That Fischer-Tropsch technology has been a bridesmaid but not a bride for a very long time. It requires a huge machine to produce a modest amount of fuel because the chemical reactions that build up molecular chains and break them down are carefully balanced so the reactor is doing numerous wasted chemical reactions that will be undone. It’s one of the few cases where iron is a workable catalyst but the yield is so bad people have scoured the periodic table for alternatives for 75+ years.
There is no doubt it will make good fuel for F1 engines and even for the change-averse aviation fuel market. The best use case today is the US Navy wanting to make e-Fuel from seawater, fuel, and nuclear energy which will help carriers keep their air wing fueled without slowing down to take on fuel from a tanker. Most of the serious work on synthetic fuels for ground transport has centered around single-entity fuels such as hydrogen, ammonia, 1-butanol, dimethyl ether, etc. I’d guess though if you can afford a legacy Ferrari you can afford to fuel it with FT gasoline.
Shell is already selling GTL diesel in Germany. It is their "high performance" diesel because the FT reaction is providing a nicely controlled distribution of linear paraffines. So, they boost their normal diesel with a bit of GTL produced diesel.
Do you know what the cetane number for both the original GTL diesel and the blended mix they sell are? (Trying to quantify the performance claim - not that cetane alone does that, of course.)
If you are after more performance out of a diesel look into LPG augmentation. >30% power boost, cleaner burn and fuel cost savings. On big farmer machines ROI is one season.
I'm reminded of the synthetic diamond process [1] and the industrial demand for perfect diamonds, cut to order exceeded the perfection nature's diamond mines could never deliver.
So with todays digital technology, instead of the analogue world of the 1920's, it would seem the Fischer-Tropsch[2] process has every chance of succeeding on an undustrial scale, bringing vehicle fuel to inhospital regions of the planet, and yet the nuclear industry with notably scaled down nuclear reactors or Small Modular Reactors [3] could be the saviour of the automotive sector, something the Germans have experience of as well, if stuxnet [4] and Iran are anything to go by.
I still dont know why we dont bury nuclear waste using a convergent boundary [5] from plate tectonics. Its all ultimately come from core of this planet, why not return it to the core for the ultimate form of recycling, like much of our landfill waste, and man made waste. I sometimes think environmentalists and politicians want us to live in our waste.
This is the first time I hear this idea to use convergent boundaries to bury anything. It's interesting! However, to my layman understanding, when discussing nuclear waste we need to be precise. If the containers break or leak in an undesirable place (or depth) without us having any access to it or being able to fix it, I imagine it could become quite the catastrophe. And the pressure and sheer power tectonic plates can apply, to my understanding, far exceeds anything we can build. So how is it possible to safely bury radioactive waste in convergent boundaries?
A sustainable nuclear fuel cycle would recycle the transuranic wastes, like Plutonium, which are valuable fuels. In this way they would unlock a vast multiple (50x or so) of energy out of uranium and the resulting fission product waste would decay to less than natural uranium in 1000 years or so.
The problem of building structures that last 1000 years is well within our experience.
Do you think the Oil industry have learnt a thing or two when drilling deep into the ground to get oil out? The nuclear fuel rods can easily passing inside an oil rigs drilling pipes.
They have to pump salt water into underground wells as crude floats on top and they use this pumped salt water pressure to extract the last drops of crude.
The fracking industry have also learnt a thing or two ironically as well!
At best, it would be like using a dye in water before it goes into a underground cave system in order to trace where it comes out, but the timescales might just be appropriate for the radioactive decay of said material.
TLDR, if the plate is convergent, what could go wrong?
If we're talking about fuel for gasoline engines, probably the Bergius process would be more suitable, as that produces fairly high octane gasoline. It was extensively used by Nazi Germany for producing aviation gasoline, FWIW.
Fischer-Tropsch, while more widely known, is better for producing diesel and turbine type fuels.
Though the same basic objections you present are there for the Bergius process as well, capital intensive and consumes a lot of energy, so hard to imagine such fuels being economically viable.
you want to turn coal into gasoline? i think most people consider use of FT fuels as an approx. neutral carbon emissions assuming clean energy source.
>>The process involves the hydroliquefication of brown coal, also known as lignite, into crude oil.
No, I don't wanna turn coal into gasoline; we should try to reduce the net addition of CO2 to the atmosphere, not increase it further.
AFAIU the Bergius process can use any source of carbon, doesn't need to be coal. The reason Nazi Germany used it for aviation fuel was that it apparently produces a lot of aromatics, whereas FT tends to produce more straight alkanes which are fine for diesel or jet fuel but have very poor octane rating. Though the lots-of-aromatics approach to increasing octane might not be compatible with current day pollution specifications.
Leaving exotic sport cars aside Europe will not be ready for the ban of new ICE cars in 12 years. Most consumers can't afford an EV, the electricity production is not there yet, the distribution grids are undersized, a lot of people living in old apartment buildings that can't support many chargers, a lot of people park on the street, so on and so forth.
When the ban hits the price of second hand ICE cars will explode. This will mean in practice that a lot of people will not be able to afford a car any more. Now this might be a feature, not a bug, depending on how you look at it.
Rural Europe is a disaster if you don't have a your own transport, as either there is no public transport, or it's atrocious (eg. 2 buses a week in some places).
Hence the usage of the word "minimal", or so I would imagine. Plus the only reason that's the case is because there's little demand for it. That is: people have cars.
"Europe" is a big place with lots of differences so I can't generalize to the entire continent, which includes places I've never even been to, but quite a few places could almost entirely eliminate car ownership within a matter of years if they wanted. Whether that's desirable in the first place is something I'll leave for everyone to decide for themselves, but it really is just a question of "want" rather than "can".
The problem here is that "minimal" car ownership due to high prices does not mean car ownership concentrated amongst those who needs cars, necessarily.
It can with people making some sacrifices. What I don't like about this is which people will make said sacrifices, meaning the low income part of the population. Which will have to either pay more rent by moving into the city where they can easily access public transport and/or waste hours of their life each day.
I'm not excited by the current number of cars either, don't get me wrong. It just saddens me the working class has to pay the price, again.
I can't tell if this weirdly popular opinion is concern trolling or not, but if you actually do really care about the working class, then the EV transition is a good thing for them.
Less pollution, less disease, less war, less imports, cheaper transport, higher standard of living. Its a win win win win and you have to have your head deep in far right conspiracy nonsense to believe otherwise.
Realistically it's going to get pushed back or heavily caveated. But also, a lot can be done in 12 years if there is a will to do it - and imposing this deadline is part of trying to make that happen. It also depends on whether there are any oil price shocks in that time.
The EU banned incandescent light bulbs and apart from minor whinging there's been no real problems. This is a bigger version.
> Europe will not be ready for the ban of new ICE cars in 12 years
Maybe. Yet I still think setting a hard clear deadline is a good thing, even if it ends up getting delayed in the end. It creates clear goals and focusses what we want to work towards, rather than a vague "in the future we'll be able to solve things, somehow".
And who knows ... lots of things can be possible with sufficient pressure.
Impossible deadline is nonsense. It did not worked in 5 years plans of communist central planning committee, it does not work in software engineering, it is not going to work here either.
It does work in software engineering. You are mis-characterizing both problems in essentially the same fashion.
The purpose of setting a deadline is not to achieve a specific thing at the nominated date, but to establish bounds on the timeline for activity. We know well that unbounded schedules fail to motivate action; so we set a boundary and then compromise on what is delivered over the resulting interval.
The 2035 deadline is a forcing function. It exists to frame discussion and to instill a sense of urgency.
Impossible deadline does not force function. Impossible deadlines are getting ignored. I can't rewrite Linux Kernel in 2 weeks, so scratch that from my queue and lets go with more sensible ticket.
12 years for a ban on ICE is not an impossible deadline on the order of "rewriting a linux kernel from scratch in 2 weeks." This is more akin to getting to the moon by the end of the decade.
ICE bans are already taking effect in cities across Europe. Viable transportation alternatives already exist for people in these cities. As the bans become more common place, the pain points will be identified and resolved.
Twelve years is a long time. The world has changed a lot since 2011.
This comparison makes no sense. It should be glaringly obvious by now that "just let everyone do whatever" doesn't work. Lots of stuff has been banned or restricted over the years: asbestos, CFCs, leaded paint, gasoline, and pipes, and all sorts of other things.
It's not a hard clear deadline. It's just a talking point which allows politicians to pretend like they're dealing with the issue. Everyone who is actually working on these issues knows that the deadlines will be pushed back and multiple exceptions granted. This breeds cynicism towards the entire process.
How is "electricity production is not there yet for EV" a case for E-Fuels that require a factor of 4 or so of renewable electricity? How are most consumers going to pay >3EUR per liter? How does all that make sense given we have highly efficient EV?
I really don't get those "pro e-fuel arguments" if I'm supposed to forget that we're talking about luxury sports cars.
There will be lots of used BEVs in the market in 12 years from now. Nobody knows how electricity production will look like in 12 years, but it seems like there will be more and more renewables. Distribution grids might change somewhat in 12 years, too. People don't need to charge BEVs everyday, also nobody knows how public charging infrastructure will look like in 12 years, so no problems for people in "old apartment buildings".
> Nobody knows how electricity production will look like in 12 years
Maybe not - but in the UK we know how long it takes to flood a valley for pumped hydro storage, or to build a new nuclear plant, or to roll out new equipment to people's homes (like smart meters) - More than 12 years.
So we don't know what electricity production will look like - but we surely know what it won't look like.
EVs are more expensive initially, but cheaper in the long run. I bought a 20k EUR EV last year (VW e-up, great car). After ~8 years it will be cheaper overall than a 10k EUR ICE car. Petrol prices will probably go up faster than electricity as well, so likely even less.
So apart from subsidizing the purchase price which already happens widely, perhaps the government should provide cheap loans for people who don't have the initial capital to buy an EV.
Also, There are signs we've already hit the peak for conventional oil. This report [1] claims that by the 2030s Europe will see its access to oil reduced by 10-20%. So running an ICE car will only go up from here. There's good reasons to assume the costs of EVs will only go down.
Wrt to the grid, the french grid operator RTE published a study [2] saying that they estimate that by 2035 there will be 15.6 million EVs on the road, a bit half of the 38m total cars on french roads today. The study says this would represent 8-10% of today's electricity consumption and would pose no danger to the stability of the grid. About 2 million new cars are sold here every year, so after 2035 the percentage would go up by 1% every year to 20% or so. A challenge but definitely feasible.
From my experience taking charge on Ionity for 0,79EUR/kWh means that it is more expensive than gas. And because I just moved to another country, and live in apartment, I don't have place to charge.
Thing is that there is more than 50% people in EU who has no place to charge at home, because they are living in apartments. SO they will be charging on expensive Fast DC chargers. It will be more expensive than owning an ICE and also massively less comfortable because you will be waiting on car to get charged, thus wasting your time.
I think the opposite, the transition will go so well, that most places will bring the bans forward in time and those that don't will still see ICE disappear.
EVs are already cheaper and better, they're only going to get more so. Business cost savings will drive the transition.
e-fuels will be a big thing for long distance air travel and similar tech for chemical feedstocks but everyone else has better options already.
The issue is simple: we need to stop emissions from individual mobility, no matter what. soon. it probably needs the ban first to build up enough political/economical motivation to solve subsequent problems.
"affordable cars" is way below "habitable planet" in my prio list.
If the scenario you are describing actually happens, the rules will be changed. It's not like they are set in stone and politicians will react if they start losing votes on this kind of apocalyptic scenario. They won't say this out loud because it would defeat the purpose of the rule in the first place.
This, among other things, will be the death of this trade union.
The technocrats in Brussels are way out of their mind if they think the average European citizen will be able to afford purchasing a new EV in 10 years, and then to purchase a battery/a new EV every other 8-10 years.
And then they'll complain of how come the "populists are taking our votes!".
Let's very optimistically imagine that the cost of batteries will go down 75% (4 times) down in 12 years, given the current massive efforts in this area.
Will it make new EV cars massively cheaper? I think it's very improbable.
Will it make replacing worn-out batteries economically viable? I think there is hope.
12 years ago, the $30k nissan leaf had a range of 85 miles in a 24kWh battery. A 2023 nissan leaf is $28k, with a 200+ mile advertised range and a 40kWh battery. If you're willing to inflation adjust a little, a $38k nissan leaf today comes with a 60 kWh battery.
12 years before that, we're talking about cars getting 30mpg running on Petrol/Diesel, and we were on euro 2 standards. 12 years is an eternity in technology.
12 years regarding infrastructure is nothing. Just a blip. And you want to significantly increase consumption of electricity, while not building any new power plants, nor upgrading grid.
For the cost of upgrading EVs to better / cheaper batteries. That is, the ability of a EU citizen to afford an EV car that lasts comparably long with an ICE car.
The charging infrastructure is a fun issue, but it's a separate issue.
This is true, but I don't have an idea how viable are plans to drastically extend it. Large numbers of EVs consuming each 300-300 kW during charging will quickly put the current urban electrical infrastructure to its knees.
You can be concerned about infrastructure changes but bullish on technology improvements in EVs.
This article [0] (apolgoies but I'm in the UK so not familiar with the state in the US) talks about the energy mix in 2010 (13 years ago, so close). Wind power could support up to 5.4 GW in 2010 in the UK, and by various sources itcan now do ~25GW. (Today is a strange day, there's a cold snap and we've fired up backup coal stations for the first time in years.).
Grid infrastructure, and consumer interaction with supplier has had enormous changes in that time. In the last 12 months, suppliers have started running schemes where they adjust demand by paying you to reduce usage during peak times [1], introducing day ahead tarriffs [2], and rollig out smart meters which provide usage in 30 minute windows. There are power diverters, and various devices available which hook up to live pricing, and can decide what to do at various points in the day, e.g. divert your solar PV into heating your hot water tank rather than selling it back to the grid.
The movement here _is_ slower, but it _is_ happening.
I do'nt really understand the point you're making. From the article you've shared,
> Combining wind with other renewable resources such as solar, hydropower and the ability to smartly manage our electricity demand will be critical at times like this summer when the wind is not blowing.
Which is pretty much exactly what is happening. We're wind heavy because it makes sense to be here, but if we were closer to the equator it would make sense to be solar heavy, for example.
> Will it make replacing worn-out batteries economically viable? I think there is hope.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: only if a skunkworks effort takes place to reverse engineer and open source the low-level controllers/ECUs in these vehicles. Manufacturers have no incentive to reduce the “planned obsolescence” EV cars come with by design today. If you want to use future battery tech in a car of today’s vintage, you’re not going to get a manufacturer-sanctioned option.
I'm still missing an answer on how are we supposed to source all the minerals like lithium, copper, etc, without an increase in the usage of petrochemicals and keeping it carbon neutral.
The sodium-ion battery (NIB or SIB) is a type of rechargeable battery that uses sodium ions (Na+) as its charge carriers. Its working principle and cell construction are almost identical with those of lithium-ion battery (LIB) types, but replace lithium with sodium.
It looks like Nio is going to use solid-state batteries from 2024 onward. That seems pretty tangible to me. BMW and Ford are said to be working on integrating batteries of this type, too. No miracles necessary.
Carmakers in general (all the ones that matter, anyway) don’t even plan to produce any combustion cars by 2035.
I’m not sure where you are getting it from that this isn’t happening. I mean, it has to happen. Also, E-Fuels aren’t an alternative since they are even more expensive.
In 2015 carmakers were planning to manufacture only self driving hybrids. So what you plan 12 years from now says nothing about what is going to be made 12 years from now.
> Carmakers in general (all the ones that matter, anyway) don’t even plan to produce any combustion cars by 2035.
I'm sure they have nice fluffy press releases about an EV future but look at the investments they're making.
They're all still 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.
Those who would be able to afford purchasing a new ICE in 10 years will be able to afford purchasing a new EV in 10 years, the difference isn't significant.
Those who wouldn't be buying a new car in 10 years, won't - nobody is taking away the existing cars, they'll keep using them until they can or need a new car, and that one will be an EV.
In Venezuela cars are not depreciating [0], because there is no supply of new cars from outside. That's what is going to happen with Europe. People will be driving in 30+ years old cars, because nobody won't be able to afford new cars.
And OEM manufacturers are aware of this problem [1], but has no solution for it. Everyone started making BEVs, so cost for resources went up. And there is no reason for it to go down.
That problem will probably solve itself once gasoline becomes so expensive (because of it becoming a niche product, because of rising taxes, or both) that nobody will be able to afford it anymore - except maybe drivers of 30+ year old Porsches or Ferraris...
When fuel becomes this expensive food will become unattainable for most people. Or we somehow miraculously create magic batteries to power commercial transport.
The problem with cities will solve itself: no one is going to live in a concrete desert where simple food is too expensive.
Actually it'll most likely be the opposite, larger cities are typically surrounded by arable land with good proximity to rail. Shipping food by rail would become more common, with distribution by semi / box truck to the suburbs or rural area to be very very expensive.
California will probably be the best off, in terms of a basically year round growing season and a massive amount of land close to large population centers.
Rail is already heavily used for transporting bulk grains, livestock, and canned/packaged/frozen food. But it's simply too slow on most routes for fresh, perishable food. Trucks will continue to be heavily used. In the US at least we have plenty of natural gas and I expect the fleet to gradually migrate to that fuel. Delivery trucks are already shifting to battery electric.
Ah yeah LP (natural gas) is a great alternative, IIRC India has a bunch of LNP vehicles already. I'm not sure battery trucks are great for long haul trucking, but they've proved useful for last mile stuff already.
Why do you think this idea of starving demand through high prices for something people want is good ? Why do you limit it only to transportation ? Would you care to apply it to all consumer needs, housing, education, child care, health care, food, staples ? If no, why is transportation different ?
Why? Because fossil fuels are killing the planet and increasing their price will lead people to use less or find alternatives. It's simple economics, not rocket science.
Then just ban it. Sin taxes are dumb, regressive, and the cost is paid by people who have no control over their situation. Someone who lives in a suburb and commutes to work in the city because that's where affordable housing is just loses money for no gain.
If the person affected by the tax doesn't have an actionable alternative to avoid it and the plan is "vaguely make people worse off so that <random corporation> will make an alternative happen" then you have a bad candidate for a tax and you should do what places are actually doing which is "banhammer for new ICE cars incoming in 20xx, figure it out car manufacturers."
A much smaller market would have to pay for the fixed costs of the oil industry? Gas stations close because a few Porsches, Ferraris and classic cars isn't enough to keep them afloat?
Then OTOH, due to refineries working the way they do, if private cars are replaced by EV's, but long range trucking, marine shipping and aviation remain, refineries will have a huge problem what to do with the gasoline fractions.
Distribution is expensive. The dense network of fuel stations works due to the high demand. In addition there is a quite high price sensitivity: If fuel is a little bit cheaper customers are willing to take the small detour. With less demand there are less stations, less competition and still a expensive logistics network.
I am hoping that we improve cities and towns so most people simply don't need to own a car. A cargo bike and the odd car-hire (like car2go) could replace car ownership for a lot of people, and make cities more pleasant.
Consider Vancouver Island for example, a number of small towns on the east coast of the island anchored by larger cities of Nanaimo and Victoria. They were connected together by a railroad.
As the age of cars took over the railroad tracks went into disrepair and were abandoned. We have a 19th century technology sitting right there to fix this problem. The only thing lacking is political will.
This. I hope this, too. Mainly because I’d love empty streets when driving my car. You can go full out cargo bike. I keep my truck. (Sadly most people think this way - the cargo bike dreamers are just a small but vocal minority).
I hope not, this seems like a nightmare scenario. Giving away the conveniences of cars is not something most people desire. People advocating for bikes have this sense of moral superiority, think people shouldn't want too many nice things anyway and believe protecting their version of the common good is definitely worth some martyrs.
They might also be just people who are fed up with cars filling up the streets taking precious space in cities and be a life-threatening issue when you're cycling around. But hey, "moral superiority" is easier to say.
I don't find the safety canard to be very convincing. You can turn it against cyclists fairly easily.
I've seen reports of cyclists who murder pedestrians through hit and runs. Sure this is rare, but we need to make sure the elderly are "safe" from belligerent cyclists and their poisonous online culture.
As such, it might be necessary for us all to walk, at least until we can develop practical systems to regulate speeds on bikes and ensure that the roads are not mad max style kill zone. I suggest a top bike speed limit of 10-12 km to ensure safe streets, with powerful automated brakes that prevent accidental pedestrian hits. It might flip the cyclist over xer handlebars but I'm sick of socializing risks and privatizing benefits; if you are in a rush, you should have left earlier.
Why settle for anything less than safety for decent society?
Incidentally, I agree with reducing polluting cars for pollution reduction measures. Sadly that means I don't care once we move to electric cars. You'll find most people are in that boat.
> As such, it might be necessary for us all to walk, at least until we can develop practical systems to regulate speeds on bikes and ensure that the roads are not mad max style kill zone. I suggest a top bike speed limit of 10-12 km to ensure safe streets, with powerful automated brakes that prevent accidental pedestrian hits.
I'm amused that you think this is some sort of "gotcha". As someone who cycles, I would take this deal without hesitation it got rid of cars.
Of course, cycle-on-pedestrian deaths basically zero relative to the deaths caused by cars, so it's a worthless analogy. However, I do like the implication that we should be regulating transit based on momentum rather than just having special status for cars.
A lot of this debate is really just a city / country debate. I completely agree with regard to the city. A reduction in cars is nearly an unalloyed good. For the country, there really aren’t so many alternatives.
The only time my daughter went to the hospital was when a careless cyclist with an umbrella in her hand struck her on the sidewalk.
The MRI and everything was awful and I wish I had been able to do something to stop it. You are going to be disappointed if you think anything will keep our kids safe.
(Unrelated but in Japan, our health care did not cover the costs for the accident; the cyclist paid us for our out of pocket expenses as the police had found her pretty quickly)
> You are going to be disappointed if you think anything will keep our kids safe.
Car crashes are a top 2 (often top 1) killer of children in ~every developed country. Cycling doesn't crack the top 10. Its intellectually dishonest to pretend that cars and bikes are comparable dangers to children.
If you increase the number of cyclists you'll see more accidents. If anything, the anonymity that accompanies cycling could result in more accidents if a larger portion of the population engages in it. I have seen bikes ride on the sidewalk, ringing their bells at pedestrians — even when there is a bike path. Sorry but that culture needs to change and demanding the whole world change first is just not going to suffice.
As a sidenote, disregarding someone's life experience over statistics is antisocial behavior that only "works" on internet forums. You'll find, IRL, that RL stories are stickier and we need to listen and understand rather than just appeal to numbers (especially in post-truth "all numbers are lies" modern culture)
/rode a bicycle for more than 40 years, drove three kids on a Panasonic e-mama chari to baseball games and school. Way worse than a car.
I use bicycle nearly every day even during winter in Toronto. And no I am not taking my car downtown, it is crazy, I use bike for it. Still I own car, use it for pleasure travel and for visiting my relatives and friends spread all over Ontario, also when shopping for larger items. To those who want to take my car away: FUCK YOU.
It's also simply not feasible for people who don't live in metropolitan areas. Should we just leave rural folk to go back to the horse and buggy? What does Joe Blow in Wyoming do if he lives 2 miles from his nearest neighbor and 25 miles from town?
There's a giant class of people that will be left behind if we get rid of cars, and they're being continually ignored by the anti-car movement. The pro bike / anti-car people have a point, but they will have to address this problem if they want to reach their end goals.
Rural folk are already a relatively small portion of the population in developed countries (<15% in the US) and that trend will only continue. We should be optimizing for the areas where the vast majority of people live, and where car-free lifestyles are absolutely feasible with proper infrastructure.
I do agree that we can optimize for the cities, but the general attitude towards the people who are going to be worst affected by the ban of ICEs is to look down at them and laugh - as Colbert exclaimed, "I don't care if gas goes to $15 a gallon, because I drive a Tesla!" That's not a healthy approach (and note, I'm not accusing you of doing this, I'm just explaining the way this issue is being approached by the upper class at large).
15% of the US is about 50,000,000 people. To reduce the fraction, that's 3 in 20 Americans. That's a lot of people to just hand-wave away and leave behind. These are people, not dinosaurs. They also control our food supply. I think it's in our best interest to account for them in our plan for the future, and treat them well.
I think Texas continues to defy this, especially in politics. Dallas, Houston, Austin/San Antonio all tend to be more liberal and are the larger concentration of population, however they always get out voted by the rural populations. (gerrymandering has really done a number here) So in this case, the rural adds up to be large enough numbers to not be ignored. The sheer size of Texas is unique though, so it is kind of an edge case, but definitely not one to be ignored.
But we don't need a one-size-fits-all solution. If the 80%(?) (and steadily but surely rising) part of the population that lives in urban areas in developed nations switch to public transportation, cargo bikes, the occasional car-for-hire use, and whatnot, it makes the problem of scaling up EV battery production, synthetic fuel production, or CO2 release from using fossil fuels for the remaining 20% that much easier.
I do question what my life would look like in that case - for the past 5 years I lived about 7 miles from work. I am currently in a college town while I am finishing up at university, and so I'm now: 3 miles from school, ~40 miles from work.
I use pseudo-public transport (a shuttle that my apartment complex provides / runs privately) to get to school every day. However, that situation works because there is a large group of people that need to go to exactly the same place (campus) at approximately the same time every day. I still need a car, because I often have to go to school late in the evening to use lab equipment when the shuttles don't run.
For work, it's even more important to have a car - a public transport route would likely take ~45 minutes compared to the ~12 minute drive on my old 7 mile commute. For the 40+ mile commute I have now, I'd likely have to jump between several different busses (go from my town to the town my company is at, then a bus from there to the regional airport where my office is). That would probably be at least an hour and a half, each way -- if you could even get the city to run a route from a hub to that regional airport.
All of this is not to mention trips I take just to explore, or to go hiking, or to see friends or family in distant towns, grocery shopping, or visiting a specific specialty store.
From what I've seen so far, the only people whose quality of life wouldn't be decimated by a lack of a car are the most privileged - young elites in major cities who live close to work (and can cycle there), who can afford the fees for an uber or taxi when they need one, or who work entirely remotely. The people in the lower and middle class who commute to work and want to go grab beers with friends a few miles away on their friday night - well, they're either forgotten, or mocked when they're remembered. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth for the whole thing.
It's not about morals. It's about wanting to get somewhere in cities in reasonable time, not breathing poisonous air and without fear of getting run over by a 2 ton SUV. Cars are just too inefficient (because of their size) and too expensive a solution. If you ban all of them in cities today and give people small electric vehicles (e-bikes, e-wheelchairs etc) personal transport would actually be faster (and healthier and safer and cheaper) plus we would free up a very significant % of most valuable land.
While I hope you're right, I think this is possibly not something we'll see in our lifetime.
To completely give up your car you'd have to put in place systems that allow you to function without it in all aspects of life. From suburban planning to doing your shopping. The amount of work needed is staggering. It took us a long time to see the damage of car culture, and it will take decades, if not longer, to change it.
Yes, and the US is a lost cause at this point, but other places might be able to manage it.
I'm not actually saying that people shouldn't ever be able to drive, just that it should be reasonable for people to need cars rarely and be able to rent them for those occasions where they do.
Depends where you live. USA, given what I've seen in the four months total I've been there? Perhaps as you say, though allowing one home on a street to be converted into a convenience store[0], would make a big difference even there.
But here in Berlin, I already have such a city: a 15 minute walk gives me a railway station, 22 stops for the metro and the bus, at least a dozen sit down restaurants and cafes, 17 supermarkets plus IDK how many corner shops, and both a construction store and a large home electronics store.
Try to do that today in Davis CA, and the closest you can manage is about half that and even then you're limited to one of Aggie Village, Old East, Old North, or on top of one of the shops or restaurants. Most of it has roads too wide to be a safe pedestrian option — I tried, I didn't feel safe, and it was relatively good compared to the other places I visited in the US!
An absolute metric shitton. If you made Berlin (today at ~4k people / sq km) the same density as Paris (today at ~20k people / sq km), you could add nearly 15m residents.
Mainly because we're not building houses fast enough right now. Although, I'm not even sure how much of a problem the city really has even then, it's kind of difficult to match up given the attitudes to renting here are like the attitudes to buying in the UK, and all the follow-on consequences of that.
However, "build millions of affordable houses really fast with almost no money" is something that this city, indeed the whole country and several adjacent countries, have done when they had to, so housing definitely isn't an insurmountable problem.
We're still regularly digging up the unexploded bombs from the same bombing runs that made rebuilding (with no money) necessary, but that's a local issue, you don't get so much of that in Washington or Mississippi. Or indeed (the original) Cambridge.
How green is all that construction? How expensive is it to build all those green buildings? It’s not a tricky question, I assure you, having just finished a six months investigation on rent/buy and renovate/build in Germany.
> How green is all that construction? How expensive is it to build all those green buildings?
Wildly indeterminate on both questions because at that scale it is primarily a function of government rules and interventions rather than personal actions — just consider how much money people actually had when half the city was built.
But that also goes both ways, because a single building doesn't need to care about most of the infrastructure — sure, the site needs to have utility connections and a road, but you personally neither need to nor care to make the decisions about the capacity of the nearby sewage farm/high voltage power lines, or if there are enough schools/hospital beds/police stations, or if the Autobahn and Eisenbahn have enough capacity to supply the supermarkets.
I know it can be done cheap because of how little money there was when most of it was first put together, and that other much poorer nations also do many of these things.
But exactly how cheap? Exactly how green? I don't know if your investigation was professional or personal, but either way I suspect you have more to tell me than vice-versa.
I LOVE the idea of going car free. But in the US, it might be a lost cause. Definitely not going to happen in my lifetime. It's so poorly managed. It's really a shame. When I travel to Germany and experience what is possible it makes it even more depressing. I can't even get to my local park without risking my life - no sidewalks and I live within a mile.
The good news is that it's not all or nothing. There are places people live in the US today without car (I've done it myself). Improving and expanding those areas, as well as creating new car-free zones, is achievable.
> because nobody won't be able to afford new cars.
Wait, what? The price differential is not that significant, there are also cheap new EVs, and driving a 30 year old car with EU fuel prices and mandatory technical maintenance costs won't be a much more affordable option, and there are pollution laws like Paris which ensure that older, more polluting cars can't enter city centers. If new cars become more expensive, it's likely to cause some limited decline in usage, but saying "nobody won't be able to afford new cars" is useless hyperbole.
This is exactly what I am expecting as well. People here earning 100k USD a year can't comprehend that people who earn 20k EUR a year or less does not have means to buy even a used BEV. But they have means to buy 15 years old beater.
If they're not buying new cars, then nothing changes for them in 2035; and if they buy 15-year old beaters, then there's time until 2050 for the used EV market to normalize - because right now it is (of course) distorted as the early adopter EV cars were more of the expensive end and not represent the median family car.
What‘s your proposal to get transportation emissions to zero?
Mine is an appropriate CO2 price (pricing in the currently not priced in externalities) and then distributing most of the money from that equally back to everyone (meaning those who earn less and also pollute less will on average get more money back than the increase in CO2 costs for them while still preserving a strong incentive to reduce emissions).
It seems pretty clear to me that in that world BEVs are the only viable way forward for personal transportation.
It's too late. Budget cars are already gone. We dont need EVs to destroy affordability. It's already happening. Used car prices have already doubled or tripled in the last few years. Do you have $4000 for a used car? That will get you a beater with around 200,000 miles on it. Average new car price is $45,000. That's around $600-800/mo for a car payment. That's not affordable. The manufacturers have all figured out that there's significantly more profit for them though. Why make 20 budget cars when you only need to sell 5 luxury models to make the same profit?
you are quoting outdated losers of the market isights.
Right now EV market is in the middle of price wars that drives EV especially with incentives into very affordable area.
Wind power will drive it even further , Tesla released $30/mo for night charging in Texas. I pay $200-$300/mo for gasoline. 200x12mox10years = $24,000 per 10 years of ownership of pure profit just on gas. I'm not including other benefits. You got a free Toyota Camry ( Nissan Leaf) every 10 years, just on TCO improvements.
There is a program for a compact chinese made EV in EU for $70/mo of lease. Yes its a very cheap car, but still it's a perfect city car.
Tesla on their investors day announced dramatic cuts of production costs, up to 50%.
EV for many cases IS much cheaper NOW. It will be waay cheaper in 10 years.
Stellantis is just a legacy automaker with no EV expertise, so no wonder they struggle to make money on EVs.
There is an abundance of lithium on Earth. Increased demand increases production. The price spikes are temporary due to a lag between increases in demand and the production that follows: https://youtu.be/Hl1zEzVUV7w?t=3262
around 65 million new cars are sold per year. toyota/vw do 10m each year each.
sales of super sports cars (ferrari, mclaren, lamborghini) combined are less than 20k units per year.
so, only one in 3.000 cars is a super sports car. additionally those cars usually do extremly low mileage of less than 1000km per year. you'd be very hard pressed to find a used ferrari with more than 30k kilometers, even when looking for very old ones
so if we combine the rough numbers (1/3000 the volume, 1/10 the mileage, 5 times the consumption) we arrive at the conclusion that only 0.016% of the car emissions come from super sports cars. the number is so low it is basically meaningless, especially since private transport is not a huge percentage of emissions to begin with. for the climate it would be better to upgrade a single old tanker or steel factory than to outlaw combustion V12 sports cars. forcing niche manufacturers to EV-only is not about the climate, it is about jealousy and malevolence, as is most of politics.
Which is why the right way to do this is to increase taxes on fossil fuels to the point that it makes financial sense to upgrade an old tanker of steel factory or buy an electric car.
People are terrible at doing total cost of ownership budgeting, and will be swayed by a cheaper price upfront. You need to provide the economical incentive (or regulation) when the car is bought to counteract it.
> People are terrible at doing total cost of ownership budgeting, and will be swayed by a cheaper price upfront.
All people don't behave this way.
People with limited incomes who drive cars generally are very careful about upfront and operational costs. That's why they are the primary buyers of small (mostly used) gasoline powered vehicles. They nearly all have a sense of what kind of MPG they can afford to get. This is because they have higher energy burden.
The people who make the choice of buying an inefficient (usually larger) car are usually buying more expensive cars, and are those who have enough income that energy costs aren't a significant burden for them.
New and used EVs aren't yet affordable for the former group, but when that happens, lower income people will make pretty rational choices about operational costs.
As a counter, the fact that finance options have increased to 48, 60, and 72 month options. Anyone concerned about the overall cost would never choose 72 months, but the majority of people only care about that the number for each month. So while they are getting a lower monthly payment, the overall price paid for the car is much higher.
Sometimes people make "unrational" choices solely because of something more immediate to them.
I can confirm this - I got a 72 month loan on my current car when my finances were a lot worse and it was pitched to me as making it affordable. The price every month now is incredibly sustainable, but I have this suspicion that I'm way overpaying for what I bought.
Honestly, everything about that purchasing experience has taught me to steer clear of dealers unless I'm ready to buy on the spot and have done my own homework.
There's a lot to consider with financing a car that isn't necessarily obvious to most people. We've all heard that the car depreciates in value significantly the second you drive it off the lot. With a 72 month note, you are upside down on the note for a much much longer time. Since it is a car, there is a greater than zero chance of getting in a wreck. It could be a situation that after insurance pays off the deemed value, you are still owing the financing company for a car that you can no longer use. This is why gap insurance is important for the longer term financing.
> Anyone concerned about the overall cost would never choose 72 months, but the majority of people only care about that the number for each month.
There's no golden rule about ideal finance term lengths. It could make a lot of sense for an individual to elect to maximize near term cash flow in exchange for a higher total cost.
After all, in car dependent societies the chief value of a car is to get you to your place for work so you can earn money to support yourself.
Car prices also don't scale down infinitely, so it's not like you can always find a practical car for yourself that you can pay off in 48 months.
Similarly, if overall costs were the only thing that mattered, I'd have no mortgage on my house, but then I just wouldn't have a house, so I instead have a 30 year mortgage.
Are we really trying to compare financing a house to financing a car? I have an issue with that for one main reason. Your house doesn't move and subject to the irrational decisions of other houses moving at high rates of velocity within mere feet of each other. Also, your house is pretty much (if you maintain it) only going to increase in value. Your car will never increase in value within any rational expectation. I seriously doubt that in 25 years (time required to be considered classic) that collectors will be looking to buy restored Chevy Cruise, Ford Escape, or Toyota Corolla from an auction house.
> Are we really trying to compare financing a house to financing a car? I have an issue with that for one main reason. Your house doesn't move and subject to the irrational decisions of other houses moving at high rates of velocity within mere feet of each other.
No, but plenty of other unplanned things happen to houses. Otherwise why have homeowners insurance?
> Also, your house is pretty much (if you maintain it) only going to increase in value.
That depends on your timescale. Can you wait 10 years for a house not to be underwater? A whole lot of folks from 2008 couldn't - including people who were current on their mortgage but needed to move for work. Also plenty of locations go into secular decline and the houses lose real value even with maintenance.
2008 situation was a weird one with crooked finance companies screwing a whole lot of people. sure, some blame can be placed on those taking the loans, but that's quite a bit of victim blaming to me.
the concept of people buying houses and moving every couple of years is something that I always thought strange. i don't care what kind of loan you took out, there's no way that can be sustainable. emergencies happen, and there are somethings that can be done to help, but using 2008 as a torch bearer seems off to me.
Car sellers will advertise it, and in the worst case, the government can keep jacking up fossil fuel taxes so that if people did not learn arithmetic in elementary school, they will learn it within a couple years of owning the car.
I absolutely agree and was very much confused by the article. It seems the obvious answer is to cap the number of such cars that can be produced by a manufacturer per year (sole are probably already below that cap) and tax regular gasoline/diesel for “consumer road use” at high enough rates with that tax going to greenification in general (refurbishing plants, carbon capture, etc).
Devising an alternate fuel vertical (from fuel synthesis to the engines that use it) seems so damn wasteful and purposefully oblivious that I’m genuinely thinking it can only happen in an attempt to avoid red tape in a bureaucratic hell-hole.
The ones up for sale in a general classifieds site are likely to be the higher-used ones. Many private collected Ferraris are driven under 100 miles per year, but won’t show up in general classifieds. (If they change hands, it’s more likely via word of mouth or marque-specific forums like f-chat.)
This seems like an easy fix if they're not actually being driven, just don't make these supercars street legal. Have the exemption be "if you're driving the car on a racetrack then it can be ICE."
I'm a bit worried about creation of a loophole similar to emission and safety exemptions for "light trucks" in the US that made SUVs and pick-up trucks explode in popularity. A common-sense exemption for actual work tools ended up making it most profitable to promote and sell ridiculously oversized cars to everyone. In the end it backfired on both safety and emissions overall.
An exemption for sports cars could similarly be abused and backfire if people who would prefer to continue driving their 4-cylinder cars will have only V12 as the only option.
In the 1970s, the United States government established regulations on vehicle emissions and safety standards through the Clean Air Act and the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act. These regulations required automobile manufacturers to meet certain emissions and safety standards, which led to the production of smaller and more fuel-efficient cars.
However, a loophole was created for "light trucks," which were exempt from many of these regulations. This exemption was intended to benefit small businesses and farmers who used pickup trucks and vans for their work.
In the 1980s and 1990s, automakers started exploiting this loophole by producing larger and more powerful "light trucks" like SUVs and pickups. These vehicles were classified as "light trucks" even though they were often used for personal transportation rather than work purposes.
Since these "light trucks" were exempt from many emissions and safety standards, automakers could produce larger and less fuel-efficient vehicles without facing the same penalties as they would for passenger cars. As a result, SUVs and pickups exploded in popularity, as consumers were drawn to their size, power, and perceived safety.
This loophole has since been narrowed, and many SUVs and pickups now have to meet the same emissions and safety standards as passenger cars. However, the legacy of this exemption lives on, as SUVs and pickups continue to be popular in the United States.
The way I was told the story, was that there were two exemptions, one for sports cars, and one for utility vehicles. So, just to be sure, the new cars were baptised "Sport Utility Vehicles", which is obviously non-sense, a vehicle cannot be at the same time both sports and utility.
The selling trucks to everyone was probably more due to that fact that in 1964 the US imposed a 25% tax on imported light trucks to retaliate for a European tax on US chicken (google chicken tax). This highly motivated domestic manufactures to promote truck purchases (and later SUVs). 60 years of marketing and here we are.
thanks for following up with more detailed numbers here.
> Ferrari shipped ... Lamborghini shipped
both of these also make SUVs now, which account for the majority of their sales. i was only referring to their real sports car offerings. those are traditionally roughly 5k worldwide per those 3 mentioned brands.
> Corvette ... 911
not really super sports cars, at least most editions of them. and i agree if including them all we are looking at a lot larger numbers, not that it changes my argument much.
How about treating these kind of cars as a separate class? Sure, you can have an ICE car, but it is not allowed in cities, and you pay a ton of taxes each year.
If the car cost $150k+ make it even with rocket engine, unless it safe. Let them pay heavy tax for a "benefit" of emitting stinky gas everywhere around, make a lot of noise everywhere they go.
if there is no car on the market within 15% price range of gasoline one, e.g. the cheapest options, allow them to sell gasoline.
review every year, profit.
With this schema, you can ban any car that is within range of $50k to 150$k easily with no harm to anyone in 2025.
Luxury car brands do not deserve any special treatment.
As for all the same tired debates on HN about cars, it is so simple. Average people in the city do not need a car if the city is properly and humanely designed. Yes some workers, industries and people outside cities still require vehicles, that is not the debate. Majority of urban life should be free from pointless poisonous car driving. Luxury SUVs and sports cars are definitely something that could be curtailed.
I personally think efuels are a good idea, it'll create infrastructure needed to support ALL the legacy cars that will continue to exist in the used market at 2035. They can do an efuel phase-out over the next few years banning all combustible sales including used cars by say 2050.
the EU trying to regulate everything out of existence sucks big time.
why not just double the taxes on carbon fuels . if a gallon of hydrocarbons cost 4EUR make it 7EUR. so people who wanna drive v6 / v8 engines can continue doing that as a hobby.
i'm sure the hydrocarbons being burned by average joe in his mustang and rich jill in her ferrari over the weekend. are just minuscule compared to the hydrocarbons released by aviation, military and industry.
if alternative fuels work and allow engines to be loud then let it be. we only live one life.
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[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 220 ms ] threadThere is no doubt it will make good fuel for F1 engines and even for the change-averse aviation fuel market. The best use case today is the US Navy wanting to make e-Fuel from seawater, fuel, and nuclear energy which will help carriers keep their air wing fueled without slowing down to take on fuel from a tanker. Most of the serious work on synthetic fuels for ground transport has centered around single-entity fuels such as hydrogen, ammonia, 1-butanol, dimethyl ether, etc. I’d guess though if you can afford a legacy Ferrari you can afford to fuel it with FT gasoline.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetane_number#Typical_values
So with todays digital technology, instead of the analogue world of the 1920's, it would seem the Fischer-Tropsch[2] process has every chance of succeeding on an undustrial scale, bringing vehicle fuel to inhospital regions of the planet, and yet the nuclear industry with notably scaled down nuclear reactors or Small Modular Reactors [3] could be the saviour of the automotive sector, something the Germans have experience of as well, if stuxnet [4] and Iran are anything to go by.
I still dont know why we dont bury nuclear waste using a convergent boundary [5] from plate tectonics. Its all ultimately come from core of this planet, why not return it to the core for the ultimate form of recycling, like much of our landfill waste, and man made waste. I sometimes think environmentalists and politicians want us to live in our waste.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_diamond#High_pressur...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_proces...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_boundary
The problem of building structures that last 1000 years is well within our experience.
I read the news to see controlling human behaviour still isnt.
They have to pump salt water into underground wells as crude floats on top and they use this pumped salt water pressure to extract the last drops of crude.
The fracking industry have also learnt a thing or two ironically as well!
This gives a good example of what is happening deep underground. https://inthecompanyofvolcanoes.blogspot.com/2019/08/content...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780128113011/magmas-unde...
At best, it would be like using a dye in water before it goes into a underground cave system in order to trace where it comes out, but the timescales might just be appropriate for the radioactive decay of said material.
TLDR, if the plate is convergent, what could go wrong?
Fischer-Tropsch, while more widely known, is better for producing diesel and turbine type fuels.
Though the same basic objections you present are there for the Bergius process as well, capital intensive and consumes a lot of energy, so hard to imagine such fuels being economically viable.
AFAIU the Bergius process can use any source of carbon, doesn't need to be coal. The reason Nazi Germany used it for aviation fuel was that it apparently produces a lot of aromatics, whereas FT tends to produce more straight alkanes which are fine for diesel or jet fuel but have very poor octane rating. Though the lots-of-aromatics approach to increasing octane might not be compatible with current day pollution specifications.
When the ban hits the price of second hand ICE cars will explode. This will mean in practice that a lot of people will not be able to afford a car any more. Now this might be a feature, not a bug, depending on how you look at it.
Rural Europe is a disaster if you don't have a your own transport, as either there is no public transport, or it's atrocious (eg. 2 buses a week in some places).
"Europe" is a big place with lots of differences so I can't generalize to the entire continent, which includes places I've never even been to, but quite a few places could almost entirely eliminate car ownership within a matter of years if they wanted. Whether that's desirable in the first place is something I'll leave for everyone to decide for themselves, but it really is just a question of "want" rather than "can".
I'm not excited by the current number of cars either, don't get me wrong. It just saddens me the working class has to pay the price, again.
Less pollution, less disease, less war, less imports, cheaper transport, higher standard of living. Its a win win win win and you have to have your head deep in far right conspiracy nonsense to believe otherwise.
The EU banned incandescent light bulbs and apart from minor whinging there's been no real problems. This is a bigger version.
CFL's were progress, right?
Maybe. Yet I still think setting a hard clear deadline is a good thing, even if it ends up getting delayed in the end. It creates clear goals and focusses what we want to work towards, rather than a vague "in the future we'll be able to solve things, somehow".
And who knows ... lots of things can be possible with sufficient pressure.
The purpose of setting a deadline is not to achieve a specific thing at the nominated date, but to establish bounds on the timeline for activity. We know well that unbounded schedules fail to motivate action; so we set a boundary and then compromise on what is delivered over the resulting interval.
The 2035 deadline is a forcing function. It exists to frame discussion and to instill a sense of urgency.
ICE bans are already taking effect in cities across Europe. Viable transportation alternatives already exist for people in these cities. As the bans become more common place, the pain points will be identified and resolved.
Twelve years is a long time. The world has changed a lot since 2011.
We are not being led by serious people.
I really don't get those "pro e-fuel arguments" if I'm supposed to forget that we're talking about luxury sports cars.
There will be lots of used BEVs in the market in 12 years from now. Nobody knows how electricity production will look like in 12 years, but it seems like there will be more and more renewables. Distribution grids might change somewhat in 12 years, too. People don't need to charge BEVs everyday, also nobody knows how public charging infrastructure will look like in 12 years, so no problems for people in "old apartment buildings".
Lots of speculation, little information.
Maybe not - but in the UK we know how long it takes to flood a valley for pumped hydro storage, or to build a new nuclear plant, or to roll out new equipment to people's homes (like smart meters) - More than 12 years.
So we don't know what electricity production will look like - but we surely know what it won't look like.
So apart from subsidizing the purchase price which already happens widely, perhaps the government should provide cheap loans for people who don't have the initial capital to buy an EV.
Also, There are signs we've already hit the peak for conventional oil. This report [1] claims that by the 2030s Europe will see its access to oil reduced by 10-20%. So running an ICE car will only go up from here. There's good reasons to assume the costs of EVs will only go down.
Wrt to the grid, the french grid operator RTE published a study [2] saying that they estimate that by 2035 there will be 15.6 million EVs on the road, a bit half of the 38m total cars on french roads today. The study says this would represent 8-10% of today's electricity consumption and would pose no danger to the stability of the grid. About 2 million new cars are sold here every year, so after 2035 the percentage would go up by 1% every year to 20% or so. A challenge but definitely feasible.
1: https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/oil-what-are-the-risk... 2: https://www-rte--france-com.translate.goog/actualites/develo...
Thing is that there is more than 50% people in EU who has no place to charge at home, because they are living in apartments. SO they will be charging on expensive Fast DC chargers. It will be more expensive than owning an ICE and also massively less comfortable because you will be waiting on car to get charged, thus wasting your time.
You typically have less car ownership in cities though...
Why should it be even the case? Why should employer pay for building chargers, maintaining it and paying bills?
EVs are already cheaper and better, they're only going to get more so. Business cost savings will drive the transition.
e-fuels will be a big thing for long distance air travel and similar tech for chemical feedstocks but everyone else has better options already.
"affordable cars" is way below "habitable planet" in my prio list.
The technocrats in Brussels are way out of their mind if they think the average European citizen will be able to afford purchasing a new EV in 10 years, and then to purchase a battery/a new EV every other 8-10 years.
And then they'll complain of how come the "populists are taking our votes!".
Will it make new EV cars massively cheaper? I think it's very improbable.
Will it make replacing worn-out batteries economically viable? I think there is hope.
12 years ago, the $30k nissan leaf had a range of 85 miles in a 24kWh battery. A 2023 nissan leaf is $28k, with a 200+ mile advertised range and a 40kWh battery. If you're willing to inflation adjust a little, a $38k nissan leaf today comes with a 60 kWh battery.
12 years before that, we're talking about cars getting 30mpg running on Petrol/Diesel, and we were on euro 2 standards. 12 years is an eternity in technology.
The charging infrastructure is a fun issue, but it's a separate issue.
Parent post makes none of the above claims. You're creating a straw-man.
This article [0] (apolgoies but I'm in the UK so not familiar with the state in the US) talks about the energy mix in 2010 (13 years ago, so close). Wind power could support up to 5.4 GW in 2010 in the UK, and by various sources itcan now do ~25GW. (Today is a strange day, there's a cold snap and we've fired up backup coal stations for the first time in years.).
Grid infrastructure, and consumer interaction with supplier has had enormous changes in that time. In the last 12 months, suppliers have started running schemes where they adjust demand by paying you to reduce usage during peak times [1], introducing day ahead tarriffs [2], and rollig out smart meters which provide usage in 30 minute windows. There are power diverters, and various devices available which hook up to live pricing, and can decide what to do at various points in the day, e.g. divert your solar PV into heating your hot water tank rather than selling it back to the grid.
The movement here _is_ slower, but it _is_ happening.
[0] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
[1] https://octopus.energy/saving-sessions/
[2] https://octopus.energy/help-and-faqs/articles/what-is-a-flex...
[3]
I do'nt really understand the point you're making. From the article you've shared,
> Combining wind with other renewable resources such as solar, hydropower and the ability to smartly manage our electricity demand will be critical at times like this summer when the wind is not blowing.
Which is pretty much exactly what is happening. We're wind heavy because it makes sense to be here, but if we were closer to the equator it would make sense to be solar heavy, for example.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: only if a skunkworks effort takes place to reverse engineer and open source the low-level controllers/ECUs in these vehicles. Manufacturers have no incentive to reduce the “planned obsolescence” EV cars come with by design today. If you want to use future battery tech in a car of today’s vintage, you’re not going to get a manufacturer-sanctioned option.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-ion_battery
The sodium-ion battery (NIB or SIB) is a type of rechargeable battery that uses sodium ions (Na+) as its charge carriers. Its working principle and cell construction are almost identical with those of lithium-ion battery (LIB) types, but replace lithium with sodium.
You can buy a car with this battery type already:
https://www.caixinglobal.com/2023-02-27/volkswagen-jac-ventu...
We already do [0].
[0] https://www.wfp.org/
I’m not sure where you are getting it from that this isn’t happening. I mean, it has to happen. Also, E-Fuels aren’t an alternative since they are even more expensive.
I'm sure they have nice fluffy press releases about an EV future but look at the investments they're making.
They're all still 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.
Those who wouldn't be buying a new car in 10 years, won't - nobody is taking away the existing cars, they'll keep using them until they can or need a new car, and that one will be an EV.
And OEM manufacturers are aware of this problem [1], but has no solution for it. Everyone started making BEVs, so cost for resources went up. And there is no reason for it to go down.
[0] https://www.automotive-fleet.com/157233/market-snapshot-vene...
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-29/stellanti...
The problem with cities will solve itself: no one is going to live in a concrete desert where simple food is too expensive.
California will probably be the best off, in terms of a basically year round growing season and a massive amount of land close to large population centers.
If the person affected by the tax doesn't have an actionable alternative to avoid it and the plan is "vaguely make people worse off so that <random corporation> will make an alternative happen" then you have a bad candidate for a tax and you should do what places are actually doing which is "banhammer for new ICE cars incoming in 20xx, figure it out car manufacturers."
Then OTOH, due to refineries working the way they do, if private cars are replaced by EV's, but long range trucking, marine shipping and aviation remain, refineries will have a huge problem what to do with the gasoline fractions.
Consider Vancouver Island for example, a number of small towns on the east coast of the island anchored by larger cities of Nanaimo and Victoria. They were connected together by a railroad.
As the age of cars took over the railroad tracks went into disrepair and were abandoned. We have a 19th century technology sitting right there to fix this problem. The only thing lacking is political will.
I've seen reports of cyclists who murder pedestrians through hit and runs. Sure this is rare, but we need to make sure the elderly are "safe" from belligerent cyclists and their poisonous online culture.
As such, it might be necessary for us all to walk, at least until we can develop practical systems to regulate speeds on bikes and ensure that the roads are not mad max style kill zone. I suggest a top bike speed limit of 10-12 km to ensure safe streets, with powerful automated brakes that prevent accidental pedestrian hits. It might flip the cyclist over xer handlebars but I'm sick of socializing risks and privatizing benefits; if you are in a rush, you should have left earlier.
Why settle for anything less than safety for decent society?
Incidentally, I agree with reducing polluting cars for pollution reduction measures. Sadly that means I don't care once we move to electric cars. You'll find most people are in that boat.
I'm amused that you think this is some sort of "gotcha". As someone who cycles, I would take this deal without hesitation it got rid of cars.
Of course, cycle-on-pedestrian deaths basically zero relative to the deaths caused by cars, so it's a worthless analogy. However, I do like the implication that we should be regulating transit based on momentum rather than just having special status for cars.
The MRI and everything was awful and I wish I had been able to do something to stop it. You are going to be disappointed if you think anything will keep our kids safe.
(Unrelated but in Japan, our health care did not cover the costs for the accident; the cyclist paid us for our out of pocket expenses as the police had found her pretty quickly)
Car crashes are a top 2 (often top 1) killer of children in ~every developed country. Cycling doesn't crack the top 10. Its intellectually dishonest to pretend that cars and bikes are comparable dangers to children.
As a sidenote, disregarding someone's life experience over statistics is antisocial behavior that only "works" on internet forums. You'll find, IRL, that RL stories are stickier and we need to listen and understand rather than just appeal to numbers (especially in post-truth "all numbers are lies" modern culture)
/rode a bicycle for more than 40 years, drove three kids on a Panasonic e-mama chari to baseball games and school. Way worse than a car.
There's a giant class of people that will be left behind if we get rid of cars, and they're being continually ignored by the anti-car movement. The pro bike / anti-car people have a point, but they will have to address this problem if they want to reach their end goals.
15% of the US is about 50,000,000 people. To reduce the fraction, that's 3 in 20 Americans. That's a lot of people to just hand-wave away and leave behind. These are people, not dinosaurs. They also control our food supply. I think it's in our best interest to account for them in our plan for the future, and treat them well.
I do question what my life would look like in that case - for the past 5 years I lived about 7 miles from work. I am currently in a college town while I am finishing up at university, and so I'm now: 3 miles from school, ~40 miles from work.
I use pseudo-public transport (a shuttle that my apartment complex provides / runs privately) to get to school every day. However, that situation works because there is a large group of people that need to go to exactly the same place (campus) at approximately the same time every day. I still need a car, because I often have to go to school late in the evening to use lab equipment when the shuttles don't run.
For work, it's even more important to have a car - a public transport route would likely take ~45 minutes compared to the ~12 minute drive on my old 7 mile commute. For the 40+ mile commute I have now, I'd likely have to jump between several different busses (go from my town to the town my company is at, then a bus from there to the regional airport where my office is). That would probably be at least an hour and a half, each way -- if you could even get the city to run a route from a hub to that regional airport.
All of this is not to mention trips I take just to explore, or to go hiking, or to see friends or family in distant towns, grocery shopping, or visiting a specific specialty store.
From what I've seen so far, the only people whose quality of life wouldn't be decimated by a lack of a car are the most privileged - young elites in major cities who live close to work (and can cycle there), who can afford the fees for an uber or taxi when they need one, or who work entirely remotely. The people in the lower and middle class who commute to work and want to go grab beers with friends a few miles away on their friday night - well, they're either forgotten, or mocked when they're remembered. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth for the whole thing.
To completely give up your car you'd have to put in place systems that allow you to function without it in all aspects of life. From suburban planning to doing your shopping. The amount of work needed is staggering. It took us a long time to see the damage of car culture, and it will take decades, if not longer, to change it.
I'm not actually saying that people shouldn't ever be able to drive, just that it should be reasonable for people to need cars rarely and be able to rent them for those occasions where they do.
But here in Berlin, I already have such a city: a 15 minute walk gives me a railway station, 22 stops for the metro and the bus, at least a dozen sit down restaurants and cafes, 17 supermarkets plus IDK how many corner shops, and both a construction store and a large home electronics store.
Try to do that today in Davis CA, and the closest you can manage is about half that and even then you're limited to one of Aggie Village, Old East, Old North, or on top of one of the shops or restaurants. Most of it has roads too wide to be a safe pedestrian option — I tried, I didn't feel safe, and it was relatively good compared to the other places I visited in the US!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convenience_store
How many people more can we fit in such Berlin?
However, "build millions of affordable houses really fast with almost no money" is something that this city, indeed the whole country and several adjacent countries, have done when they had to, so housing definitely isn't an insurmountable problem.
We're still regularly digging up the unexploded bombs from the same bombing runs that made rebuilding (with no money) necessary, but that's a local issue, you don't get so much of that in Washington or Mississippi. Or indeed (the original) Cambridge.
Wildly indeterminate on both questions because at that scale it is primarily a function of government rules and interventions rather than personal actions — just consider how much money people actually had when half the city was built.
But that also goes both ways, because a single building doesn't need to care about most of the infrastructure — sure, the site needs to have utility connections and a road, but you personally neither need to nor care to make the decisions about the capacity of the nearby sewage farm/high voltage power lines, or if there are enough schools/hospital beds/police stations, or if the Autobahn and Eisenbahn have enough capacity to supply the supermarkets.
I know it can be done cheap because of how little money there was when most of it was first put together, and that other much poorer nations also do many of these things.
But exactly how cheap? Exactly how green? I don't know if your investigation was professional or personal, but either way I suspect you have more to tell me than vice-versa.
The right question is, how do you copy what it does right at the lowest cost in the places that do it wrong?
Wait, what? The price differential is not that significant, there are also cheap new EVs, and driving a 30 year old car with EU fuel prices and mandatory technical maintenance costs won't be a much more affordable option, and there are pollution laws like Paris which ensure that older, more polluting cars can't enter city centers. If new cars become more expensive, it's likely to cause some limited decline in usage, but saying "nobody won't be able to afford new cars" is useless hyperbole.
Both of which are predicated on continued political will.
I can see the out of touch upper middle class driving things far enough off a cliff that populists get elected and change these things.
Mine is an appropriate CO2 price (pricing in the currently not priced in externalities) and then distributing most of the money from that equally back to everyone (meaning those who earn less and also pollute less will on average get more money back than the increase in CO2 costs for them while still preserving a strong incentive to reduce emissions).
It seems pretty clear to me that in that world BEVs are the only viable way forward for personal transportation.
[0] https://www.autotrader.com/cars-for-sale/all-cars/cars-under...
Right now EV market is in the middle of price wars that drives EV especially with incentives into very affordable area.
Wind power will drive it even further , Tesla released $30/mo for night charging in Texas. I pay $200-$300/mo for gasoline. 200x12mox10years = $24,000 per 10 years of ownership of pure profit just on gas. I'm not including other benefits. You got a free Toyota Camry ( Nissan Leaf) every 10 years, just on TCO improvements.
There is a program for a compact chinese made EV in EU for $70/mo of lease. Yes its a very cheap car, but still it's a perfect city car.
Tesla on their investors day announced dramatic cuts of production costs, up to 50%.
EV for many cases IS much cheaper NOW. It will be waay cheaper in 10 years.
There is an abundance of lithium on Earth. Increased demand increases production. The price spikes are temporary due to a lag between increases in demand and the production that follows: https://youtu.be/Hl1zEzVUV7w?t=3262
around 65 million new cars are sold per year. toyota/vw do 10m each year each.
sales of super sports cars (ferrari, mclaren, lamborghini) combined are less than 20k units per year.
so, only one in 3.000 cars is a super sports car. additionally those cars usually do extremly low mileage of less than 1000km per year. you'd be very hard pressed to find a used ferrari with more than 30k kilometers, even when looking for very old ones
so if we combine the rough numbers (1/3000 the volume, 1/10 the mileage, 5 times the consumption) we arrive at the conclusion that only 0.016% of the car emissions come from super sports cars. the number is so low it is basically meaningless, especially since private transport is not a huge percentage of emissions to begin with. for the climate it would be better to upgrade a single old tanker or steel factory than to outlaw combustion V12 sports cars. forcing niche manufacturers to EV-only is not about the climate, it is about jealousy and malevolence, as is most of politics.
All people don't behave this way. People with limited incomes who drive cars generally are very careful about upfront and operational costs. That's why they are the primary buyers of small (mostly used) gasoline powered vehicles. They nearly all have a sense of what kind of MPG they can afford to get. This is because they have higher energy burden.
The people who make the choice of buying an inefficient (usually larger) car are usually buying more expensive cars, and are those who have enough income that energy costs aren't a significant burden for them.
New and used EVs aren't yet affordable for the former group, but when that happens, lower income people will make pretty rational choices about operational costs.
Sometimes people make "unrational" choices solely because of something more immediate to them.
Honestly, everything about that purchasing experience has taught me to steer clear of dealers unless I'm ready to buy on the spot and have done my own homework.
There's no golden rule about ideal finance term lengths. It could make a lot of sense for an individual to elect to maximize near term cash flow in exchange for a higher total cost.
After all, in car dependent societies the chief value of a car is to get you to your place for work so you can earn money to support yourself.
Car prices also don't scale down infinitely, so it's not like you can always find a practical car for yourself that you can pay off in 48 months.
Similarly, if overall costs were the only thing that mattered, I'd have no mortgage on my house, but then I just wouldn't have a house, so I instead have a 30 year mortgage.
No, but plenty of other unplanned things happen to houses. Otherwise why have homeowners insurance?
> Also, your house is pretty much (if you maintain it) only going to increase in value.
That depends on your timescale. Can you wait 10 years for a house not to be underwater? A whole lot of folks from 2008 couldn't - including people who were current on their mortgage but needed to move for work. Also plenty of locations go into secular decline and the houses lose real value even with maintenance.
the concept of people buying houses and moving every couple of years is something that I always thought strange. i don't care what kind of loan you took out, there's no way that can be sustainable. emergencies happen, and there are somethings that can be done to help, but using 2008 as a torch bearer seems off to me.
Devising an alternate fuel vertical (from fuel synthesis to the engines that use it) seems so damn wasteful and purposefully oblivious that I’m genuinely thinking it can only happen in an attempt to avoid red tape in a bureaucratic hell-hole.
The f-chat listings are significantly lower miles/year: https://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/forums/cars.303/
An exemption for sports cars could similarly be abused and backfire if people who would prefer to continue driving their 4-cylinder cars will have only V12 as the only option.
In the 1970s, the United States government established regulations on vehicle emissions and safety standards through the Clean Air Act and the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act. These regulations required automobile manufacturers to meet certain emissions and safety standards, which led to the production of smaller and more fuel-efficient cars.
However, a loophole was created for "light trucks," which were exempt from many of these regulations. This exemption was intended to benefit small businesses and farmers who used pickup trucks and vans for their work.
In the 1980s and 1990s, automakers started exploiting this loophole by producing larger and more powerful "light trucks" like SUVs and pickups. These vehicles were classified as "light trucks" even though they were often used for personal transportation rather than work purposes.
Since these "light trucks" were exempt from many emissions and safety standards, automakers could produce larger and less fuel-efficient vehicles without facing the same penalties as they would for passenger cars. As a result, SUVs and pickups exploded in popularity, as consumers were drawn to their size, power, and perceived safety.
This loophole has since been narrowed, and many SUVs and pickups now have to meet the same emissions and safety standards as passenger cars. However, the legacy of this exemption lives on, as SUVs and pickups continue to be popular in the United States.
This is exactly how loopholes are found. Forget the spirit of the law and look at the letter of the law.
In California you can register a kit car. These cars are not compliant with many regulations. However it’s limited to 500 a year. Which is nothing.
Ferrari now makes 13k cars a year. The previous boss put the cap at 9k iirc. They don’t make as many as they can sell. Neither does Porsche.
These companies can do just fine with production caps that are completely reasonable environmentally.
The tax is still in effect.
Ferrari shipped 13221 units in 2022 (https://www.drive.com.au/news/ferrari-record-deliveries-prof...).
Porsche shipped 7419 units of 911 in 2022 (https://carfigures.com/us-market-brand/porsche/911).
Chevrolet shipped 9130 Corvette units just in the US (https://gmauthority.com/blog/2023/01/chevrolet-corvette-sale...).
Lamborghini delivered 9233 vehicles worldwide in 2022 (https://robbreport.com/motors/cars/lamborghini-sales-record-...).
McLaren figures are pretty difficult to get. Seems to be in the range of 1500 units per year total.
> Ferrari shipped ... Lamborghini shipped
both of these also make SUVs now, which account for the majority of their sales. i was only referring to their real sports car offerings. those are traditionally roughly 5k worldwide per those 3 mentioned brands.
> Corvette ... 911
not really super sports cars, at least most editions of them. and i agree if including them all we are looking at a lot larger numbers, not that it changes my argument much.
If the car cost $150k+ make it even with rocket engine, unless it safe. Let them pay heavy tax for a "benefit" of emitting stinky gas everywhere around, make a lot of noise everywhere they go.
if there is no car on the market within 15% price range of gasoline one, e.g. the cheapest options, allow them to sell gasoline.
review every year, profit.
With this schema, you can ban any car that is within range of $50k to 150$k easily with no harm to anyone in 2025.
Luxury car brands do not deserve any special treatment.
As for all the same tired debates on HN about cars, it is so simple. Average people in the city do not need a car if the city is properly and humanely designed. Yes some workers, industries and people outside cities still require vehicles, that is not the debate. Majority of urban life should be free from pointless poisonous car driving. Luxury SUVs and sports cars are definitely something that could be curtailed.