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Comment by foxyv | Hacker News Reader

I can see these kinds of bans working in the EU where car ownership isn't a necessity. However, in the US where cars are often the ONLY means of transportation, I imagine they will go down like a lead filled balloon. How many barely running gas cars are the only thing letting poorer Americans make it to work and school? I really wish the US would work much harder on making car ownership unnecessary.

In the end though, I won't miss the stupid cars that go up and down my street farting at 120db for no freaking reason because the owner "Want car go vroom!"

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> In the end though, I won't miss the stupid cars that go up and down my street farting at 120db for no freaking reason because the owner "Want car go vroom!"

I consider myself somewhat of a car enthusiast and I absolutely hate the mentality of "Loud = Good". They just remove their muffler and then rave about how good their car sounds and then later rant about getting a ticket for their car being louder than legally allowed.

I love the sound of flooring it in my Model 3 Performance. From the outside, all you hear is tires on pavement. From the inside, I hear a slight "whoop" that quickly goes up in pitch as a few hundred kilowatts get shoved through the motors. It's quiet and sounds futuristic.

In my experience, those loud bangs are usually caused by motorbikes. Some car drivers however loves their audio to be on 110% and I can hear that tuc-tuc-tuc 100 meters away as it will approach me and then the tuc-tuc-tuc disappears into distance.

This is 12 years from now. There will be plenty of used combustion vehicles for the less well off to acquire and use until EVs further decline in cost. These folks don’t have $40k-$50k (median sales price) to spend on a new car anyway.

They'll push that target into the future once the power networks won't handle the load and the industry won't be able to obtain enough lithium and copper and sell the cars at a competitive price. The industy will reconvert the internal combustion engine to run on hydrogen and/or manufacture EVs with a small battery and a hydrogen power cell range extender. Renault already annonced fuel cell powered Kangoo and Master vans.

https://www.renaultgroup.com/en/news-on-air/news/kangoo-z-e-...

If you would like to make a LongBet [1], I'm willing to take the other side and wager $1000 (to a charity of the winner's choice) that EVs move full speed ahead, hydrogen dies except possibly for trucks and niche use cases, and that range extenders are never deployed in material quantities.

The Tesla Model Y is currently the best selling vehicle in Europe, and fully electric cars made up 16 percent of total registrations during the first nine months of the year. [2]. Fast DC charger networks are robust and continue to grow rapidly [3]. The costs to make these vehicles will only come down, and used vehicles will filter down to the less well off and replaced by new vehicle sales. Fast charges can already be performed in 10-25 minutes. A decade is a long time for progress.

Tangentially, hydrogen is just an expensive, low density battery. Toyota is learning this the hard way [4] [5].

[1] https://longbets.org/

[2] https://europe.autonews.com/sales-market/tesla-model-y-tops-... ("Tesla Model Y tops Europe's new car sales for the first time")

[3] https://chargemap.com/map (Map of Europe's Fast DC chargers)

[4] https://electrek.co/2022/10/24/toyota-struggles-ev-shift-cha... ("Toyota struggles with EV shift, considers changing plans due to Tesla")

[5] https://electrek.co/2021/06/16/toyota-delusionally-claims-hy... ("Toyota delusionally claims hybrids and fuel cells will stay competitive with electric cars for next 30 years")

> The Tesla Model Y is currently the best selling vehicle in Europe

This is like saying that Mercedes E class is the best selling vehicle.

The majority of new bought cars are people's cars. When you have the majority of new cars replaced by luxury cars (model Y) this shows something different. (i.e only the rich can buy a car,).

The go forward economic mobility proposition for your average and lower income class consumer requiring an auto is either buying a more expensive EV (versus a historically priced combustion vehicle) or paying exorbitant petrol prices as various stakeholders make O&G production and refining painful (by design of course). The future is going to be harder than the past; way more people while we're trying to move away from a cheap source of energy that is detrimental to the species' survival.

The days of cheap and plenty are behind us in the near term, at least until all of the flywheels around clean energy and mobility (and their associated supply chains) spin up to speed. Let's be real, we're shifting a global energy system to a new paradigm and attempting to do so in decades instead of centuries. Not easy nor cheap!

> Tangentially, hydrogen is just an expensive, low density battery. Toyota is learning this the hard way [4] [5].

That's not even hydrogen's worst problem.

Hydrogen's worst problem is that it would need a distribution network set up. EV charging works because the electrical grid already existed, chargers just need to be plugged into it.

Meanwhile, for hydrogen, you would need to transport liquid hydrogen all over the place constantly. It's a whole new set of logistics.

To put it bluntly, Toyota fucked up and have been very slow to admit their mistake.

> EV charging works because the electrical grid already existed, chargers just need to be plugged into it.

Electric grid may exist, but it's capacity is not enough to handle the additional load of the car charging. Sure, it can take car here or there, but replacement for current ICEs? No way.

> Hydrogen's worst problem is that it would need a distribution network set up.

Yes, slowly supplement and convert the gasoline and diesel distribution network to H2. We already have a LPG distribution network. Currently the only company offering H2 in the EU is Linde Gas. But that will change. The EU MPs want H2 stations every 100 km and charging stations every 60 km. Without this infrastructure EVs and H2 powered vehicles will not get enough traction to replace the current vehicle fleet.

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20221014IP...

Rich poseurs fueled by subsidies. You could then make Lamborghini Urus best selling car in EU if you would set the subsidies right. In the end you need to target peoples cars (VW Jetta 20k EUR, VW Polo 16k EUR) and we are not there at all with BEVs.

My hope is that the shift to EV causes side effects like increased number of communal hubs and better public transit so people don’t have to use cars as much anyway

Those changes won't just happen as a result of EV adoption, but they can if we push for them. Call your (especially local) elected officials.

Yes they won’t be just because of it, but I think it’ll be a very influential factor

I think that's unlikely. EVs aren't much different from ICE cars in operation, and they have the same large space requirements.

Unless you include e-bikes of course, in which case sure. But electric cars have most of the same problems with regards to encouraging sprawl, danger to pedestrians/cyclists, etc.

If we want changes it's gonna have to be a conscious effort to reshape our built environment.

Its the same in more rural countries like Ireland, for a lot of people public transport and bikes aren't an option

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