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Norway reportedly agrees on banning new sales of gas-powered cars by 2025

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Re: Norway reportedly agrees on banning new sales of gas-powered cars by 2025

#21

To anyone who is thinking: 1) Yeah, they are a small resource rich country, not practical for the rest of us. America, Canada, UK, Saudi Arabia and Australia were resource rich and still are ( America is the largest producer of oil ) and had the opportunity to do what Norway did but chose not to do it. UK had a huge surplus from north sea oil during the 1990s which is allowed private companies to profit off. Same wit…

Norway is culturally optimized for safe equilibrium. America is culturally optimized for risky advancement. It's pretty starkly different and makes direct single-variable comparisons into shallow exercises in meaninglessness

Re: Norway reportedly agrees on banning new sales of gas-powered cars by 2025

#22

To anyone who is thinking: 1) Yeah, they are a small resource rich country, not practical for the rest of us. America, Canada, UK, Saudi Arabia and Australia were resource rich and still are ( America is the largest producer of oil ) and had the opportunity to do what Norway did but chose not to do it. UK had a huge surplus from north sea oil during the 1990s which is allowed private companies to profit off. Same wit…

Norway is culturally optimized for safe equilibrium. America is culturally optimized for risky advancement. It's pretty starkly different and makes direct single-variable comparisons into shallow exercises in meaninglessness

Re: Norway reportedly agrees on banning new sales of gas-powered cars by 2025

#24
post #8

what are they going to do between then and now to get older vehicles out of service? are there emissions tests in Norway? Do they have a cut off date, as in the car is beyond a certain age it is not tested? Do they treat trucks and such the same? I think its an interesting idea and it might work depending on how fast fuel cell and battery technology advances. I have never been a believer of the all battery solution a…

There is no need for the government to set up a system to make sure older vehicles are taken out of service. You just use a combination of taxes and subsidies. You tax gas, vehicles based on their emissions or both to make old cars unaffordable, so people will take them out of service. On the other hand you make electric cars more affordable and usable through subsidies on electric cars and infrastructure for them.

If you want to push the industry further, you could also make money available for research into electric cars, batteries and related technology. You want do to the latter probably anyway because you need energy storage in order to make renewable energy work.

Modern cars are all tested for emissions by the manufacturers because of US and EU requirements. I'm sure Norway has regulation for that as well. Cars that are so old that they're untested, you could just assume as having the worst possible grade in tests. That's probably not far from the truth.

Much of that is already happening. In the EU gas is taxed quite heavily for example. Germany has environmental zones to combat air pollution that certain cars aren't allowed to enter due to their emissions. Germany has also plans on subsidizing electric car sales.

Re: Norway reportedly agrees on banning new sales of gas-powered cars by 2025

#25
post #3

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 saying they had this coming. Norwegian pm demands to talk to a european head of state.... and SWEDEN pops up. SWEDEN!

Seriously, I love this show, but the American equivalent would be if France and China teamed up as an evil strikeforce to invade America because they were printing too many Bibles or something.

EDIT: also if norway turned off the tap, isn't that GOOD for Russian gas exports & thus controlling europe? But exciting fiction nonetheless :P

Re: Norway reportedly agrees on banning new sales of gas-powered cars by 2025

#26

To anyone who is thinking: 1) Yeah, they are a small resource rich country, not practical for the rest of us. America, Canada, UK, Saudi Arabia and Australia were resource rich and still are ( America is the largest producer of oil ) and had the opportunity to do what Norway did but chose not to do it. UK had a huge surplus from north sea oil during the 1990s which is allowed private companies to profit off. Same wit…

Norway is culturally optimized for safe equilibrium. America is culturally optimized for risky advancement. It's pretty starkly different and makes direct single-variable comparisons into shallow exercises in meaninglessness

It's also much less diverse than America.

Re: Norway reportedly agrees on banning new sales of gas-powered cars by 2025

#27

Passing laws now about what SHOULD be in the future is a way for politicians to make it seem like they're doing something when they have no real solutions. It will be technology and industry innovators and disruptors that make this possible, but I'm sure the intelligentsia and politicians will give "forward thinking policy makers" the credit.

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?

Re: Norway reportedly agrees on banning new sales of gas-powered cars by 2025

#28
post #18
post #13

What I don't get is that this is a pretty confident bet that batteries will dramatically improve. It's not a very densely populated country. It's not like you can have a charging station every 3km. Usually law follows technology. Here it seems to anticipate it massively.

It's not as outlandish as you may think. Tesla has already said that it expects batteries to cost $100/KWh by 2020. Although that may be a little optimistic, I don't think it's off by more than 2, maybe 3 years. By 2020 batteries could cost around $70/KWh, after which Li-Ion batteries at least, will probably stagnate, as it's close to raw material cost, but I expect some new type of batteries to emerge by then with p…

+1 And there is another smart kid in the class, ie. Toyota with its Mirai

Re: Norway reportedly agrees on banning new sales of gas-powered cars by 2025

#30
Can you imagine this in the USA after the response by the right to limiting just incandescent lightbulbs?

Half the legislatures in the country passed laws to ban any ban on the old lightbulbs.

I think some politicians ran on it, remember Michelle Bachmann?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Lighting_Energy_Policy#Li...

If they limited gas powered cars the government would probably be overthrown by some of the same lightbulb people.

2025 does seem a bit soon but it would be nice to have a target to talk about, ie. no new gas cars made starting 2050 (people would horde them though)

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