Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules • Hacker News Board

Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules

#331

Post by bwindels » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 9:16 AM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #324

bwindels wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, I don't see how you can put a price on these externalities. 13.000 people die early in Germany alone because of this. What would you have them do with this money? Planting trees wont do them much good. Liberty is not an absolute thing. My freedom to drive my car ends where it encroaches on other peoples freedom to have a passable living environment. We've banned smoking in public spaces for exactly the…

Personally I was thinking purely in terms of the various forms of pollution, although the Harvard study does try to account for injury and loss of life. Externality is an economic theory, far from a euphemism. It’s easy to gauge how many lives are lost due to the automobile. But how many lives are saved? How many lives are enriched? How many lives are even made possible because of the automobile? You can look at only…

How does driving a car in a big German city (which is what I am talking about at least) make lives possible where they weren't before, or save them? I think nobody here is advocating to ban ambulances or fire trucks.

Me too, I can't wait for self-driving electric cars to be used inside the city. That will take care of the local pollution burden put on residents today, and hopefully put cars in a more submissive role in traffic, where they belong.

Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules

#332

Post by IkmoIkmo » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 9:57 AM UTC

oldcynic wrote: post #209

jacquesm wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to see you downvoted. I'm totally sympathetic to the end goal, I would just like to see a realistic approach and the GGP's call for an outright ban on vehicles in the present is not supportable. The biggest problem I have with various 'green' parties is that for the most part their solutions are bordering on the militant and do not take in to account the various complications that will need to be dealt with in…

> ...and the cities were ill prepared to deal with that. For all the faults around Europe with traffic, I think they did far better adapting to cars than the UK. Mainly by preserving some of the alternatives better. The Netherlands has infinitely more sensibly integrated public transport, and provision for cycles than we will probably ever have. At least that's my perspective as an occasional visitor. Postwar rebuild…

> provision for cycles than we will probably ever have.

I'd recommend a brief history of cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands. It was actually quite poor here, too. i.e., it wasn't culture naturally shaping a cyclist-first traffic regime throughout Dutch history, it were conscious policy decisions to uproot a car-friendly traffic regime and make a decades-long effort for change. The Dutch system sucked in the 50s and 60s and it changed its policies in the 70s, which took off only in the 80s.

https://www.centreforpublicimpact.org/case-study/focusing-bi...

Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules

#333

Post by Zak » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 11:56 AM UTC

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #325

Zak wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think jacquesm adequately explained one of the major distinctions: a high tax that's slightly lower than the tax on a competing good does not result in a below-market price. While many of the effects are similar, it is not the same .

> a high tax that's slightly lower than the tax on a competing good does not result in a below-market price. Erm ... what do you consider "the market price"? I suppose it's not the price that people actually pay for something in the market, as then even the state paying for all your diesel needs would still not qualify as a subsidy (if the state pays for it, you don't pay anything, that would make the market price ze…

In economics, oversimplifying slightly, the market price is the equilibrium price. That is, where the demand curve and supply curve cross. This is the price the market will settle on without outside forces acting on it.

A subsidy results in a sale price below the equilibrium price while sellers receive payments above the equilibrium price. An excise tax has the opposite effect.

Different excise taxes on competing products may lead consumers to prefer one over the other, but still results in less consumption of both products than the market would without intervention.

Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules

#334

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 12:43 PM UTC

Zak wrote: post #333

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a high tax that's slightly lower than the tax on a competing good does not result in a below-market price. Erm ... what do you consider "the market price"? I suppose it's not the price that people actually pay for something in the market, as then even the state paying for all your diesel needs would still not qualify as a subsidy (if the state pays for it, you don't pay anything, that would make the market price ze…

In economics, oversimplifying slightly, the market price is the equilibrium price. That is, where the demand curve and supply curve cross. This is the price the market will settle on without outside forces acting on it. A subsidy results in a sale price below the equilibrium price while sellers receive payments above the equilibrium price. An excise tax has the opposite effect. Different excise taxes on competing pro…

OK, so let's check whether that holds up: Suppose petrol was taxed at 1000 EUR/l and diesel was taxed at 0.01 EUR/l. Do you think that that would lead to less consumption of diesel than in the no-intervention equilibrium with the seller receiving payments below the no-intervention equilibrium price?

Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules

#335

Post by pelasaco » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 3:50 PM UTC

TheLostOne wrote: post #45

As a German who never owned a car (have driver license 30+ years) and never will, hurray! Next: Petrol cars please. Costs for cities would decrease a lot [1], room for bicycles would increase, noise would drop to a level which can't believed, ambulances would be adjusted to walking persons instead of loud cars with their stereos on and air would be wonderful. [1] https://www.amazon.de/High-Cost-Free-Parking/dp/193236…

typischer grüner wähler. Keine ahnung von nix :)

Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules

#336

Post by 0xfeba » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:25 PM UTC

gmueckl wrote: post #300

lulmerchant wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. It's one of the safest and cleanest forms of energy in the world.

Well, in theory perhaps. In practice, a bit of stupidity can make nuclear reactors fail spectacularly. Chernobyl had operators doing stupid things. Fukushima had planners ignore centuries old warnings about tsunamis in the area. I was a proponent of nuclear power for a long time, but I became cautious when I realized that it still involves humans making mistakes. Now I hope that the German reactors hit their shutdown…

Yeah, but as I'm sure you heard before, newer reactors are really well-designed.

I think the low death rate per kWh, effective risk to the environment, and carbon footprint are all clearly in favor of nuclear.

The downsides: cost, time to operation, and ramp up/down times. But none of those have large negative externalities.

Compared to the negatives of conventional power plants, I really think we should be subsidizing nuclear heavily to mitigate climate change -- in addition to renewables.

Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules

#337

Post by zaroth » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 5:51 PM UTC

bwindels wrote: post #331

zaroth wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I was thinking purely in terms of the various forms of pollution, although the Harvard study does try to account for injury and loss of life. Externality is an economic theory, far from a euphemism. It’s easy to gauge how many lives are lost due to the automobile. But how many lives are saved? How many lives are enriched? How many lives are even made possible because of the automobile? You can look at only…

How does driving a car in a big German city (which is what I am talking about at least) make lives possible where they weren't before, or save them? I think nobody here is advocating to ban ambulances or fire trucks. Me too, I can't wait for self-driving electric cars to be used inside the city. That will take care of the local pollution burden put on residents today, and hopefully put cars in a more submissive role…

In many, many ways. People face all sorts of conditions and situations for which an automobile can significantly improve their quality of life.

I’m sorry you can’t imagine the range of human conditions which can make cars a absolute necessary part of modern life for some people, even in dense urban environments.

The funniest example that comes to mind is you (or your wife’s) water breaks and it’s time to head to the hospital. Quick, let’s get on the bus!

You honestly think the only way people should be able to get privately and expeditiously from point A to point B (while potentially transporting hundreds of pounds of cargo) is calling emergency services?

Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules

#338

Post by bdamm » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 6:14 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #316

bdamm wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a strange statement. More horsepower based on what? I think if you look around, you'll see that the largest and highest horsepower combustion engines all burn diesel. Semi-trailers are exclusively diesel. Your statement on speed is also odd. Record setting cars may burn gas, but your typical car driving around a city or highway needn't ever go faster than 160km/h. Most cars can achieve this, and most modern ca…

> the diesel will win just about any street race. This is really wrong. It's a weird myth that gets perpetuated in America where people don't really drive diesels. Let's compare a 2.0L diesel Golf TDI to a 2.0L petrol Golf GTI. Same car, same displacement, both turbo engines. The Golf TDI does 0-60 in 9.0s and a quarter mile of 17.0s@84 mph. The Golf GTI does 0-60 in 5.7s and a quarter mile of 14.2s@100 mph. There's…

I think the 0-40 profile would be much more favorable to the TDI, and much more useful to the typical driver. But we'll never really know as that's not the standard measurement.

Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules

#339

Post by gmueckl » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 1:12 PM UTC

0xfeba wrote: post #336

gmueckl wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, in theory perhaps. In practice, a bit of stupidity can make nuclear reactors fail spectacularly. Chernobyl had operators doing stupid things. Fukushima had planners ignore centuries old warnings about tsunamis in the area. I was a proponent of nuclear power for a long time, but I became cautious when I realized that it still involves humans making mistakes. Now I hope that the German reactors hit their shutdown…

Yeah, but as I'm sure you heard before, newer reactors are really well-designed. I think the low death rate per kWh, effective risk to the environment, and carbon footprint are all clearly in favor of nuclear. The downsides: cost, time to operation, and ramp up/down times. But none of those have large negative externalities. Compared to the negatives of conventional power plants, I really think we should be subsidizi…

No matter how much you put your emphasis on the technology, this does not make the human factor go away. Reactors are too complex to build and run without human supervision and maintenance. Thus, incidents and accidents based on human error will happen eventually.

Also, you leave out one aspect of nuclear power generation: really long term storage is required for the fission waste products. This has its own troubles and unsolved problems.

An old salt mine in Germany was converted into an experimental long term storage facility for nuclear waste. Originally, the site was judged to be geologically stable enough to contain the waste for a couple of millenia. However, it turns out that the amount of water that was seeping through was underestimated badly. Now, they are scrambling to get the waste back out. But noone has an idea how to do this safely with badly corroded, damaged and burst containers down there.

No other site has been selected for another attempt to put radiating materials into a safe long term storage. In other words, no spent fuel rod has been put into any kind of long term storage yet.

Re: Diesel cars can be banned from German cities, court rules

#340

Post by mywittyname » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 3:43 PM UTC

Matthias247 wrote: post #326

mywittyname wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the diesel will win just about any street race. This is really wrong. It's a weird myth that gets perpetuated in America where people don't really drive diesels. Let's compare a 2.0L diesel Golf TDI to a 2.0L petrol Golf GTI. Same car, same displacement, both turbo engines. The Golf TDI does 0-60 in 9.0s and a quarter mile of 17.0s@84 mph. The Golf GTI does 0-60 in 5.7s and a quarter mile of 14.2s@100 mph. There's…

If you want to do this comparison please do it right: The Diesel equivalent to the Golf GTI is the Golf GTD. There's more than just displacement that makes up an engine and the fact that is some kind of turbocharger. Their difference in 0-60 seems to be 6.4s vs 7.4s according to what I find. Guess the difference in higher regions might be even less, because of a different torque profile in turbocharged diesel engines…

The GTD is Euro-only, so it's harder to get performance comparisons. But it's still much slower than the GTI, I found a 15.6@93 in the quarter.

0-60 is an awful way to measure acceleration; most of what it measures in modern cars is traction, since a Mk7 GTI will shred the front tires with a hard launch. So high five second and low six second times are both accurate, it just depends how good the launch was.

That's why you compare quarter mile times when looking at acceleration. And the GTI is still so much faster than the GTD; a full second and a half and 7mph trap. Meaning, in a drag race, the GTD wouldn't be close enough to read the GTI's license plate.