EU vote to ban all sales of combustion engine vehicles by 2035
theregister.com
theregister.com
Engines roaring in a city might be nice for some, but for most it's just noise pollution, particularly offensive noise pollution at that. The lack of noise will be a huge benefit to electric cars.
But look at the filth they created! [2] (The shafts of light show how smokey it is in there).
His hobby was travelling round the country to see old steam trains running on preserved/heritage railways. That's fine, and fans of ICE cars will probably be able to watch races, drive on private roads/racetracks etc.
[1] https://youtu.be/UwfM8SNoMtk?t=448
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:St_Pancras_2_railway_stat...
When talking about electric, we tend to think of the expensive cars currently on the road in North America. They're expensive in large part because being electric is used as a premium feature.
Look at the cost of those cheapo chinese electric cars if you want to see how cheap electric cars can get. https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2021/06/the-worlds-cheapest-ev-is...
Nobody's arguing for chinese deathtraps to be used on our roads, but a small car in the vicinity of a Kia Rio's price could exist, but it would have too many caveats at this point.
Let's see how "the market" likes being unable to drive to their beach holidays without infrastructure.
>> After all the investment to build a fast charger is easy if you have a guarantee that the number of customers will increase dramatically.
Maybe, but there is no such guarantee. You can't solve everything by throwing money at it. Fast chargers/decent batteries remain elusive. So then building infrastructure is the only solution within the next 10-15 years. No way the EU can coordinate that fast.
This is banning the sale, not the use. And trains exist in Europe.
So not sure that ditching driving to your destination is a positive evolution.
Furthermore, short haul flights are being banned in Europe.
For myself, my wife is from Slovakia, so every year I drive at least once there (1200km). I can do that in 1 day with getting gas in the middle. My wife takes the plane with our youngest one. The reason I drive is because I take a lot of stuff, and want a big car there. If I wouldn't take the car (which sometimes happens), I take the plane, it's really fast. I don't want to imagine how long the train would take me, and how many times I have to switch...
Find sites, get permissions, build. That's a big race no matter the technology used by those power plants. I expect the 2035 limit to be relaxed or result in fewer car sales because we can't power them up.
Good. We need fewer car sales. We need more non-car infrastructure.
We don't need an "output equivalent to the energy stored in the fuel used by today's non EV cars". What we need is fewer cars and more people on public transports and bicycles wherever it makes sense.
Less car trips. The current price of gas is already pushing people to take their car less and prioritize cheaper modes of transportation.
Fulfill the remainder of the demand with electric.
Are you saying we can never argue for more bicycle use because that's somehow ableist?
Cheaper?. 100 miles on the train is more expensive [in the UK] than the fuel for the same trip. And that's before I put 4 people in the sodding car. Not to mention, my standard drive is barely serviced by public transport (requiring three changes and a significant detour). You can even amortise my car costs and I'm still way ahead in time, costs and convenience.
NB. I'd really like the railways and buses nationalised and heavily subsidised to support fixed costs based solely on bucketed crow flies distance, log scaled etc. But whilst they are the way they are - no way will I give up a car.
This didn't use to be the case. UK trains were privatised and their costs have gone way up in the past few years.
Regardless, the UK is irrelevant to this discussion as we're talking about the EU.
> Passenger car diesel engines have energy efficiency of up to 41% but more typically 30% (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_efficiency#Statistics)
> Low-speed diesel engines (as used in ships and other applications where overall engine weight is relatively unimportant) can reach effective efficiencies of up to 55%. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_engine)
Not to mention that a very large percentage of electricity for charging of vehicles is not going to come from fossil fuels in the first place, especially whenever charging can be planned (which is most of the time in Europe).
> Not to mention that a very large percentage of electricity for charging of vehicles is not going to come from fossil fuels in the first place, especially whenever charging can be planned (which is most of the time in Europe).
That's not what my parent and I are talking about. But I second that. Except I live in France and we are starting to have electricity cuts because we can't maintain our nuclear plants properly. So we are in a little bit more trouble than you might think.
Well, for example transformers are ~98% efficient, AC lines lose around 7% per 1000 km. So with three transformers between you and the power plant and a ~300 km distance, you lose around 8% between the power plant and you.
> Because if it is another 50% you lost all interest (but you built a plant and a float of cars and batteries in the meantime).
No, not really. You're still not powering your cars purely from fossil fuels, so even 50% of losses would still be a win when it comes to minimizing fossil fuel emissions caused by road transportation. You'd only have to burn enough fossil fuels to cover whatever the non-fossil-fuel generators wouldn't be able to provide at any given time. But as I pointed out above, you almost certainly won't get 50% of losses.
> Except I live in France and we are starting to have electricity cuts because we can't maintain our nuclear plants properly. So we are in a little bit more trouble than you might think.
Nah, not really. France is in a great position to generate fairly substantial amounts of electricity from renewables with complementing the rest from nuclear power. Not to mention that I'd expect the EPR design to finally be sorted out after the initial units built. It's not like you'll need it tomorrow -- the transition to BEVs will take a considerable time. Even if sales of ICE cars actually stop in 2035, ICE vehicles won't disappear overnight. They'll only be gradually replaced for a decade or so.
I also think that a lot of steel+copper+lithium and others are not taken into the equation to replace cars and manufacture more plants. Steel particularly consumes a lot of energy to produce. Uranium shortages are going to become a thing too especially with new demand from China.
Also I disagree with your optimism on french nuclear and renewable, having worked there and having friends working in EDF and also following various debates, political decisions, and news flow, we went from quite optimistic a few years back to more and more pessimistic about the whole thing. Nobody seems to want a nuclear plant, or a solar/wind power field next to their home. And the competency for nuclear has retired or seems to be going to China or elsewhere for counseling now.
Not sure what "NE plants" are (I'd understand that NG would be natural gas) but the point was that whatever liquid hydrocarbons you can put into a car can be used even more efficiently in a large scale facility. And if you intend to operate such plants, you don't need to crack oil into gasoline for them, so they wouldn't be gasoline plants, even if they were oil-fired.
> Nobody seems to want a nuclear plant, or a solar/wind power field next to their home
I've had a solar plant next to my home for years and I've had zero problems with it. I wouldn't have a problem with a nuclear plant either. (With wind power it's a moot point since the place where I live has zero useful wind for any potential turbine installation.)
That's not how it works because it's assuming a point to point connection for your use case. In reality there is the grid, and from everything I know transmission losses from whichever source to your socket over that grid average out to 50% best case, to about only one third reaching the destination. The latter for instance for electrified rail.
I live (mostly) in Germany. But as I've said, when you zoom out and look into it, considering all that goes through and into it, it seems like it.
No matter where. ISTR tidbits from documentaries, many websites specializing in analysis, even wikipedia. Especially that rail thing, only one third from power plant reaching the locomotive is normal.
Let's put it this way: You have a model for your use case, a (mind) map. But the map is not the territory :-)
Link please. Because that would be a terrible performance figure for a high power system like that. Worst possible loss figures I've been able to find for our grid are 15% losses between the power plant and the plug, and that's including the losses in low-voltage distribution (400 V 50 Hz three-phase). Modern rail runs at 25 kV/50 Hz single-phase. 66% losses would be mind-boggling. As per [1], the expected losses for powering 25 kV rail are around 7% including conversion between transmission lines and the traction lines. So even including losses between the power plant and the conversion substation, they should definitely be significantly below 20%.
[1] https://vts.cd.cz/documents/168518/195369/3201.pdf/9a95e429-...
Mission impossible for now, because sleep is long overdue. Anyway, something anecdotical: At the times, when I looked into it about 2008, I discussed that with some people, some of them 'engineers', as in the people who actually drive the trains (both freight and passenger). They also confirmed that, they even learn that during training. Can 15kV at 16 2/3Hz produce such differences?
Whatever, as I said before, it isn't limited to rail, grids as they are now aren't as efficient as the models suggest. But I can't re-research this at the moment. I just know I didn't hallucinate that stuff, OK?
> The only exceptions are countries such as Poland, where the electricity network is still mostly based on coal-fired power generation.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikescott/2020/03/30/yes-electr...
Of course you lose some charging and discharging the battery, in the charger itself and in transmission losses. But just eyeballing it it seems like the power plant should come out ahead as long as it isn't too far away.
But where is efficiency of electricity transmission, transformation, battery charging and battery discharging?
Also Latvia, Estonia and Malta. And Kentucky, West Virginia, Wyoming.
You're mixing up power and energy there
And we are talking, cars, not small buses, etc. You know that it will not have fundamental effects on the current trends if you look at the stocks of Shell, TotalEnergies, BP. They were basically not affected by the vote.
I do not know much about the grid capacity in the various regions of the EU. Here in the US our grid is often pushed to the brink causing mandatory shut-offs in some areas.
I guess both are true in some way - it's really challenging to decarbonise quickly, but we need even quicker, because we're way past reasonable in terms of the environmental situation.
Electric cars can run on average 100 km/h over 10 hours if you plan your trip well (and have a bit of luck with free spots on plugin stations). Apart from charging time I don't see where plugin vehicle is worse than ICE one when it comes to features.
That's below highway speed here, and everything is at least twice the distance in America than you think it is. The nearest major city from me is 240km away, the second is 435km and it gets -34C here (the average in winter being about -10C).
It just isn't feasible if you aren't in a dense metro area and only ever use your vehicle to commute (which is by far not the case).
Are you under the age of 65? Do you have children? Do you expect that you will ever have children?
If so, you want either an electric car or no car at all, in preference to a fossil-fuel-powered car, because you want the planet to remain hospitable for humans.
It's not fast enough to make electrics better, so we need to make ICE worse as well.
For example, vans must be manufactured on 1 January 2007 or later to be used in Copenhagen. In July the date will become 1 January 2012 [1].
That doesn't yet apply to cars, and I think the truck counts as a car. It does apply in some cities in Germany, where the limit depends on the fuel -- petrol cars are often limited to 30 years (1992), diesel to 2007.
I expect these regulations to tighten as electric cars become widespread, and the various exemptions to become more stringent.
[1] https://miljoezoner.dk/en/regulations-and-vehicles/regulatio...
The only way ICEs will go away is by hostile legislation, being regulated and taxed to death purely for ideological reasons, as is happening.
Err, what? I'm in Paris, I can't drill that kind of hole anywhere near my home. The article is about the EU; but I doubt most people can do that even in the US, except when you have a house in the middle of nowhere with lots of land around it.
Or another 50 years. The modern western disposable culture isn’t global, although is certainly envied by many who don’t have it.
Also oil has high fixed costs. Stations, tanker trucks, refineries. Fewer customers carrying them means they rise as a percentage of purchase price.
In 2035/2040 the majority of ICE car owners will be the less well off (plus those driving classic cars) - but they'll likely be paying much more for travel than those that can afford new electric cars.
I hear this repeated all the time. No you don't need hundreds of chips to build an ICE engine car, and no you don't need hundreds, let alone thousands, of chips to build an electric car. There's no technical reason electric cars need so many more chips than ICE cars.
The number of chips in cars is mostly due to the number of suppliers involved in building parts of the car separately.
All those pumps, thousands of parts in the ICE, emissions control, transmission will become obsolete. Having a charging controller, an electric motor and battery monitoring is going to he a lot less complicated.
Just wondering what will happen to all these existing cars, it’s nice to know new cars will be electric but what are people supposed to do with their current ones? Lot of them won’t be usable in cities due to low-emission zoning policies.
Edit: it’s a genuine question, I don’t understand the logistic behind it, other than driving your old car to Turkey and sell it there, which isn’t realistic for the millions of existing cars. I asked it a few times in the past but didn’t get satisfying answers.
>In a plenary vote on Wednesday, MEPs adopted their position on proposed rules to revise the CO2 emissions performance standards for *new* cars and vans with 339 votes in favour, 249 against and 24 abstentions.
Many of the eu rules for cars are not retroactive. E.g I can use a old car without lighting for the number plate, even though new cars must have light on them.
We may even end up in a long term repair market like Cuba maintaining those 50s cars since they can't really get more.
BEVs will be for civilian city dwellers, but for those who have jobs that were once called essential workers, the ones where people suffer and maybe die if the job doesn't happen, ICE cars will still have a place just for their dependability under duress factor.
All in all, in the EU you are quite pushed to get rid of your ICE car. I see this as a very good thing.
If you keep a consumption engine you won’t have as many gas stations anymore and will not be allowed to circulate in some areas (low-emission zones, for example see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crit%27air).
The primary reason I bought non-electric car is insufficient infrastructure, bills like this will fix the infrastructure problem.
Edit: to answer the question in the edit. 13 years is enought of heads up for any new cars. I'd expect a pretty significant drop off in new car sales by 2030 as few people would like to be forced to get rid of their 5 year old car by 2035.
That's an issue with electric cars that has not really been solved, afaik. Most batteries will become useless at a rate that is not comparable to critical ICE engine parts, and they continue to be very expensive.
Diesel cars have already seen this happen, with current and expected future restrictions on them being used in cities.
Don't know what everyone else's experience is, but coming from a middle class family, my first car was a 1993 Ford Fiesta (which was ~20 year old at the time) my dad bought me for dirt cheap. It used a very outdated fuel (petrol instead of diesel), didn't have any of the modern safety standards which are required by new cars and had fuel efficiency so bad it was outright banned within many city centers... but it still served me for years.
Much longer than that. I'm in my mid 20s in the UK, and I only know one person who drives a car that's less than a decade old, and she leases it. Everyone else has cars 1995-2011. Mine is a 2010 fiesta which I bought last year.
The used car market is huge here.
> The average age of a car at scrappage in 2015 reached 13.9 years, which is on a par with the 2014 performance. The lowest scrappage age, 13 years, was recorded in 2009, a result of government’s scrappage scheme. [1]
> Furthermore, the average age of a vehicle on the road has increased, from 6.8 years in 2003 to 7.8 recorded in 2015. This reflects both slower fleet renewal and the increased longevity of vehicles.
Looking at the statistics (veh1111.ods in data tables [2]), on 31 December 2021, 63% of cars were less than 10 years old. 86% were less than 15 years old. 96% were less than 20 years old.
[1] https://www.smmt.co.uk/industry-topics/sustainability/averag...
[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/vehicle-licensing-s...
In a lot of the EU, the used-car sector has lost a lot of ground, particularly since governments figured that a cheap way to stimulate tax revenues is to pass emission rules, effectively forcing sales of new vehicles. We had a similar effect in UK (also powered by the rise of PCP), but the somewhat-constrained supply of new vehicles kept up prices of used ones.
In Europe, just because of rumors that city centers plan to ban diesel cars their sales have already dropped and manufacturers are phasing down production. When that kind of talk happens to all ICE nobody around a city will want one.
There are plenty of cases where EVs are very good answers today. My wife’s ICE car is 17 years old and still going strong. If I fast forward to 2039, she’d equivalently be driving a 2022. In 2045, 10 year old ICE cars will still be readily available and I think quite usable.
So realistically, old car stock will spend another couple of decades being driven till it's dust, and then it'll be gone. But this is a move which does need to happen soon, since you can reasonably expect another 2 decades of the vehicles on the second hand market after implementation.
"Lot of them won’t be usable in cities due to low-emission zoning policies.",Yeah lots of talk about that previously but I don't think this will happen for _new_ cars. Also lots of places outside of cities.
The last ICE cars will be mostly crappy econoboxes for people who can't afford a battery. And they will still have stupid touchscreens and phone-home software because that's dictated by fashion and profit margins, not the powertrain.
[1] https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/eu-oil-depletion-2030...
While I'm happy about initiatives like this for environmental reasons, I'm sure their real reasons have a lot to do with the EU not having oil in a context where it's going to grow increasingly expensive, and not so much with environmental concerns.
In fact, the most desirable second hand cars (in Europe at least) are those form around mid '00s, as they had enough electronics to be relatively fuel efficient and safe, but still be reliable enough to not get you dragged to the dealership because one of the million electronics on board of the cars of today decided to have a bad day (modern cars a reliability nightmares, making out of warranty repairs super expensive, basically pushing people to old cars).
The societal implications are worrisome. Electric vehicles tend to track and surveil their "owners", fast charging is centralized and can be tracked as well.
We have seen how far dystopian regimes like Trudeau's are willing to go. Instead of freezing the bank accounts using enabling laws, he could also shut off the grid or exclude specific vehicles. Mandatory kill switches for vehicles will come in handy as well.
I'm sure the army and police armored vehicles for population suppression will still have combustion engines.
This is certainly true in Europe, though I understand that those networks aren't as mature in the USA yet (anecdotal, and I could be very wrong about that).
I've yet to hear about any vehicles with 'kill switches'. Is there any evidence of this, or is it just a possibility?
I don't think this would have happened in Europe in 2005.
The car's connected features like remote unlocking are completely optional and easy to live without.
Fast charging data, as far as I can tell, are only centralized within my payment provider, similar to how it would be if I were to use a debit/credit card to buy fuel.
I trust the EU and my country's government not to introduce dystopian measures like mandatory kill switches.
ICEs are very inefficient at converting gas to movement, so the per-km emissions almost always favor EVs, independent of power generation. So if the manufacturing gets greener (which will hopefully be sufficiently the case by then), it doesn't matter.
You're assuming you'll be able to vote on the issue.
The EU isn't a particularly democratic system, and even assuming that the question will be asked of politicians and not simply implemented by non-elected bureaucrats, being able to poll the entire voter base on an issue such as this one is damn near impossible in the current system.
Also, last time an actual EU-wide referendum was implemented, the results were basically ignored because the outcome didn't suit the bureaucrats.
That what they vote on can simply be. Politicians don't like to think logistics. They exist in another realm, above the common man.
> The only way they can make this work is by going full YOU VILL OWN NOTHING mode and cancel private property as we know it.
Correct. That's been the elite's plan for a long time now, and they're open about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car_use_by_country
https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=fr&c=DE...
This way you would need to mine only a quarter of the materials for the billions of batteries. It's not immediately obvious it makes sense to create those batteries that would then sit on driveways for most of their life.
For taxis or sales reps, full electric, definitely!
Like really, am a European but feels like this is just "giving up"
Also I'm curious how this will play out with the huge economic disparity between the member states (eg Luxemburg vs Bulgaria). People can't afford new cars let alone new electronic cars.
Curious what you mean by "giving up" though?
Always someone to blame.... this is a positive step.
EU has less than 10% share in the CO~2 production. We are not going to make a difference even by going medieval today, and the rest of the world isn't going to care, especially as they will watch us to self-destruct.
The deadline is for cars and light commercial vehicles, not for heavy goods vehicles, which is what industry uses for nearly all distribution.
Coordinate foreign affairs? Nope
Able to police external borders? Nope
Credible military deterrence in its near abroad? Not even remotely
But banning IC engines, mandating dongle size, and giving the world cookie popups? You bet!
Coordinate foreign affairs? => Yes (e. g. Russia sanctions)
Able to police external borders? => Yes, Frontex
Credible military deterrence in its near abroad? => When was the last time anyone attacked an EU country?
US led and coordinated
Able to police external borders? => Yes, Frontex
Famously ineffective in 2015.
Credible military deterrence in its near abroad? => When was the last time anyone attacked an EU country?
The near abroad of the EU is not the EU, they are its neighbouring states.
There was no common EU agreement to do that though. It was mostly Germany posturing for good PR and to try to save their ageing demographics and supplement their manufacturing sector which is dependent on imported cheap labor to stay competitive, as the cheap labor from the Eastern Block dried up.
Denmark and other EU members chose to opt out from the refugee sharing scheme back then, denying to take them in, and this was also one of the main factors that violently triggered Brexit as lots of brits feared the idea of having to be obliged to take in unwanted people just because that's what Germany was suggesting to other members.
All it did was create dissident among EU members and help break up the EU.
Also germany needs some cheap labor but manufacturing isn't the main part, manufacturing is actually quiet expensive due to strong unions in germany especially in car manufacturing etc.
and yes, brexit happened also because of these things, but as you can see now, letting foreigners in doesn't need to be bad, it's more the other way around, you can't find truck drivers, bus drivers etc. anymore in the UK.
Except that not all industries are unionized so workers' exploitation is rampant, especially in low margin, low wage industries like fruit and vegetable picking, meat, hospitality, etc. where most of the migrant workers end up. The exploitation of migrants during Covid was even documented on DW.
Through work, I once had to vist one of the biggest meat plants in Germany, and nearly half the workers were Polish, and the other half Romanian. I asked them if they're unionized, they said 'no'.
Q.E.D.
US led US sanctions, not all sanctions are US sanctions.
> The near abroad of the EU is not the EU, they are its neighbouring states.
They are indeed EU neighbour states, but they are not EU member states.
Let me clarify again - I mean states that border EU member states, but that are not themselves EU member states.
I'd say it's more down to NATO membership than anything from the EU
That hasn't really worked in practice though, as illegal migrants discovered that if you sail a boat towards EU borders and intentionally sink it when Frontex tries to intercept, then they're obliged to rescue and take you to Europe, instead of sending you back for trespassing without a visa, meaning anyone could exploit this loophole to enter Europe illegally.
That's hardly an effective border protection.
The problem is, the vast majority do, and since that right stems from fundamental human rights, you can't simply remove it. That, and the better angels of european conscience remember that it was our grandparents, and the governments they elected, who turned away the jewish refugees seeking asylum from the Nazis.
Sadly, since the apple never falls all that far from the tree, there is always a lot of support for making it practically impossible for refugees to claim the protections that are enshrined in the core principle of the EU. So, that's why people are attempting dangerous sea crossings.
Am I meant to think that: banning one of the biggest contributors to climate change, lessening walled gardens and e-waste, and giving us more control of our own data are bad things?
Cooperation on military and foreign affairs is developing though, so I think you are just misinformed on the EU and its purpose.
The cynic in me thinks it thrives because it's a bureaucrat and civil service wet dream. I feel like the hardcore pro-european people must feel this deep down and be deeply ashamed that - in 2022 - they are still completely reliant on the US security umbrella despite their increasing edge (on paper at least) over their neighbouring "rival".
The EU's roots are as a common trading block - it is built around the foundation of a single market, removing barriers to trade across countries. A common defense policy isn't part of that, external borders are nominally a matter for those countries - it is internal borders that the EU is centrally concerned with.
Common connectors for phones, clearly falls within the ambit of a seamless internal market, internal combustion engines too - given that the countries have adopted similar positions on climate change and want the market to reflect that.
Cookie popups were a stupid industry innovation designed to try and circumvent EU data privacy rules.
Somewhat ironically, that's also the basic principle enshrining the primacy of the US federal government - rules for interstate commerce.
The main difference between the US system and EU system is that one was effectively built top-down, and the other bottom-up. At some point, they will likely reach a similar equilibrium, with US states becoming more and more independent and EU states less and less so.
I can only dream.
Really could be either way.
Unless your point is the legislation didn't go far enough? I didn't personally read it that way.
Now, I believe this and you’ll find this belief implicit in much of the criticism of the EU regulatory directives but a reasonable person might disagree.
- They police their borders sadly quiet heavily, if you think about pushbacks in greece and the whole frontex operation.
- EU is not a military alliance and doesn't have an army, even though they thought about it. So most states rely on their own army and NATO.
- So why do they care about IC engines, dongle size and cookie? Because the EU is about trading policy, consumer rights, privacy, worker rights and much more.
Is it inside out for you because you misunderstood what's it's role is maybe?
When you're talking about 'policing external borders', you're both ignorant of the reality (EU power projection in the 'near abroad' has led to the non-EU states in the periphery stemming migrant flows), and you're again, arguing the EU is lacking something most of its citizens do not want. The vast majority of arrivals in the EU have legitimate claims to asylum, and human rights are a more important value than having proper paperwork.
The regulation stuff is what the EU is supposed to do. The whole elevator pitch of the EU is you get all the economic integration without the political integration. So banning IC engines, establishing standards, that kind of stuff, is part of the program. That's why a disparate set of nations that often hate eachother all want to be part of the same union.
> "Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."
A lot of their multi millionaire customers value that these cars have several moving parts that go bang on dead dinosaur juice, causing them to go vroom when you hit the gas pedal while making loud crackling and popping sounds from the exhaust, as the several pistons ramp up to over 8.000 RMP, so they will pay a premium for that in an all electric world (just look at the failure of electric motorcycles in the west).
(Originally sarcastic, but now I'm actually curious.)
Meanwhile the US car companies got stuck with Harvard Business School MBAs doing value engineering and badge engineering that nearly sank the US car companies in the 70s and 80s vs the Japanese competition in terms of reliability and TCO.
So the US can make a few good cars for things like commercial adjacent vehicles, but mostly we play catch up to Japan IMHO.
Anyway, only EV i'm willing to use is the one disconnected from internet.
You must be thinking that automotive will suffer from this, this leaves France and Germany on the table. Arguably, a lot of the sector is spread across the EU, but this spread is facilitated by the common market itself.
Since France has basically endless opportunities arising from its "carbon neutral" power generation, are you thinking of Germany?
I guess we could all make our bags and move to wealthier Germany and France, I mean, those of us that still decided to remain here, but that would be bad for our society at a national level (see the previous point about empty towns).
There is enough Natural Gas production in the EU + UK to cover electricity production. It’s home heating that needs imported gas.
You need to fund groundbreaking infrastructural changes at national level.
The last mile of logistics channels will not work with mythical electric trucks. Those does not exist because they make no sense. So how are we going to flow all those goods to markets?
I would say that the _very last mile_ of delivery (especially inside city centers) is properly covered by EVs (French Postal Service is claiming to have "the largest fleet of EVs in the world" [2].) Those vehicles have predictable routes, reasonnable usage hours, and a relatively small radius of travel; a battery of 100km or range, recharged at night, seems like a good fit.
It's of course _much_ trickier for the kind of trucks that cross over Europe to ship veggies. I would not be surprised if those get to use fossil fuels a bit longer (maybe with higher efficiency requirements, higher proportion of plant-based fuels, incentives to go for H2 even if it does not make _complete_ environement sense, etc...)
[1] https://www.liberation.fr/economie/transports/interdiction-d....
[2] https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2019/04/08/la-poste-...
Besides, in Europe there are pretty stringent rules about driving times already. You need to take a 45-minute break every 4.5 hours, which at 90 kmh is every 400 km. You can split that into a 15-minute break and a 30-minute one, requiring an even shorter range. Meanwhile, Germany is trialing overhead wires on highways, which would allow for an even more reduced range.
The way I see it, the truck isn't the problem: building the charging infrastructure is.
I have to do it, but citation is needed. A quick googling and all i see is announcements of future truck. Tesla truck that are more cost efficient than trains available as early as 2018 are almost ready for 'production.
> The way I see it, the truck isn't the problem: building the charging infrastructure is.
Hmmmm, I wonder if you could rephrase that... 'You need to fund groundbreaking infrastructural changes at national level.'
Volvo have been selling electric trucks for over 2 years now: https://www.volvotrucks.co.uk/en-gb/trucks/alternative-fuels...