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Tesla becomes most popular automaker in Norway

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Re: Tesla becomes most popular automaker in Norway

#31

Post by quickben »

dogma1138 wrote: post #18
ciconia wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why ridiculous? After all, it's been put in place for the express purpose of reducing greenhouse gas emissions [1], and at least in Norway it seems to be effective. [1] https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/transport/vehicles/cars_...

Because it didn’t, it was hugely biased against CO2 emissions only which allowed the European favored Diesel engines to appear much less polluting. On top of that the policy focused heavily on engine “size” which again favored Diesel engines and vehicle weight which effectively screwed over early plugin hybrids and currently screws over large families and luxury cars. The weight and capacity policy has also been abus…

Sport cars have stronger engines, luxury cars are heavier. How do you get from that to 'more economical' ?

Re: Tesla becomes most popular automaker in Norway

#32

Post by semi-extrinsic »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #23
deepsun wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla is also subsidized by government, so it costs pretty much the same as a "general" kind of family car.

They arent subsidized. Internal combustion vehicles are disincentivized with taxes. Externalities internalized.

Well, not really. The hefty taxes on ICEs have been there always to provide income for the state, they were not introduced to internalize any environmental effects. In particular this holds for the 25% VAT which EVs get to skip, which you otherwise pay on anything from bubblegum to burglary alarms.

The thing that irks me about this subsidy (or whatever you call it) is how ineffective it is. Something like $5000 per tonne CO2 avoided, if uou make some optimistic assumptions, which is 50-100x more expensive than most sensible emissions reduction methods. Adding insult to injury, total emissions from cars are growing, i.e. EVs lead to people driving more in total, not driving less in ICE cars. It's just greenwashing, pure and simple.

Re: Tesla becomes most popular automaker in Norway

#33

Post by quickben »

_0w8t wrote: post #26
dzhiurgis wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dont you find it bizzare that adding extremely complex engine + drivetrain integration is cheaper than adding additional solid state battery storage? It’s a bit like CRT vs LCD or HDD vs SSD. Eventually the reduced complexity or even weight of raw components are cheaper than counterparts.

HDD is still much cheaper than SSD. The same is with ICE cars that have 100 years to perfect manufacturing. I guess in 10 years battery will be cheap enough to end the ICE age, but at this technological point small ICE + small battery looks like the cheapest solution.

It may or may not get cheaper.

Lithium isn't semiconductor engineering where every generation you double the density yearly (even that stopped long time ago).

Planning current policies on future scientific discovered usually doesn't end up as planned.

Re: Tesla becomes most popular automaker in Norway

#34

Post by dogma1138 »

quickben wrote: post #31
dogma1138 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it didn’t, it was hugely biased against CO2 emissions only which allowed the European favored Diesel engines to appear much less polluting. On top of that the policy focused heavily on engine “size” which again favored Diesel engines and vehicle weight which effectively screwed over early plugin hybrids and currently screws over large families and luxury cars. The weight and capacity policy has also been abus…

Sport cars have stronger engines, luxury cars are heavier. How do you get from that to 'more economical' ?

Because the policy doesn’t take into account actual fuel consumption and emissions.

The BMW 520d has a combined MPG of 72 and 79 road, it’s still at a higher category than many less efficient cars simply because of how the policy is structured.

For gasoline engines specifically you’ll also find that many performance cars do offer higher efficiency at road speeds than your sluggish 1.8L minivan.

Re: Tesla becomes most popular automaker in Norway

#35

Post by _0w8t »

quickben wrote: post #33
_0w8t wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HDD is still much cheaper than SSD. The same is with ICE cars that have 100 years to perfect manufacturing. I guess in 10 years battery will be cheap enough to end the ICE age, but at this technological point small ICE + small battery looks like the cheapest solution.

It may or may not get cheaper. Lithium isn't semiconductor engineering where every generation you double the density yearly (even that stopped long time ago). Planning current policies on future scientific discovered usually doesn't end up as planned.

I do not count on any scientific breakthrough. The current batteries are good enough for cars. It is just too expensive to make them. But most of the price is not inherent in the technology, but rather in expensive specialized tools. Economy of scale should fix this.

Re: Tesla becomes most popular automaker in Norway

#36

Post by foepys »

heyalexej wrote: post #28
hurrdurr wrote: post #8

This is a repeat of a prior Tesla publicity stunt. What they do is they only ship cars to Norway quarterly, and by filling a big backlog of orders they then claim to be the most popular make in that month, which is technically true but also quite silly. You can clearly see on the graph in the article that the reason Tesla "sold" a ton of cars in September is because it sold almost none in August and July prior. And T…

Genuinely curious why you assume this is a PR stunt vs. say, a logistics related thing. The effects of such a PR stunt are likely negligible vs. potentially losing out on hundreds or thousands of sales due to long and unnecessary waiting times.

> The effects of such a PR stunt are likely negligible

Marketing is most likely the most important thing for new products nowadays. Quality becomes secondary if your target group thinks they get the best even though they don't.

Re: Tesla becomes most popular automaker in Norway

#37

Post by dzhiurgis »

quickben wrote: post #33
_0w8t wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HDD is still much cheaper than SSD. The same is with ICE cars that have 100 years to perfect manufacturing. I guess in 10 years battery will be cheap enough to end the ICE age, but at this technological point small ICE + small battery looks like the cheapest solution.

It may or may not get cheaper. Lithium isn't semiconductor engineering where every generation you double the density yearly (even that stopped long time ago). Planning current policies on future scientific discovered usually doesn't end up as planned.

Most cost goes to nickel, cobalt, manganese and other similar metals.

Increasing mining capacity can reduce the cost significantly. In very far future tho, most of it is probably going to be all recycled, but thats like 50 years ahead.

Re: Tesla becomes most popular automaker in Norway

#38

Post by moomin »

dogma1138 wrote: post #6
moomin wrote: post #4

The funny thing is, if there’s a country that practically would adopt electric cars last, it would be Norway. It’s got large distances and low prevailing temperatures, neither of which are favourable to electric cars. That’s how it would go if countries were equal. However, Norway’s a fairly enlightened and forward thinking place, so politically it’s not surprising they’re way ahead of the curve.

Nothing to do with being forward thinking it’s about money. When you can buy a Tesla for the same price or cheaper and a bloody Volkswagen Passat you are going to buy a Tesla. The Passat which in the US would cost you $20,000 has an on road price which starts at around $60,000 in Norway and most versions would cost you $70-75K.

I think you’re confusing aims and mechanisms.

Re: Tesla becomes most popular automaker in Norway

#39

Post by dogma1138 »

moomin wrote: post #38
dogma1138 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing to do with being forward thinking it’s about money. When you can buy a Tesla for the same price or cheaper and a bloody Volkswagen Passat you are going to buy a Tesla. The Passat which in the US would cost you $20,000 has an on road price which starts at around $60,000 in Norway and most versions would cost you $70-75K.

I think you’re confusing aims and mechanisms.

Nope, EVs are not cheap by design for the most part they are cheap by loopholes.

Norway treats cars as luxury items and taxes them accordingly with 100% or higher import taxes and considerable overall road tax.

This isn’t that different than some other EU countries but the combination of an asinine taxation policy and a handful of incentives created a situation where cheap cars cost a fortune, where luxury cars are effectively a skin job but some EVs despite being a luxury item slip through.

Norway is already planning to cut many incentive and like many other EU countries tax EVs on a KW/h basis as well as their weight and class just like ICE cars are taxed today.

This would mean that the price and TCO of Tesla would increase to the level of other similarly priced cars in Norway which by 2020 should put a $100,000 US Tesla Model whatever in the $250-300K range in Norway just like the $22,000 cars costing $60000.

Cheaper EVs like the Leaf and Model 3 should remain affordable, at least to what Norwegians have been forced to call affordable.

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