171–180 of 279 posts
It's good that Norway may hit 100% electric EV. But with ~20% of their economy based on oil and gas production, it's hard not to think of it being funded largely by exporting pollution elsewhere.
There are some serious caveats here: > seven out of every eight cars bought and sold in Norway a used car. The NAF’s numbers show that of the 357,176 ownership registration changes so far in 2021, electric vehicles only accounted for 12 per cent. And their definition of electric cars includes hybrids (whereas I think most people interpret it to mean fully electric). So they're obviously doing great but the vast major…
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Of course. But a key difference is that the electric grid seems to be drastically more decentralized than fuel pipelines. Pipelines for liquid or gaseous fuel have a huge upfront cost and maintenance requirements compared to running power lines, so the incentives are to build them as big as possible. Taking down a power station is certainly a viable attack vector, but the damage caused by losing a single station is d…
Do you not remember the massive blackouts in the last 50 years? Entire regions of the USA and Canada have gone dark from time to time. California teters on the brink regularly. Remember last winter's troubles in Texas? It's not really any more stable than fuel distribution IMO.
20% of Norway's GDP comes from pumping oil out of the ground and selling it for others to burn. If they were really green that would stop.
Hypocritical facile criticism is hypocritically facile.
What's notable about Norway is that back in 1968, as the country was first becoming aware of its oil wealth through the newly-realised North Sea deposits (shared with the UK), the country had the foresight to tap the advice of an Iraqi ex-pat who advised the country to invest its oil funds for national growth, infrasturcture, and sustainability, and not squander it in corruption and gratuitous expenditures as so many other countries had and would.
That story is now in the HN queue:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2878010
The consequence is that we can now face the ironic but heartening fact that, yes, an oil-producing and exporting country is now positioned as amongst the more prepared for a post-fossil-fuel economy and civilisation.
If you find yourself in a lifeboat with limited supplies and rations, it's not unwise to make use of those rations. It is unwise to squander those rations for purposes other than reaching safety. And it's extraordinarily unwise to criticise those who are using those rations to achieve a safer state.
20% of Norway's GDP comes from pumping oil out of the ground and selling it for others to burn. If they were really green that would stop.
How much oil is needed to produce a single electric vehicle? What I am getting at is we will need oil extraction for a long time. While we can move away from burning it for heat, we still need it for the production of most plastics. This doesn't even begin to touch on oil's use in the extraction process of all the other metals used in car production. We also need oil for road building. I don't see that changing anyti…
Maybe I'm being reductive, but isn't this essentially because we haven't electrified mine carts et al yet? Or are you referring to steel smelting?
20% of Norway's GDP comes from pumping oil out of the ground and selling it for others to burn. If they were really green that would stop.
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Similar in California and other states. The states typically tax gasoline and since electrics don't use any they are implementing special fees on electric vehicle purchases to make up for lost revenue. One would think that the savings in pollution (not only for the car itself, but the transport of the fuel, pollution from refineries, etc.) would offset any lost revenue from gas taxes. What makes this really nonsensic…
In Colorado at least it's not that high. $50 plus a small amount (today) that goes up over time to no more than $96 in the 2031-2032 fiscal year. It's CERTAINLY a lot less than you'd be paying in gas tax if you used your car an average amount. Taxes aren't punishment, anyway. Especially "road use taxes", which are, in this case, used to repair the roads you're driving on. [1] https://afdc.energy.gov/laws/11486
I don't think taxes should be too low and don't mind paying moderate amounts of tax, but I do think the number of taxes should be as low as possible to maintain legitimacy in the population. Nobody likes to feel nickel and dimed to death, so it's better to have a small number of predictable and easy to understand taxes than an endless variety of fees that add up to what feels disproportionately burdensome for the public. Policymakers need to remember that very few of the public are economic rationalists with pocket calculator brains.
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Wow really? I have a Tesla in CA and am only familiar with the electric vehicle credit (not sure what it is, I haven't looked into it) and the "you get to use carpool lanes" rule for EVs. Otherwise, I'm not familiar with extra taxes :(
IIRC, renewing a Tesla registration is $6xx/year whereas renewing a gas car's registration is $1xx/year
But I think they do charge extra to make up for the fact that you never have to smog an electric vehicle.
It will be interesting if there comes a point where ICE vehicles are such a small minority of all vehicles, that supporting infrastructure (petrol stations, traditional mechanics, oil change services, etc) starts to collapse and disappear. There may still be some infrastructure for special use cases like long haul trucking or industrial vehicles, but it might become untenable for the average consumer to own an ICE ve…
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Very interesting. In Canada, it will take years to recoup the price difference for buying an electric car even with government incentives. 25% VAT + Extra tax seems to work.
That's mostly because of the lack of midmarket cars. I bought a used sub-$20k electrical car a few months ago; it can be done. The market needs pressure to create cars in that price range; right now EVs are mostly luxury cars. Tesla is not the car we should be aiming for; what we need are things in the class of the E-Golf, Kia Niro, FFE, Fiat 500E etc. that are the size of a Corolla and cost 20k CAD or less. Until th…
Out of curiosity, what make and model? I'm trying to find an EV and like everyone is saying, it's all luxury vehicles.