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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

> In some countries it's well over 50%. China of course being one of them

As always with these stats, I like to check whether that includes plug in hybrids, and it does. Those are still mostly dependent on fossil fuels, although they use less. Pure BEV adoption seems to depend on your radius from Norway: https://www.autonergy.co/blog/global-ev-adoption-leaderboard...

(France should really be doing better, after all migration away from fossil fuels was a motive behind the Pompidou/Messmer nuclear buildout in the 70s!)

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> Those are still mostly dependent on fossil fuels, although they use less.

I don't think the word "mostly" belongs in that sentence - "partially" might work.

It depends significantly on how far you drive - I know 4 people with Plug-in hybrids. They all use ~0 fossil fuels most of the time, and only have to fill their gas tank when they go on a longer driving trip (roughly every 4-6 weeks or whatever). Considering how fuel inefficient city driving is, it's enough to eliminate at least half, maybe 2/3 of their fuel consumption.

Thats personal vehicles. But if China is going full speed with electric trucks, that will be the fastest gamechanger. Diesel trucks run 300K miles, under 5mpg, consume a gazillion gallons. Electric truck fuel costs are probably 10%.

Its really sad that India is pro fossil fuel, it has an opportunity to follow China's strategy.

I don’t know what you mean by India is pro fossil fuel. It’s aggressively building out solar and has multiple nuclear reactors being simultaneously constructed. It would love to be an electrostate but is doing everything it can to satisfy its populations energy needs in the meantime which means they can’t just stop using coal and oil.

You will find Chinese electric trucks making inroads (heh) everywhere from UK and Europe (1) to Africa (2)

now that it's a proven business model in the centre of the these things, of course.

1) https://octopus.energy/big-on-batteries-octopus-and-catl-tea...

2) https://mybroadband.co.za/news/motoring/648661-electric-truc...

India is pro-coal (has local sources), but anti-oil (import dependence). It is only pro-coal because there's no other alternatives at cost/scale for baseload generation.

India is literally following China's "anything but oil and gas", which encourages renewables, nuclear and coal.

In fact, the Chinese coal lobby is partially responsible for the push for electric trucks. The alternatives are diesel and LNG - both competitors to coal.

Those numbers are from before Mr Trump decided to do his very best to convince the world to stop using oil. Which happened to coincide beautifully with VW group, Stellantis and Chinese firms having an all out price war on smaller EVs, which have until now been the underserved segment of the market. In Denmark it’s certainly not 36%, its probably closer to 90% of new cars being EVs, it’s simply financial suicide to buy a new ICE car here.

> it’s simply financial suicide to buy a new ICE car here

That's a result of tax policy much more than the fundamental economics of ICE vs EV. Petrol is highly taxed. ICE cars are highly taxed. EV cars are probably exempted, or at least taxed less.

Sure, but the fundamentals are moving in same direction, partly thanks to Trump. Electricity is getting cheaper and EVs have 90+ efficiency, gas is getting more expensive. You could also say that petrol is fundamentally way to cheap because so far it has been exempt from paying for all the damage it causes.

Wow. On mobile Firefox I have to use two fingers to scroll that site.

Yeah, that's some cursed JavaScript :-/

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