the voted–in government officials instead of the majority of people ;)
The difference does matter, because the cause and effect is inverted: the government is elected... And now it passes laws such as this.
It's not the population that voted so the government would pass these laws.
The US federal government subsidizes $20B per year towards fossil fuels across oil, gas, and coal.
The EU subsidizes €55B per year towards fossil fuels.
https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel-subs...
Drilling Info has more than 2,700 accounts globally with more than 20,000 users. Drilling Info members produce more than 90 percent of domestic oil and gas in the United States.
They're in the oil and gas business -- of course they want to "debunk" any info about the subsidies given to that industry.
"Intangible Drilling Costs ($3.5 billion “subsidy” – low estimate is $780 million) - Intangible Drilling Costs are essentially the cost of drilling a new well that have no salvageable value. Currently, most exploration companies are allowed to deduct 100% of the costs in the year they are incurred with the majors able to deduct 70% of the costs immediately with the remaining 30% amortized over 5 years. In what world would money spent that may or may not be recovered be capitalized as an asset?"
Plenty of companies spend plenty of money on R&D every year that goes nowhere. For some reason, the oil & gas industry gets a refund on their exploration but other companies don't. I work in R&D in tech -- should the government fund my complete salary for projects that turn out to not be viable? Sounds great if you're an entrepreneur -- start all the companies you want and get refunded by the government for all of your misses.
Ability to scale, test new models, gather experiences et cetera.
To be clear, I am a big fan of electric cars. But this seems to have become another one of those things that has become so polarised you're not even allowed to express healthy skepticism.
So it isn't pretending, they really are a lot better for the planet in the mid-term and forward.
Also, the fact that EVs produce almost zero local pollution makes them incredibly compelling. So much so that I'd still be in favour of them even if they produced the same amount of CO2 overall. Just to make it clear which "team" I am on.
I'm just pointing out that the EV debate seems to have become one of those things where people pick a side and then stop accepting any nuance.
The comment I originally replied to was making the typical glib lazy assertion that ICE cars are some terrible medieval technology and EVs are all sunshine and rainbows. It's more complicated than that.
There is, it’s called biodiesel. It’s certainly possible to be net zero carbon with synthetic fuels.
I think our disposible lifestyle needs to be fixed. Replacing your perfectly good thing with shiny new x% better thing is not necessarily green when you consider the costs of manufacturing that thing, shipping it to you, and disposing with your old thing.
The pitch has always been that they pollute less globally (and that how much depends on the electric energy mix, but will generally decrease over time) and way less locally. EVs is also the only solution to have a viable path to net zero lifetime CO2 impact. It'll take a zero-emission grid and zero-emission mining, but we need those anyway, and EV tech will help make mining zero-emission.
EV pollute the planet, but so does everything else - including making the food that's turned into energy spent on cycling. It's not all that clear cut.
They are almost identical dimensions
Model 3: 185" L x 73" W
Outback: 191″ L x 73″ W
[0] "Should Law Subsidize Driving?" by Greg Shill https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3345366
Killing trains, increasing car usage, encouraging shipping things from far away locations.
Hopefully with the next generation of city planning we won't be so stupid and create environments which are more liveable where people waste less time commuting and buy things as close to home as possible (even if the last point may have more to do with taxation / regulations / working conditions differences in various countries more than roads).
One of the large issues around uptake is simply infrastructure. Here in Ireland, it is still patchy at best. We had an EV (Nissan) from around 2016 but gave it up in 2020 as there was simply too much anxiety around out of service public chargers and lack of backup. Range anxiety is definitely possible to overcome, but it requires the state to back it up with resources: Norway has most definitively done this.
Final thought: no surprise that ID.3 is making inroads in a huge way on sales. It's a sweet spot of a good car at an attainable price that looks, for want of a better word, 'normal'. Some EVs seem to be designed 'differently' almost for the sake of it - and while some will love that, it ends up adding another hurdle for a certain segment of the market I believe.
This is mostly because aerodynamics become very important in an EV, and weight becomes (relatively) less important.
That changes substantially many design decisions, affecting a lot of things you might not expect - dramatic changes to the visual appearance, focus on AC rather than a sunroof, internal airflow changes to prevent fogging, etc.
I drive occasionally and the first time I drove an electric last year, I barely made it to a charging station an hour outside Oslo and not close to another city. I had to wait a couple of hours before hopping to a fast charger. I treated it like a gas car, but after that, I changed both my attitude and a number of driving habits to get the most of them. I am happy the wide breadth of support across the country is available to maintain charging stations. Just on cost alone, I would prefer electric for rentals.
Edit: I found a link about it - https://www.thelocal.no/20150506/norway-strips-electric-cars... - perhaps it has since been reversed again?
I'm not arguing against pedestrian friendly towns, in fact Drammen is very pedestrian friendly, just that it is really not enough to make a town pedestrian friendly, not here anyway, you also need a massive expansion in public transport. You need more routes, more frequent buses, you need overlapping routes so that people do not have to change buses too often.
As a side note I've only visited Norway once (and would love to return), but I've heard the phrase "Det finnes ikke dårlig vær, bare dårlig klær/There's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes" countless times, almost as if it were the official motto of Norway. And here you are, fretting about rain at the bus stop, dashing my stereotype of Norwegians as tough, hardy folks, undeterred by even the foulest weather! :)
But I can undash your stereotype: I'm English. Mind you my boss did once say to me "Du har blitt en ekte Viking."; the previous day I had walked out of the office to go home dressed only in a light jumper and shorts while it was tipping it down. It was summer so not too cold and anyway where I come from the rain comes sideways from the Atlantic.
Glad to hear you liked it here, perhaps you'll get a chance to come back once COVID-19 is sorted out.
> the problem of designing convenient, efficient, cost-effective public transportation is beyond the capabilities of this HNer.
You are not alone. I certainly can't do it and it seems to be beyond the local authorities here. Actually I wonder if it might actually be provably impossible.
rain isn't either.
Perhaps in Tromsø. Oslo certainly doesn't fit that description.
But that now has stopped above 40k euro, and its the Volkswagen group that builds electrified cars in the sweet spot.
May be norwegians will sell their petrol car to less EV-advanced countries before they have no value at all in their home country?
Edit: I would like to rephrase the last sentence as "At least it is better than _an_ alternative, which is to sell oil and buy fossile fuel cars." which is a fairer categorisation of the problem space and less consumerist.
To me it is obvious that the solution to the global climate change crisis isn't rich countries buying new luxorious cars, that happen to be electric. That's a very western-centric view.
Still though, switching from gasoline cars to electric ones is a substantial improvement.
THE solution? Who has ever said the problem is solved with just one thing?
It's certainly a very important part of the solution. Solving climate change is absolutely impossible without electric vehicles and better batteries. This is not just about driving your SUV to your cabin, it's about transportation of goods, farming, mining etc. We're also seeing that there's overlap in development of EV batteries and grid batteries (at least for short term frequency regulation).. so there's some synergies there that will be important for increasing the share of renewables.
It just happens that personal cars is the easiest vehicle to implement as BEV first. If rich western countries didn't buy them, and China didn't have the foresight to push BEVs hard, the development could easily have taken 10-20 years longer.
> That's a very western-centric view.
Cars are used in non-western countries too. Now that batteries for vehicles are getting cheaper, you're starting to see BEVs become viable at the very bottom of the market as well. Cheap BEVs and cheap renewable energy will be huge for developing countries. You're already starting to see renewable micro-grids giving a much lower barrier to get access to electricity. Importing oil is expensive for a developing country. Importing refined gasoline is even more expensive.
No, the solution is leaving the oil in the ground, anything less than that and what you're making is excuses and not progress. We can't keep moving the goalposts.
There is nothing good for the climate about 13 norwegians (to reference another comment on this article) buying luxurious cars that happen to be electric.
I doubt renewable micro-grids are going to power EVs in the third world anytime soon, but that would be nice I guess.
> https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc...
So, yeah, that argument is actually valid.
[1] Side note: I'm impressed by the explosion of high-quality electric replacements for small gasoline engines over the past few years. All my power yard tools are electric; the only gasoline engines we own our the car and the generator.
That being said, given how much of our workforce is directly or indirectly tied to pumping up oil and gas, I also get that simply stopping the pumps tomorrow will pretty much make the country collapse.
As such I think that spending our black money to help foster greener technologies like EVs is at least better than nothing.
We're also using our oil fund a bit more actively[1] when it comes to climate and investments.
[1]: https://www.nrk.no/norge/for-forste-gang-kaster-oljefondet-u...
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/Hypocracy
It's clearly _not_ hypocrisy by any normal definition of the word.
I mean, first of all EVs isn't just about cutting CO2-emissions. Norway is very concerned about local pollution, and EVs is pretty superior there.
And Norway does not believe that they're the good guys when it comes to CO2 emissions, at all. There's a continuous debate about what to do about the oil/gas production though, and there's some pretty strong arguments that cutting oil/gas would do nothing or even be damaging to global CO2 emissions. Cutting production will easily be offset by other countries with worse emissions in their production chain. Cutting off gas to Germany will either push them back to coal or to Russian gas. And most of those other countries are not investing as much of their oil profits in renewables and EV tech. I'm not sure I agree with this line of though, but it's valid because it depends on knowledge of alternative futures that we just don't know.
I mean if you think it's hypocrisy you're free to do so, but it's not very productive. What action should Norway take to reduce the worlds CO2 emissions more than they are? The Norwegian green party wants to cut all oil/gas production by 2035. Is that enough, or should they have cut everything already?
Okay sure if you define their goals for EVs simply as decreasing _local_ pollution, then you're right it's not hypocritical. Though in that case I would instead refer to it as extremely selfish, since they are using the proceeds from their exportation of pollution to decrease their own local pollution. Honestly I'm not really sure which perspective I find worse.
> There's a continuous debate...
Given you clearly don't strongly agree with what you wrote, I won't attack you on it. I'll simply point out that those arguments are really no different than all the other self-serving arguments people use to post facto rationalize their actions. If them ridiculous. They remind me of the arguments I sometimes hear from fellow Swedes saying that Sweden's large profits from arms exports aren't bad since they'd be sold by someone else anyway. Convenient how easily such reasoning can be used to ignore one's culpability.
> I mean if you think it's hypocrisy you're free to do so, but it's not very productive. What action should Norway take to reduce the worlds CO2 emissions more than they are? The Norwegian green party wants to cut all oil/gas production by 2035. Is that enough, or should they have cut everything already?
If this is a serious question, then I'll answer it. They should stop being hypocrites. That is they should either stop their exports immediately or they should come to terms with the fact that they are making the world a worse place. You might want to get rid of Solberg as a first step:
https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/7335804
"Norge är ett av världens rikaste länder, mycket tack vare sin olja. Men man tar inget klimatansvar för den olja som exporteras.
Det säger Norges statsminister Erna Solberg i Ekots lördagsintervju idag. Enligt henne är det den som köper oljan som har ansvaret för utsläppen. Och då menar hon bland annat Sverige."
Total bullshit. I mean I agree that Swedes need to take responsibility for their actions (Sweden is probably just as full of hypocrites as Norway), but Norway is selling their oil knowing very well the result. Of course they are responsible. They are selling it because they want money. There's nothing noble about it.
In what way? It's not like Norway is responsible for the worlds dependence on oil, or that they've ever claimed that they're saving the world. They haven't said that others should stop using oil/gasoline right now either. They're just trying their best to help develop alternatives.
If you have oil, what's the third alternative? Should Norway just not have extracted any of its oil ever? Is that realistic to expect? Would it even have helped in any way, or would it just be offset by increased production in the middle east?
It's a huge discussion around this in Norway btw. The green party wants to cut all oil production by 2035. Obviously it's not very popular, although the green party has been growing quite well recently. The main argument against it is that cutting oil/gas production will easily be offset by other nations, most of which have worse CO2/methane pollution from their oil/gas production, and cutting gas to Germany could increase coal usage. It has been a big focus on that in Norway, to the point that Equinor is building a wind power plant to supply oil rigs with cleaner electricity rather than burning gas in inefficient power plants on the oil rigs. Of course, a lot of people are saying that this is green washing. Personally I'm ambivalent. Cutting production early would send a very strong signal, and could perhaps push other countries to cut oil/gas use, but at least building those off-shore wind power plants will help reduce cost of off-shore wind.
Norway is not the "good guy" here, but then nobody is. Everyone that has cheap/easy access to oil reserves has developed them. Expecting anybody to do otherwise is naive. Everyone in the world is hopelessly dependent on oil. We're all product of the circumstances of the 20th century, and all we can do is to try to do the best we can going forward.
> https://www.skatteetaten.no/en/person/duties/cars-and-other-...
Electric cars are exempt from these taxes which is why they are so attractive in Norway for customers. Electric cars are also exempt from road fees.
Overall, electric cars in Norway are still getting 2.4 billion USD subsidies per year:
> https://www.nettavisen.no/okonomi/norge-sponser-elbileiere-m...
I mean, of course people are buying electric cars under these circumstances.
> https://kontohjelp.no/kontering/elsykkel/elsykkel-til-bruk-i...
The official website of the Norwegian tax authority also has some details which mentions scooters (Norwegian: Ståhjuling) as well:
> https://www.skatteetaten.no/en/rettskilder/type/uttalelser/p...
There have been some municipal subsidy schemes for private citizen where you upon sending a receipt of an electric bike purchase will get some money back. They are however often temporary as they only budget a given amount for the scheme.
In the US roads are mostly maintained by taxes on gas. I would think taxing tires might be a decent replacement, but I haven't seen much conversation on the issue.
Most of the conversation seems to be around taxing mileage or putting up toll roads which IMO are both crap solutions.
Taxing mileage is, is highly regressive because less wealthy people drive tons more (they live farther out from the economic centers and more frequently justify driving farther to access goods more cheaply). However, less wealthy people do not shape public policy in the kinds of states that tend to be willing to try these things out so we'll likely wind up with mileage taxes that result in people in the expensive cities and inner ring suburbs paying the least and they will be able to justify it by pointing out that the less wealthy who live in city apartments and use public transit (which is generally how the more wealthy want the less wealthy to live) pay even less.
Taxing tires is a great idea because it's a naturally progressive tax though still loosely tied to overall use. The poors on their rock hard economy all seasons will pay less than the wealthy on their super sticky and soft summers and winters. Also tire cost scales well with weight of vehicle and the heaviest vehicles do the most damage to roads. That said, I can see a lot of bad 2nd order effects (that fuel tax is mostly immune to) if we start taxing tires so I am highly apprehensive. It would be a great time to own an alignment shop though.
IMO the best solution is to just accept that good transit infrastructure is in everyone's interest and fund roads directly with general tax revenue the same way we fund subways, municipal water/sewer, parks and almost every other piece of infrastructure. The net good of the marginal cost of use being so low that pretty much anyone can use as much as they want with no cost other than opportunity cost has immense benefits to society.
you pay a higher amount if your car causes more damage to the road.
This is a common misconception. Most road funding comes from the Fed and state/local income and property taxes. Gasoline taxes exist but do not comprise the majority of funding. It's important to emphasize this because I pay a LOT in taxes but don't even so much as own a car, so I'm paying way more than my fair share for road upkeep.
The solution would be simple -- tax based on odometer reading (and do it federally, so you can't get around it by moving cars between states). Every year as part of your taxes you'd look at your odometer and then pay an amount per mile driven since last year, and periodic vehicle registration renewals would keep people honest (there'd be the same kind of penalty fee there as for paying taxes late). So long as all the states require vehicle registration and send that data to the feds, it'll work. The states could also have their own tax on top.
Most of your property tax (depending on state) is going to schools, not roads. For example, my school tax is about $3700 per year, while county tax is about $500 and local income tax is maybe $500. The county and local taxes support courts, parks, police, fire, public transport, etc. Yes, some does go to road maintenance, especially projects like bike lane and crosswalk programs, but that is relatively little. I pay about $400 per year in gas taxes, $90 in registration, and $90-120 in tolls each year (pre covid). Federal road money comes from a federal gas tax (not sure if there are other sources added since that was a big issue a decade ago).
Enforcement of the odometer reading might be tricky, especially at the state level for states without periodic inspections. It could work though. The reason I mentioned tires is because they are a consumable part and have treadwear ratings for how long they should last. It would be self-enforcing, to a degree, at the consumer level. Enforcement would be at the manufacturer or distributor level to collect the tax.
If you were going to buy an electric car in the next couple of years, you should do it before you lose the discounts
Of course, budget electric cars are continuing to improve year over year, so that along with gas prices and the charging station network effect (which is perhaps fairly saturated in Norway? I don't know) should help draw in new buyers post incentives
I agree that I don't really imagine much backsliding unless the current generation of first-time buyers hate their electric cars (I suspect many will love them though)
Especially considering that Norway's average income is leagues ahead of those countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_electric_vehicles_in_N...
including a nice S-curve:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_electric_vehicles_in_N...
https://www.norskpetroleum.no/en/production-and-exports/prod...
Discussions about the efficiency/environmental impact/... of combustion v.s. electric aside, it's obvious that driving a huge battery around will burn more fuel.
I think this can only be seen as a success for electrified motors if it's proven that they're actually being used.
Almost everyone celebrating "electric cars" in that headline is really cheering for carbon reduction, and this for sure qualifies.
In which case it's effectively a gasoline car.
I am not sure if I am misunderstanding something here, but did you ever compare fuel statistics of ICE/HEV/PHEV?
and driving around two engines. also, equally important, having to produce two engines gives hybrids an extra co2 footprint even before their first km. this way, the total co2 footprint over the entire life cycle of a hybrid car can be just the same as that of the same car with a combustion engine.
Plugin hybrids were 20% and non-plugin hybrids 9%
Total *EV share of 83%
See slide 21: https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/opplysningsraadet-for-vei...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_produ...
This is like someone burning down a forest and then planting a single tree and expecting praise.
New car sales in the country last year were 141,412, of which 76,789 were fully electric.
We're a small country, so yeah not huge numbers but...
> https://www.nettavisen.no/okonomi/norge-sponser-elbileiere-m...
I mean, the government is spending something like 2.5 billion US Dollars per year to subsidize electric cars, yet people still claim how electric cars are competitive.
From having lived in Norway for a year, I also remember that even buying used cars with a combustion engine is ridiculously expensive due to the high taxes that electric cars are exempt from.
I mean, of course, Norwegians are buying more electric cars. Who wouldn't given these circumstances?
The government currently does not charge import taxes on electric cars, but charges very high import taxes on ICE cars.
I wouldn't say that the government is "spending" that money. For sure it's a subsidy, but the Norwegian government is not actually sending checks to people or manufacturers if they buy electric. There is a cost to road maintenance that needs to get funded from somewhere, and that cost is not currently being borne by electric car owners. But using the phrase "spending" makes it sound a whole lot like a check is getting cut in some amount and sent somewhere.
(There's an ongoing debate about when to ramp up taxes for electric cars, and to what amounts, so don't expect the situation to remain as-is for too much longer.)
Just saw the new ID4, its a super cool car: https://www.volkswagen.nl/modellen/id4
It looks way better in real life than on the site. With Tesla... These tesla model 3s are everywhere in the Netherlands, and they are a bit minimal in design and expensive.. A bit boring to be honest. But thats good, electrify the world!
The worst part with the most recent center-divider crash is that it was an regression following an OTA update, demonstrating that OTA can cause just as much harm as good.
> most recent center-divider crash is that it was an regression following an OTA update,
DO you have reference for that? I would be interested to read up on that, I have an interest as I have a Model S.