101–110 of 117 posts
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So instead of helping EV companies ("industry innovators and disruptors") by making their products more attractive, they should just do nothing and hope some "disruptors" come around?
How many hundreds of millions more in tax breaks and subsidies does Tesla need? They're getting a lot of help.
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If you ban sale of gas cars in say, California, everyone will just hop over to Oregon/Nevada/Arizona to purchase vehicles.
If you ban gas stations instead in California, where will they fill up? The federal government has limited control over state land use regulation.
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They should probably skip subsidies though. Taxing emissions makes sense because emissions are a direct externality. But when you subsidies replacements you are essentially betting on the most efficient solution, not at all certain it would be the best, you also introduce new externalities for people to profit on unfairly. I'm guessing it would be much more effective to tax emissions, do so aggressively, and then jus…
We tax emissions. This way, a plug-in hybrid is cheaper than a diesel-car, and a pure EV is cheaper than a plug-in hybrid. We also have some special privileges for EV cars. Like free parking on state/county-owned parking places and the option of driving in the public transport lane. Special privileges are supposed to go away in a couple of years though, due to the increase in EV owners. We've had some problems with t…
That was what I meant with betting, the reason we have free markets in the first place (as opposed to central planning) is because we simply can't plan such things without them, it's to complex.
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How so? What stops any state in the US from doing similar things? Genuine question. California for example routinely establishes new and stricter (compared to other US states) environmental rules governing emissions and whatnot. Legalizing pot is similarly fairly out of the mainstream and it is being done independently by several states.
If you ban sale of gas cars in say, California, everyone will just hop over to Oregon/Nevada/Arizona to purchase vehicles.
I'll keep banging on this since I haven't yet heard a satisfactory answer: what are you going to do about people who park on the street or in garages they do not own? Overnight charging systems are for homeowners. Even with a (high end, optimistic) public charge station time of 30 minutes, if there are just 4 people ahead of you in line, that's 2.5 hours out of your day. Yes self driving may fix this eventually, but…
Off topic: Anyone watch Okkupert (occupied in English)? The French-Norwegian made drama about how a modern European country would act if war were to happen there today (like it kind of has in Ukraine...). http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4192998/
(Norwegian here). Great show, but it's so hilariously and transparently self-flattering to the Norwegian sense of self. Norway boldly goes zero-emission and turns off the fossil fuel tap. The European Union essentially hires Russia to swoop in and invade in response to turn the tap back on. When the shocked Norwegian prime minister demands to talk to the person in charge, the EU chief's head pops up and scolds them s…
I'd love to watch that one, haha!
Although I have to say, being scandinavian (🇸🇪) as well, the show had me thinking better about the life in Ukraine 2014, Iraq 2003 or Afghanistan 2001. Let's all refuse violence, and end war.
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This sounds like a more balanced approach than the linked article which claims an outright ban on oil-based vehicles. I think banning any technology is a bad idea. Imho, the problem with climate change is not the burning of oil or carbon, but the emissions from doing it.
Why can't we ban fuel-burning cars? They have a more direct impact on the environment than just climate. I live next to a busy road and I frequently have to sweep noxious dust off my balcony. Not to mention that the sky at sunset is not naturally orange, but is tinted by the haze. We banned CFCs because they were removing the UV filter from our atmosphere, so there is precedent, and decades later nobody misses them.
Economically viable is another question, but there's some possibility that this may be the case.
what about trucks, heavy machinery and motorcycles? battery tech is not there for all of those. range/power/density work against batteries in those. current models all suck.
There was a time when it was laughable that the "automobile" would ever replace the horse. It broke down constantly, it had such anemic engine power that it could barely get up a hill, and the manufacturers of these vehicles were just a bunch of people in a ramshackle garage. Yet somehow we made it work.
Initially used for lamps (Standard Oil was founded as an illumination company), motive power wasn't practical (aside from as an alternative to coal or wood for steam engines* until Nikolaus Otto perfected the four-stroke engine in 1876. Daimler started his own company in 1880, but didn't perfect a transport-capable engine until 1885.
Within 25 years, Henry Ford was selling Tin Lizzies to anyone who could come up with $260 in cash. Numbers of automobiles and companies exploded.
And yet total patents filed not only plateaued by 1925, but fell afterward. Not all the hard problems had been solved, but many were, and there's been comparatively little qualitative improvement in automobiles in the subsequent 90 years, particularly as compared with the 50 preceding.
From first inception to mass consumer product was the blink of an eye considering all of historical innovation in transport previously. We saw 6,000 years of transport expertise obsoleted within a generation.
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Regarding Statoil. The government currently owns about 1/3 of it. The oil income for the state does not come from the profit of the company but the taxes they put on the companies that extract oil (which is about 80%) and the sale of licenses through Petoro. Selling Statoil (and the other ones) have absolutely no comparison to what Thatcher did in the 80s if that is what you are insinuating. Regarding the power, the…
Why sell off the train if it's earning money? Plenty of government run ventures don't.