I don’t know. There seems to be a movement in Europe to limiting one’s life to a few city blocks. Oxford wants to limit people to only driving about 100 days a year (1). Barcelona is pushing for super blocks (2). In both cases cars are scene as, at best, second class transport. At worse they are a way of taxing people into submission.
Banning cars doesn't limit your life to a few city blocks.
I lived without a car for years in Switzerland and there's no issues going to other cities or even going on hikes or skiing on week-ends using public transport.
Wild that keeping the casinos open is higher on the list of priorities for the state than letting people watch Blu-rays at home or even driving their cars.
That said, I'm not sure the conclusion of this article makes any sense. The problem isn't that the energy that powers these things comes from renewable sources. The problem is they don't have enough of it.
I would say the problem is more so that renewable energy sources just aren't as reliable as fossil fuels. The sun doesn't always shine, and the wind does not always blow.
Good thing 68% of Switzerland's renewable power comes hydroelectrical plants[1].
Plus these systems are designed knowing that solar and wind power are inconsistent. It isn't a shock to anyone that Central Europe gets less sunlight in the winter.
If you look at the source [0], that level of energy conservation isn't picking out Blu-Ray players but most major personal uses of electricity for leisure. It includes heating swimming pools, lighting sport facilities, gaming consoles and artificial cooling for outdoor ice skating rinks.
I do agree that putting casinos at level 4 is a bit odd but the idea seems to be that most of the shared indoor leisure facilities are left open as long as possible. That level also includes things like opera and theatre.
We should ban EVs and produce PHEVs instead. We don't have the battery production yet to build all the EVs people want. Instead of making people wait for their EVs, we should build PHEVs with 50 km electric range. They use 1/10th the batteries (of a 500 km range EV) so you can build 10 times more PHEVs than EVs and still reduce fuel usage by 90% because most trips are less than 50 kms. Also, PHEVs have no range anxiety because you can switch to gas seamlessly if necessary. It would also teach people that their range anxiety is overblown.
So with PHEVs, 10 times more drivers can cut their fuel usage by 90% instead of 1/10th the drivers cutting their fuel usage by 100%. Seems like a better plan to me.
Eventually battery production will increase and people will be ready to get an EV because they already understand them from driving their PHEV in EV mode.
Hybrids, then, should be advantageous as they carry their own chargers and have improved mileage. Today’s world needs power and getting it remains a problem, getting it cleanly is even harder. I would imagine crypto mining is right out for similar reasons.
Having an internal combustion engine adds a ridiculous amount to the manufacturing cost.
It's why Chevy quit manufacturing the Volt in spite of the fact that everybody I know who has one adores them. The Bolt is sooooo much cheaper to produce that's it's ridiculous.
But what if the ICE is merely a charger as with diesel trains? None of this mixed drivetrain stuff... Just a dynamo putting (hopefully) more juice into the battery than your foot's taking out. It's also way easier to carry a gallon of gas than a bucket of electrons...
The number of components on any ICE engine with a power level in the multi-10K watt range FAR exceeds the number of components on an all-electric drive train.
This is the fundamental problem: What's the point of producing a hybrid car that is more expensive to produce than both a standard ICE car and an all-eletric car?
It would be better for governments to subsidize the installation of chargers. This has the advantage that we could move to the all-electric cars (which are significantly cheaper to produce) and start removing gas stations (which are an environmental disaster because the tanks eventually leak).
It’s not just the chargers it’s the amps. They gotta come from somewhere, travel down a wire and then be issued by the charger. Carrying an engine avoids these problems. Switzerland is pointing out they’re short of amps.
I can't imagine that streaming standard definition only and no Bluray players has much impact on a nation's electric consumption. You're still lighting up a screen and getting the data from somewhere (via network or spinning disc); the extra energy overhead from decoding HD vs SD is negligible.
+1. This sounds like a legislation that someone without the required technical background drafted. Streaming SD vs HD vs 4k will have a negligible power consumption on the consumer, since it's all decoded in hardware. It will at max be a 10W difference - which is less than a classic lightbulb from which there are certainly still a lot in Swiss homes.
On the server side it's even less - CDN servers serve so many users that CPU load is very amortized (I've worked on CDNs before and have the necessary background). The biggest bottleneck for serving higher quality streams is usually available bandwidth on the customers internet connections and backbone links - but neither seems to be a bottleneck for their concerns.
Blue-ray players is the same story. These now used optimized SoCs to decode content, and are therefore energy efficient. Just looking up an example test of a player, a Sony UBP-X700 seems to require 6W. That's about 10k times less than an EV - which means you can watch 7 full days of Blu Rays instead of driving a car 1 minute based on the player power consumption alone. The added TV will make it more like 1 day, but it still shows they are looking at the wrong things.
I've never seen any studies on whether the grid can handle the switch to electric cars. And even if it can what is it going to do to electricity prices? Will the poor be able to run a fridge, etc?
It's almost like there's an agenda behind the headline when it could have just as easily been "Switzerland Bans HD Streaming" or "Switzerland bans hot wash cycles" based on the list of "potential bans" in TFA.
I'm no longer surprised, maybe it's "everything was better in the old days", but HN nowadays is full of reactionaries who think they have the correct facts when they don't.
Not sure why this article mentions renewabels. Our power is water and renewable.
Our energy policy has been pretty trash. Our nuclear reactors are getting pretty old and we have to import way to much power.
Instead of building new reactors a totally populist vote has banned basically anything to do with nuclear and we can't build new plants.
Switzerland isn't a great place for wind or solar, nuclear is the clear solution and all we had to do is build like 1-2 more plants in the last 30 years, but no.
In terms of saving energy, systematically removing cars from cities would be a good idea. Granted, most cars are not electric but its still a good idea in general. And it would safe energy in multiple ways.
We have done a great job at driving modal share into trains and public transport. But we have not been nearly as good at driving modal share into bicycles.
In general we just simply made a mistake on relaying on France and Germany to much, both have also messed up their energy policy in different ways.
32 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 87.2 ms ] thread> and also limiting the use of electric cars, which should be driven only when absolutely necessary
I guess they mean: only charged when absolutely necessary. And charging from your own solar panels would still be fine...
2 - https://www.barcelona.cat/pla-superilla-barcelona/en
1 - https://dailysceptic.org/2022/09/10/net-zero-zealots-on-oxfo...
I lived without a car for years in Switzerland and there's no issues going to other cities or even going on hikes or skiing on week-ends using public transport.
That said, I'm not sure the conclusion of this article makes any sense. The problem isn't that the energy that powers these things comes from renewable sources. The problem is they don't have enough of it.
The blog just seems to be the ramblings of a covid/climate conspiracy type. I'd take it with a pinch of salt.
Plus these systems are designed knowing that solar and wind power are inconsistent. It isn't a shock to anyone that Central Europe gets less sunlight in the winter.
[1] - https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/sci-tech/renewables-share-of-el...
I do agree that putting casinos at level 4 is a bit odd but the idea seems to be that most of the shared indoor leisure facilities are left open as long as possible. That level also includes things like opera and theatre.
[0]: https://www.newsd.admin.ch/newsd/message/attachments/74051.p...
So with PHEVs, 10 times more drivers can cut their fuel usage by 90% instead of 1/10th the drivers cutting their fuel usage by 100%. Seems like a better plan to me.
Eventually battery production will increase and people will be ready to get an EV because they already understand them from driving their PHEV in EV mode.
It’s annoying that they’re not more common - even the companies that have them like Toyota don’t have them across the line.
Having an internal combustion engine adds a ridiculous amount to the manufacturing cost.
It's why Chevy quit manufacturing the Volt in spite of the fact that everybody I know who has one adores them. The Bolt is sooooo much cheaper to produce that's it's ridiculous.
The number of components on any ICE engine with a power level in the multi-10K watt range FAR exceeds the number of components on an all-electric drive train.
This is the fundamental problem: What's the point of producing a hybrid car that is more expensive to produce than both a standard ICE car and an all-eletric car?
It would be better for governments to subsidize the installation of chargers. This has the advantage that we could move to the all-electric cars (which are significantly cheaper to produce) and start removing gas stations (which are an environmental disaster because the tanks eventually leak).
You're adding a charger.
There's no reason that a plugin version of the Sienna should cost significantly more - https://www.toyota.com/sienna/features/mpg_other_price/5402/... but these are all non-plugin.
On the server side it's even less - CDN servers serve so many users that CPU load is very amortized (I've worked on CDNs before and have the necessary background). The biggest bottleneck for serving higher quality streams is usually available bandwidth on the customers internet connections and backbone links - but neither seems to be a bottleneck for their concerns.
Blue-ray players is the same story. These now used optimized SoCs to decode content, and are therefore energy efficient. Just looking up an example test of a player, a Sony UBP-X700 seems to require 6W. That's about 10k times less than an EV - which means you can watch 7 full days of Blu Rays instead of driving a car 1 minute based on the player power consumption alone. The added TV will make it more like 1 day, but it still shows they are looking at the wrong things.
Our energy policy has been pretty trash. Our nuclear reactors are getting pretty old and we have to import way to much power.
Instead of building new reactors a totally populist vote has banned basically anything to do with nuclear and we can't build new plants.
Switzerland isn't a great place for wind or solar, nuclear is the clear solution and all we had to do is build like 1-2 more plants in the last 30 years, but no.
In terms of saving energy, systematically removing cars from cities would be a good idea. Granted, most cars are not electric but its still a good idea in general. And it would safe energy in multiple ways.
We have done a great job at driving modal share into trains and public transport. But we have not been nearly as good at driving modal share into bicycles.
In general we just simply made a mistake on relaying on France and Germany to much, both have also messed up their energy policy in different ways.
Bullshit. Importing on-mass energy from other nations was the "magic ingredient". That can be fixed in multiple ways. All of which are green.
Oh come on.