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

Norway rolls back EV incentives while boosting walking and cycling (2022)

electrek.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 142 posts

Re: Norway rolls back EV incentives while boosting walking and cycling (2022)

#121

Post by nologic01 »

candiddevmike wrote: post #24
nologic01 wrote: post #6

There is a very clear flow chart * Walk Else * Take Bicycle Else * Take Electric Bike or Fixed Track Public Transport Else * Use Electric Automobile or Bus Else * Use Fossil Fuel Automobile or Airplane Subsidies, incentives etc must align with this flowchart. EV is seen as a savior for economies and urban structures that are not viable to start with

I'd imagine there should be a few more bullet points somehow between automobile and airplane: - Carpool - Bus - Train

Bus and Train are covered but Carpool is indeed an important arrangement (though not a new transport tech, more a behavioral adaptation).

But I think whenever carpooling is effective it probably means even more effective public transport is feasible. E.g. minibuses.

Re: Norway rolls back EV incentives while boosting walking and cycling (2022)

#122

Post by nologic01 »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #105
nologic01 wrote: post #6

There is a very clear flow chart * Walk Else * Take Bicycle Else * Take Electric Bike or Fixed Track Public Transport Else * Use Electric Automobile or Bus Else * Use Fossil Fuel Automobile or Airplane Subsidies, incentives etc must align with this flowchart. EV is seen as a savior for economies and urban structures that are not viable to start with

As someone who loves to bike and hates to walk why would you prioritize one over the other? You're entire prescriptive approach is a big problem in making any improvement. How about "try to do anything other than drive by yourself in your car?"

The prescription is more about an ultimate target that is aligned with making mobility as efficient and low footprint as possible.

For each mode we need to think: does it work if 10 bln people do this for centuries into the future?

Even a mechanical bike has a non-trivial impact (its manufacture needs recyclable raw materials and energy, it needs paved paths etc).

What you are suggesting is the least possible action in the current circumstances - which is fine very short term but not a full plan how to incentivise people.

On the juicy question of bike vs walk I would say it depends on the weather :-)

Re: Norway rolls back EV incentives while boosting walking and cycling (2022)

#123

Post by lb1lf »

willio58 wrote: post #58
vinni2 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside of Oslo the infrastructure is built with car reliance deincentivizing cars and incentivizing walking and bikes won’t make much difference. Instead they should be making public transport more attractive. Walking and biking is not exactly ideal in harsh weather.

> Outside of Oslo the infrastructure is built with car reliance deincentivizing cars and incentivizing walking and bikes won’t make much difference. To me this reads like "Cars have won, give up on walking and biking in your cities." That's just not a solution. Just because car lobbyists have successfully ruined nearly all US cities and a good amount of European ones doesn't mean we just sit down and continue to let…

It simply means that most of Norway (In the area sense, not population) simply is too sparsely populated to support any meaningful form of public transport, and for large parts of the year the weather is sufficiently disagreeable that walking or biking either is out of the question or means getting dressed for the occasion, which adds considerably to the time needed to get somewhere, particularly if kids are involved.

I am sure some advances could be made - say, utilizing smaller buses and perhaps make them go out into the boonies only if someone had notified the bus company that they wished to take the bus - but for the most part, when the population is evenly and thinly distributed over a large-ish area with shoddy weather, the car is king for transport.

Walking in the snow is one thing, walking on ice in -20C/-4F while wind gusts threaten to topple you quite another; that being said, people are quite eager to use bikes whenever the weather is agreeable-ish - it's just that the car is the viable fallback plan when it is not - not public transport.

Re: Norway rolls back EV incentives while boosting walking and cycling (2022)

#124

Post by lb1lf »

willio58 wrote: post #59
vinni2 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True the temperature is not the issue. The issue is unmaintained bike paths in most of Norway during winters. I did mention that.

Sounds like a chicken or the egg issue to me. Why are the bike paths unmaintained? Because they aren't used as often as in a country like the Netherlands. But how can we increase biking in Norway if the roads are unmaintained? The only answer is radically changing the way we view walking in biking in cities. They are the base of all transportation, and we should treat them as the most important mode of transport for…

Also, keep in mind that The Netherlands has a population density some 20 times that of Norway, while being largely, uh, flat, which lots of Norway definitely isn't.

There's no doubt maintained bike paths would make cycling more viable, and in the cities great progress have been made in that respect, from what I can see.

However, for a significant part of the population, that simply isn't much of an option as roads and bicycle paths alike are used by such a small (relatively speaking) number of people that keeping both maintained basically would ensure we all worked with maintaining the network!

Re: Norway rolls back EV incentives while boosting walking and cycling (2022)

#125

Post by lb1lf »

all2 wrote: post #9
anonporridge wrote: post #2

Fantastic news! EVs already have escape velocity in Norway to replace ICE cars, and incentivizing more walking and cycling not only promotes more efficient modes of short distance travel, but makes the population healthier. Over reliance on cars kills us slowly via lifestyle degradation.

How are the EV battery cells handling the cold? I know from personal experience that a cold battery has much reduced capacity.

It is my understanding they are insulated and heated/cooled as needed; the performance loss from being cold is much larger than the energy expenditure to heat the cells to an optimum temperature.

Around where I live, we have several weeks of -15C - -25C (5F - -13F) every winter. No worries for the EV owners, they just need to charge a bit more often as they need to heat the interior of the car, too... (Not being afforded the dubious luxury of simply utilizing the waste heat from the engine, as I do for the time being in my diesel...)

Re: Norway rolls back EV incentives while boosting walking and cycling (2022)

#126

Post by vinni2 »

melling wrote: post #42
vinni2 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would the Russian gas situation have done that? Because the countries are realizing how relying on foreign oil and gas makes them vulnerable. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/how-t...

I think we realized that half a century ago in the 1970’s https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970s_energy_crisis But hey, feel free to make it up as you go. Most of the time people won’t call you on it. I’m not a Donald Trump fan so I won’t be posting his warning about depending on Russian gas. So, please don’t insult us with statements that are clearly silly: “Because the countries are realizing how relying on foreign…

This is not 70s cost of renewables has gone down drastically.

Re: Norway rolls back EV incentives while boosting walking and cycling (2022)

#127

Post by vintermann »

vinni2 wrote: post #11
anonporridge wrote: post #2

Fantastic news! EVs already have escape velocity in Norway to replace ICE cars, and incentivizing more walking and cycling not only promotes more efficient modes of short distance travel, but makes the population healthier. Over reliance on cars kills us slowly via lifestyle degradation.

Outside of Oslo the infrastructure is built with car reliance deincentivizing cars and incentivizing walking and bikes won’t make much difference. Instead they should be making public transport more attractive. Walking and biking is not exactly ideal in harsh weather.

Bah, I'm not sure I'd even call Oslo the most walkable city in Norway. It's perfectly possible to live in smaller cities, or even outside cities, without a car.

I visited one of the supposedly ugliest cities in Norway this summer, Alta in Finnmark. It got its reputation because appatently during the reconstruction after the war, they couldn't decide which of the small population centres in the municipality they should locate public functions to, so they put them in the middle. So it was an unusually car-centric city.

What I found was that this reputation is either grossly exaggerated, or is no longer true. The grid is maybe spacier than we're used to in Norway, but they have a huge pedestrian plaza in the middle and you can walk to anything you'd need in the city centre. They even seem to have great pedestrian/bike paths all the way out to Hjemmeluft, and there was nice public transport. I'd happily live there without a car. Looking at the real estate prices, though, it seems lots of other people are happy to live there too, harsh weather notwithstanding.

Re: Norway rolls back EV incentives while boosting walking and cycling (2022)

#128

Post by vinni2 »

paddim8 wrote: post #57
vinni2 wrote: post #4

This is hypocrisy Norwegian economy is heavily driven by oil industry. Instead of planning to phase out oil they just makes these ineffective policies. People are going to buy big electric cars even with VAT.

Hypocrisy? They're not allowed to improve in other areas just because they sell oil? What in the world are you on about? This is not what hypocrisy is.

Yes it is hypocrisy because Norway claims to be a green country ignoring all the emissions from the fossil fuel industry and the oil and gas exported. They use these petty schemes and policies to project themselves as green while the big issue is ignored.

Here is an article about the issue https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/17/norway-u...

Re: Norway rolls back EV incentives while boosting walking and cycling (2022)

#129

Post by pxtail »

nologic01 wrote: post #6

There is a very clear flow chart * Walk Else * Take Bicycle Else * Take Electric Bike or Fixed Track Public Transport Else * Use Electric Automobile or Bus Else * Use Fossil Fuel Automobile or Airplane Subsidies, incentives etc must align with this flowchart. EV is seen as a savior for economies and urban structures that are not viable to start with

* Watch politicians/millionaires flying their personal jets to event avenues wasting within hour the equivalent of CO2 you personally can save by choosing to make life difficult and dangerous for yourself and your family for years! Fuck that.

Re: Norway rolls back EV incentives while boosting walking and cycling (2022)

#130

Post by rajnathani »

nologic01 wrote: post #6

There is a very clear flow chart * Walk Else * Take Bicycle Else * Take Electric Bike or Fixed Track Public Transport Else * Use Electric Automobile or Bus Else * Use Fossil Fuel Automobile or Airplane Subsidies, incentives etc must align with this flowchart. EV is seen as a savior for economies and urban structures that are not viable to start with

> Bicycle

Or [standing] electric scooters.

Post reply on HN