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The Netherlands is making moves to ban all non-electric vehicle sales by 2025

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31–40 of 73 posts

Re: The Netherlands is making moves to ban all non-electric vehicle sales by 2025

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it's more to do with air resistance. It increases exponentially at higher speeds. You also don't burn less by driving really slow, since the engine burns some amount of fuel just by running at any speed. 40 mph is the sweet spot, supposedly. Driving at the speed limit will definitely save you more fuel than speeding.

> Actually it's more to do with air resistance. It increases exponentially at higher speeds. You also don't burn less by driving really slow, since the engine burns some amount of fuel just by running at any speed. 40 mph is the sweet spot, supposedly. Actually, the sweet spot is dependent on the design and condition of the car. I'm not sure where exactly it is, but I think you are right that it is usually around 40.…

Of course it depends on the design of the car, but 40 is an average.

>How does a number on a sign affect how much fuel I'm burning?

I never claimed that it would. I said "Driving at the speed limit will definitely save you more fuel than speeding.", which is definitely true. If you speed you are going faster and using more fuel.

Re: The Netherlands is making moves to ban all non-electric vehicle sales by 2025

#32
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could argue that self-driving cars potentially consume less energy by driving more efficiently than humans.

Self driving cars will almost certainly use much more energy than regular cars. It will reduce the cost of shipping by a lot, increasing the amount of things which are shipped. It will reduce the price of taxis a lot, so people will drive more. And it will make long commutes and road trips much more convenient.

Maybe, but you're still limited by atoms not occupying the same physical space at the same time ("traffic", "congestion", etc).

There's limited road to use, so you'll still hit finite limits; if limits are reached, congestion charges will be used to bring demand inline with roadway supply.

Re: The Netherlands is making moves to ban all non-electric vehicle sales by 2025

#33
post #6

It's noteworthy that 90% of energy used in the Netherlands is fossil fuels[1] (as of 2013, anyway). This means electric cars will emit GHGs comparable to a 40-50mpg gasoline-powered car. Hopefully they do some major work to clean up their grid electricity. Electric cars are a necessary step to reducing GHG emissions, but without a clean grid they are pretty pointless. [1] https://www.iea.org/Textbase/npsum/netherland…

I haven't read the linked report, but I'm guessing that's mostly industrial usage? From anecdotal evidence of the people I know (which is also biased), most consumer electricity is 'green' (wind, solar, and sometimes biomass). In general this is not more expensive than 'grey', so many people opt for it.

Here you go, Sankey diagram for the Netherlands (for 2013):

http://www.iea.org/sankey/#?c=Netherlands&s=Final consumption

0.5 MTOE geo/solar/tide/wind/bio/waste energy going to residential use

Re: The Netherlands is making moves to ban all non-electric vehicle sales by 2025

#35
post #25

Will they compel landlords to install chargers in all parking spots? What about street parking? Or are people who don't own garages simply screwed, as in the US?

I'm not sure about other cities, but if you own an electric car in Amsterdam, you're guaranteed to get a charging spot near your home. As long as nobody in your neighbourhood has a visitor with an electric car, this means a guaranteed parking spot, which is an enormously valuable perk in this city.

Interesting! So every time someone buys an electric car, the government builds a new charging spot? That sounds like a great way to incentivize EVs, even more than a straight cash refund like in the US.

Re: The Netherlands is making moves to ban all non-electric vehicle sales by 2025

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self driving cars will almost certainly use much more energy than regular cars. It will reduce the cost of shipping by a lot, increasing the amount of things which are shipped. It will reduce the price of taxis a lot, so people will drive more. And it will make long commutes and road trips much more convenient.

Maybe, but you're still limited by atoms not occupying the same physical space at the same time ("traffic", "congestion", etc). There's limited road to use, so you'll still hit finite limits; if limits are reached, congestion charges will be used to bring demand inline with roadway supply.

ideally the throughput of highway would be increasing with self-driving vehicles: no need for start/stopping when they can drive at optimum total velocity.

Re: The Netherlands is making moves to ban all non-electric vehicle sales by 2025

#37
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We already have an energy-saving self-driving mechanism - ... (and obeying the speed limit.) Obeying the speed limit is irrelevant; the actual speed is. A given car at a given speed consumes the same amount of fuel per unit distance regardless of what the speed limit is. All the data indicating that "speeding wastes fuel" is basically just proving that fuel economy is a function of engine power output.

You're ignoring breaking. If you go significantly faster than the speed limit your far more likely to break at highway speeds. Further, IC cars often get better fuel efficiency by mixing slow acceleration periods at optimum RPM and coasting. (Car engines get ~10-30 efficiency based on usage.) You can do this manually, but it's hard. However, air resistance is going to be the dominate factor at high speeds.

> You're ignoring breaking. If you go significantly faster than the speed limit your far more likely to break at highway speeds.

I'm not ignoring braking. Aggressive driving wastes a lot of fuel, but aggressive driving happens regardless of the posted speed limit. In fact, that rapid acceleration-brake cycle is more likely to happen when the flow of traffic is below the speed limit.

> Further, IC cars often get better fuel efficiency by mixing slow acceleration periods at optimum RPM and coasting. (Car engines get ~10-30 efficiency based on usage.) You can do this manually, but it's hard.

I don't think it's hard. It just requires paying attention to the traffic around you.

Re: The Netherlands is making moves to ban all non-electric vehicle sales by 2025

#38
post #16

It's about sales and it's very far from an implementation. One major issue is the EU, I heard on the radio (BNR) that it is not even legally possible for the Netherlands to banish sales of goods that are not banished in other parts of the EU. It's a nice discussion-starter though.

(Not EU resident here) How hard is it to cross an internal EU border, buy a car, and take it back home?

Not hard, but usually not worth it as far as I remember: You have to pay the VAT of your home country when you import it, which is often one of the biggest difference between car prices within the EU.

Re: The Netherlands is making moves to ban all non-electric vehicle sales by 2025

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Actually it's more to do with air resistance. It increases exponentially at higher speeds. You also don't burn less by driving really slow, since the engine burns some amount of fuel just by running at any speed. 40 mph is the sweet spot, supposedly. Actually, the sweet spot is dependent on the design and condition of the car. I'm not sure where exactly it is, but I think you are right that it is usually around 40.…

Of course it depends on the design of the car, but 40 is an average. >How does a number on a sign affect how much fuel I'm burning? I never claimed that it would. I said "Driving at the speed limit will definitely save you more fuel than speeding.", which is definitely true. If you speed you are going faster and using more fuel.

> I never claimed that it would. I said "Driving at the speed limit will definitely save you more fuel than speeding.", which is definitely true. If you speed you are going faster and using more fuel.

That statement has nothing to do with the speed limit, though. It may be trivially true, but adding the speed limit ties an irrelevant variable to it. Speed limit is a semi-arbitrary number that has nothing to do with how much fuel a car uses and how efficiently it uses it.

Re: The Netherlands is making moves to ban all non-electric vehicle sales by 2025

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So people will just travel an extra 15 minutes to the next country to buy their dinosaur-powered vehicles instead. This won't do anything but push sales tax money out of the country unless they also do something like ban new vehicle registrations as well as sales.

Or unless the neighboring countries follow suit.

Belgium maybe, but France and German have very strong industry relying on the production of petrol cars, so you'd expect them to offer strong resistance until they field more electric model than petrol ones. It is the same industry that victoriously lobbied against the liberalisation of the personal vehicle market.
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