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The Netherlands is making moves to ban all non-electric vehicle sales by 2025

sciencealert.com

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Re: The Netherlands is making moves to ban all non-electric vehicle sales by 2025

#2
> Electric vehicles – including self-driving cars – are clearly the future

Partially off-topic, but it feels very weird when people put electric and self-driving cars into the same basket. Those are 2 different problems. There're electric cars which are not self driving. There're cars aiming to be self-driving, that are not electric.

Re: The Netherlands is making moves to ban all non-electric vehicle sales by 2025

#3
"There is no ban on the sale of 'fossil' cars such as the Labour Party originally wanted, but the Netherlands must "seek the mere selling of emission-free (new) cars in 2025""

source: http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2016/03/29/tweede-kamer-neemt-omstr...

Re: The Netherlands is making moves to ban all non-electric vehicle sales by 2025

#5
post #4

It's not as radical as the headline suggests. > There are moves within the country to ban all petrol and diesel vehicle sales by 2025.

You are right, I slightly changed the headline to avoid unnecessary confusion.

Re: The Netherlands is making moves to ban all non-electric vehicle sales by 2025

#6
It's noteworthy that 90% of energy used in the Netherlands is fossil fuels[1] (as of 2013, anyway). This means electric cars will emit GHGs comparable to a 40-50mpg gasoline-powered car. Hopefully they do some major work to clean up their grid electricity.

Electric cars are a necessary step to reducing GHG emissions, but without a clean grid they are pretty pointless.

[1] https://www.iea.org/Textbase/npsum/netherlands2014SUM.pdf

Re: The Netherlands is making moves to ban all non-electric vehicle sales by 2025

#7
post #2

> Electric vehicles – including self-driving cars – are clearly the future Partially off-topic, but it feels very weird when people put electric and self-driving cars into the same basket. Those are 2 different problems. There're electric cars which are not self driving. There're cars aiming to be self-driving, that are not electric.

One could argue that self-driving cars potentially consume less energy by driving more efficiently than humans.

Re: The Netherlands is making moves to ban all non-electric vehicle sales by 2025

#8
post #2

> Electric vehicles – including self-driving cars – are clearly the future Partially off-topic, but it feels very weird when people put electric and self-driving cars into the same basket. Those are 2 different problems. There're electric cars which are not self driving. There're cars aiming to be self-driving, that are not electric.

I noticed that too. It's maybe because both are some pretty big advances that are happening somewhat simultaneously?

I seriously doubt this whole thing will actually happen. The plan was made by one of the governing parties but the other party in the coalition thinks the plan is idiotic and I'm not sure there's enough backing for it overall. I for one hope to be able to drive an electric vehicle in a few years (self-driving or not; but the Dutch road network probably really need this kind of solution to the congestion problems it has) but there are all kinds of smaller hurdles. It still takes a bit too long to charge mid-trip but I'm not entirely sure I could charge at home, not having a driveway (and probably be disallowed by regulation to just leaving a cable laying across the street where I park). Or at work, actually we don't really have any kind of parking provided by my employer (which is the government in this case). I dunno if I have to add 20 minutes a day to my commute to charge the batteries. Some also say our electric network cannot really handle the shift from fossil fuels to electricity in terms of bandwidth. Again, I hope to see this happen but we need a whole lot of people on the bandwagon or it's not going to happen in the time period the plan describes (but I do think it'll happen sooner or later).

Re: The Netherlands is making moves to ban all non-electric vehicle sales by 2025

#9
post #7
post #2

> Electric vehicles – including self-driving cars – are clearly the future Partially off-topic, but it feels very weird when people put electric and self-driving cars into the same basket. Those are 2 different problems. There're electric cars which are not self driving. There're cars aiming to be self-driving, that are not electric.

One could argue that self-driving cars potentially consume less energy by driving more efficiently than humans.

We already have an energy-saving self-driving mechanism - cruise control (and obeying the speed limit.)

I drive a hybrid. Except for a few parts of my commute, cruise control and slow acceleration push me from 42 mpg to 50 mpg on my commute.

Re: The Netherlands is making moves to ban all non-electric vehicle sales by 2025

#10
post #4

It's not as radical as the headline suggests. > There are moves within the country to ban all petrol and diesel vehicle sales by 2025.

You are right, I slightly changed the headline to avoid unnecessary confusion.

But it still is incorrect, the Dutch Labour Party is proposing the ban, they are not representative for the Dutch people. Which during the last elections was about 25% of the votes, now more like 10%. There is still a lot of resistance also within our government and political parties. With these proposals a lot of people are quite positive when they are proposed, but down the line they get voted down.

The case against the Dutch government from Urgenda [1] shows how hard it is to get change going.

[1] http://www.urgenda.nl/en/climate-case/

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