Germany refuses to agree to EU ban on new fossil fuel cars from 2035
euronews.com
euronews.com
>> Germany's government is refusing to agree to European Union plans to effectively ban the sale of new cars with combustion engines from 2035, according to Finance Minister Christian Lindner.
(Fossil fuels = bad) does not mean the same as (combustion engine = bad). There are lots of green combustion options, first on the list being hydrogen gas as fuel for a combustion engine. Then there are fuel-from-air approaches whereby a normal combustion engine would burn hydrocarbon fuel made without "fossil" carbon sources. German auto makers are rightfully upset at being told to abandon such lines.
https://www.motor1.com/news/535002/next-toyota-prius-hydroge...
[0] https://autoesporte.globo.com/um-so-planeta/noticia/2021/04/...
It's for several reasons, interwoven.
One, Toyota lagged behind everyone else. VW and GM, the other giants, are far ahead of them. Even Nissan, the shittiest manufacturer in Japan, is far ahead of them. Took them a bit (the Leaf was a joke until its most recent incarnation because of Nissan's cost-cutting, refusing to implement proper, liquid-based thermal management.)
Toyota, and the Japanese economy, are heavily dependent upon the Japanese replacing their cars every few years, which is why they obsessively re-style their products with little changes "under the hood." For something like decades the Corolla by and large did not change much except for body panels and interior changes. Another reason people replace their cars is the unreliability as they exit the warranty period. BEVs are much more reliable, so people won't replace them as often.
Japan's economy is heavily dependent upon a huge cottage industry of mom and pop car part suppliers, and BEVs are both vastly simpler and much more reliable, meaning there will be far less demand for parts during manufacture, in warranty, and post-warranty sales.
Japan's economy is also heavily dependent upon people replacing their cars often, as previously mentioned, to keep fueling the whole industry. Further, they export a huge number of used vehicles, mostly to the rest of Asia - and there's a very large industry around that. Transporting the cars, evaluating their condition, auctioning them, shipping them.
If people keep their cars longer, that all grinds to a halt...particularly because the cars often go to countries where frankly there's little hope of there being EV infrastructure any time soon. So as used EVs enter Japan's used car export economy, nobody will want them. Because nobody will want them, auction buyers won't buy them. So dealers won't be able to get much money for the cars. Which means they won't be able to offer good trade-in values. Which means people won't be able to afford buying a Toyota Camry with differently shaped headlights and bumpers every 3 years. Which means the Japanese economy, frankly, grinds to a halt.
Further: Dealers make all their money on maintenance and service, especially out-of-warranty. BEVs require far less maintenance and service. So dealers are pissed about the huge drop in income from these BEVs. So keeping ICEs means dealers keep getting maintenance and service on the engines.
By the way: another reason Toyota changes the headlights/taillights bumpers so often? They're the most commonly damaged in a collision, and by changing them constantly (and assuring that only one or two model years will fit a car...saaaaay, by making them stretch deep into other body panels like the front fenders with long bits that, oh by the way, happen to be pretty fragile!), they get to keep the parts expensive, and aftermarket suppliers (and the used car parts industry) have a nearly impossible time keeping up.
Further by-the-way: some cars, it's incredibly difficult to change the headlight bulb. Guess why? That's right: helping dealers inflate the labor costs for a bulb change. 15 minutes at $120/hour isn't sexy. But if you have to take apart a dozen things in the engine compartment? Why, now you can justify an hour's labor!...and because your techs are probably paid for the "book time", they figure out how to do it a lot faster....and both the dealership and tech make out like bandits, while the customer gets fucked for the full book time labor charge.
IMO Toyota has chosen a path that is congruent with the reality that is, not what might be.
I call that pragmatic. Those calling for full electrification right now when we can’t even keep our porch lights illuminated every single night in California, not so pragmatic IMO. Present battery tech requires a huge infrastructure buildout required and I’m not talking about charging solutions for residents of multi-family dwellings.
If such a time should come to pass where those problems are solved, Toyota will at that time capitalize on everyone else’s mistakes and possibly buy solutions like batteries and enter the market then. It’s a basic risk containment strategy.
Is that actually based in reality? Toyota's hybrid vehicles that have ICE engines also have battery packs, and the newer hybrid models have battery packs approaching 6-7 kWh. These aren't even classified as PHEVs.
Their PHEVs have battery packs upwards of 10 kWh (between 10 and 20 kWh) and sell like hot cakes.
So if you were to look at the aggregate capacity of all the batteries Toyota is shipping with their vehicles, I would bet it's at least average or actually higher than other manufacturers, e.g. Ford or Chevy or VW.
Basically, unless you have the raw numbers for comparison about aggregate pack capacity, your whole point is kind of moot.
Laws are generally followed by the letter, not by intention. Whole cottage industries exist that look for ways around laws without breaking them.
What is written down matters even if what was intended differs.
Creating the fuel requires energy, the best supply of high volume, high quality CO2 neutral energy is electricity derived from carbon neutral sources (solar, wind, tidal, etc).
Why would you take perfectly good electricity, use it to create a synthetic liquid fuel using a lossy process (some energy will be lost as heat), then burn that fuel to extract, at most, 25% of the energy you used to create the fuel. Rather than just taking the electricity, putting it in a battery, and running an electric motor. A process that’s 70%-90% efficient.
The cost difference between EVs and ICE cars would have to be astronomical to make synthetic fuel ICE cars appealing when compared to EVs.
There still a use case for synthetic fuels, but that only in situations where you already have a large ICE fleet (could be cars, trucks, ships, planes) that are very expensive to replace, or where batteries don’t mix well with the form of transport (aircraft for example). But for _new_ passenger vehicles, where EVs are basically a solved problem, I can’t see how a new ICE + synthetics fuel could possibly hope to compete with a new EV + electricity.
When one approach is half as efficient as the other, it hard to see how you build a cost competitive product using the less efficient approach. Especially when the more efficient approach is already approaching price parity, with a much cheaper technology (diesel from the ground is much cheaper than diesel from the air).
OTOH, Lithium is easy to recycle, and a car only uses ~50kg of it.
On the other hand, hydrogen combustion is an inefficient process that uses an astonishingly bulky, expensive fuel that needs to be compressed to absurd pressures and has no realistic use case - except to give petrolheads hope that things don't have to change and to kick the can down the road while continuing to burn fossil fuels. Check out this analysis:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJjKwSF9gT8
or the numerous sources cited.
This is not about German car companies like BMW, Volkswagen, and Mercedes being cut off from productive lines of inquiry. Those lines were only undertaken for show to allow them to continue business as usual. This is about them successfully bribing the German government to allow them to keep destroying the planet.
this guy makes a methanol fuel cell and battery hybrid car:
In 2019 95% of the hydrogen produced globally was coming from fossil fuels (black, gray and brown hydrogen).
In practical reality this just means there's just going to be fossil fuels cars past 2035. Not "hydrogen" or other.
Not a big surprise, the "plan" was unrealistic from the start, and it's just put forward because 2035 appears "too far away". It's going to be revised time and again anyway.
Those voters are now waking up to the fact the the FDP is in fact not representing social liberal values and is instead a sure way to hollow out government programs for poor people and stopping anything green from happening when it might be hurting any industry in any way.
The FDP is basically a party people vote for in protest when the voter's primary party isn't doing what the voter wants it to do. Nothing else. Each time after the FDP gets good results, it gets smacked down in the following election, and this is what we are seeing over and over again. It has been the same in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, the 2000s and it will be the same this decade.
made from cheap russian gas, that shit has sailed
Plug-in hybrid cars with a decent electric range (let's say 80 km) can achieve 99% emissions reduction compared to current cars. The vast majority of trips people make are short.
You don't have to deal with the oil supply chain that has issues, from geopolitics, wars, environmental disasters, gas stations. Instead you just slowly upgrade the electrical grid and add more renewable energy production.
If I had to bet, refuelling a car will be a challenge once it will not be economical to have many gas stations everywhere. Fossil car will still exist like we still have horse carriages. I do enjoy the sound of an old internal combustion engine, in some contexts.
Not to mention that hybrid cars are bad electric cars that are more expensive and heavier. Once you have an electric power-train and a battery, it's not much more expensive to have more cells and get rid of the old heavy fossil tech.
- eliminates a huge chunk of CO2 emissions (most daily commutes, local travel)
- still takes advantage of the energy density and short refuel time of hydrocarbons for long distance travel
- dramatic reduction in the amount of batteries that need to be produced to electrify the whole vehicle population (this might shift the curve of at least some EV-miles by decades)
- no need for a massive retooling of the filling station network
- series hybrids still eliminate a lot of the mechanical overhead of ICE vehicles, and all else equal (range), a series hybrid is probably a lot lighter than an EV with all batteries
https://www.thedrive.com/news/31105/listen-to-the-fake-engin...
electric doesn't solve any of these. I don't think I have to go into the lithium and rare earth stuff, but you also need charging stations for gas stations, as well as needing to invest substantially in the grid.
I am not anti electric, its just not a utopia its made out to be. its all the same problems of a different flavor. the only real benefit is less smog in cities, which is pretty good.
right. but then again most of those issues apply to lithium and other stuff needed to manufacture batteries.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
https://www.techtimes.com/articles/275497/20220516/largest-e...
I don't see gas stations surviving when nobody realistically needs to fill up more than once a year. At that point, the logistics of building and relying on charging networks makes a lot more sense.
The local kwik trips have more cars parked at the parking than at the pumps.
So I'd like to see a new class of EVs with an onboard auxiliary generator. They should use something like a Wankel rotary engine, Tesla turbine, 1 or 2 piston linear generator, Stirling (optionally acoustic) heat engine, fuel cell, etc. They should have more flex fuel options from compressed natural gas (CNG) to alcohol, biodiesel, even wood pellets and ones made from hemp and algae.
All EVs should be able to charge while driving, to create a competitive market for generators, otherwise they'd receive a failing grade from reviewers.
All EVs should come with built-in solar panels capable of adding 7-44+ miles per day (see Aptera and Lightyear 1). Maybe grade A: 40+, B: 30+, C: 20+ and D: 10+.
All EVs should come with 1 or more base platforms where only the body style changes.
All EVs should go through independent review where they're graded on their modularity, to prevent vendor lock-in and unnecessary complexity, to encourage decommodification. Otherwise we'll find ourselves in the same situation we are in now next decade, where EVs break down before 100,000 km and require specialized equipment and training to repair.
I'd also like to see ultracapacitors for ~10 second boosts to at least 100 km/hr, to be used like the hyperdrive in Extreme E, taking most of the load off the batteries to extend their life. Buyers should also be able to choose from a limited mix of energy storage options including sodium-ion.
And please stop it with the tiny motors. Each wheel deserves at least 100 kW, and we should supplement windings with aluminum or carbon fiber, staying above 90% efficiency at max load, to reduce the amount of copper and/or rare earth metals in each motor.
With 1000 W of solar panels costing around $500 wholesale, none of the above add appreciable cost to the vehicle. Most resistance will be political or caused by manufacturers dragging their feet to prevent cannibalizing their current model sales.
I agree with you though, but what if we could sell fully electric vehicles with only ~100km range? I would buy it if I was really saving the cost and weight of a whole engine block. Useless for road trips, but most people don't need to be taking road trips every day.
100km is not a useful range. Remember that for best battery life you really need to only charge to 80%, and and never let the battery get below 20%. Now cut that entire range in half for cold weather. You are now down to 30km range that you really can use. That is round trip range unless you really have chargers everywhere you might go.
The average US commute is 40 miles or 65km. Though given you are using km you probably have a shorter distance, but even still your 100km car is cutting range too close for comfort for most people. (and you probably have better access to transit, why not get rid of that 100km car completely)
I don't know how to compare manufacture emissions. I do know that metal shaping has been optimized a lot, while I would assume as new technology modern batteries still have a lot of room for improvement (the older batteries probably not), so I wouldn't trust a comparison if you had data.
This depends on the cell chemistry. LFP cells don't have this restriction (which is what many low performance EVs use, especially those coming out of China)
The company I work for’s office is 13 miles away, 35 mins max. The in town office is 19 miles. You could grab a train about 12 miles away and add another 30 minutes to your commute but most people would drive 7 more miles and get there quicker.
Living in town is expensive, schools are terrible, and the homes/properties are small.
- 0 minutes (working from home)
- 30-60 minutes each way
- 1.5-2.5 hours each way (I only went into the office 2-3 days per week at this one)
One of the primary benefits of owning things, as opposed to being a rentoid, is over-allocation to seamlessly handle peak/long-tail demand scenarios. Yes, a lot of people could save money by only riding bikes or taking taxis or whatever, but the extreme inconvenience associated with getting caught in a demand surge makes ownership worth it a lot more than first-order average-oriented thinking would suggest.
Having to get a rental car every time you want to drive more than 100km sucks.
E-Bikes exist. But it isn't quite that simple, infrastructure and culture are harder to change than products.
Mandate that all gas/petrol stations have at least two working fast chargers (i.e. Level 3 800V) by 2030 in exchange for a gas station operating license/permit and check them monthly.
Time limit caps can be imposed at 8 minutes which is equivalent to the fill up time for a gasoline based car/truck. At 5 minutes, a Hyundai Ioniq 5 can be charged up to 68 miles of range which should get you out of most situations.[1]
[1] https://www.hyundai.com/worldwide/en/eco/ioniq5/charging
I would say the current state (although I'd imagine incrementally improving) of the Electrify America network (i.e. not working) is what prevents me (and a lot of people) from going electric.
Having to charge in the middle of the night in a deserted parking lot without a human attendant to assist/report issues is also a blocker personally.[1]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BA2qJKU8t2k&t=366s MKBHD - This is Ruining Electric Cars - The charging experience is just as important as the car experience.
That will just result in fewer gas stations. Most of them are already not profitable, and similar mandates that forced gas stations to pay out of pocket for new pumps (ethanol, biogas) have forced a lot of them to shut down in some countries.
There are a lot of slowish charging EVs
I think the automatic cut-off at 5-10 minutes similar to the time of an ICE fuel pit stop is key. Also having a human attendant who is around to ensure people aren't leaving their car unattended while hogging the fast charging EV chargers while they go off to have a 5 course dinner is also critical for both gas station owners and other users.
There has to be a joke here about EVs not having the range to leave Germany anyway. Something like "they closed the boarders but nobody noticed as there weren't any charging ports within 100km of them".
Does banning diesel and petrol stop BEV manufacturers having incentives to improve? They will simply get the market for free and own it without having to improve batteries, charging speed and range.
Carving out an exception won't make these people's lives much easier. Eventually enough people will have gone electric that the economics of fuel distribution begin to deteriorate, and these people out in the boonies end up paying even more exorbitant prices for gas and diesel.
We might as well rip the bandaid off quickly.
And as for fuel delivery, cars are not everything. Trucks/boats/aircraft together consume vast quantities of fuels. They arent going away anytime soon. So the infrastructure will remain a while too.
I said these cold weather problems could be engineered around, just as they had to be for ICE vehicles.
Why would banning diesel and petrol cars result in BEV manufacturers not competing? They would still compete with each other to build the best BEV at the lowest price, just like any other market works. Just like the competition between ICE manufacturers resulted in ICE improvements for decades before EV turned up.
Claiming we need ICE so BEVs have a tech to compete with, is like arguing in 2000 that we need the horse and cart so ICE has something to compete with.
I think we can afford to take a minor hit of competition to avoid that fate. Unless people honestly believe that BEVs will simply stop improving if ICE vehicles aren’t around to provide “competition”.
Edit, because I can't reply further: perhaps this won't at first be a problem on long journeys, but if you live in a small town and the nearest petrol is 100km away from where you live, you start to have to plan your daily driving to factor in a long detour occasionally. We're really used to having fuel available everywhere. This will change, the only question is when.
If banning ICEs fails because of adoption expect the black market to take care of it. Or people will import older ICEs from abroad using loopholes.
Every single BEV model seems to be 20-50% more expensive than its ICE counterpart. And the "cheap" ones are something like Renault Tweezy, useless to most people.
Government subsidies exist for oil and ice vehicles as well.
I think if you subtracted all subsidies ICE must be far more expensive because oil infrastructure is obviously way less efficient.
Maybe in USA there are subsidies on gas. Come to EU, 50% tax on gas, no subsidies.
You sure that isn’t subsidised somewhere along the line?
Is it? With the electricity prices what they are and sparse infrastructure I doubt BEVs have a lower cost of ownership. At least in Europe.
> oil infrastructure is obviously way less efficient
Not sure it's obvious. If anything, oil infra has been optimized to be as cost effective as possible. Remember Deepwater Horizon? They were extracting oil from 10 km under water still at competitive prices.
Efficiency is rarely about how many steps it takes to get there.
And even taking into account all the steps that you call inefficient, ICE cars are still 20-50% cheaper to buy. And with electricity prices what they are ICE cars are probably the same, or even cheaper, to run.
Tanks to Ukraine, Nord Stream 2, turning off all their nukes, now this?
Maybe if Greta scolds them they'll do it, they certainly seemed to take all of their nuclear advice from her.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/01/europe/greta-thunberg-wind-fa...
My concerns are flooring it from cold. So far I have not read / found literature on what the computer then does, and how this increases engine wear.
I read 'reinforced components' but that's just longer until they wear out.
For as long as I've been driving I have been taking it slow with the engine until it got up to oil temperature. And that actually got longer these days with having a huge amount of oil in the car.
But then looking at a BMW X50e, you run the risk of flooring it on electric, and then that B58 3L needs to kick in and instantly delivery 300+HP. That just ... doesn't compute. HOW is that NOT bad but when I do that on my current, same, but non-reinforced B58 3L...
I'd understand if there are reports out there that say things like 'given current oil quality we don't need to worry about cold oil performance anymore'. But we still have the time that the engine kicks in, while the oil isn't circulated. I'd be more comfortable if the oil pump was disconnected from the engine and ran when high performance is needed, bridging the gap of oil starvation when the ICE kicks in.
Engage ICE until operating temperature. Allow auto-turning it off for EM only. Hysteresis to like 2/3 operating temperature.
There is a "force electric" button for like a short ride on all EM.
The reason was to keep engine wear down as well as emission demands.
When engine fell back to 2/3 of operating temp you went back to mandating the ICE to remain on.
Did I get that correct?
It was heavy vehicles, so dunno if car engines need different long term temperature operating ranges.
Modern engines are much tighter tolerances and should be fine for "on demand" instant start.
If you can avoid doing it today in an ICE car, you can avoid it just as much next year in a hybrid, right?
The reason is because your pedal, in electric mode, has different modulation than when in ICE / hybrid mode.
In order to get the full 194 hp of the electric engine you're pedal to the metal. When that juice runs out the ICE kicks in, all of the sudden delivering ITS 308 hp.
With my ICE I don't have that problem. When cold maximum throttle 30%. When warm 100%.
It's the fear that they won't make as much money as they are now, losing lines that probably will still be profitable in 2035. It's likely that 20-30% of the market will simply refuse to transition to EV, either for ideological or practical reasons; nobody wants to lose those customers.
If they are against a ban in 2035 it obviously means that it's not good for them, which can only mean that they think they cannot make it, either in volume or price point, or both.
Meanwhile in Norway:
"It is followed by the MG ZS (+15.5%) up 35 ranks on June just a the BYD Tang climbs 6 spots to a new record 6th place overall," [July 2022] [1]
That's an unknown brand from China that's only just moving into the European market! And MG is now Chinese.
In any case, Norway is a small market. Here 'ready' means being able to produce as many EVs as they do ICE now throughout Europe.
Yeah, German carmakers are on top of things... not.
[1] https://bestsellingcarsblog.com/2022/08/norway-july-2022-mg-...
Actually 2035 is worrying short timeframe. That is less than 12 years now. Which is like two model generations of vehicles...
The main problem is that the FDP are basically on the other side of the SPD and Greens, with which they share the office and why this will drag on until the next government will be voted upon (in 2025).
That's not immediately, but a significant number of politicians will still be around in 12 years.
I cannot accept that 2011 was 12 years ago.
It's a very short time (maybe too short) if you're talking about transitioning the entire car industry off of fossil fuels.
This is why no one does the obvious: If you ACTUALLY want a 100% cut in 2035, why not have an 8.5% cut per year for each of those 12 years? Or even just a 1% cut? Or even just a 1 car less cut?
Because the plan is to do nothing for 12 years then give ourselves another extension.
The stated purpose of Paris was to avoid 1.5 degrees of warming. That level of warming is now inevitable. But we will instead totally really definitely avoid 2 degrees. Which we're already likely to miss.
Now the EU tells me about how we are going to go ICE car free by 2035. And do that by doing nothing now...
While everyone was busy back patting and circle jerking over the 2035 mandates they were investing in new gas engine architectures for commercial vehicles (so like minivans on up to medium duty trucks) because they looked at the state of diesel tech and emissions rules, looked at the state of gas engine tech and emissions rules and looked at the state of battery tech and decided that the box van of the future was gonna have a gas engine option.
At the end of the day you can't legislate a technology jump into existence.
> This is in no way about sanctioning the Orbán government, but about sustainably strengthening the rule of law — which Hungary voluntarily committed to when it joined the EU
- Michael Link, https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-lawmakers-push-hard-...
It only took a few months for the shoe to be on the other foot. Now it's Germany, rather than Hungary that does not want to comply with EU law.
This is completely different from Hungary not following laws existing when they joined the EU.
The situation in hungary is the government violating core principles that stand at the heart of the EU with behaviours that, were Hungary applying for membership right now would see them rejected outright
Right now germany is signalling they might vote against a proposed change in ordinary law. That's how laws are made, some actors vote for, some vote against and if there's enough actors in favour the law becomes such and binds all
It'd be remotely comparable if Germany were refusing to comply with an adopted law, and even then comparing rule of law principles with commercial regulations would be distasteful at best
Orban is undermining the basics of democracy and a functioning state to keep in power and get a profit - this is far far away from a discussion about engine types.
The left does plenty that I’d call unconstitutional (although the right is catching up), but they’re not talked about as much in the popular media.
Just saying, there are probably tens of millions having the same reaction as me. When everyone is called a dictator, don’t be surprised when we yawn when the next person is called a dictator. And some day it might be important to have a useful label like that.
Sometimes people cry wolf because there is an actual wolf, and refusing to accept it will result in getting eaten.
But who is also a globalist whereas Orban is not.
> even for the ruling elites
The ruling globalist elites. The “citizen of anywhere” elites, who are not allies of the “citizens of somewhere” elites, to use Victor Davis Hansen inspired terminology.
They persecute gays and vilify Jews. You don't have to be left to think that wrong. But even if you think that right, Orban has milked billions out of the system for himself and his family, and has completely captured the electoral system by changing the laws and captured the media by bribery (aka government advertisements) and force (aka using state machinery like tax investigators to punish and drive out non-complying media).
I'd hate any leftie doing this the same as any rightie. But no matter your political colour, Orban is an anti-democratic corrupt elite fostering a one party state. He is bad for Hungary, for the EU and for the rest of the world.
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/council-eu/voting-system/...
You can play with possible coalitions on this link, to be fair due to its population and the nature of this law germany is de facto a swing vote