Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tesla Model 3 represented over 15% of September new car sales in The Netherlands

cleantechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 348 posts

Re: Tesla Model 3 represented over 15% of September new car sales in The Netherlands

#141

Post by dreamcompiler »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #83
hnarn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, around 40% of the electricity in Germany was generated from coal in 2018, but in january 2019, a group of federal and state leaders as well as industry representatives, environmentalists, and scientists made an agreement to close all 84 coal plants in the country by 2038.[1] Just as in many other parts of the world, expanding electrical consumption through electric vehicles does not make sense if we also…

It actually does make sense to burn coal (or oil) in power stations to power electric vehicles. You'd have to have a very dirty grid and keep it dirty for decades for it to be a bad idea, and in that case you have bigger problems and it's not the EVs at fault. https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-vehicles > Even when the electricity comes from the dirtiest coal-dominated grid, electric vehicles (EVs) still…

A dirty grid just means the electric car needs to be kept in service a little longer to be greener than an ICE car, but it's still well within the lifetime of the vehicle. It's [roughly, from memory] service life of 12-18 months for a clean grid, and around 5 years for a dirty grid. The above is about how quickly the lower CO2 per mile of an EV offsets the CO2 required to build the car (which mostly means building the battery). Even with a dirty grid, EVs produce much less CO2 per mile than ICE.

Re: Tesla Model 3 represented over 15% of September new car sales in The Netherlands

#142

Post by natch »

tcmb wrote: post #18

I live in an apartment complex in Berlin. We have a parking garage that belongs to the complex. Unfortunately the housing company does not allow installation of a wallbox in the garage, even if I paid for it myself. The housing company is owned by the municipality. Large-scale adoption of electric cars is unrealistic when the majority of people have nowhere to charge it.

We have two and live in an apartment. The problem is not that insurmountable when there are chargers at work and Superchargers. At work, they are expanding the number of chargers year after year. Same with Superchargers. I am always able to charge well beyond my commute miles at work, for free.

I'm not saying it's a non-issue, but it is possible for a lot of people, and it is getting better, even for people who currently do not have chargers at work, things are changing rapidly.

Re: Tesla Model 3 represented over 15% of September new car sales in The Netherlands

#143

Post by gok »

tcmb wrote: post #18

I live in an apartment complex in Berlin. We have a parking garage that belongs to the complex. Unfortunately the housing company does not allow installation of a wallbox in the garage, even if I paid for it myself. The housing company is owned by the municipality. Large-scale adoption of electric cars is unrealistic when the majority of people have nowhere to charge it.

When I got an EV, my apartment had shared chargers in the parking garage. As an experiment, I tried to not use them for a couple weeks and lived on public chargers. It wasn't terrible. It was basically back to periodically filling up the tank, except that you get some shopping done while waiting.

Re: Tesla Model 3 represented over 15% of September new car sales in The Netherlands

#144

Post by toomuchtodo »

whoanow wrote: post #136
tcmb wrote: post #18

I live in an apartment complex in Berlin. We have a parking garage that belongs to the complex. Unfortunately the housing company does not allow installation of a wallbox in the garage, even if I paid for it myself. The housing company is owned by the municipality. Large-scale adoption of electric cars is unrealistic when the majority of people have nowhere to charge it.

I was told I couldn't use the 110 volt plug in my parking spot in my condo building. I live in a city with hydro electric that is very environmentally conscious. I emailed the property manager that the local newspaper would probably be interested in the story of them blocking the adoption of clean cars, they quickly changed their tune and now I plug my Tesla in and pay the strata council $30 / month. You might be abl…

Well done!

Re: Tesla Model 3 represented over 15% of September new car sales in The Netherlands

#145

Post by socialdemocrat »

Tesla is almost 25% of the sales in Norway. Counting Tesla's on the road has started to become a bit silly.

Just walking up to my local grocery story in Oslo, I may see 6-7 Tesla's on that short walk. I only realize how abnormal that is when it is when I travel abroad. Spent several days in London and didn't see a single Tesla.

Spent a week in Spain and didn't even see an electric car at all. In Norway there are Leafs, BMW i3, e-Golf, Teslas, Ionic, you name it going around all the time.

What is interesting to observe is how it just accelerates. The more normal it gets to drive electric the more people jump onboard. A lot of people are reluctant to try something entirely different. But then they drive in their friends electric car or sit in an electric cab etc and it all starts to look really normal.

Re: Tesla Model 3 represented over 15% of September new car sales in The Netherlands

#146

Post by socialdemocrat »

ralusek wrote: post #45
hnarn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, around 40% of the electricity in Germany was generated from coal in 2018, but in january 2019, a group of federal and state leaders as well as industry representatives, environmentalists, and scientists made an agreement to close all 84 coal plants in the country by 2038.[1] Just as in many other parts of the world, expanding electrical consumption through electric vehicles does not make sense if we also…

Isn't running an internal combustion engine in a car still substantially less efficient than the power plant necessary to charge it, regardless of the fuel?

ICE engines are around 20% efficiency I think, while e.g. a gas turbine in a power plant is around 60%. Very little efficiency is lost in transmission cables and in the electric motor, so it is definitely a lot more efficient to use electric cars as a way of burning fossil fuels.

Not to mention that coal plants and gas power plants can be changed to burn biomass or do gasification of biomass. That allows us to avoid fossil fuels entirely. You cannot easily run an internal combustion engine on biomass.

Sure you can produce ethanol or biodiesel from plants, but that is not as attractive as gasifying wood pellet. In particular because the latter does not compete with agricultural land.

Re: Tesla Model 3 represented over 15% of September new car sales in The Netherlands

#147

Post by pedrocr »

tcmb wrote: post #18

I live in an apartment complex in Berlin. We have a parking garage that belongs to the complex. Unfortunately the housing company does not allow installation of a wallbox in the garage, even if I paid for it myself. The housing company is owned by the municipality. Large-scale adoption of electric cars is unrealistic when the majority of people have nowhere to charge it.

In Portugal a law was passed to solve most of these cases. It says that if you own the apartment all you have to do is notify about the installation in your parking spot. The building management can then opt to do an installation themselves but usually doesn't.

The install itself isn't too hard usually. There is an opportunity to set up a business to do cooperative charging where the chargers limit themselves to a total max power. Otherwise garages will need large upgrades in total peak power capability. None of these issues are all that hard to surpass though. The power grid is pretty good already and most needed charging is only in the <10kW range which most places can manage easily.

Re: Tesla Model 3 represented over 15% of September new car sales in The Netherlands

#148

Post by socialdemocrat »

jgalt212 wrote: post #135
melling wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the short term, it does absolutely make sense to use electric vehicles. The critical goal is to further develop electric cars so they become the obvious choice for consumers. As we go from a few million EVs to tens of millions, it is of course important to move towards cleaner electricity.

> The critical goal is to further develop electric cars so they become the obvious choice for consumers. should be The critical goal is to further reduce CO2 in the atmosphere .

You can reduce CO2 emissions from an internal combustion by making it more efficient, but there is not way you can ever bring it down to zero.

Thus if you want to ever get to zero, you need to electrify the transport.

We can produce synthetic fuel, but it will be very hard to reach the kind of volumes we have for fossil fuels, hence synthetic fuels should only be used for long range trucks, airplanes etc.

All transport that can be electric should be electric. Transportation make up the bulk of CO2 emissions, so if you don't turn most of it electric, there is no way to get down to zero CO2 emissions.

Re: Tesla Model 3 represented over 15% of September new car sales in The Netherlands

#150

Post by xyzzyz »

socialdemocrat wrote: post #145

Tesla is almost 25% of the sales in Norway. Counting Tesla's on the road has started to become a bit silly. Just walking up to my local grocery story in Oslo, I may see 6-7 Tesla's on that short walk. I only realize how abnormal that is when it is when I travel abroad. Spent several days in London and didn't see a single Tesla. Spent a week in Spain and didn't even see an electric car at all. In Norway there are Leaf…

That’s no surprise, since Norwegian government heavily penalizes ICE vehicles, and advantages the electric cars. No VAT, no CO2 tax, and lots of other incentives are involved.

If your goal is to upgrade your country’s vehicle fleet to electric, then Norway is a good example that with enough government spending it can happen. Don’t mistake it for “normal people jumping onboard electric train”, though, they are jumping onboard tax incentives train.

Post reply on HN