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Growing moves to ban petrol and diesel cars

Henrin said:
No, it has to do with them being stupid. If I had to guess this is the result of some stupid UN agreement focused around Global Warming.
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You don't know much about any of the three countries mentioned, do you?

Let me give you a hint:

When I broke out into uncontrollable laughter at a Dutch friend having bought himself a Porsche 911, he obviously wanted to know the cause of my merriment. Pointing out to him that hitting the pedal too hard just once in his small country would land him in the North Sea, didn't have him amused.:mrgreen:

However, even if there were charging stations every 200 km or so from Chicago to Houston, I wouldn't want to drive that either, not even in a Tesla. Even getting the full 400 or 500 km out of one charge, the waiting time for recharge would kill me.

That problem doesn't occur in either Netherlands or Denmark and in Norway, especially in the long winters, hardly anybody travels the country's full length from South-West to North-East by car anyway. And you hit more moose than flies in summer.
 
Jack Fabulous said:
Might be but one thing is a dead certainty. Once there are no more fossil fuel cars to tax they will shift that tax to something else. The fossil fuel burning engines may disappear but the tax never will.
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I remember Pete telling me how the Danish Govt heavily subsidised sales of solar panels to Danes who could then sell electricity back to the grid - all stopped when the Danes realised there were no taxes coming in from people who didn't need to buy electricity or pay tax on their purchase of electricity.
 
Chagos said:
Not much different to the same experience in a conventional car with the next gas station just as far away.

The trick (with both) is to look at the bloody gauges often enough.

Fercryinoutloud :mrgreen:
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I can have a can of gas delivered to me in 20-30 minutes. Are you going to deliver a 600 lb. battery cell?
 
Infinite Chaos said:
I remember Pete telling me how the Danish Govt heavily subsidised sales of solar panels to Danes who could then sell electricity back to the grid - all stopped when the Danes realised there were no taxes coming in from people who didn't need to buy electricity or pay tax on their purchase of electricity.
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It is actually worse... the solar panels are so effective that they are pumping so much electricity into the grid that the system needs a seriously upgrade... so the debate is now, who should pay for that upgrade... everyone or just those with these solar panels.

So the solar panel people could be hit by a massive tax/fine/whatever you want to call it, because they were too forward thinking.. go figure.
 
Jack Fabulous said:
Might be but one thing is a dead certainty. Once there are no more fossil fuel cars to tax they will shift that tax to something else. The fossil fuel burning engines may disappear but the tax never will.
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No doubt about that..... but think everything is taxed in Denmark.. air and water included.
 
Chagos said:
Norway actually has the most elctro-cars per capita in the world.

Not only does the 25 pct VAT get scrapped at purchase, import duty also falls flat as well as (obviously) fees for exhausts.

That makes the currently most popular model, the VW E-Golf, around € 8,800 cheaper than the purchase of a conventional Golf.

Beyond which drivers of an e-car are allowed to use the bus lanes, can park on communal lots anywhere free-of-charge and at many locations may charge up free of charge as well.

Many ferries are free of charge and charging points are virtually everywhere, most company parking lots have one for each car there.

Add that Norway is the 5th biggest hydro-power producer in the world meaning that, in ratio to its population, it provides every household with juice from this source so that's not even counting other sources of alternative energy.

It's also the reason people leave the lights on thruout the house all day, whether they're in or out. Electricity is, in relation to income, dirt cheap.

Norwegian oil thus could virtually always all be sold abroad with the profits, sensibly invested, making for the country's overall financial wealth. Add that no petro-giant gets hold of it or the profits other than Norway's own Statoil.

Sensibly never sold to others but in government control.
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Yes the government has been quite wise up there.
 
Glen Contrarian said:
I think that's the case of how someone from the city looks at things as compared to how someone in rural areas looks at things.
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Hey....

I am all for battery powered cars and other forms of renewable energy.

We are getting there step by step............but it's going to be a while.

In my opinion, the Norwegian government is jumping the gun to make it mandatory without a better battery out there on the horizon.........or maybe they have a little inside information on some new battery technology ;)
 
PeteEU said:
It is actually worse... the solar panels are so effective that they are pumping so much electricity into the grid that the system needs a seriously upgrade... so the debate is now, who should pay for that upgrade... everyone or just those with these solar panels.

So the solar panel people could be hit by a massive tax/fine/whatever you want to call it, because they were too forward thinking.. go figure.
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Yes, but as the poster I was quoting commented - eventually those tax breaks on electric cars will go. Right now a 215% tax on petrol cars is ridiculous.
 
Infinite Chaos said:
First:


And then:


That's three countries so far and it's likely to grow. There are obvious problems to do with the production of such vehicles cheaply compared to fossil fuelled cars but the trend is going to continue. Good thing or bad thing?

Would you buy if there was plentiful, cheap alternative energy and such cars were the same price as fossil fuelled cars?
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Well no, I would not buy a new car no matter what technology it used. New cars are way outside of my budget.

But I would retrofit my vehicles if it was cost effective, and provided much better efficiency and was equal to, or better than what my engines can do. If thats not the case then i will wait until it is the case before jumping ship.
 
RetiredUSN said:
Hey....

I am all for battery powered cars and other forms of renewable energy.

We are getting there step by step............but it's going to be a while.

In my opinion, the Norwegian government is jumping the gun to make it mandatory without a better battery out there on the horizon.........or maybe they have a little inside information on some new battery technology ;)
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Hardly anyone can afford to drive there anyways. SO it will be the people that can waste a bunch of money that would be affected.
 
Infinite Chaos said:
Yes, but as the poster I was quoting commented - eventually those tax breaks on electric cars will go. Right now a 215% tax on petrol cars is ridiculous.
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you made me google it.. it is only 180%.. and in many ways it is irrelevant, since it has been there so long that it has become the norm. I believe the idea was to push people away from cars to public transport back in the day..
 
RetiredUSN said:
Hey....

I am all for battery powered cars and other forms of renewable energy.

We are getting there step by step............but it's going to be a while.

In my opinion, the Norwegian government is jumping the gun to make it mandatory without a better battery out there on the horizon.........or maybe they have a little inside information on some new battery technology ;)
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I quite agree. If they said "either battery or hybrid", at least then it would be a bit more workable.
 
Ikari said:
... and guess where that energy is generated from?
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Nuclear energy, the cheapest and most viable for peak-energy needs. The Germans are bonkers for having decided to close its nuclear-plants making the country dependent upon cheap (and smoky) coal from neighboring Poland. (Which, with the prevailing westerlies, is dumped on which country? Poland!)

France (where I live) has employed it judiciously since the 1970s, without the slightest significant accidental death. Far more agents have been accidentally electrocuted on the grid carrying the electricity. Here is the history of nuclear accidents in France. One worker-death is attributed to accidental incidence not directly related to production of nuclear energy.

The stockpiles of nuclear waste are typically stored in underground, man built caves, that only a major cataclysmic earthquake would open to the atmosphere.

There is no doubt whatsoever that non-nuclear means should be innovated and installed to produce concurrent electrical-energy. AND, humans should learn how not to waste it, which means its price should remain high.

But the argument to do away with nuclear-energy is a false one. Rather, it needs to be constrained to high-density population usage.
 
Infinite Chaos said:
First:


And then:


That's three countries so far and it's likely to grow. There are obvious problems to do with the production of such vehicles cheaply compared to fossil fuelled cars but the trend is going to continue. Good thing or bad thing?

Would you buy if there was plentiful, cheap alternative energy and such cars were the same price as fossil fuelled cars?
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At this point in time, prolly not a wise move. I've yet to see a purely electric semi-truck. Much less one that can haul 8 thousand lbs of items across country. I don't know, maybe smaller countries could handle such. Here in the States though? Not going to happen any time soon. Not unless electric vehicles gets a VAST improvement in technology.

Also electric cars do not use "cheap alternative energy". It will still take the same amount of energy to move X car to point B as it does to move Y car to the same place. How you get that energy may be different, but the amount expended is the same. And will reflect the same in your pocket book. And that's assuming that both are equal. If an electric car will take you 300 miles before needing "refilled" where as a gasoline car will take you 600 miles with both having the same relative sized "tank" then you'll actually end up paying more in "gas" with the electric car than with an actual gas car.

That said, I wouldn't mind owning an electric car. If I could pay the same amount for it that I just paid for my '02 van. Which was only $3k. I can't afford brand new cars.
 
PeteEU said:
No doubt about that..... but think everything is taxed in Denmark.. air and water included.
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Then the scenario I just presented would indicate that it STILL isn't enough.
 
Lafayette said:
Nuclear energy, the cheapest and most viable for peak-energy needs.
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Not in America, unfortunately, but actually looking at Norway it would seem that they are almost all hydroelectric so it's not so bad there. The Dutch, I think, are not quite as clean. It looks like they use a lot more fossil fuels.
 
RetiredUSN said:
I can have a can of gas delivered to me in 20-30 minutes. Are you going to deliver a 600 lb. battery cell?
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True enough a comparison. Except that I've never had to have a can of gas delivered in my life. I just filled up when the lights told me to. Usually well before that, even where the "on reserve" light still gave me around another 100 kms.
 
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Glen Contrarian said:
I think that's the case of how someone from the city looks at things as compared to how someone in rural areas looks at things.
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I've lived in both (now it's very rural) and the car's control panels stayed the same.
 
RetiredUSN said:
Hey....

I am all for battery powered cars and other forms of renewable energy.

We are getting there step by step............but it's going to be a while.

In my opinion, the Norwegian government is jumping the gun to make it mandatory without a better battery out there on the horizon.........or maybe they have a little inside information on some new battery technology ;)
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The thing here is that one country's particular situation can't be transported in a one to one comparison onto yet another.

Norway's system has already shown to work, at least in the changes so far made. That's an encouragement for moving further.

In no way does that mean that the already initiated Norwegian model would work, for instance, in France.

Topography, size, population (density of car ownership), sources of energy, average mileage per capita and year, etc. etc., none of it compares.

What cannot at all be done is transpose the whole thing onto the US. That wouldn't just be comparing apples to oranges, more like peanuts to melons.

As I stated earlier, unless I was solely an "urban driver" in the US (anywhere), I wouldn't drive an e-car there if you paid me. Literally.

Not with the current status of technology.

Now offer me a car that'll give me 1500 kms per charge, a dense network of charging stations everywhere and a state of advancement of all of them that'll allow to charge up the bus completely in just 10 minutes, and we can talk.
 
Kal'Stang said:
At this point in time, prolly not a wise move. I've yet to see a purely electric semi-truck. Much less one that can haul 8 thousand lbs of items across country. I don't know, maybe smaller countries could handle such. Here in the States though? Not going to happen any time soon. Not unless electric vehicles gets a VAST improvement in technology.

Also electric cars do not use "cheap alternative energy". It will still take the same amount of energy to move X car to point B as it does to move Y car to the same place. How you get that energy may be different, but the amount expended is the same. And will reflect the same in your pocket book. And that's assuming that both are equal. If an electric car will take you 300 miles before needing "refilled" where as a gasoline car will take you 600 miles with both having the same relative sized "tank" then you'll actually end up paying more in "gas" with the electric car than with an actual gas car.

That said, I wouldn't mind owning an electric car. If I could pay the same amount for it that I just paid for my '02 van. Which was only $3k. I can't afford brand new cars.
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You don't need monster trucks in a country with a proper rail infrastructure. Just local vans to pick up from the rail station.
 
RabidAlpaca said:
This is nonsense. Fossil fuel powered cars can accept energy from one and one source alone, while electric cars can accept power from any source, be it solar, wind, coal, gas, etc. Even if they were run on 100% gas, it would be dramatically better for the environment because generators at power plants are drastically more efficient than using millions (or billions) of individual car engines and plants can better filter exhaust.

"Hitching to an unproven horse" would be outlawing fossil fuel powered cars tomorrow instead of doing a decade long transition period as the technology continues to mature and every major car company in the world is developing a line of electric cars.
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it's not nonsense at all. Our battery technology is crap. The best form of storing energy we have is pumping water uphill. The electric cars just jam pack those cars with a ludicrous number of batteries and then they can go..what...a hundredish miles. I think Tesla has that up a bit higher, but it gets real pricey real quick.

And the chemicals that make up batteries aren't nice, how we get them aren't nice either. It's not to say we shouldn't be pushing our tech, we should always push our tech. Particularly our battery tech, it's so old as to be embarrassing. But it's not here.

I think the draw of electric cars now is that people can hide their pollution and thus feel a bit better about it. No one thinks about the strip mining or the energy production. All they see is their little electric car and how it doesn't use gas. but there's an entire string to consider from materials to manufacturing and production to charging.

And while they gave 10 years, it done so on the assumption that it will get better over those 10 years, it's not proven. It's likely going to get better, but without something big in battery tech, it's always going to be limited. ranges are limited, charging time makes it harder for things like cross country trips, those huge battery packs don't last forever (and are crazy expensive to replace...plus you need to dispose of the battery banks properly), etc.

It can be done, it will likely happen too. Hopefully sooner rather than later because we do need to innovate our energy production and consumption. We've been stagnating on fossil fuels, and it's never good to stagnate on anything.
 
Lafayette said:
Nuclear energy, the cheapest and most viable for peak-energy needs. The Germans are bonkers for having decided to close its nuclear-plants making the country dependent upon cheap (and smoky) coal from neighboring Poland. (Which, with the prevailing westerlies, is dumped on which country? Poland!)
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"Nuclear" is inundated in ideology. In France as much as in Germany. Between (respectively) black and white, good and bad, there is no middle ground and thus none of that in utilisation either.

Germany merely decided to "get out now" and was and is willing to bear the detriments of coal in the interim. You're making it sound as if the Germans are happy to live on coal forever. That's not the case. The current problem consists of not being able to slap up an alternative energy infrastructure overnight. Maybe they should have waited til that's been built but you can bet yer butt that Big Energy would have sabotaged any such efforts in every step of the way.
France (where I live) has employed it judiciously since the 1970s, without the slightest significant accidental death. Far more agents have been accidentally electrocuted on the grid carrying the electricity. Here is the history of nuclear accidents in France. One worker-death is attributed to accidental incidence not directly related to production of nuclear energy.
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Yeah, they said that in Fukushima and are saying it again. Probably said that in Chernobyl as well, even where that was one gigantic human screw-up. But anywhere there is nuclear, it's also run by humans. What's more, it's also built by humans supposedly having taken all contingencies into account in the planning. Like they did in the building plans (specifically concerning location) in Fuku.

Maybe you're familiar with the plant at Fessenheim, the oldest of the lot in France, absolutely outdated by modern technical standards with upgrades nowhere near meeting the requirements that today's standards demand and built on a natural quake fault to boot.
The stockpiles of nuclear waste are typically stored in underground, man built caves, that only a major cataclysmic earthquake would open to the atmosphere.
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So we are told and guess by whom.
There is no doubt whatsoever that non-nuclear means should be innovated and installed to produce concurrent electrical-energy. AND, humans should learn how not to waste it, which means its price should remain high.
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Nothing to dispute in any of that.
But the argument to do away with nuclear-energy is a false one. Rather, it needs to be constrained to high-density population usage.
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Actually, if you were to take away all the subsidies and the risk brearing that governments shoulder (something no insurance company will and what risk is government actually gonna shoulder when push comes to shove?), it's one of the most expensive forms of energy production imaginable.

Have something like Fessenheim (to stick with that example) "blow" and the fallout in damages to be paid (let alone costs of dealing with the outcome) will have not only the complete French nuclear industry broke, but the whole people.

Yeah, a doomsday scenario for sure. But the band played on the Titanic until the very end as well.
 
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Chagos said:
I've lived in both (now it's very rural) and the car's control panels stayed the same.
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But when one lives in rural areas, one may well more likely to be aware of how much gas one has left, and to be more aware of what resources one has if worse comes to worst. I don't think it's a matter of projection to say that, for instance, those in the country are more likely to have a lot more non-perishable food on hand just in case they can't make it into town for awhile...whereas such possibilities are less likely to be a concern in the city.

And like you, I've lived in both - a very, very rural area (my school was in the next county over, and the nearest town (and I use the term loosely) was eight miles away)...and in a very, very urban area (Manila, 15M people packed into an area perhaps twice the size of San Diego).
 
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