Top-Selling Car in Norway Now Electric Car Two Months in a Row
cleantechnica.com
cleantechnica.com
What we come back to is the very high sale taxes on new cars in Norway (our "rule of thumb" is that cars are close to twice as expensive in Norway as in some other countries), but that most(/all?) of those taxes are waived for electric. So the alternative to getting, e.g., a Tesla is paying almost twice as much for a "similar" BMW. Same story for lower-end cars.
Also, on the commuter high-ways leading in to Oslo, there's one lane that's reserved for bus+taxi+electric (similar to the 2+ or 3+ person-per-car lanes in California). There's a joke that there's a standing queue of Teslas in that lane now (though I don't drive there so I haven't seen how much of an exaggeration that is).
Also, electric don't pay on the toll roads, which saves you 3-4$ each time if you're living outside towns and commuting in.
For example, in California, typical petrol prices are around $0.85/L ($3.20/gal), and residential electricity prices are around $0.17/kWh. So you get about 5 kWh of electricity for the cost of a liter of petrol. Meanwhile in Norway, typical petrol prices are around $2.45/L ($9.25/gal), and residential electricity prices are around $0.25/kWh. So you get about 10 kWh of electricity for the cost of a liter of petrol.
edit: Actually might be an even bigger ratio. I was getting the Norwegian retail price of $0.25/kWh from Eurostat [1], but Statistics Norway gives a price of only $0.14/kWh [2]. Which would make for nearly 18 kWh for the cost of a L of petrol, 3-4x better ratio than in California.
[1] http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index....
According to Wikipedia¹ the energy of gasoline is ≈11.8 kWh/kg at a density of ≈0.74 kg/l, giving us 8.7 kWh/l. For California, using the $0.85/l price, we get $0.10/kWh (rounded from $0.09770) for gasoline. Norway, at $2.45/l, gives us $0.28/kWh.
It is about getting 400+ hp at family barge prices.
(And that is okay by me. We need more people to drive electric cars so we can evolve and develop them. And Norway is a great place to do that because of the hostile climate and the even more hostile politicians and their medieval ideas of what constitutes a "road")
edit: link for reference http://www.bloomberg.com/visual-data/gas-prices/20133:Norway
Sweden Norway
Audi A4 33 269 64 843
Tesla S 70 798 55 682
How do people feel being a top oil exporter and doing green policies/laws internally?
And you know the old saying - don't get high on your own supply..
The cycle has started and showing good signs.
I believe, if the same support is replicated across the world, it is very much possible we may witness electric automobiles a very viable alternative within next 10 years.
As a Canadian I can't see a Tesla being of any use in the winter, do people talk about that?
I had to look up what the 'cold weather spec' package is and seems to be just creature comforts not different engineering/design to increase efficiency in cold weather.
My concern is at -20C in January with a metre of snow, heater on full blast, spinning the wheels as I plow through snow and slush with aggressive studded winter tires how much will that 400km range drop? Even just warming up the interior (a common thing) in the morning and scraping off the ice off the windows before going to work in the morning. My current vehicle's mileage drops in half in the winter due to all those conditions.
You can do morning heating using grid power, trigger it remotely via your phone (they have an app for iphone/droid). I think you also can schedule heating ahead of time.
A trick for manual transmission vehicles in winter when on ice is to shift into third gear to reduce the torque so the wheel don't spin, the Tesla is the insane opposite of that.
[ Come on Elon summon your inner Canadian instincts! ]
You out West? I've heard they don't salt out there, which makes all the difference.
It snowed today and there was about six inches of slush on the roads, no plows out. Sure they salted the snot out of the roads but the slush was crazy.
Seriously, everybody was all for saving the world from global cataclysm until we found out it would be expensive and inconvenient.
My educated guess is that the vast majority of EVs are bought and driven in the larger Oslo area, and if I'm right, I think we actually should be discussing Oslo and not Norway as a country.
Edit: Reorganized two words.
I live in NYC. I was thinking specifically of the air quality in NYC which its almost sure to improve, rather than total pollution.
However, I think it will improve total pollution as well. I'm fairly certain that natural gas fired combined cycle generation (which is most of the new generation being added) is both more efficient and lower polluting than the internal combustion engine, so total pollution should decrease.
Also, a move to a less polluting industry is more than the sum of the direct effects; you must also consider research and momentum - as more electric cars are built, solar power and battery efficiency will also improve. If you take the opinion that an electric car is the same as a gas car because at some point they both pollute, you'll never make any progress anywhere.
Otherwise, Canada can be really big and rural. Not having access to car (or in this case, potentially not being able to afford it) can be really damaging to your career, lifestyle, social life.
I grew up in the interior of BC 9 hours East of Vancouver. All of our driving policy (new driver rules and licensing) was dreamed up by street racing ridden Vancouver politics. The result was really damaging in small communities, as 18 year olds could only drive with 1 passenger. In effect, this eliminated young peoples ability to designate a DD. People didn't stop partying...they just drove.
Point being, policies designed for city residents don't always fit out in the rural areas.
embro: I wish gas was more expensive
pearkes: People in rural areas are very dependent on cars and would be disproportionately affected by increased gas prices
me: Cars have a lot of associated externalities such as CO2 emissions and air pollution, taxation is one way to internalize these externalities. If this process disproportionately affects rural people, it's because society has been subsidizing them by accepting the effects of their externalities. If this results in higher corn prices, for example, then corn prices should be higher to reflect it's true cost to society. By giving the market the true prices of goods it can more efficiently allocate resources.
The work externality is a technical term from economics. No need for the scare quotes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
Or is that just typical Toronto center of the universe thinking?
I do not live in Toronto or even nearby, population of my city is 130,000. The public transportation is ok only if you don't have kids.
My point is, a majority of people don't even consider public transportation or electric cars, hybrids are a joke, except for the Chevy Volt.
The government incentives have been increasing but they don't seem to convince a lot of people.