Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not hard, but usually not worth it as far as I remember: You have to pay the VAT of your home country when you import it, which is often one of the biggest difference between car prices within the EU.
The difference is negligible. When you buy a car coming from another EU country, you pay the price without VAT(the dealership has to give you an ex-vat invoice). Then when you register it, you pay the VAT of the country where you register the vehicle. Most countries in EU have VAT between 20 to 23%, so in the worst case, you are paying 3% more, in the best case, you are saving 3%.
The Netherlands is making moves to ban all non-electric vehicle sales by 2025
61–70 of 73 posts
Re: The Netherlands is making moves to ban all non-electric vehicle sales by 2025
#62Earlier 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.
Re: The Netherlands is making moves to ban all non-electric vehicle sales by 2025
#63It'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.
When you go to another country to buy a vehicle, you still have to bring it back into the Netherlands and register it. So you'll just end up paying the tax anyways.
I would expect that if the Netherlands does end up going through with this proposal, Dutch residents would be unable to register imported vehicles unless they were electric vehicles.
Personally, I think just taxing fuel-burning vehicles with very high taxes would achieve a similar goal with less fuss. People would buy electric vehicles because they're cheaper rather than due to the cars just not being available. A small number of people who really want gasoline cars can still do so, but they're going to have to pay a lot for the privilege.
Re: The Netherlands is making moves to ban all non-electric vehicle sales by 2025
#64It'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…
The Dutch cabinet has already decided to close 8 coal plants - there will only be 3 remaining [1]. Having said that - the power supply gap will now be fed from imports - and critics are claiming that those imports are more carbon intensive. A report has been commissioned... [1] http://www.nltimes.nl/2016/04/11/dutch-cabinet-to-close-two-...
Re: The Netherlands is making moves to ban all non-electric vehicle sales by 2025
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Electric vehicles are many many times simpler than their gas-powered cousins. This simplicity is passed onto the self-driving computer as fewer variables. Also, the primary downsides to electric vehicles -- longer refuel times, reduced range -- are mostly irrelevant when a computer is doing it by itself. Nobody cares if their self-driving taxi spends 10 minutes recharging itself between every pickup.
> Electric vehicles are many times simpler than their gas-powered cousins What does engine complexity have to do with driving complexity? I imagine that a computer would drive a car using interfaces analogous to those we use; namely gas, brake, steer (and I guess a shifter to put it in drive).
Re: The Netherlands is making moves to ban all non-electric vehicle sales by 2025
#66In 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 be…
Re: The Netherlands is making moves to ban all non-electric vehicle sales by 2025
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I never claimed that it would. I said "Driving at the speed limit will definitely save you more fuel than speeding.", which is definitely true. If you speed you are going faster and using more fuel. That statement has nothing to do with the speed limit, though. It may be trivially true, but adding the speed limit ties an irrelevant variable to it. Speed limit is a semi-arbitrary number that has nothing to do with h…
The implication is that driving over the speed limit is likely, on average, to be less fuel efficient than obeying it. Due to the laws of human nature, very few people drive significantly below the speed limit, and very few people prioritise their fuel economy over everything else so this translates to a reasonable guideline .
Not necessarily, because of gear changes. Not all cars can use 5th gear in a 50km/h zone, so they'll drive in 4th gear. It seems likely that doing 60km/h in 5th gear is more efficient than 50km/h in 4th gear.
Re: The Netherlands is making moves to ban all non-electric vehicle sales by 2025
#68So what are people to do when there's no suitable electric vehicle that fills their need? I'm thinking mostly about businesses that need trucks and vans for shipping and distribution. It's going to be a long time before we have all electric Ranger & Transit lineup. The Dutch market is far too small for any large company to justify moving towards this. So, unless the rest of Europe moves in lockstep with them, this me…
However, as for freight, large cities have been working for a decade to get heavy trucks out of the inner city. Delft and Amsterdam have several distribution points on the outside of the city, and the last-mile delivery is done with electric vehicles like [1].
[1] http://www.stadslogistiek.info/home/wp-content/uploads/2015/... -- The site is Dutch-only, but this image shows some of the vehicles used
Re: The Netherlands is making moves to ban all non-electric vehicle sales by 2025
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
c.) lie and cheat their way around the standards
To be fair they've been caught and are facing enormous punitive fines.
People want cheap and fast cars which directly conflicts with the regulations.
When all things are equal people will buy the faster car and the car that dose 0 to 60 quicker. And many people even prefer those stats when choosing a family car often over safety and pretty much all the time when it comes to how green the car is unless there is a harsh progressive tax based on car emissions.
Re: The Netherlands is making moves to ban all non-electric vehicle sales by 2025
#70It'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.