COP26: Germany fails to sign up to 2040 combustion engine phaseout
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There are two types of car companies in Germany: those on track to switch to fully electric production in the next 5-10 years; and those nowhere near on track that are very afraid of the implosion of their market share as those others are saturating the market with EVs. That's not a future thing; it's already happening.
So, the Germans committing to any ICE phaseout would speed this process up and mess with the (long) time they've given themselves to get out of this mess. The problem with that timeline is that they no longer control it. The transition is happening, whether they like it or not.
Tesla was within a few hundred cars of dethroning the VW Golf as the most popular car in Germany. VWs iconic Wolfsburg plant, which was restored by the allied forces after WW II, is hitting a record low production volume this year at the same time Tesla is opening up a factory in Germany. That's not a coincidence. And VW is one of the better prepared manufacturers. They actually have a decent shot at surviving the transition to EVs. But that's not necessarily true of the other manufacturers.
I don't really see that many Teslas here in the UK, but maybe as a percentage of new cars sold the number is quite high (and I'm sure it's a lot higher in London).
Before that came out, internally they developed their own version of an electric car, but were not allowed by GM to bring it to light and had to resell the GM version.
Daimler has a few expensive models on the market but is not really selling those in large volume. Their recently announced cars seem nice though and their focus on the luxury segment and brand actually makes a lot of sense. And since they are not about high volume sales and selling at a premium, they can get away with cost disadvantages more easily.
The ones that are in better shape are all associated with the Volkswagen group (Porsche, Audi, VW itself) thanks to VW having gotten aggressive on this topic a bit earlier (courtesy of Diesel gate). And even those still have some catching up to do.
IMHO the real issue for these manufacturers is not even Tesla but the coming influx of cheap Chinese imports. So far, manufacturers have been able to pretend it's all about the luxury segment and sell a few EVs at a premium (typically above their ICE pricing). Once EV prices dip below 20K euro, it's a different game. That might happen in 2022 already. Chinese manufacturers have a lot of very interesting EVs already on the roads in China that are being produced in volume. Exporting those to the US and Europe is more a question of when than if.
It's a repeat of what happened when Japanese cars started competing in the 1980s. It forced everybody else to up their game. This time around, the required changes are more disruptive. Everything from supply chain management, car design, software development, sales, etc. is in need of change. It's about cost and margins. The question is not whether manufacturers can produce EVs but whether they can do so at the right price point and still make a profit. What's on the market right now is a bit challenged on that front. Except for a handful of manufacturers.
Although Golf sales have admittedly almost halved over the past 5 years and is currently outsold by both the Polo and Tiguan
I understand the hype States-side, but in Europe the situation is different. People keep saying it will change once Tesla has an EU factory, but we'll have to see - opening a factory is no walk in the park, and by the time that happens VW might have a better electric line.
https://www.best-selling-cars.com/germany/2021-half-year-ger...
Ah yeah, surely the supply chain crisis has nothing to do with it /s . This sentence made me doubt your entire comment and ability to see things clearly.
Edit: it occurred to me maybe you mean their self driving tech - I think the reality is they and everyone else is really sooooo far away from this, it’s basically as far away as fusion power - just another 5 years. When a electric car can navigate my shitty rural roads or the streets of Rome, were there. Highway driving isn’t it and frankly I think the evidence is still out as to whether the high level driver assists are actually beneficial compared to something like lane warnings and that modulating cruise control which makes my regular 9 hr drives a breeze
I am thankful that there are new vehicles coming out that support this wirelessly, along with the already existing wireless charging. I have gone through so many USB cables of various lengths, materials and prices and they all seem to fail after a few months of use. Something about the cold/hot/constant movement causes them to not last. It always felt to me to be very retro for this to not all be wireless.
The annoying thing is that the shift to wireless is not just a software update. Apparently it requires an entirely new hardware solution, despite the existing solution already supporting Bluetooth for everything but CarPlay/AndroidAuto.
[0] https://www.kba.de/DE/Statistik/Fahrzeuge/Neuzulassungen/Mon...
So, even if the Model 3 isn't quite beating the Golf yet, it is coming closer. This will even be more the case, once Tesla produced in Europe, as there are no import taxes on the vehicle and the prices lower.
So while Tesla is quickly gaining market share, VW is still selling 10x as many cars in Germany.
> are very afraid of the implosion of their market share as those others are saturating the market with EVs. That's not a future thing; it's already happening.
I think that's more than a bit overstated.
Why pay 50k Euros for a BMW/Mercedes with 350km range, while you can get a model 3 with 500km range for 42k (or the long range one with 600km range for 50k instead)?
VW's ID4 is the only one that can keep up with Tesla in price/performance ratio, while having good range.
Hyundai seems to be doing pretty well with the Ioniq 5, and the Kia EV6 looks interesting. On a price/performance scale I would definitely rate the Honda E as well as a very nice 'good enough' electric car that's significantly cheaper than a Tesla.
Even this winter, clearly still pre-EV dominance, is going to be interesting - if it's cold in europe for long, and if Russia decides to use their current position of power for a nasty short-term shock, that could really shift people's willingness to accept a few sacrifices in the coming years.
I wouldn't count them out just because they've got issues; those things might change quite quickly - some of the needed infrastructure can be built in just a few years, once the political will is there, which currently is lacking. Sure, it's a problem, but on this topic: what else is new.
Meanwhile the shutting down of the last nuclear power plants in Germany, the original reason for SuedLink, is on track to happen by the end of 2022.
I am not impressed by the level of foresight on display here.
I think its a rather clever choice to be against the end of the combustion engine when you can fuel them with something like: hydrogen, e-fuels or methanol. In Ingolstadt (Audi HQ is there) a former Audi engineer invented a car with 800 kilometres (500 miles). So there are alternatives to electric-only.
of course, this range is only correct with best circumstances, in practice it will be less
Edit: according to the specs, it should have a range of 960 km (597 miles) under optimal conditions. It sounds more than I would expect, but then the car is almost 20 years old. Still, the low fuel consumption is one of the reasons I keep it -- it uses less fuel than modern hybrids do.
Fossil companies are keen on hydrogen as they can still pump their oil.
In theory, hydrogen fuel cell is perfectly fine. But then we reach the other problem: there won't be any infrastructure. Hydrogen, e-fuels, etc. It is just too expensive. Maybe fine for a few rich people driving on a track.
Any e-fuel that can use normal petrol infrastructure and is burnt in an ICE has absolutely atrocious efficiency. Not only do you lose a large fraction of the energy going from electricity to fuel, but then you burn it in an engine that has 40% efficiency is a lab and 15% efficiency in city traffic. It just makes no sense outside of niche applications.
You also have charging losses which electric cars, they are just not that high as with e-fuels. E-fuels have the advantage of being easily transportable and refuel is done in 1-3 minutes. So why not create them in countries that have much sun (free and endless energy) and convert this into something useful.
Because that's not economical. It's cheaper to ship in the electricity directly, or if you don't want to build the HVDC lines (there are good reasons for that), turn it into Hydrogen, ship that and turn it back into electricity. Electrolysis is reasonably efficient (>70%), and the round trip to electricity can be done at 40% efficiency or so. Charge an EV with that elecricity and you're still much better off than first turning the electricity to Diesel (<30% efficienct) and then burning the Diesel (<<40%).
And that's not even taking into account all the health benefits of not burning stuff where people want to breathe.
You don't need a lot of space for wind and solar. Take Germany for example. Using just the area currently used for "energy crops" (around 2.4 million hectares) for PV you could cover most of the primary(!) energy demand of the country. Wind is even more space efficient in Germany.
Yeah perfect idea using farmland that could be used for growing food wasting on PVs. Do not get me wrong, there has something to happen but perhaps only solar and wind will not safe us as long as we have no good battery technology. Therefore it would be better to store this in some fuel.
We already use that farmland to grow fuel instead of food, and we also have the technology to store the energy: electrolysis. But because that is relatively expensive you don't want to burn that fuel in shitty tiny generators, you want to burn it in efficient combined-cycle plants.
If anything I think 20 years is too long. Specially since these drafts always get diluted and things like hybrid motors are probably also going to be deemed 'electric'.
The problem will be recharging in cities. In the suburbs/countryside it is very likely you can plug your car at night in your garage or similar. This is not true in cities since owning a parking spot with access to electricity is expensive. So, if cities will start putting plugs in "normal" parking spots I don't see any major issue in shifting completely to EV.
[1] https://netherlandsnewslive.com/flanders-bans-the-sale-of-ne...
Even in places like the Nordic countries and Western Europe, massive infrastructure upgrades needs to be put in place to allow people in the rural areas to get rid of ICE's. And that's personal use. Getting forestry and agriculture to switch to electric will take many decades.
We need synthetic fuels produced with renewable/nuclear energy, and we need them fast. Yes, EV's are nice and they will cover a lot of the use-cases, but they're not a silver bullet to end all worries.
The upside is, that once we accept that this is not happening we can move on from these attempts and fully focus on technologies that capture/remove carbon from the air. This one to efficiently convert CO2 into starch (https://newatlas.com/science/artificial-synthesis-starch-fro...) comes to mind. I have no insight of my own to contribute, but David Friedberg argued on the all in podcast that a 25 square-mile areal of these would be enough to capture all CO2 currently in the atmosphere. (again, just quoting, not able to verify this myself)
Of course, China is a very big country with an industry that is growing at a rapid rate. So they have to add even more coal to keep up with demand.
But it is wrong to think that they are not doing anything.
As for carbon capture. People have been talking about that for a long time. Today it seems that the most effective way of carbon capture is to plant some trees.
Personally, I think it is great that banning sale of ICE vehicles are already on the table.
I felt like napkin mathing it, and even a cursory check completely obliterates that claim. Adding 1 ppm (volumetrically) of CO2 to the atmosphere is about 2 Gt of CO2, and we're at about 400 ppm. Carbon is 27% by mass. Monocrystalline diamond is 3.5 g/cm3. This makes a prism with the specified base 1km high. Talk about a ring.
The linked article seems to indicate that the researchers are also much more conservative with their claims than Freidberg, and state their technology is about 8x more efficient at capture than corn. Very cool, but nowhere near that sort of magnitude, as 8x that area would be only a fraction of the farmland in the continental US alone (by a factor of 1000).
* Edited for math
The UK is banning the sale of internal combustion cars starting 2030, now how is 10 years later a problem for the rest of the world?
Finally, companies don't want to anger the unions for something that is happening anyway regardless of their support or not. As soon as EVs cost the same as ICE cars the transition will happen naturally as the cost of ownership is already much lower.
Is it really not happening? AFAIK the EV revolution is happening underneath their noses and German car manufacturers are letting Tesla and Chinese/Asian companies eat their lunch and their move is to sleep on it to not anger their ICE-focused Labour unions. Not a good strategy long term.
Kodak also shelved their digital camera Invention in the '70s to not disrupt their film business, and guess what, the digital camera revolution happened without them anyway so they missed out on it costing them the company.
The real issue is building enough charging points in cities where people don't have access to a garage, but that's just a matter of investing some money and will happen naturally as demand picks up.
A positive side effect: if the companies in the industrial zone have large-scale solar panels installed on their roofs, the load on the grid and power plants could be reduced (at home, people usually charge their cars at night).
Sounds like a perfect solution to me, which means there is something wrong in my reasoning :)
When I hear people say these sorts of things, I always imagine someone from the end of the 19th century complaining about removing horse carriages from the roads being totally unrealistic. You know, all this gas infrastructure has to be built and ...
I am not sure if you are being serious.
Assuming that cars are used on average 20000 km per year, then you can charge a Tesla 3 for 10 hour per night, 1 kW. Of course you would need to use a fast charger if you want to make long trip.
In most places to day, there should be 1 kW at night.
Not only countries will be banning combustion engines, but major cities too.
Also, probably by 2030 we will have big switch towards self-driving cars, by 2040 self-driving cars will dominate across all developed economies.
Just as pointless as some countries cough cough agreeing to things, forcing other countries to ratify them, and then ratifying it themselves.
Sometimes I wonder if we're not just shifting emissions onto other countries rather than reducing them.
I'm living in an apartment building and the closest place to charge it would be in front of a supermarket. I don't think my landlord would do something for the rented parking spots, and those are even the exception because road parking is the norm.
Don't take this pessimistic outlook as being against any of this, but without owning (or renting) a house with a garage I simply don't see how charging would realistically work. Maybe I'm living in the wrong part of the city but even in other parts the charging points are far and between.
Overall, most people probably will be charging while parked at work.
DW is now world police?
Actual real threats which affect and kill the worlds poorest on a daily basis today.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-58992093
Then you've got the climate change effects destroying places like much of Africa and South Asia, leading to mass migration including into Germany
Huh?
I would think that the principle of economies of scale would apply in this case, reducing the cost of production. The progress regarding battery recycling will probably drive the price further down.
A realistic solution would be carbon tax, yes making things like fuel and holidays halfway around the world more expensive. But yeah, no populace will vote for that, they still aspire to go to Thailand as cheaply as possible. (even rich-ass Switzerland voted against laws to lower CO2 emissions earlier this year).
In my pessimistic view of reality, we'll just go on like this. When the resources get low in say 20-30 years, the rich countries will steal from the poorer ones (by money and by military), even if you're a pacifist you'll not mind your country's military shooting up refugees at the border if it means you can have some food and water.
If you have good public transport, then noone will want to take the car instead of public transport.
combustion engine phaseout ≠ total shift to emission-free vehicles
What's wrong exactly with an ICE that uses clean and sustainable fuel? This is what Formula 1 is aiming for. There's nothing wrong with internal combustion per se. It's just the fuel we are currently using being harmful for the environment and unsustainable that is an issue.
Although I suspect as usual this point will be particularly unpopular with the HN crowd, as it seems anything less than full electric is the Antichrist.
The other part of the equation is that the selling of ICE vehicles will happen in poor countries. Who will not use sustainable fuel.
Anyhow, the article is clearly about the politics of the current transition; not about potential future technological breakthroughs.
The laws banning combustion engines.
If there's both a plausible alternative fuel on the horizon _and_ a plausibly problematic law, _and_ a political unwillingness to grant exemptions - then let's talk. So far, laws even vaguely in that direction seem few and far between, and even those make it might turn out to have loopholes rendering the point moot. The conventional fuel industry and popular usage is so huge that surely exemptions would be granted if necessary. Finally, there does not yet appear to be plausible alternative fuel.
The risk of an overzealous restriction on ICE cars is much lower than the risk of an overly lenient ICE policy. After all, each additional ICE car sold has real, likely unavoidable, and virtually irreversible consequences. In aggregate, those consequences are pretty dire. Betting on some kind of hail mary wonder-fuel without considerable certainty of its success isn't wise. But it's also likely what society will do for quite a few more years.
Under an idealized capitalist system we'd just tax the carbon and thus raise the fuel prices. However, as long as much of the electorate has ICE cars that's political suicide in most places - and competitive suicide even where the body politic might swallow that bitter bill. Consider e.g. the proposed small fuel price tax hike in France recently and the unrest that followed. Raising fuel prices isn't easy.
Ok well, you have:
1) NO2 emissions - which basically reduce human lifespan
2) CO emissions- don't really need to explain this one, you've seen the films with the suicides in the closed garage
3) Tailpipe particulates- basically very tiny bits of charcoal that are carcinogenic
So no, claiming that the fuel was made from sugarcane, or corn, or algae, does not somehow make an ICE clean.
Reminder that air pollution is responsible for 7 million premature deaths every year. [0]
[0] https://m.dw.com/en/who-7-million-people-dying-yearly-from-p...
To name a few:
1. Terrible efficiency. ICE average at around 30% efficiency vs 90% of EVs (close to 100% if regenerative breaking is used).
2. 1000s of moving parts for ICE vs few 10s for EVs. This directly translates to cost of ownership which is a big win for EVs already now.
3. Emissions. Even using a clean fuel you generate nitrous oxides or carbon monoxide (unless you have perfect combustion which is something we didn't achieve yet even after decades of R&D).
4. Fuel logistics. Even if it's a clean fuel, you still have to transport it from the refinery to the fuel pumps. We already have an electric grid in place and we just need upgrades (a 1-off cost more or less) instead of continuously transporting stuff around.The majority of energy in the combusted fuel goes right out the tailpipe: vehicle engines are generally only about 25-30% efficient. Combined cycle power plants that capture energy from the exhaust of the initial combustion cycle get over 60%, but it's ridiculously impractical to put one in a car.