Estonia becomes the first to open a nationwide electric vehicle charging network • Hacker News Board

Re: Estonia becomes the first to open a nationwide electric vehicle charging network

#51

Post by dalke » Thu, Feb 21, 2013, 3:15 AM UTC

SilasX wrote: post #45

dalke wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Challenge accepted. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6768395.stm says there's a 30km/h speed limit and an accident in 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments_for_Drivers says there are 1,000 cars in Vatican City. A-ha! Here's a description of the people who drive in Vatican City: http://mes.stparchive.com/Archive/MES/MES03141997p05.php . It's at the bottom, along with a description of the parking problem…

> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6768395.stm says there's a 30km/h speed limit and an accident in 2006. Hm, they could just restrict driving to golf carts and be the first fully-electric-car nation ...

A lot of the people with cars in Vatican City also want to drive in Rome. I suspect most would not like golf carts for that purpose, compared to a car.

Re: Estonia becomes the first to open a nationwide electric vehicle charging network

#52

Post by crdoconnor » Thu, Feb 21, 2013, 4:44 AM UTC

anonymousDan wrote: post #29

The construction of the fast-charging network was financed by using the funds received pursuant to a CO2 emission quota sales agreement entered into between the Republic of Estonia and Mitsubishi Corporation. Anyone understand what this sentence from the article means?

I'm not sure if this is entirely correct, but it seems to me that:

Mitsubishi are giving this network for free to Estonia in exchange for a right to some of their pollution allowance under the kyoto protocol.

Estonia has a lot of allowance spare because quotas were based upon the amount of polluting you used to do, and Estonia used to have a lot of heavy industry which fell apart in the 90s.

So really, they got lucky and they got this network for free thanks to a quirk in the Kyoto protocol.

Re: Estonia becomes the first to open a nationwide electric vehicle charging network

#53

Post by yen223 » Thu, Feb 21, 2013, 5:46 AM UTC

jmspring wrote: post #42

martinced wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"They have executed well in financing the building of this network..." They have executed well in the building. Financing is kinda easy for a country of only 1.3 million people heavily subsidized by the European Union (which Estonia is a part of). During the 2008-2009 crisis (which is not done yet but I digress), the Estonian GDP took a gigantic hit: -20% of the GDP. That's what you get when you're taxing the private…

Agree with your point about both the size of the country and the funding they are receiving. That said, when I visited Estonia in the early 2000s, prior to being in the EU, their broadband infrastructure seemed better than that of Finland and Germany (two countries I spent time in). That may have well been due to it's overall size. What is interesting to me about Estonia now is the lack of overall diversity in the te…

"What is interesting to me about Estonia now is the lack of overall diversity in the tech sector there. The biggest tech employers seem to be the government, the banks, and Skype."

I believe that's not unique to Estonia. The biggest tech employers in my country are the government and the banks as well (No Skype here).

Re: Estonia becomes the first to open a nationwide electric vehicle charging network

#54

Post by yen223 » Thu, Feb 21, 2013, 5:48 AM UTC

adventured wrote: post #35

bjhoops1 wrote: post #23

And they already beat the US in Internet speed. http://www.netindex.com/download/allcountries/

Know what the top countries on that list have in common? I could beat the US in Internet speed if I setup a neighborhood network.

What's the average Internet speed in, say, the Bay Area?

Re: Estonia becomes the first to open a nationwide electric vehicle charging network

#55

Post by guard-of-terra » Thu, Feb 21, 2013, 7:01 AM UTC

adventured wrote: post #35

bjhoops1 wrote: post #23

And they already beat the US in Internet speed. http://www.netindex.com/download/allcountries/

Know what the top countries on that list have in common? I could beat the US in Internet speed if I setup a neighborhood network.

If it's "size", #7 Japan is huge and #26 Russia is monstrous and crumbling and still managed to beat US.

That rating is totally humiliating for a country which invented Internet and they should do something about it.

Re: Estonia becomes the first to open a nationwide electric vehicle charging network

#56

Post by jkaljundi » Thu, Feb 21, 2013, 7:15 AM UTC

jmspring wrote: post #42

martinced wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"They have executed well in financing the building of this network..." They have executed well in the building. Financing is kinda easy for a country of only 1.3 million people heavily subsidized by the European Union (which Estonia is a part of). During the 2008-2009 crisis (which is not done yet but I digress), the Estonian GDP took a gigantic hit: -20% of the GDP. That's what you get when you're taxing the private…

Agree with your point about both the size of the country and the funding they are receiving. That said, when I visited Estonia in the early 2000s, prior to being in the EU, their broadband infrastructure seemed better than that of Finland and Germany (two countries I spent time in). That may have well been due to it's overall size. What is interesting to me about Estonia now is the lack of overall diversity in the te…

Estonia has ~15000 people working in the tech sector. There are 1500 tech/IT companies, 26 of them above 100 employees. IT/Tech is ~5.8% of GDP (2010).

Here is one Estonian Startups list: http://hub.garage48.org/estonian-startups - all in all, there are 100+ active startups in Estonia, which I would say for a country of 1 million people is quite a startup culture. Estonia now has I believe 7 or 8 European startup accelerator Seedcamp winners, trailing only UK, Seedcamp's home country.

Re: Estonia becomes the first to open a nationwide electric vehicle charging network

#57

Post by BHershewitz » Thu, Feb 21, 2013, 8:53 AM UTC

jkaljundi wrote: post #56

jmspring wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with your point about both the size of the country and the funding they are receiving. That said, when I visited Estonia in the early 2000s, prior to being in the EU, their broadband infrastructure seemed better than that of Finland and Germany (two countries I spent time in). That may have well been due to it's overall size. What is interesting to me about Estonia now is the lack of overall diversity in the te…

Estonia has ~15000 people working in the tech sector. There are 1500 tech/IT companies, 26 of them above 100 employees. IT/Tech is ~5.8% of GDP (2010). Here is one Estonian Startups list: http://hub.garage48.org/estonian-startups - all in all, there are 100+ active startups in Estonia, which I would say for a country of 1 million people is quite a startup culture. Estonia now has I believe 7 or 8 European startup acc…

This is kind of misleading. Many of the start-ups on that list are headquartered (or host major operations) outside of Estonia; they're considered Estonian only because the founders hold Estonian nationality. You wouldn't call start-ups headquartered in the US and founded by Indians "Indian start-ups", would you?

Re: Estonia becomes the first to open a nationwide electric vehicle charging network

#58

Post by elisehein » Thu, Feb 21, 2013, 9:05 AM UTC

BHershewitz wrote: post #57

jkaljundi wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Estonia has ~15000 people working in the tech sector. There are 1500 tech/IT companies, 26 of them above 100 employees. IT/Tech is ~5.8% of GDP (2010). Here is one Estonian Startups list: http://hub.garage48.org/estonian-startups - all in all, there are 100+ active startups in Estonia, which I would say for a country of 1 million people is quite a startup culture. Estonia now has I believe 7 or 8 European startup acc…

This is kind of misleading. Many of the start-ups on that list are headquartered (or host major operations) outside of Estonia; they're considered Estonian only because the founders hold Estonian nationality. You wouldn't call start-ups headquartered in the US and founded by Indians "Indian start-ups", would you?

This might not be the case for quite a few Estonian startups though -- with 1.3 million people you're desperately lacking a large enough target market for the niche products that some startups are developing, and looking to other countries may actually be a part of a strategy, not simply a case of 'I happen to be an Estonian living in the UK so I'll just go with the flow and do my startup here'. I would call these startups Estonian.

Re: Estonia becomes the first to open a nationwide electric vehicle charging network

#59

Post by jespersaron » Thu, Feb 21, 2013, 10:42 AM UTC

newbie12 wrote: post #6

Unfortunately, because Estonia derives almost all of their electrical power from coal, this is a wasteful setback for the environment. http://www.tradingeconomics.com/estonia/electricity-producti...

Your data is a bit outdated, currently about 20% of the electricity produced in Estonia comes from renewable sources (biofuel, wind) and the figure is growing rapidly.

Plus the electric cars can only buy renewable energy, it would nullify the point of selling CO2 quotas if they used fossil fuel to produce that energy ;)

Re: Estonia becomes the first to open a nationwide electric vehicle charging network

#60

Post by walshemj » Thu, Feb 21, 2013, 2:55 PM UTC

saraid216 wrote: post #41

walshemj wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Estonia is a former Soviet republic and now a fairly poor European country one does have to ask is there not better things to spend this on? Support for start ups that create long term jobs and values might be a better use of the carbon credits they sold to Mitsubishi.

Off Wikipedia: "Estonia has the highest gross domestic product per person among the former Soviet republics.[10] It is listed as a "high-income economy" by the World Bank, is identified as an "advanced economy" by the International Monetary Fund, and is a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The United Nations classifies Estonia as a developed country with a very high Human Developmen…

Then why are there tons of educated Estonians moving to the UK doing the low level jobs then.

And first amongst former soviet states is not exactly knocking it out of the ball park.