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VW sees EVs making up 90% of Norway sales in 2021

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Re: VW sees EVs making up 90% of Norway sales in 2021

#52
post #22
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moving the environmental damage from "everywhere in the atmosphere", to mining sites and power plants is a good thing. Power plants can be replaced with carbon free energy sources, but synthetic fuels have such terrible efficiency that they only make sense for niche applications.

I mean if you don’t care about African mines and Chinese rivers that factories dump their effluent into, sure. But there is absolutely an environmental cost, just less to the wealthy nations that pay to move the damage elsewhere.

Mining problems have the huge benefit that they're relatively localized and get a lot less severe when you choose to stop mining there. Fixing environmental problems from mining also doesn't require global coordination.

Global warming on the other hand threatens the whole biome and stopping the release of CO2 doesn't stop global warming once tipping points are reached. You also need global agreement to meaningfully do something about it.

(You also have to keep in mind that fuel for ICEs doesn't magically appear. Extracting oil and transporting it isn't particularly good for the local environment either.)

Re: VW sees EVs making up 90% of Norway sales in 2021

#53
post #34
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electric vehicles cause much more CO2 emissions during production as compared to cars with internal combustion engines due to complicated manufacturing process of the battery. If you’re comparing CO2 emissions, you have to consider the full lifecycle.

That's interesting, and self-defeating I might add! Do you have any data to share supporting the claim?

https://www.allego.eu/blog/2019/october/circular-thinking--c...

Re: VW sees EVs making up 90% of Norway sales in 2021

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I don't understand is how the EU public will afford this. I drive a Plugin Hybrid, but since moving from my old place and living in an apartment, I have no where to charge it. The closest charging station is around 12km from me and has 2 plugs (it is in an Aldi). After that there is another on 4-5 km after also with 2 plugs and one is mostly out of service. I am all for lower emission vehicles, but most peo…

Wireless charging would be the best solution. Charge where you park and no cables on the street: https://witricity.com/products/automotive/

My local council barely has enough money to patch potholes in the streets, they are switching the lights off at night to save money. Yet somehow.....they will build this expensive to build and maintain infrastructure?

I imagine the first answer people will have is "it's simple! We will just let the private sector handle this!" - to which I say, this is an absolutely awful idea. The charging infrastructure is already handled like this and it's an absolute mess - every charger requires a different app, from a different provider, they all have different rules and requirements, if you turn up to a charger that you don't already have an account for, good luck spending the next 15-20 minutes setting up an account and hoping it actually works(instead of giving you "unknown error occurred" like it happens in my experience, just yesterday I wanted to use a "public" charger but failed because the 1 star android app by that provider kept crashing - it's a shitshow basically). The best thing that could happen to it is either all charging infrastructure being nationalized, or at least the government introducing very strict standards like they do with petrol stations.

Re: VW sees EVs making up 90% of Norway sales in 2021

#55
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish it weren’t the case, but the mining of rare earth materials is quite hazardous as well as the electricity production that powers EVs. We are mostly moving the environmental damage to other places. However if we can get to renewable energy (nuclear power, as solar panel manufacturing has a lot of damage as well currently) then we can truly be carbon neutral. The best thing to say about EVs is that air quality i…

Off topic: Nuclear power isn't renewable energy. If we keep it up and cannot find methods to extract it more efficiently, the current rate of consumption would consume conventional uranium reserves by 2080. Some say we can add 100 years for potentially undiscovered ones, but it is certainly limited. Especially if we increase usage further, currently NP just serves around 12% of energy worldwide. I know that NP is hip…

At scale we'd probably switch to breeder reactors once fresh Uranium becomes too expensive. Normal reactors only extract a few percent of the energy in the fuel.

Re: VW sees EVs making up 90% of Norway sales in 2021

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free? Maybe in the US, but over here, 40-60% of the cost of fuel is taxes (Dutch source: https://www.unitedconsumers.com/tanken/informatie/opbouw-bra... ). Bonus taxes ("accijns", also raised on alcohol and tobacco) makes up 12.2 billion of the country's income ( https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/prinsjesdag/inkomst... at least a billion is spent on CO2 and nitrogen reduction, and reducing the dependency on na…

The taxes on fuel need to do a lot of heavy lifting, pricing in the cost of road building and maintenance, the effect of road congestion and air pollution in cities, and the effect of increased global warming. I’m sceptical they cover those factors. Although, it probably would be better to move more of the tax burden to car use in cities, and away from fuel. Driving a car in the countryside is much less damaging than…

We also get taxed for owning the car itself (Road Tax). Which is meant for road maintenance in the Netherlands.

We pay a lot of taxes.

Re: VW sees EVs making up 90% of Norway sales in 2021

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true. EU has very strict policies about emissions. The most immediate and obvious cost is not being able to drive those cars that do not respect the limits. Also: in many EU countries fuel is heavily taxed In Italy 75% of the price to the pump is taxes. Definitely not free.

Norway isn't a part of the EU.

Does it matter if 700 million people are under the same rules if a country of 5 is not?

ICE cars are not releasing CO2 for free, that's the point.

in Norway gas is heavily taxed as well

Re: VW sees EVs making up 90% of Norway sales in 2021

#58
post #4

The Norwegian EV incentives: No purchase/import taxes (1990-) Exemption from 25% VAT on purchase (2001-) No annual road tax (1996-) No charges on toll roads or ferries (1997- 2017). Maximum 50% of the total amount on ferry fares for electric vehicles (2018-) Maximum 50% of the total amount on toll roads (2019) Free municipal parking (1999- 2017) Parking fee for EVs was introduced locally with an upper limit of a maxi…

I understand all this, Norway is able to print money as they sell oil (so others can freely emit CO2), and they don't really need those taxes, but this point:

"Allowing holders of driver licence class B to drive electric vans class C1 (light lorries) up to 4250 kg (2019)"

Is this a good idea? Is this save? There are C class driver licenses for a good reason, those heavy cars just behave differently on the road, there are different regulations for them. Sounds strange.

Re: VW sees EVs making up 90% of Norway sales in 2021

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true. EU has very strict policies about emissions. The most immediate and obvious cost is not being able to drive those cars that do not respect the limits. Also: in many EU countries fuel is heavily taxed In Italy 75% of the price to the pump is taxes. Definitely not free.

Norway isn't a part of the EU.

Too simple a take on the relations between EU and Norway, here is a more comprehensive view: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway%E2%80%93European_Union_...

In short, as much part of EU you can be without being part of it. Norway keeps the freedom on key areas like fishing rights and agriculture while essentially being part of everything else without voting rights. And in some partnerships also having voting rights due to their structure.

Re: VW sees EVs making up 90% of Norway sales in 2021

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I don't understand is how the EU public will afford this. I drive a Plugin Hybrid, but since moving from my old place and living in an apartment, I have no where to charge it. The closest charging station is around 12km from me and has 2 plugs (it is in an Aldi). After that there is another on 4-5 km after also with 2 plugs and one is mostly out of service. I am all for lower emission vehicles, but most peo…

Wireless charging would be the best solution. Charge where you park and no cables on the street: https://witricity.com/products/automotive/

The problem is that there is no infrastructure at all. Inductive charging is already a mature technology even for EVs. It's not going to change things up if nobody installs chargers.
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