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Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

theguardian.com

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Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

#291
post #227

The next step is to work on cleaner electricity. While most EU got the message long time ago, eastern bloc countries are much behind. Currently in Poland it is better for the environment to drive a diesel VW Golf than Tesla, as the electricity is produced from brown coal.

That's not true. Even with coal, the end-to-end emissions are better with electric cars. Proof: Poland is 800gCO₂/kWh [1]. With an average electric car (i.e. my hyundai ioniq), you average 11kWh/100km, or .11kWh/km. Taking emissions into account, that gives us 88gCO₂/km. A VW golf is 120gCO₂/km [2] [1]: https://www.electricitymap.org/map [2]: https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/cars/Car-CO2-and-fuel-economy-mp...

11kWh is kind of generous - I mean I believe you, because I've been following a Facebook fanpage of an Ioniq owner in Poland and his numbers are very similar, but I think it's due to the car's amazing efficiency comparing to the competition.

From a regular EV I would expect around 16.5kWh.

Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

#292

One thing I keep getting tripped up on with EV cars is the usability during an emergency. I grew up in SoCal when there were rolling black-outs. Just this week, a windstorm took out my parent’s power for 3 days. I don’t view electricity to be as reliable as gas. What fact am I missing that can change my view on this?

It's easier to set up back yard solar panels than a back yard fuel refinery.

This is such a good point - in every disaster / zombie movie they somehow have gasoline to run cars but no electricity, when in reality it would be the other way round - any existing gasoline would go off after 6 months.

https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/advice/know-how/does-fuel-go-off....

A group of survivors could scavenge a lot of solar panels, bit good luck restarting an oil refinery.

Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> strong collective identity This makes a society weaker - it's effectively a monoculture that restricts the data available to the decision makers. It also reduces a societies ability to innovate in art, culture and eventually technology and science - innovation requires the ability to take an outside view, to be self-critical, and a society that is too busy forging a 'strong collective identity' will make it harder…

The Western urge for constantly rethinking and reevaluating history and traditions, for innovations in art and science, does not lead to an inherently stable society in the long run that spans across centuries. The changes themselves introduce new kinds of problems requiring new solutions, and that affects the societal structure in unpredictable ways. Japan and South Korea are western only in a superficial sense, in…

> The Western urge for constantly rethinking and reevaluating history and traditions, for innovations in art and science, does not lead to an inherently stable society in the long run that spans across centuries

I'm not clear what you're saying here. Are you saying that it would be a good thing if society in western countries were more like what it was 400 years ago? Enormous improvements in science, technology, culture and civil society grew out of that 400 year history, and regressing or remaining static over that 400 years would be a disaster.

The only way to have a stable society that spans across centuries is to have a society that can change and incorporate new ideas, technology, people and ways of doing things. It's societies that aren't flexible and strong enough to cope with change that are unable to remain stable over long periods of time.

Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

#294
post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan and Korea are collective societies, not autocratic ones. China's goal under Xi is a return to the golden age of the Kingdom of Heaven, where all Chinese people exemplify the ideals and morals of the most civilized society on Earth. That goal is only tangentially related to the technical innovations they're making, and will eventually stifle them as the definition of "good citizen" and "proper pursuits" becomes…

How do innovative transportation technologies(SpaceX, Hyperloop), food choice(plant, lab based meat), robots and AI, green tech, etc not "proper pursuits"? They're good business, they offer more power to China, why would they change that? And considering they're history, they've probably learned the lesson about the weakness of ignoring global technology. And sure, they do have the "great firewall", but it's smart en…

> And sure, they do have the "great firewall", but it's smart enough to let the science\technology in while filtering the politics out.

That's not true, and given the current trend (everyone gonna use TLS) it is impossible for the "great firewall" to be smarter. For example, HN is blocked in China.

Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Autocracies are only short-term efficient. Once their initial aims are met, they become terribly inefficient, then corruption sets in, and then they must be forcibly removed. From the point of view of Western individualism, yes. However, a strong autocracy relies on building a strong collective identity through education and the cultural institutions. That identity isolates the individual from his personal beliefs…

> strong collective identity This makes a society weaker - it's effectively a monoculture that restricts the data available to the decision makers. It also reduces a societies ability to innovate in art, culture and eventually technology and science - innovation requires the ability to take an outside view, to be self-critical, and a society that is too busy forging a 'strong collective identity' will make it harder…

> it's effectively a monoculture that restricts the data available to the decision makers

Would you call Singapore a "weak society" with little ability to innovate? It's essentially what GP was describing.

Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

#296

The "iphone" of the electric car still isn't here. I've been saying it's coming soon for a while, cars that are so vastly superior to gas cars that it re-frames the gas car as being legacy technology just as the smartphone from apple finally got the consumer interested in smartphones and view flip-phones as inferior. I think however, it's going to come from left-field (not from Tesla) and for the first time I'm tossi…

I think anything smaller than a four-door sedan will be pretty much dead on arrival in the U.S. for most people. I don't see any reason that Americans would start preferring small cars because they're electric.

Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> strong collective identity This makes a society weaker - it's effectively a monoculture that restricts the data available to the decision makers. It also reduces a societies ability to innovate in art, culture and eventually technology and science - innovation requires the ability to take an outside view, to be self-critical, and a society that is too busy forging a 'strong collective identity' will make it harder…

> it's effectively a monoculture that restricts the data available to the decision makers Would you call Singapore a "weak society" with little ability to innovate? It's essentially what GP was describing.

[deleted]

Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

#298
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is like to have a source for the statement that plug in hybrid never gets plugged in. Everyone I know who has one charges it over night and only runs it on petroleum occasionally.

All the neighbours here on the compound bought it for subsidies only - there's no charging option in the parking garage. Edit: Adding some numbers from https://www.zeit.de/mobilitaet/2020-09/plug-in-hybrid-studie... (sorry, german) 43% of the private owners use the charging option, 18% of the company owned cars. However, due to tax incentives, 63% of all cars registered per year are company owned cars. The incentives…

This is why I think more of the tax should be moved from buying to using. C02 tax for cars should be mostly at the pump when filling the tank, not when buying. A plug-in driven 10 000 km a year pollute more than any car driven 100 km a year.

Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> strong collective identity This makes a society weaker - it's effectively a monoculture that restricts the data available to the decision makers. It also reduces a societies ability to innovate in art, culture and eventually technology and science - innovation requires the ability to take an outside view, to be self-critical, and a society that is too busy forging a 'strong collective identity' will make it harder…

The Western urge for constantly rethinking and reevaluating history and traditions, for innovations in art and science, does not lead to an inherently stable society in the long run that spans across centuries. The changes themselves introduce new kinds of problems requiring new solutions, and that affects the societal structure in unpredictable ways. Japan and South Korea are western only in a superficial sense, in…

If anything, China is an example of a society NOT stable over long term. Here in the West, we basically had two large disturbances in 2000 years: collapse of Western Roman empire (which wasn't even as bad it they made it look because most economy was in the Eastern part of it, that fared reasonably well through that crisis), and Black Death. As a big big stretch, one can also point at Napoleonic Wars and WWII but neither was nearly as bad, not even comparable to the disturbances Chinese society was going through almost every century in the same period.

And their collective identity (or huge population) didn't help them fighting wars either, they miserably lost almost every conflict they got in, even ones with themselves.

Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

#300

The next step is to work on cleaner electricity. While most EU got the message long time ago, eastern bloc countries are much behind. Currently in Poland it is better for the environment to drive a diesel VW Golf than Tesla, as the electricity is produced from brown coal.

The EV market in Poland is extremely small for a 38mln country, so I believe that by the time it reaches appropriate size the scale will tip in favour of EVs - after all we're bound by EU emissions targets and the associated CO2 market.

Brown coal has been declining in Poland faster than anticipated:

https://wysokienapiecie.pl/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/polish...

It is being replaced by imported hard coal, but that's still some improvement.

There are also plans for offshore wind, because I believe they finally found a crony that would like to pick this up and make money on government projects.

There are plans for nuclear, but let's just say that there have been for years now and they didn't even manage to pick a site, even though there's a half-finished concrete reactor hull(block?) from the communist era available.

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