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

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11–20 of 73 posts

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

#11
post #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/netherland…

Although those fossil fueled plants tend to still be more efficient than car engines. You might only save about 1/3 of the normal emissions in the worst case, but that's still some improvement, and it automatically improves further as the grid moves to more environmentally friendly production.

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

#12
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.

So people will just travel an extra 15 minutes to the next country to buy their dinosaur-powered vehicles instead.

This won't do anything but push sales tax money out of the country unless they also do something like ban new vehicle registrations as well as sales.

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

#13
post #9
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Obeying the speed limit is irrelevant; the actual speed is. A given car at a given speed consumes the same amount of fuel per unit distance regardless of what the speed limit is.

All the data indicating that "speeding wastes fuel" is basically just proving that fuel economy is a function of engine power output.

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

#14
post #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/netherland…

Remember, green looks far better for building new power plants vs. replacing existing power plants. 2025 is still a long way away, and those electric cars will still be electric in 2035 as would any gas cars bought.

PS: Their greenhouse gas emissions where down -5.2% from 2004-2009. So, with new demand the mix could change fairly rapidly.

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

#15
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> We already have an energy-saving self-driving mechanism - ... (and obeying the speed limit.) Obeying the speed limit is irrelevant; the actual speed is. A given car at a given speed consumes the same amount of fuel per unit distance regardless of what the speed limit is. All the data indicating that "speeding wastes fuel" is basically just proving that fuel economy is a function of engine power output.

You're ignoring breaking. If you go significantly faster than the speed limit your far more likely to break at highway speeds.

Further, IC cars often get better fuel efficiency by mixing slow acceleration periods at optimum RPM and coasting. (Car engines get ~10-30 efficiency based on usage.) You can do this manually, but it's hard.

However, air resistance is going to be the dominate factor at high speeds.

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

#16
It's about sales and it's very far from an implementation. One major issue is the EU, I heard on the radio (BNR) that it is not even legally possible for the Netherlands to banish sales of goods that are not banished in other parts of the EU. It's a nice discussion-starter though.

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

#17
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.

Self driving cars will almost certainly use much more energy than regular cars. It will reduce the cost of shipping by a lot, increasing the amount of things which are shipped. It will reduce the price of taxis a lot, so people will drive more. And it will make long commutes and road trips much more convenient.

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

#18
In this case I think the approach taken by the US is better -- set aggressive fuel economy standards and let the market either

a.) figure out new technologies for much better fuel economy

b.) figure out electric vehicles are cheaper

My point here specifically is not that the numbers the US chose are correct (let that be for another debate), but that this method of effectively restricting/"banning" gasoline cars is better for everyone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Average_Fuel_Economy...

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

#19
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> We already have an energy-saving self-driving mechanism - ... (and obeying the speed limit.) Obeying the speed limit is irrelevant; the actual speed is. A given car at a given speed consumes the same amount of fuel per unit distance regardless of what the speed limit is. All the data indicating that "speeding wastes fuel" is basically just proving that fuel economy is a function of engine power output.

Actually it's more to do with air resistance. It increases exponentially at higher speeds. You also don't burn less by driving really slow, since the engine burns some amount of fuel just by running at any speed. 40 mph is the sweet spot, supposedly.

Driving at the speed limit will definitely save you more fuel than speeding.

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