Switzerland Considers EV Driving Ban and Limits During a Blackout | Hacker News Reader

Switzerland Considers EV Driving Ban and Limits During a Blackout

carscoops.com

18 pointsjosephcsible16 comments

Looks like shutting down the nuclear reactors is working out splendidly.

Yeah, exactly. I'm all for caring well for the planet---people working to promote the flourishing of all life---yet we can't get there with anti-human deep green philosophical commitments. And strong anti-nuclear rhetoric is exactly that.

If nuclear wasn't so incredibly overregulated and if we hadn't had decades-long antinuclear smear campaigns, costs would come down and we would see it as an energy option that has incredible benefits with well-known tradeoffs. Its difficult engineering, but they're well-known problems.

We actually still have 4 out of 5 running here in Switzerland.

We have had 6 reactors although connected to the grid it was a research reactor. The reason it doesn't exist anymore is that it suffered a meltdown. Luckily they were smart enough to build it in a cavern.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucens_reactor

Beznau nuclear power plant in Northern Switzerland takes the honour of being the oldest nuclear power currently in use in the world. Construction on the plant began in 1965 and Beznau 1 began producing power on 1 September 1969, with Beznau 2 following in 1972.

It's either build new ones or turn them off. Switzerland has the ability to store vast amounts of energy via hydroplants. Alternative energy like solar is therefore quite useful even at night.

> and video streaming platforms would be told to show videos in standard definition only.

Does an HD stream use significantly more energy than SD? Pardon my ignorance, I’ve just never thought about it.

Obviously HD means more data which means more packets that each router in the chain has to process. A quick bit of research leads me to believe that the passive power consumption of your average LCD monitor is orders of magnitude higher than the power difference between SD and HD video.

so in 20 years when everyone is driving an EV and the government decides to limit your electricity: this is how they will stifle protests etc...

Restricting ICE use in a fuel crisis could happen just as easily. In fact, the IEA made such suggestions in March.

Actually it's very often easier to charge an EV from your own solar, wind or microhydro than it is to prepare your own petrochemicals.

The difference is there are all these gas stations all over the country full of gasoline. People also have boats with 100's of gallons of gasoline and other storage. I've been through several hurricanes and finding gasoline even without power for 2 weeks was never an issue. The government would have to block refueling of gas stations for weeks before they could shut off movement then they'd have to wait weeks for people to run out of any stored fuel.

I remember one hurricane from high school where we were out of power for 2 weeks. We were siphoning gas from anywhere we could get it and storing it in a boat with a 1,000-gallon tank which started about half full. We had enough fuel to drive across the country and back if we had wanted to without any issues. I was driving around like everything was normal during that period. Seeing friends and family daily picking up water from the national guard, etc.

With EV's all you have to do is flip off the power and they'll all be dead in days at most with a couple hundred-mile range maximum. I'll take petrochemicals in a disaster any day of the week.

Now if we're talking no power for months that's a whole different situation and solar panels are the least of your concern. You're moving more into the realm of how many bullets do you have at that point.

With a generator, you can convert gasoline into electricity.

Flipping off the power also flips off ATMs and credit card transactions, ICU life support units etc. It's something out of the terrorist playbook. The restrictions are in place precisely because of that, avoiding rolling blackouts and ultimately an uncontrolled blackout. The Swiss are just planning ahead, like they always do.

I agree, I love the Swiss I have a home and citizenship there. I'm half Swiss by birth.

I remember really struggling to travel just a year ago when the UK ran out of fuel and the EV owners were laughing. I used one-way car hires from airports.

No doubt that was to block protests

In the real world though protesters don't use cars - they instead block roads to prevent cars from driving on them.

They'd have to pinpoint ration electricity to households to keep people from using wall outlets to charge their cars. Any oppressive government could also just shut down gas stations or set up roadblocks.

> They'd have to pinpoint ration electricity to households to keep people from using wall outlets to charge their cars.

No they wouldn't. Basically every EV is Internet-connected, so they just need to tell the manufacturers to remotely disable the cars.

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