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

Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 519 posts

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

#421

Post by foepys »

gonehome wrote: post #88
foepys wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tesla has offered access to their superchargers, but legacy car companies haven’t taken them up on the offer Probably because Tesla demanded something that they knew other manufacturers won't give them. They pulled the same PR stunt when they offered their pretty limited patent pool in exchange for all patents of the partaking manufacturers. Nobody wanted to take part because as a result Tesla would have had access…

I’m not sure how bad a deal that would have been for the legacy companies - I’d guess most of their patents are worthless (maybe good for defense). The legacy car companies are held back by the dealer model and failing to execute for ten years giving tesla a massive head start. I’m not sure they’ll be able to survive the transition. Refusing to support superchargers just makes whatever EVs they do come up with a non-…

Those "legacy" companies are already selling more EV than Tesla in Norway. Norway taxes ICE to an extreme and was Tesla's PR example where they claimed to be the front-runner.

In 2020 from January to October the Model 3 was behind the Audi e-Tron, VW's aging e-Golf, the VW ID.3, the Hyundai Kona, and the Nissan Leaf.

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

#422

Post by cbmuser »

nindalf wrote: post #128
ido wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be great but high % growth from a small base doesn't imply the same growth rate will continue once it reaches higher levels (see for example how undeveloped economies grow faster until they become developed, at which point growth slows down: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergence_(economics) )

In general, what you’re saying about growth rates is true. However, there’s reason to believe that electric cars could grow at that pace 1. Regulation by governments. A few states and countries are mandating zero emissions (ie electric) vehicles by 2035. 2. Car manufacturer strategy. Since they know they can’t sell ICE vehicles past 2035 in some jurisdictions, it’s better to make the transition to electric quicker. A…

Electric cars aren’t zero emission when considering the whole life cycle.

The cake is a lie!

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

#423

Post by rubinelli »

AYBABTME wrote: post #259
kstenerud wrote: post #241

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…

Maybe or maybe not. Given that they're basically picking a very similar recipe from the economical development playbook, I wouldn't be surprised if they arrive at a similar outcome. And South Korea was ran by violent dictarors until its recent democratic history. I don't think the same will happen to China, but I wouldn't dismiss the ability of its citizens to innovate based only on the autocratic nature of their gov…

Many of the innovators in medieval Europe and Soviet Russia were seen with suspicion, when not outright persecuted. Innovation, beyond safe incremental productivity improvements, requires nonconformism and unconventional thinking. After all, why would you create something new if you are content with what you have?

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

#424

Post by cbmuser »

sveingjoby wrote: post #83
danielheath wrote: post #11

Up 43% is great news. To put it in context: There were 91 million cars produced last year (per wikipedia) and 3 million electric cars sold.

The majority of sold cars are electric in Norway. Above 60 in October

And you always have to emphasize that buying a regular, combustion engine car is exceptionally expensive in Norway, even for used cars the taxes are high.

Electric vehicles are exempt from all this plus you don’t pay road fees and electricity is cheap.

Also, Norway has just about 5 million inhabitants.

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

#425

Post by rakoo »

ctdonath wrote: post #312
rakoo wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call me cynical but climate change, the biggest threat to mankind right is right in front of us. We will also face the biggest threat to what made our civilization and our democracy possible, which is cheap quasi-unlimited access to energy (petrol in our case). Combine both and I don't see democracies as being able to efficiently navigate us out of this combined nightmare to come. As you said, autocracies are efficie…

1°C rise per century. 1 foot ocean rise per century. Threat?

There is no indication that problems are going to be linear related to temperature increase. Maybe it will be twice worse, maybe 20 times worse, who knows.

Among the many problems, you can expect heat to be so hot that 1 billion people will be living in a place where it's not physically possible to live (humidity doesn't allow the body to cool down): https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2020/05/04/world-he.... It won't exactly be all roses to the other billions too

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

#426

Post by cbmuser »

limaoscarjuliet wrote: post #183

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.

Germany is one of the dirtiest producers of electricity in the European Union with 400 grams of CO2 per kWh on average while France emits 50 grams of CO2 per kWh on average.

Poland is actually planning to build nuclear power plants while Germany is permitting the shutdown of coal-powered plants plus building 17 new gas plants.

Thus, Poland’s electricity will eventually be cheaper than Germany’s.

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

#427

Post by cbmuser »

Faaak wrote: post #227
limaoscarjuliet wrote: post #183

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...

You are ignoring the high amount of emissions necessary to produce the battery.

You have to compare the complete lifecycles, including production and recycling of the car.

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

#428

Post by aembleton »

Faaak wrote: post #227
limaoscarjuliet wrote: post #183

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...

Also, that 120gCO₂/km doesn't take into account the CO₂ emissions for the electricity for the refinery to make the diesel. Or the transportation of the diesel.

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

#429

Post by tomp »

jacquesm wrote: post #254
tomp wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or will democracy require something akin to "martial law" to quickly decide and act on urgent matters? After the pandemic hit the West - Europe started locking down mid-March, Trump banned EU flights on 12th - Germany (a democracy of 80 million people) passed a financial aid package on 23rd of March; US (a democracy of 300 million people) followed on the 25th. So it's quite clear that democracies can react quickly,…

If anything I think the pandemic shows that the 'free West' sucks at responding to such threats. We've done miserably compared to Singapore, China and Vietnam.

Personally I'm incredibly happy to have spent the pandemic in Europe rather than totalitarian regimes. And even though I spent my time between Italy, UK and Slovenia, three of the worst-hit countries.

But obviously different people have different preferences. I'm also young, fit, healthy programmer, so all-in-all very lucky.

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

#430

Post by cbmuser »

brianwawok wrote: post #321
ersiees wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might have missed the production of EVs that causes more CO2 than that of diesel cars.

Over the 20 year service life of a car, operating costs dwarf production costs.

We were talking about emissions, not costs.
Post reply on HN