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Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules

reuters.com

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Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules

#291

Post by s73v3r_ »

Noos wrote: post #250
zaroth wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a ___ who never owned ____ I would love to see ____ completely banned. I guess I sometimes feel this way about some things, but then pretty quickly get over it and realize that other people have different utility functions than me, and that I kinda like this whole life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness thing. I much rather take the approach that externalities be accounted for properly than to ban anything tha…

If anything, this site has a nasty "sacrifice life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for some future concept of good" thing going on at times. I sense we'd all be packed in cities, forced to ride bicycles, eat only vegetables, be unable to reproduce without a permit, and live in massive apartment towers with 200 sq of space to save the world.

This site also has a nasty, "I should be able to do anything I want, and damn any externalities" thing, too.

Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules

#292

Post by bwindels »

mem0r1 wrote: post #208
TheLostOne wrote: post #45

As a German who never owned a car (have driver license 30+ years) and never will, hurray! Next: Petrol cars please. Costs for cities would decrease a lot [1], room for bicycles would increase, noise would drop to a level which can't believed, ambulances would be adjusted to walking persons instead of loud cars with their stereos on and air would be wonderful. [1] https://www.amazon.de/High-Cost-Free-Parking/dp/193236…

So what‘s with the constitutional guarantee of ownership ? I highly doubt that court decision is constitutional, I think and hope it is going to be overthrown by the German Federal Consitutional Court. I‘m so tired of the freedom hostile Green-Leftist agenda in Germany !

I somewhat understand your anger, but it seems misdirected. I hope VW gets sued out of existence for their reckless behaviour.

Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules

#293

Post by enothereska »

Wouldn't it be great if Tesla kicks these cheaters in the bin and wins the car race (like the iPhone did vs. the other phones)? Pity producing cars isn't as fast as manufacturing an iPhone. Germany's industry is in real trouble, looks like they were cheating.

Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules

#294

Post by CalRobert »

Noos wrote: post #251
CalRobert wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people are inconsiderate :-( . Some of those people ride bikes. I've been annoyed at bicyclists while walking along holding my helmet just after docking my Dublinbike, even. But a jerk walking is virtually certainly not going to kill me (or my kid). A jerk cycling almost certainly won't either. But a jerk driving quite possibly will - after all, where I come from there's a 9/11 on the roads every month due to dr…

Actually a jerk walking may kill you and your kid...its called "mugging" which can happen when you walk places, and which really can't happen easily if you are in a car. And there are many areas in an average city where it's completely unsafe to walk in. And keep in mind, it's a lot more dangerous for a woman to walk alone than the average HN poster, especially if they need to do so at night.

That's a question of intent, and in my mind a different matter. I meant jerk as in inconsiderate, not murderous.

Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules

#295

Post by bwindels »

zaroth wrote: post #218
adrianN wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is practical to offer parking at train stations at the outskirts of the city so that people can commute to the train station and leave their car outside the exclusion zones.

Sometimes people, you know, fill their cars with the “goods” that they are trying to bring into the city. It’s fine to debate the merits of the policy, but don’t pretend it wouldn’t come at an enourmous cost.

It would come at a big cost, but lets optimise cities more for the people who actually have to live in them. The balance is too far from centre as it is.

Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules

#296

Post by blau3 »

yostrovs wrote: post #19

It's important to note that popularity of diesel is the doing of the German government. The fuel is subsidized for the sake of the environment because it's more efficient. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/eb8be120-de5... The situation is similar to Germany's work on its electric power sources. Nuclear was turned off because it's dangerous. Now Germany spews out about same carbon as before giant investm…

> It's important to note that popularity of diesel is the doing of the German government. The fuel is subsidized for the sake of the environment because it's more efficient. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/eb8be120-de5....

That's not true. Diesel was a byproduct of gasoline production, which was cheaper because in less demand. This is changing slowly.

> Now Germany spews out about same carbon as before giant investments in solar, electricity is four times the price as in US, plus they now have to buy from France cause they don't produce enough.

That's disinformation. Germany has a high and growing percentage of renewable power, and it exports electricity - for example, frequently to France, especially in the summer, because scarceness of cold river water to cool the french nuclear plants.

Then, renewable energy in Germany is subsidized to some degree, a subsidy which is paid by a small percentage on the bill of private households. On the other hand, there are numerous companies which are except from this tax. Also, every time there is an oversupply of wind or solar energy, the price at the energy spot market goes to zero. In the net result, companies are paying much less for energy.

And what you also are leaving out of the equation: Renewable energy is now cheaper than nuclear. There is only one nuclear power project in the EU, Hinkley Point in Britain, and it is becoming increasingly clear that the whole project is likely to make a net loss. I guess the only thing that keeps it alive are the nuclear weapons ambitions of the UK government.

Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules

#297

Post by seanmcdirmid »

fyfy18 wrote: post #272
saagarjha wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive if I'm wrong, but isn't nuclear power always used for base load? Why would France have excess nuclear energy at all?

Typically you want to keep nuclear plants running at full power all the time, as most of the costs are fixed or sunk, independent of the electricity output. Most countries use nuclear power just to generate a small fraction of their electricity, so can do this without issue. However over 90% of France’s generating capacity is from nuclear power, so during low demand times there is a lot of excess. They do actually sh…

Do they really shut the reactors down during the weekends? My dad worked in nuclear, and the plant would be down for a few days if it ever tripped, planned outages were about two weeks.

Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules

#298

Post by blau3 »

xaldir wrote: post #108
foepys wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop touting "Germany buys electricity from France because they don't have nuclear power". France always exported electricity because they cannot power their nuclear power plants up and down as easy as others can their coal plants. In hot summers and cold winters France relies on Germany electricity to stabilize their net because nuclear power then becomes a problem.

It is possible to power up and down nuclear power plants, it is however very inefficient. And when you have neighbors wanting to buy your surplus electricity and a grid that support it, why bother? France and other countries (like Switzerland) import electricity from time to time not because they are unable to produce it, but because it's cheaper to do so. Germany on the other hand have to import electricity when the…

Coal plants in Germany have the same problem as elsewhere: They are becoming too expensive.

Renwable power in Germany is mostly a mix of solar and wind energy. In the summer, the curve of solar production fits nicely the daytime of the highest demand, while the higher production of wind energy is in cold stormy winter months. What needs to complement the mix are gas power plants which can be ramped up and down quickly. Coal plants are too slow for that.

Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules

#299

Post by blau3 »

woodpanel wrote: post #265
guardian5x wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but some of your statements are only partially correct. In fact germany exports more energy than it imports. ( https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/news/2016/germa... ) Also the popularity of diesel might have other factors as well.

Sorry, but you're comparing apples with oranges. Germany is "exporting" energy because its ecological agenda is forcing energy companies to buy all green energy that is produced all the time, leading to severe instabilities for the grid. So to keep the German grid from collapsing Germany is dumping its energy into foreign grids, for negative prices even. It has caused the neighbouring countries so much trouble, that…

That's an inherent problem of non-fossil electricity production. Electrical energy is expensive to store (some hydro plants e.g. in Austria do that).

For both nuclear and renewable, the marginal costs for producing an extra MWh, once the plant is built, are close to zero. Because on a market of any commodity, the marginal costs determine the market price, this means that once there is more electricity produced than there is current demand, the price goes to zero. This is actually the realization of the old promise from the fifties that with nuclear energy, energy would be so 'cheap' that it would not be worth the effort to install an electrical meter.

The flip side of the coin is that energy production with this cost structure, marginal costs at zero, need some degree of subsidies to be economically interesting for the operators. Renewable energy in Germany is funded by a very visible green energy tax. Nuclear power in turn is expensive to build and was mostly funded by research funds and hidden subsidies. Such as that the final storage of spent nuclear fuel is paid by the state. Extremely expensive but it does not appear in the books of companies.

Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules

#300

Post by gmueckl »

lulmerchant wrote: post #287
0xfeba wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nuclear was turned off because it's dangerous Nuclear was turned off because of FUD.

Exactly. It's one of the safest and cleanest forms of energy in the world.

Well, in theory perhaps. In practice, a bit of stupidity can make nuclear reactors fail spectacularly. Chernobyl had operators doing stupid things. Fukushima had planners ignore centuries old warnings about tsunamis in the area.

I was a proponent of nuclear power for a long time, but I became cautious when I realized that it still involves humans making mistakes. Now I hope that the German reactors hit their shutdown dates without incident now that all incentive to maintain them properly has been removed by setting those dates in the first place.

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