It'll be interesting to see what happens to gas stations. Part of what makes gas cars so popular is the easy ability to refuel, since stations are ubiquitous.
Once a tipping point is reached, most new homes will have the ability to charge cars, and old ones retrofitted, so people mostly charge at home. And gas stations will begin to dry up, making gas cars less desirable.
That same pattern should follow in every country, so it will be useful to have Norway as a data point on what actually happens.
A street in my town (in Canada) already has 4 gas stations and there are 3 new ones being built. Granted, it is close to a major highway... but 7 gas stations in a 2km stretch seems crazy to me, especially given the (seemingly) inevitable shift to EVs.
It's especially obnoxious given that remediation of gas stations sites after the fact is extremely expensive. Or at least has been, maybe they're being built to a higher standard now.
I remember reading that 7/11 (popular gas station in the US) makes most of its money from purchases inside the convenience store and not gas. But nevertheless, the gas is probably the main reason why most people stop by anyway.
I have noticed that Wawa (mid-atlantic convenience store often paired with gas station) is starting to set up a supercharger network, sometimes even when there is no gas station already existing.
Anecdotally, I agree with your assessment that EVs will cause more purchases.
I've never spent more than 5 minutes in a 7/11 in my life.
The point of those stores is to get in and get out quickly. It's the exact opposite of an EV charging station. In fact, most 7/11 in my area enforce the 'no loitering' rule.
I don't even think that 7/11 managers want you there for more than 5 minutes.
Restaurants or shopping malls I'll stay for 2 hours regularly, and a few level 2 chargers can actually get me 50 miles of charge in that time. That's where the EV chargers should be.
Some 7-11s are gas stations in the USA, but most aren’t, so I’m not sure how to judge this claim. I definitely wouldn’t consider 7-11 to be a popular place for gas like chevron or shell.
Anecdata here, but I live in America and had no idea 7-11 gas stations even existed until reading this thread. To me it’s always only been a convenience store.
I live in a large city on the west coast, not particularly dense, though I feel like our definitions of “dense” may differ, to me dense evokes manhattan.
I’ve traveled through most of the western (ie west of the Rockies) United States and North east as well. It’s possible I’ve seen a 7-11 gas station and just don’t remember.
Thanks for sharing. I'm similarly in a city, similarly not super dense like Manhattan. But I'm East coast and most of my travels have been up and down this coast. I wonder if the difference is regional. Of course there's the good chance I'm just not very observant and pass by non-gas station 7-11s all the time.
In my experience, as Americans we tend to under appreciate the regional differences in the US, especially with chains that are familiar to us, so I think you’re probably correct.
Dunkin doughnuts vs Starbucks, Hardee’s vs Carl’s Jr., etc.
Will they though? I was under the impression "gas stations" make very little from the gas itself, and instead make most from the store (food/drinks etc.)
Recently they replaced a very simple and old gas station in my town with a completely new station featuring a robust store. The volume of business to that station has probably increased 10x.
I imagine the reason they make so much from the store is that the gas station is drawing people in? It's expensive to build and maintain the gas station itself, they wouldn't do it unless it was an important contributor to the business model.
Operating a gas station is expensive, so many will ditch the "gas" part.
Often the primary draw of gas stations is the gas, not the store, for which there are better alternatives. And since operating an EV-Charger is pretty easy & cheap compared to gas, there will be many stores adding EV-Chargers in the parking lot.
Here in germany, there are already a few supermarket chains (primarily ALDI) that have EV-Chargers on their parking lots.
I used to work for a gas station chain's corporate office in the mid '10s. In general the business was 50/50 gas and food sales, with gas having higher volumes and food having higher margins. The business strategy was to expand food sales and b2b gas and diesel sales (i.e. fuel for company fleets). There was also some niche targets like powersports (e.g. ethanol free fuel for classic vehicles and older recreational powersports equipment).
I can see a business model in setting up something like one of the large outdoor/weather resistant Japanese vending machines near a bank of chargers. Without staff.
The only problem is you wouldn't go to a gas station if there wasn't gas there. The 5x price "convenience fee" is only convenient if you are already there anyway.
With EVs taking more time to charge for the time being, I can see the "convenience store" remaining if gas stations switch to electric, unless charge-at-home becomes more prevalent.
Alternatively, these might be replaced by restaurants with chargers, for drivers to take their lunch breaks while charging their cars on longer trips. Restaurants, or any popular activity you might want to do on the go (a tourist attraction, though the novelty might wear out, cinemas, spas, etc).
Given that it it probably easier to create a new charging station than a new gas station, a lot more competition might appear, and we might see "charging hubs", with basically facilities centered around a fast-charging station, for people to take a break while their cars recharge.
It could also disappear once actual fast-charging is a thing.
Here in Sweden I can count on my fingers the number of times I've filled up at a gas station with a store attached in the past several years. Most gas stations are unmanned and self service, and I assume they make money.
New apartment buildings here in Norway have to have off street, usually underground parking, with charging facilities. Not much help to people who park their cars in the street but that is not so common here in Norway even in cities, most apartment complexes already have off street parking
Every time I read an EV discussion I see comments feigning concern for poor people, even though they are the demographic least likely to own cars at all.
If people are actually concerned about the poor, the conversation should be about good public transit, pedestrian and bike infrastructure-things that actually make a difference for people with less means.
Depends on the country I guess. In Poland poor people usually own cars, just very old and cheap ones, like 15 years old VW Golf with resale value of $500. There are very few people here who can't afford any car at all. If ICE cars are bannned completely, having to switch to extremely expensive EV will be a problem for them.
I’m not saying it’s not a matter of concern at all, it’s just that here in the US we’ve absolutely hamstrung all other modes of transportation besides cars, which is not helpful for poor people, not to mention all of the many other policies we have that adversely effect the poor.
It’s just in this one discussion that people come out of the woodwork suddenly proclaiming how terrible anti ice policies are for the poor, and never with any suggestion for compromise eg “if we do this, it would have an adverse effect on the poor, we could mitigate that with X”.
Therefore it’s hard to read it as anything other than disingenuous.
In the USA, millions of people live in apartments or rented houses, maybe park on the street, and would have no means to charge their cars where they customarily park.
Yes, we've got ourselves up a tree without a ladder on this issue.
I think that as gas use dries up, gas stations will being installing charging stations (since it takes longer to charge up, it creates an even more captive market for their products in the store) (this of course is based on the idea that charging away from home will still be necessary, which I think it will be)
Only sell gas? What? I've never ever seen a Norwegian gas station that doesn't have a small grocery store/kiosk attached, plus usually a cleaning hall etc.
Sweden is even further ahead. I have to think hard to recall any Swedish stations near me of any brand that isn’t self service or has a shop. There are still some shops with statoil in Sweden, which is Norwegian… but so is ST1, which is entirely unmanned.
Your claim that "Almost all gas stations across the nordics are self service and only sell gas." is still wildly inaccurate. For Norway it seems to be roughly 10 % unmanned, and like I said, this is new to me so it is a fairly recent change.
This is purely anecdotal, but I live in Oslo where the majority of cars are now electric. I have seen no reduction in traffic to the neighboring Shell station in the past decade. As far as I know it doesn't offer charging, there are charging stations a few blocks away and this is in an urban area in our biggest city.
My guess is that their daytime customers are people dropping by for a quick bite when parking at a grocery store is too much effort. Stores aren't allowed to be open for the night, so the gas station doesn't have any competition for nighttime customers.
This will be the tipping point if it gets hard to find gasoline stations. I won't buy an EV until the very end as the technology is so basic right now. It has to improve and I think we need to get to the point of driving thousands of miles on one charge before it'll be wholly accepted.
Not in Norway, but my wife and I have the Chrysler Pacifica plug-in hybrid (our only car). We average about 1 in 6 miles on gasoline power. With more widely distributed charging infrastructure and a bigger battery we could easily make that 0 in 6. This is living in the suburbs of Chicago.
I'd add that a not insignificant part of that 1 in 6 is the car choosing to use gasoline power to keep the gas engine operable. It also likes to switch to gas power during the winter when we're running the heater.
Guessing at the intention behind the phrasing… would you buy a minivan if you worried that the resale value might be near zero? Would some minivan model still be your favourite model given that handicap?
AIUI there's no expectation that selling a used combustion car will become illegal. But people don't have confidence that they'll get a high price (not even for the export market).
The e-nv200 is mostly used as a van for electricians, plumbers, etc. Not many of them are fitted out for passengers, probably because the range is rubbish.
Norway is part of EU Emissions Trading System that is becoming very effective. The best way to cut CO2 emissions would be to make coal expensive.
This can be done by requiring that all cars must be 100% carbon neutral. To be able to sell gas, companies have to buy carbon permits and hurt coal production. (100% carbon neutral might not be the endpoint. Requirement can grow to 200% or to any arbitrary number). Those who need gas cars could still use them.
A ban is like a giant tax, whose amount is set by fines and jail time in addition to the black-market cost of procuring the thing in the first place (which includes the cost of evading the police and paying for the violence that comes with crime).
I agree with you, but the reality of Norwegian politics is that people react better to all-out bans than taxes, because bans are perceived as affecting all people equally, no matter their income. Taxes are perceived as affecting people with little income more.
I’m very much a fan of taxing all carbon equally, but whenever I discuss the idea with other Norwegians, this reaction seems almost instinctive. In my opinion, there are better, more direct ways to redistribute income if you think that some people have less than they are entitled to (e.g. progressive taxation), but no one seems to convinced by this.
Quotes from the article:
"This has led Norway to have the earliest target for the phaseout of new gas vehicle sales in the world – 2025"
...
"(which, to be clear, is not a legal requirement yet, more of a soft target agreed upon by Norway’s government)"
...
"Norway might even allow limited numbers of gas car sales to continue past 2025"
So Norway isn't banning gas cars in 2025. Norway also likely isn't banning sales of new gas cars in 2025, they're incentivizing people to buy electric. But Electrek's gotta get those clicks.
EVs are less than <5% of the global market. They are the Linux desktop of automobiles. Interesting and a passion for some, but always just a few years away.
If we're going to get technical, the transmission of a vehicle is everything that exists between the motor and wheels. Americans tend to think of the gearbox when referring to a car's transmission; much like we call a computer a CPU and we also refer to a single chip inside the computer a CPU. A gearbox with two gears is still a gearbox.
I'm still waiting for the ultimate EV that's got 4 in-hub direct drive motors. Until then, we're stuck with transmissions.
I’m still waiting to see a Cat D11 with an electric motor or a mechanic who can fix a used EV battery or what planet we’re going to get the lithium and cobalt from to make billions of EV cars. I don’t think we share a common definition for technical superiority.
And there's plenty of competitive, cobalt-free battery chemistries coming to the fore.
And as you hint, cobalt's damage is a political problem, not a "we don't have enough of it" problem. With proper regulations, the battery industry could clean up what has been a long-accepted human rights nightmare. But nobody seems to complain about it unless they can use it as an excuse to continue fossil fuel use.
Despite all the extraction that happened during those 20 years, we now have more known reserves than before, because unsurprisingly, the more you look for something, the more of it you find.
Discovering 2.5M tons in 20 years does not come close to the demand. You would need at least 3X the rate of discovery forever assuming we only ever serve the need of passenger vehicles and never increase world vehicle production. That’s a big hand-wave.
Reserves grew despite increased extraction. So far we are discovering faster than we can extract. Obviously it is something to keep an eye on but panic is not warranted.
That type of vehicle is ideal for electrification. Electric motors have maximum torque at zero RPM. A lot of haul trucks are already electric, and just use diesel to generate electricity for the electric motor.
I don't understand your skepticism about mechanics being able to service electric vehicles though. Why the doubt?
Ideal? Huh. You’d think CAT would just do that sort of thing on their own for equipment with price tags in the millions. That Diesel engines are required to produce the electricity underscores that battery energy density is not comparable to petroleum products.
Are you aware of someone with a machine shop having fixed a battery made of exotic
minerals? I’m not.
> what planet we’re going to get the lithium and cobalt from to make billions of EV cars
This one. Lithium and cobalt are slightly less abundant in the oceans and Earth's crust than nitrogen and there's more of it than lead or boron, which are produced at much greater scale than lithium or cobalt [1].
The problem isn't the amount it's the concentration of the elements in economically extractable ore. That's rapidly changing as various extraction methods reach economies of scale.
You seem to be expecting to get a waterfall out of a pond. That we will just push the ocean through a fantasy machine that gives you the minerals you want is Lysenkoism.
If by fantasy machine you mean existing mining and evaporative extraction technology - like those used to produce boron in California and Turkey - then yes.
That’s fascinating! Can you please share the name of one of those operations or the companies operating them? I can only find academic papers referencing pilot projects.
Examples are Searles Valley Minerals which extracts boron from the brine under Searles Lake, CA [1] and Rio Tinto's lithium extraction plant which uses waste rock from the Borox mines in Boron, CA [2].
It takes time to spin up production to 10 million tons per year - which is the scale of boron or silicon production according to the wiki - but now that lithium is worth something, it's just a matter of time and incentives.
This is the biggest selling point of EVs for me. Driving an EV vs an ICE car is like the difference between streaming a movie vs dealing with a VHS tape.
In March of 2000 the Internet was available to roughly 5% of the population. In March of this year it was about 65%.
If you look at EV growth, projected growth, the plans of major automobile manufacturers and the economy of building new engine manufacturing, it is pretty safe to say your assumptions are wrong.
Toyota, committing to an all-hybrid/EV fleet, also cut it’s production targets in half.
The internet of today was possible to build in 2000. Replacing billions of vehicles and industrial equipment with batteries and solar panels or something in 20 years is not. You’ve observed a market response to legislation and central planning.
Most car manufacturers offer EV vehicles - some have announced the target year for ending manufacturing of combustion engines. Production lines for combustion engines are becoming stranded assets. Yes, tax rebates acted as the activation energy. But what you are seeing is a change that already self-sustaining. In parts of the world EVs vehicles already outsell ICE-cars by a good margin.
The average lifetime of a car is about 12 years.
(As for Toyota, they are actually notable for being laggards, having dragged their feet, wasted time on dead-end hydrogen technology)
What you are seeing is the foot of an S-curve. It isn't unusual for people who don't look at what goes on in industries to miss that.
People missed that for the Internet for nearly a decade. And then it permeated most of their life.
And to add insult to injury they're counting hybrids. That's ridiculous. If 10 Toyota Corrolas were taken off of the road and replaced with Toyota Corrola Hybrids it's, what, the equivalent of 2 net-new electric cars?
In my country (Eastern Europe) there are very generous subsidies now for buying an EV as a replacement for an older vehicle so I ended up going for that instead of buying a nice gas car. With gas prices (and the general economy) being the way they are I simply couldn't justify the increasing cost of gas alongside the lease. I'm looking forward to March/April when it arrives.
Typical with these gas car future bans. The politicians set a date at which they assume EV's will be technically and economically superior and have already won in the market. Then they will credit their ban for the transition, even though they have done nothing. If they are wrong and gas cars are still being sold near the deadline, they will quietly extend it, because they are never going to actually force a sizeable population to give up their cars and lose an election.
The bans are not symbolic. They are signals to automakers that there won't be a market for their legacy products. This gives them time to shift their supply chain towards producing EVs. The bans can always be pulled forward if the market evolves faster than anticipated.
If EV sales in Norway continue to trend at 100% past April, Norway can pull forward its ban to "immediately." They could also accelerate petroleum station phase outs as it would not impact the EV fleet.
>If EV sales in Norway continue to trend at 100% past April, Norway can pull forward its ban to "immediately.
Why would they need to do that?
If EV sales trend at ~100% nearly continuously then there is no reason to ban anything unless the goal of the ban is symbolic chest thumping or pandering.
If your goal is to phase out combustion, why would you allow it regardless of purchase price and taxes? Otherwise, you'll have consumers who might buy combustion vehicles, price be damned.
EDIT: @throwaway0a5e, the approach does not need to "fly" everywhere, just enough jurisdictions where automakers have no choice but to make EVs because the combustion market is no longer large enough to be a sustainable business, just as California sets emissions standards for the US [1] (as automakers don't want to build "California" and "non-California" vehicles). Combustion vehicle bans at scale [2] get us to a combustion vehicle manufacturing death spiral faster.
It is clear that cities and countries find value in combustion vehicle bans based on them being announced, codified into law, etc [1].
>If your goal is to phase out combustion, why would you allow it regardless of purchase price and taxes?
If statistically nobody's doing it and there's statistically no harm coming from it there's no reason to ban it.
Your approach might fly in singapore but western nations generally think of themselves as free nations where everything is allowed unless there's a good reason for it not to be.
> you'll have consumers who might buy combustion vehicles, price be damned.
Those people would just track down a used vehicle.
>just enough jurisdictions where automakers have no choice but to make EVs
But if the consumers are already buying exclusively EVs and the OEMs are catering to those consumers what's the point of the ban? Nobody will be making gas cars if nobody is selling gas cars. A ban serves no end other than pandering to authoritarians at that point since the thing we wanted to get rid of is already gone.
While I agree with your general points, one minor detail: ICE vehicles will be manufactured long after western countries ban them. Western car companies will continue making them too, they won't abandon markets that will still buy them: Asia, Latin America, Africa. There people don't have resources nor infrastructure for EVs, so ICEs will continue to be used there.
Knowing that gas cars have a limited future and can foresee running costs rising sharply while resale value plummets incentivizes people to buy electric already.
I'm taking about banning ICE sales of light vehicles, and yes, I do expect such sales to be near zero in Norway in about 4 years -- with or without a ban.
2025 is not that far off though. It’s a hell of a lot closer than 2050. Easy to ignore political promises that come into effect after the politician will be dead.
It's the other way around. The car taxes have always been there, but EVs have been incentivized through exceptions from those taxes, plus other benefits (use of bus lanes etc).
As opposed to being allowed to externalize their emissions to the death of the rest of us? I agree that current taxing of ICE vehicles is not optimal, what should happen is that gasoline is forced to be carbon neutral and pollution costs associated with lubricants and other fluids are built into the prices of those too, but the present situation near universally has been the opposite extreme where ICE costs aren't internalized one bit, and in fact often actively subsidized.
>You can call that a "market" if you want.
I will, since I know what a "market" actually is. Free markets are creations of government and tools of society, ultra scalable economic optimization algorithms. They require being reasonably far along the spectrum of things like cost internalization and information symmetry, the core point is that the price embodies all the costs as well as any floors society desires. That way each individual purchaser can allocate their own resources in as optimal way as possible.
The current anthropogenic global warming mess is precisely because we don't have a Free Market in vehicles, electricity, etc since they're allowed to dump an enormous amount of their costs onto everyone with no reflection in the sticker price. The result being trillions and trillions of dollars/euros all of us are and will have to pay to deal with the mess. And of course some of the damage will be irreversible at any price.
You can try to rationalise these taxes with externalities but that would assume electric cars have no externalities. Between the environmental impact of manufacturing and disposing of batteries, the cost of adapting all the infrastructure to the charging need (not the least the additional demand on the electricity grid), etc.
And you can redefine a market all you want. The original poster almost certainly meant it as "winning on its own merit". Yeah a regulator can arbitrary ban a competitor and then you can claim that it is still the market because you think the market is what the regulators say the market is, but it certainly doesn't fit "winning on its own merit".
>You can try to rationalise these taxes with externalities but that would assume electric cars have no externalities.
No, it does not. But they definitely don't have any of the same externalities when it comes to AGW, which is the biggest environmental threat we're facing. And it's not clear they have any significant unique ones vs ICE cars. You'll need to quantify the environmental impact of manufacturing batteries vs crude oil extraction, transport (including oil spills), and refining for example. Internalizing carbon emissions in gasoline/diesel only covers a hard eyed AGW focus. Things like tire wear causing particulate pollution apply to both too. And EVs use far less consumable fluids and have fewer parts.
>And you can redefine a market all you want. The original poster almost certainly meant it as "winning on its own merit".
No, it is you who are attempting to redefine what a "market" is. A product "winning on its own merit" can only be said to be true if all externalities (or at least all significant ones) are accounted for. If the price doesn't include those, the product is not competing on its own merits either. This is econ 101. ICE cars have literally not competed solely on their own merits even once in their entire history. We are seeing at best a very, very slow and halting ultra late correction when the market is already shifting for other reasons because BEVs are just that much better even with ICE cars massively subsidized.
Unfortunately there are studies that show that building the battery of an electric car pollutes as much as a ice car in 8 years of use. That's not very helpful unless you find the way to greenify the extraction and building process.
I don't think there will ever be a market in this universe where something is "winning on its own merit". We could have avoided a lot of deaths (hundreds of millions) if that were the natural order of things.
Gas cars won the day because they didn’t pay the price for poisoning city inhabitants and polluting the planet, you can call that a “market” if you want.
The taxes are an attempt to correct a failed market.
Just to be clear, they aren't banning the sale of gas cars. FTA:
> This is a lot earlier than their 2025 target (which, to be clear, is not a legal requirement yet, more of a soft target agreed upon by Norway’s government).
Only 15 % of the 2020 car sales here in Norway were pure ICE. Roughly 55 % was pure electric. EV has been strongly incentivized politically for 10-15 years or so. 60 % of the total car pool is electric (not sure if that includes hybrids).
Using oil money to aggressively help the EV industry is an excellent thing. Emissions today, but no emissions tomorrow is a goal the whole world should agree on.
I am curious how this works in the North during winter, where very low temperatures reduce battery capacity significantly.
Also, not all roads are suitable for cars that are built for the city.
Winters in much of Norway rarely get that cold. Certainly in and around Oslo, Bergen and Stavanger very low temperatures are rare and short lived.
And while I'm sure there are some people who need a true off road vehicle, I see people happily drive their Model S and X on small gravel roads to their mountain cabins all the time.
> I am curious how this works in the North during winter
We have a BMW i3 94Ah model. When it's not cold we get about 230km range.
When it's fairly cold, -10C or below, that drops significantly. Not helped by my SO's requirement to not feel cold. Reported range is about 160km at worst (cold batteries).
Still, we live in the city and it's been just fine for us. We just leave it connected in the garage over night and set the planned departure time in the morning. That way it's ready with heated batteries, which helps a lot.
It hasn't bothered us so far. We knew the limitations going in, so we just plan a bit. Every now and then we get an extra 10-20 minute charging stop on our way back, meh.
Being able to fill the tank at home, so to speak, is great though. So is the lack of engine noise when driving slow or in traffic. It quickly became clear that our next vehicle would definitely be another EV.
I'm glad I don't live there for many reasons, this being just one more since I like my classic cars.
If the engine goes on my 300zx though I might do an EV conversion. It'd feel like a shame doing that to a manual though. Maybe I'd just sell it and get an automatic to do that to since nobody wants those anyway.
Edit: apparently only a ban on sales, but everything car-related is obscenely expensive over there anyway.
I'm wondering about the transition dynamics, and the likelihood of a step-change.
Initially, petrol stations will see declining sales but still be profitable. But at some point, there will be few enough miles being driven in petrol-powerd cars that it will be come unprofitable. They will either need to find a new way of making money or close.
This will rapidly turn the tables and range anxiety will become a feature of petrol cars - where on the trip can I find a filling station? There might be a period of substantially increased petrol prices to keep the stations afloat. This will result in petrol-powered automobiles becoming stranded assets.
While this ideally happens slowly enough that most vehicles are used for their full useful lives, it seems more likely that this will be more of a step-change transition — and a lot of people will be left with big expensive lawn ornaments when the music stops.
The other big question is when this will occur. The Norwegians are likely very well off in this regard, as I presume that they can still sell their petrol cars to other areas in the EU. But what about when these charts apply to entire markets like the EU or North America?
How is Norway dealing with the resulting increase in electric demand, charging at peak times etc? Have there been investments in ripping/replacing distribution and transmission to account for increased demand?
Clickbait-y title aside (other comments were pretty helpful to point this out), this sounds pretty positive.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 211 ms ] threadOnce a tipping point is reached, most new homes will have the ability to charge cars, and old ones retrofitted, so people mostly charge at home. And gas stations will begin to dry up, making gas cars less desirable.
That same pattern should follow in every country, so it will be useful to have Norway as a data point on what actually happens.
Anecdotally, I agree with your assessment that EVs will cause more purchases.
The point of those stores is to get in and get out quickly. It's the exact opposite of an EV charging station. In fact, most 7/11 in my area enforce the 'no loitering' rule.
I don't even think that 7/11 managers want you there for more than 5 minutes.
Restaurants or shopping malls I'll stay for 2 hours regularly, and a few level 2 chargers can actually get me 50 miles of charge in that time. That's where the EV chargers should be.
I’ve traveled through most of the western (ie west of the Rockies) United States and North east as well. It’s possible I’ve seen a 7-11 gas station and just don’t remember.
Dunkin doughnuts vs Starbucks, Hardee’s vs Carl’s Jr., etc.
In the Seattle area, it looks like 33/100 of the 7-11s have gas. For LA, it was 1/100. For Toledo Ohio, 1/10. For Dallas Texas, 50/100 it looks like.
Will they though? I was under the impression "gas stations" make very little from the gas itself, and instead make most from the store (food/drinks etc.)
Recently they replaced a very simple and old gas station in my town with a completely new station featuring a robust store. The volume of business to that station has probably increased 10x.
Often the primary draw of gas stations is the gas, not the store, for which there are better alternatives. And since operating an EV-Charger is pretty easy & cheap compared to gas, there will be many stores adding EV-Chargers in the parking lot.
Here in germany, there are already a few supermarket chains (primarily ALDI) that have EV-Chargers on their parking lots.
https://www.google.com/search?q=japanese+vending+machine+lar...
Alternatively, these might be replaced by restaurants with chargers, for drivers to take their lunch breaks while charging their cars on longer trips. Restaurants, or any popular activity you might want to do on the go (a tourist attraction, though the novelty might wear out, cinemas, spas, etc).
Given that it it probably easier to create a new charging station than a new gas station, a lot more competition might appear, and we might see "charging hubs", with basically facilities centered around a fast-charging station, for people to take a break while their cars recharge.
It could also disappear once actual fast-charging is a thing.
EDIT: With some searching I found they already launched trials.
After living and driving in Sweden for seven years, I'm fairly certain this isn't true.
Oh, that's just "the poors", they can drive to a gas station 10 miles a way, I suppose.
If people are actually concerned about the poor, the conversation should be about good public transit, pedestrian and bike infrastructure-things that actually make a difference for people with less means.
I’m not saying it’s not a matter of concern at all, it’s just that here in the US we’ve absolutely hamstrung all other modes of transportation besides cars, which is not helpful for poor people, not to mention all of the many other policies we have that adversely effect the poor.
It’s just in this one discussion that people come out of the woodwork suddenly proclaiming how terrible anti ice policies are for the poor, and never with any suggestion for compromise eg “if we do this, it would have an adverse effect on the poor, we could mitigate that with X”.
Therefore it’s hard to read it as anything other than disingenuous.
Yes, we've got ourselves up a tree without a ladder on this issue.
Visiting America, I was completely flummoxed by attendants and tipping and other antiquated things.
This was coined “bullshit jobs” recently.
I think Norway probably points at where the rest of the world is slowly going to go.
Sweden is even further ahead. I have to think hard to recall any Swedish stations near me of any brand that isn’t self service or has a shop. There are still some shops with statoil in Sweden, which is Norwegian… but so is ST1, which is entirely unmanned.
My guess is that their daytime customers are people dropping by for a quick bite when parking at a grocery store is too much effort. Stores aren't allowed to be open for the night, so the gas station doesn't have any competition for nighttime customers.
[1] https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2017/3/20/cars-and-s...
https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2017/3/20/cars-and-s...
AIUI there's no expectation that selling a used combustion car will become illegal. But people don't have confidence that they'll get a high price (not even for the export market).
Norway is part of EU Emissions Trading System that is becoming very effective. The best way to cut CO2 emissions would be to make coal expensive.
This can be done by requiring that all cars must be 100% carbon neutral. To be able to sell gas, companies have to buy carbon permits and hurt coal production. (100% carbon neutral might not be the endpoint. Requirement can grow to 200% or to any arbitrary number). Those who need gas cars could still use them.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/20/poland-vows-to...
A ban is like a giant tax, whose amount is set by fines and jail time in addition to the black-market cost of procuring the thing in the first place (which includes the cost of evading the police and paying for the violence that comes with crime).
PS: we don't tax crime and genocides, do we?
I usually starts with starters, then main course and finally dessert, even if I intend to eat my dinner whole.
I’m very much a fan of taxing all carbon equally, but whenever I discuss the idea with other Norwegians, this reaction seems almost instinctive. In my opinion, there are better, more direct ways to redistribute income if you think that some people have less than they are entitled to (e.g. progressive taxation), but no one seems to convinced by this.
Often the best policy is simple and straight forward but the mechanism of action is something that people don't understand or refuse to believe.
Quotes from the article: "This has led Norway to have the earliest target for the phaseout of new gas vehicle sales in the world – 2025" ... "(which, to be clear, is not a legal requirement yet, more of a soft target agreed upon by Norway’s government)" ... "Norway might even allow limited numbers of gas car sales to continue past 2025"
So Norway isn't banning gas cars in 2025. Norway also likely isn't banning sales of new gas cars in 2025, they're incentivizing people to buy electric. But Electrek's gotta get those clicks.
Mostly single-speed transmissions but not exclusively: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a28903274/porsche-taycan-t...
A single speed transmission can only really be called a transmission in a universe where cows are spherical.
Yes, it's a textbook correct terminology but completely irrelevant anywhere else (hence my comment about spherical cows)
I'm still waiting for the ultimate EV that's got 4 in-hub direct drive motors. Until then, we're stuck with transmissions.
Total aside, I know, but man would that would be awesome.
And as you hint, cobalt's damage is a political problem, not a "we don't have enough of it" problem. With proper regulations, the battery industry could clean up what has been a long-accepted human rights nightmare. But nobody seems to complain about it unless they can use it as an excuse to continue fossil fuel use.
Same known reserves were 4.5M tons in 2000. (https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/prd-wret/assets/palladium...).
Despite all the extraction that happened during those 20 years, we now have more known reserves than before, because unsurprisingly, the more you look for something, the more of it you find.
I don't understand your skepticism about mechanics being able to service electric vehicles though. Why the doubt?
Are you aware of someone with a machine shop having fixed a battery made of exotic minerals? I’m not.
This one. Lithium and cobalt are slightly less abundant in the oceans and Earth's crust than nitrogen and there's more of it than lead or boron, which are produced at much greater scale than lithium or cobalt [1].
The problem isn't the amount it's the concentration of the elements in economically extractable ore. That's rapidly changing as various extraction methods reach economies of scale.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth...
It takes time to spin up production to 10 million tons per year - which is the scale of boron or silicon production according to the wiki - but now that lithium is worth something, it's just a matter of time and incentives.
[1] http://www.svminerals.com
[2] https://www.riotinto.com/en/news/releases/2021/Rio-Tinto-ach...
Yes. That’s my point.
If you look at EV growth, projected growth, the plans of major automobile manufacturers and the economy of building new engine manufacturing, it is pretty safe to say your assumptions are wrong.
The internet of today was possible to build in 2000. Replacing billions of vehicles and industrial equipment with batteries and solar panels or something in 20 years is not. You’ve observed a market response to legislation and central planning.
The average lifetime of a car is about 12 years.
(As for Toyota, they are actually notable for being laggards, having dragged their feet, wasted time on dead-end hydrogen technology)
What you are seeing is the foot of an S-curve. It isn't unusual for people who don't look at what goes on in industries to miss that.
People missed that for the Internet for nearly a decade. And then it permeated most of their life.
If EV sales in Norway continue to trend at 100% past April, Norway can pull forward its ban to "immediately." They could also accelerate petroleum station phase outs as it would not impact the EV fleet.
Why would they need to do that?
If EV sales trend at ~100% nearly continuously then there is no reason to ban anything unless the goal of the ban is symbolic chest thumping or pandering.
EDIT: @throwaway0a5e, the approach does not need to "fly" everywhere, just enough jurisdictions where automakers have no choice but to make EVs because the combustion market is no longer large enough to be a sustainable business, just as California sets emissions standards for the US [1] (as automakers don't want to build "California" and "non-California" vehicles). Combustion vehicle bans at scale [2] get us to a combustion vehicle manufacturing death spiral faster.
It is clear that cities and countries find value in combustion vehicle bans based on them being announced, codified into law, etc [1].
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/04/2...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_fossil_fuel_vehic...
If statistically nobody's doing it and there's statistically no harm coming from it there's no reason to ban it.
Your approach might fly in singapore but western nations generally think of themselves as free nations where everything is allowed unless there's a good reason for it not to be.
> you'll have consumers who might buy combustion vehicles, price be damned.
Those people would just track down a used vehicle.
>just enough jurisdictions where automakers have no choice but to make EVs
But if the consumers are already buying exclusively EVs and the OEMs are catering to those consumers what's the point of the ban? Nobody will be making gas cars if nobody is selling gas cars. A ban serves no end other than pandering to authoritarians at that point since the thing we wanted to get rid of is already gone.
I'm not alone: https://electrek.co/2021/09/23/norway-bans-gas-cars-in-2025-...
It seems they have already won in the market: "14 of the top 15 cars in Norway are all-electric"
> because they are never going to actually force a sizeable population to give up their cars
This ban doesn't affect current vehicles, only new sales.
By gas cars being taxes to death. You can call that a "market" if you want.
As opposed to being allowed to externalize their emissions to the death of the rest of us? I agree that current taxing of ICE vehicles is not optimal, what should happen is that gasoline is forced to be carbon neutral and pollution costs associated with lubricants and other fluids are built into the prices of those too, but the present situation near universally has been the opposite extreme where ICE costs aren't internalized one bit, and in fact often actively subsidized.
>You can call that a "market" if you want.
I will, since I know what a "market" actually is. Free markets are creations of government and tools of society, ultra scalable economic optimization algorithms. They require being reasonably far along the spectrum of things like cost internalization and information symmetry, the core point is that the price embodies all the costs as well as any floors society desires. That way each individual purchaser can allocate their own resources in as optimal way as possible.
The current anthropogenic global warming mess is precisely because we don't have a Free Market in vehicles, electricity, etc since they're allowed to dump an enormous amount of their costs onto everyone with no reflection in the sticker price. The result being trillions and trillions of dollars/euros all of us are and will have to pay to deal with the mess. And of course some of the damage will be irreversible at any price.
And you can redefine a market all you want. The original poster almost certainly meant it as "winning on its own merit". Yeah a regulator can arbitrary ban a competitor and then you can claim that it is still the market because you think the market is what the regulators say the market is, but it certainly doesn't fit "winning on its own merit".
No, it does not. But they definitely don't have any of the same externalities when it comes to AGW, which is the biggest environmental threat we're facing. And it's not clear they have any significant unique ones vs ICE cars. You'll need to quantify the environmental impact of manufacturing batteries vs crude oil extraction, transport (including oil spills), and refining for example. Internalizing carbon emissions in gasoline/diesel only covers a hard eyed AGW focus. Things like tire wear causing particulate pollution apply to both too. And EVs use far less consumable fluids and have fewer parts.
>And you can redefine a market all you want. The original poster almost certainly meant it as "winning on its own merit".
No, it is you who are attempting to redefine what a "market" is. A product "winning on its own merit" can only be said to be true if all externalities (or at least all significant ones) are accounted for. If the price doesn't include those, the product is not competing on its own merits either. This is econ 101. ICE cars have literally not competed solely on their own merits even once in their entire history. We are seeing at best a very, very slow and halting ultra late correction when the market is already shifting for other reasons because BEVs are just that much better even with ICE cars massively subsidized.
The taxes are an attempt to correct a failed market.
> This is a lot earlier than their 2025 target (which, to be clear, is not a legal requirement yet, more of a soft target agreed upon by Norway’s government).
In short, I'd say you're missing the mark.
Edit: source is elbil.no
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_produ...
And while I'm sure there are some people who need a true off road vehicle, I see people happily drive their Model S and X on small gravel roads to their mountain cabins all the time.
We have a BMW i3 94Ah model. When it's not cold we get about 230km range.
When it's fairly cold, -10C or below, that drops significantly. Not helped by my SO's requirement to not feel cold. Reported range is about 160km at worst (cold batteries).
Still, we live in the city and it's been just fine for us. We just leave it connected in the garage over night and set the planned departure time in the morning. That way it's ready with heated batteries, which helps a lot.
It hasn't bothered us so far. We knew the limitations going in, so we just plan a bit. Every now and then we get an extra 10-20 minute charging stop on our way back, meh.
Being able to fill the tank at home, so to speak, is great though. So is the lack of engine noise when driving slow or in traffic. It quickly became clear that our next vehicle would definitely be another EV.
As for the trend saying that there will be zero new ICE car registrations by April next year; well take that with a large pinch of salt.
If the engine goes on my 300zx though I might do an EV conversion. It'd feel like a shame doing that to a manual though. Maybe I'd just sell it and get an automatic to do that to since nobody wants those anyway.
Edit: apparently only a ban on sales, but everything car-related is obscenely expensive over there anyway.
Initially, petrol stations will see declining sales but still be profitable. But at some point, there will be few enough miles being driven in petrol-powerd cars that it will be come unprofitable. They will either need to find a new way of making money or close.
This will rapidly turn the tables and range anxiety will become a feature of petrol cars - where on the trip can I find a filling station? There might be a period of substantially increased petrol prices to keep the stations afloat. This will result in petrol-powered automobiles becoming stranded assets.
While this ideally happens slowly enough that most vehicles are used for their full useful lives, it seems more likely that this will be more of a step-change transition — and a lot of people will be left with big expensive lawn ornaments when the music stops.
The other big question is when this will occur. The Norwegians are likely very well off in this regard, as I presume that they can still sell their petrol cars to other areas in the EU. But what about when these charts apply to entire markets like the EU or North America?
Any insights?
Clickbait-y title aside (other comments were pretty helpful to point this out), this sounds pretty positive.