Also their grid is 100% renewable and per capita they are around half of US emissions and on par with most of Europe.
If you produce and sell oil, even if you don't use the oil yourself, you know full well what that oil will be used for.
I'll admit that argument doesn't sit right with me on a personal level, but on the scale of geopolitics the stakes are just that high. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, died last time the US cut off oil supplies to a major country.
Fair is fair: This argument works better for sane markets than for tortured oligopolies like oil. But, at its core, morally if nothing else, this is the principle. And this is why that “if I don’t do it someone else will” argument never is a strong one.
Norway can’t hide their oily fingerprints in green washed gloves.
There's a game theory discussion to be had about negotiating with terrorists, but at the end of the day that oil is still getting burned and the damage is still being done.
I’ll add that I have a Prius Prime that I’m very happy with, and it’s only 175 cm wide. It’s an amazing and extremely nifty car. Compact car fans are sure to love it. Practically everything about it is praiseworthy (except for the Entune software).
That being said, I live in New York, and I’ve never had a problem here. The government does a pretty good job of salting the roads, and cleaning up excess snow, so I’ve practically never had to drive on snow, even during snowy times.
[1] See: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a24843141/2019-toyota-priu...
On de-icing: you can have clean road if they are heavy used together with a not so cold climate since car's itself contribute a bit on cleanup phase but you practically can't on any less frequented road, especially outside cities.
Salt and gravel help avoiding ice with a "liquid top" that's super slippery but can't really melt snow on snowy days or cold days...
Personally living, and have lived, in snowy area while I prize winter tire on snow I also prize 4WD/AWD, without them in many cases I'll have had to beg for a tow, no matter how good winter tire I can ever mount.
In some condition, like little snow, you only have slippery roads due to the moisture of salt/snow/dirt on the road and 4wheel help reaming on trajectory but you may still drive on 2WD at least if you are a good enough driver, on heavier snow 4wheels means have enough traction to advance and enough grip to still have traction when some wheel slip.
I grew up living on the side of a mountain in Montana. 1000 foot climb from the highway to home. Could not make it home in winter with snow tires and 2WD, period. You'd end up fish tailing and generally turning a snow packed road into a gleaming sheet of ice. Which, makes it worse for those with 4WD as now the snow pack is a polished sheet of ice.
4WD helped, but was also not always sufficient. I've had a 4WD SUV slide directly sideways after coming to a compmete stop on an incline. Some of the grades were up to 14%, not highway quality, but private road.
Only relatively assured way to get home was 4WD, snow tires and chains. And you could skip the snow tires if you had the chains.
But yes, luggage is a concern. Though my Volt mostly fits my needs given we have a second, ICE, hauling vehicle.
There will be more options soon. I hope.
I just got a Model S actually, and am considering installing a hitch for carrying bikes. But I would NEVER pull a trailer..
What if I do, and my trailer collides with something/someone, and I become liable for millions in damages, not covered by my insurance...
At least in Norway, how large a trailer you can pull is regulated in the license of the car. For a Model S this number is 0 kg. And insurance covers what the license says.
(IANAL, but Norwegian Tesla forums seem to agree that hitches are for carrying bikes only around here, until Tesla is bothered to officially submit trailer crash tests or similar)
That's an impressively terrible rating for something with the curb weight of a 90s 1/2 ton pickup. I suspect the vehicle could comfortably handle far more considering how much better the power and brakes are than a 90s pickup but they don't want to be replacing certain parts under warranty (my guess would be CVs since the S has plenty of torque and traction to hurt them with).
The underlying issue is a lot of pickups are road queens and entirely unnecessary for their daily workloads, existing as status symbols first and a mode of transportation second.
There's a lot that goes into making a vehicle good for towing, and a luxury sedan is not normally expected to have a good towing capacity no matter how much it weighs.
And kayaks too.
Tow bar: Not sure what others do without them. Furniture shops lend out trailers for free so that you can take your new sofa with you back home. I recently transported the materials for building my new front deck on a trailer. I tend to rent a trailer for taking things to the landfill/recycling facilities especially when renovating my home (and Norwegians do a lot of home renovation..). When helping young people move a trailer is all it takes. Etc etc. I used a tow bar at least five times a year for misc errands. (Now I have a Model S and have to leech on neighbors)
I am not sure why this is different and how e.g. US or German or French culture would be digferent.. I guess the alternative is paying others for delivery/disposal, doing less handiwork oneself, and (in the case of US) buying pickup trucks that in no way will fit on Norwegian roads and parking lots.
As a result, almost no cars in the US has a tow bar. Except pickup trucks. That don't really need them. Because you haul stuff directly in the truck.
In the OP's scenario, furniture, there are very few furniture stores in the United States that don't deliver. And if you happen to shop at one of those few, there are a number of ways to rent a truck for a day or by the hour: Home Depot, ZipCar, Enterprise, U-Haul, etc...
Perhaps higher minimum wage drives tow bar adoption...
Buying large things such as a sofa, lumber
Need to do this a handful of times per year, probably 5-6 on average. Everyone with a house does this.
Roof rack is for bikes/skis/kayaks.
Oslo-Stockholm is ~530km mostly flat.
You probably need to charge either way.
Battery life is still a problem, most of the people have yet do discover due to the young age of ALL electric car's in actual market, inability to offer enough electricity to recharge them at scale is another problem most people still have to discover simply because we actually have very small percentage of EV around. And that's only to cite most important problems.
Of course I expect may downvote, without comment so I expect this comment fade quickly but since today's prize of EVs people that can actually buy them is supposed to been able to compute enough to choose and REAL EV sell confirm that. Despite all the marketing.
I bet you do not know anyone with a moderately used EV with more than five years. If I'm right wait a bit before try so sure conclusion.
I know few people with few not-so-new EVs (Renault ZE series most of them) and hear their practical experience outside marketing. No one of them is willing to buy an EV again.
I have a Chevy Volt from 2013. Bought it used. It's now six years old and has nearly 60k miles on it -- 75% of those on EV-only miles. I have almost no decrease in range or capacity. (It was EPA rated to 35 miles range off the lot. I got a real world 30 miles range yesterday, in below-freezing weather with aggressive snow tires on it, in a Michigan winter. When the weather warms up, it will go right back to 35 miles, just like it did last summer).
I'm never buying a gasoline car ever again. I'll buy Volts until they can't be found, and then I'll probably switch to a Bolt or equivalent.
The trick is to buy a well-designed, thermally managed battery. If you are lazy about thermals, the battery will kill itself. (See the original Nissan Leafs, anything from Ford, etc). But that has nothing to do with EV battery tech viability, and everything to do with car companies being lazy or cheap.
A properly designed EV battery will easily last over 10 years and over 100,000 miles. We have lots of examples of this (from Tesla, Chevy, and others) to prove it.
The probem for me is, that's on the young end of the sort of cars I'm interested in buying. The newest car I own is a 13 years old Honda that has 190,000 miles.
Anyway, with Michigan's $0.15/kwh electricity and a climate that's either way too hot or way too cold, the break-even point for electric vs. gas is about $1.90 a gallon ... so at least for now (with gas below the break-even point), it doesn't hurt so bad that the battery capacity is so low.
More importantly, phevs with an ev mode that are intended to be driven as an ev for a significant portion of their miles are devalued by battery degradation in a similar way to pure evs (because of you pay all the cash for the expensive phev systems,you don't plan to be forced to use it as a plain hybrid).
All EVs are only capable of running on electricity for a limited distance and limited speed. Eventually they all run out.
IMO an electric vehicle is a vehicle capable of run with electrical motor's in any condition. So a modern hybrid-series ship is actually electrical because it's propulsion is electric only, parallel-hybrid vehicle are not electrical since they can't really work only on electrical motors except for limited usage.
I have one. I haven't lost a SINGLE capacity bar after 3 years (first year saw really heavy usage with multiple quick charges a week). Unless it decides to self-destruct after 5 years, I would expect it to last a while.
Yes, they lose maximum capacity over time. Very slowly. They still work. This is not a phone or laptop.
As I write before I say most of them are on Renault, But one is on a Tesla. This last one essentially stop using it because it's too large for him in city and it can't use it because of reduced range to go to it's country house or on mountains to ski without recharge...
The problem, beside battery life, Renault ZE have and nobody like to recall it in marketing is 85 euro/month fee for battery (mandatory) rental.
BTW battery tech is the very same of phones, laptop, cordless drill etc, any other devices that use lithium ion battery. Only very few vendors offer other option that last even less than Li-Ion battery.
IMO anyone buying a fossil fuel car at this point is the one being duped by marketing. (excluding circumstances such as nowhere to charge).
I'm guessing this is deliberate hyperbole, because it's simply not true. The OP very much has a point: aside from Tesla X, the interior space (both rear bench seating - important for families - and boot (trunk)) in current EVs is nowhere near many combustion engine cars. (We just bought a VW Touran; we really wanted an EV, but fitting baby seat and pram plus shopping or luggage is just not possible unless you spend ~€100k on a Tesla; aside from the price, the OP's point about the footprint/width of the car is a major obstacle in much of Europe.
The range question is only really resolved on the very latest models (Renault Zoe, Hyundai Kona EV, Jaguar i-Pace) and the Teslas as well. Our absolute minimum was 200km mixed driving in all seasons and that already narrows you down to a very small pool of models. Our VW Touran has a range of 800km. (500km would be more than enough for 99.9% of our trips though.)
Gas is still way cheaper. Electric (specifically Tesla) is way more convenient. All EVs will soon be more convenient as fast charging options become more available for all EVs.
I bet as EVs get cheaper, so does gasoline because of dropping demand. I doubt EVs will beat gas on long-term-ownership-cost within the next 5 years.
*EDIT: Should've noted I also live in the northeastern US which is probably relevant for both price and convenience factors.
As said above while I do not have owned an EV myself I know few peoples with one and NO one, after an initial period of high enthusiasm, would buy another in the future.
So my data, surely not significant in statistical terms tell a really different story than actual marketing claims. And since car's are build in series I bet they have still a generally valid value.
First, it's fossil fuel that has a marketing issue. First of all, you have to pretend the second hand value of your car is not going to rapidly tank as EVs take over. If you are buying Diesel, I hope you factor in that it will be a hard sell in a few years and you might have to write off a lot more than you bargained for when you sell at a much lower price than you hoped. IMHO Diesel is the canary in the coal mine here; the same will happen to petrol cars in a few years. This will rapidly kill the market for new ICE vehicles as there is no point in buying them if you can't pass them on at a reasonable price a few years later.
Secondly, fossil fuel cars benefit from all sorts of government protection including tax benefits for big oil, tax funded expensive wars in the middle east (at trillions $ cost), silly subsidies for things like bio diesel, etc. And that's before you factor in the damage burning fuel does. Which people seem to be allowed to get away with for absolutely free. If you stop all that overnight, ICE based cars would become a really hard sell because fuel prices would rise, and manufacturers would be retrofitting cars with expensive fixes to make them stop being a health and safety risk in fear of action law suits. Think tobacco industry here. Why not? Diesel/petrol, fumes kill people, by the millions with long term health affects and measurable life time decreases. There's no good reason for any of this to continue to be the case as EVs become widely available commodity products available at competitive prices. This is more than a little marketing challenge as governments world wide seem to be cracking down on this with taxes, vehicle restrictions, etc. And that's of course aside from the whole co2 business. I know, not a popular topic but it's having real effects on fuel prices and vehicle taxes in most civilized places at this point. I don't see that ending any time soon; rather the opposite.
Norway is leading here, but plenty more countries are following. This will kill demand and increase cost for ICE based vehicles. That's why GM and Ford shut down a lot of their ICE business last year and why the likes of VW are making tens of billions of investments in production capacity for EVs over the next few years. In fact, most major manufacturers are effectively divesting their ICE business for a few years now. A few percent now, doubling every 18 months or so creates a nice exponential growth curve for EVs. Meanwhile, everything else is dealing with shrinking markets, declining ASPs, increasing taxes, government pressure, etc. There's very little future in ICE based vehicles, judging from how major manufacturers are behaving in the last year.
Charging infrastructure is just fine. There's plenty of it already and more is on the way. Actually, most of it is under-utilised most of the time (<10%). So, there's plenty of room for growth short term and plenty more long term as there are continued investments in charging infrastructure happening everywhere. Sure, in the utterly unrealistic scenario that everyone would switch overnight to EVs this would indeed be a minor challenge for grid providers. But growth as per even the most optimistic scenarios, provides plenty of room for continued investments in infrastructure, clean energy, etc. You say problem, I say business opportunity. Most healthy businesses would consider predicted growth spread over multiple years/decades to be fantastic news. Of course it kind of sucks if all you know is burning coal/gas and all the cool new hip kids are undercutting your prices with solar/wind.
Battery life is not really a problem for the vast majority of commuters. Even with the unimpressive/limited range of already obsolete first generation vehicles like the Nissan Leaf or Chevy Bolt. Long distance travel indeed requires annoyingly long charging breaks; but on the other hand taking a break after 200-300 miles is not the end of the world. And if you drive those kind of distances daily, your life sucks much more than that of most drivers stuck in perpetual traffic jams. Luckily, faster charging high end vehicles with longer ranges are becoming available as well. And that's before you factor in battery R&D over the next few decades that will decimate cost and double/triple capacities.
But most people rarely need to rely on public charging points since their car will be fully charged when they unplug it at home in the morning. And coming back to the charging infrastructure, most people see a measurable but not spectacular increase in their electricity use while charging almost exclusively at home. You have to drive a lot to double your usage. So if that's the same for most people, we're talking probably much less than 2 x increase in total electricity demand. And that's spread out over the next 10-20 years. Also, charging happens mostly off peak at night. And you can do some interesting things such as use charged cars to provide power back to the grid during peak hours. In short, this is not an issue now and unlikely to become one.
Finally, battery life span seems awesome in first generation vehicles. Mostly their batteries get reused rather than recycled after their vehicles are written off. Tesla guarantees 100K+ miles for their drivetrains + batteries at or above 70% capacity: reason: they know full well, they can do at least double that. I think Elon Musk was actually boasting numbers closer to 500K miles recently. Most ICE cars would go to many expensive maintenance cycles every few tens of thousands of miles.
On my counter-point, in order:
On residual value, while I know it's not common norm I do not buy vehicles to re-sell them after few years. I tend to prefer keep them longer (around 8/10 years) and use them at December to get more discount from the vendor. I do a bit of math and found this as a good ration between having a vehicle with proper maintenance that do not give me much surprise during it's life and do not spend too much in continuous buy&sell game.
On fossil fuels, yes, they benefit from many kind of subside, however not for us "end-users" but only to the industry and resulting price does not came in relation of subsides but, at least in EU, came as a bank for our governments to milk money without introduce more explicit taxes.
So came the decision to ditch diesel that IMO pollute far less than gasoline in newest Euro6+ versions and offer few extra benefit like:
- less maintenance cost;
- less fuel per unit distance;
- safer in case of accidents (diesel does not explode and it's very hard to burn from heated metals/sparks);
- easy to stock in big quantity without explosion risk (nearly no gas production) and without loosing efficiency after years of stock.
Those IMO are the real reason behind actual marketing against diesel. Since we know that we do not have gasoline trucks, nor in general gasoline heavy vehicles nor we use anything else to start newer ship motors. So we know that we do not really ditch diesel before we have something like small nuclear reactors safer and cheap and scalable enough to be on any heavy vehicle. And those vehicle actually pollute far more than private car's.
On charging infrastructure I laugh: try to compute how much energy demand a single classic car, sum that for the total number of car of your nation and try to compute how many GWh/day your nation need to charge an hypothetical all-EV car's nationwide fleet. Perhaps only Norway, Sweden and Swiss with their nuclear+hydroelectric power and very low population can afford that demand. Without counting the fact that we can't distribute such energy without burn our actual transmission infrastructure.
Battery life IMO it's a problem, not only for the car owner but also at a scale since we do not know how to dismantle used batteries and keep pushing them to poor countries does not really scale, nor is morally acceptable.
BTW in most cities people do not have a garage so they can't recharge their vehicle at home. That's a classic marketing picture of an individual house of happy people with a garden and a private garage. That's exists for few countries and for little areas of them. Not for the vast majority of developed world.
Also on distance travels they are surely not a majority but many people do work traveling on car's for long distance, and some of them are ruffly high in "social rank" of our timocratic society...
In the end, no, I'm not convinced at all and I add few point in the mix: I can easily store diesel easily for even few months of complete autonomy (because I've moved from the city to the mountain so I have adequate space). I can do the same for gasoline but at a far bigger risk (explosion/fire and time degradation). I can't do for electricity. Of course you may say that without electricity I can't do many other things and that's right but only partially: I can't be in comfort but I still can live, far better than cave-man survival. My garage big bi-energy freezer can work on propane/butane for around 4 months without gas bottles supply. I can cook on wood stove despite it's uncomfortable. I can heat water with the very same stove + thermic-solar panels that also heat my house via a VMC, I do not have one now but I'm planning to add a photovoltaic panel that's enough for thermic-solar water circulation + VMC. So I can stand, without comfort but far better than being in a camping tent. And my diesel car can move.
Another point to the mix: EVs tend to be connected/require regular connection to the vendor for many things, internal combustion vehicle are more and more connected but I can still buy and use unconnected one's.
Long story short I'm looking for, I hoping for a greener future, but I foresee a black future instead, not only because of climate change but because of actual social trends. And EV are a part of that black picture, not a dream of a better future...
>On charging infrastructure I laugh: try to compute how much energy demand a single classic car, sum that for the total number of car of your nation and try to compute how many GWh/day your nation need to charge an hypothetical all-EV car's nationwide fleet. Perhaps only Norway, Sweden and Swiss with their nuclear+hydroelectric power and very low population can afford that demand. Without counting the fact that we can't distribute such energy without burn our actual transmission infrastructure.
You should do at least some rough maths before making such comments, it is not hard.
In my country - Australia:
- Electricity consumption per capita is about 11,000 kWhr/year
- There are about 0.7 cars/capita
- Annual km driven per car is about 15,000.
Electric cars get roughly 5 km range per kWhr, therefore if ALL cars in Australia became electric, the electricity consumption would increase by (15000/5)*0.7 = 2100 kWhr per year. Less than 20%.
If most of charging occurred at home at night, there would be no need to upgrade the grid, or power generation capacity, as the night-time utilisation is under 50%.
Furthermore, the batteries in the cars could, with just a little thought and effort, act as a grid reserve, feeding power into the grid during peak demand, and, in some countries, absorbing non dispatch-able power generation such as wind and solar.
That's the "most real" consumption you can compute... Another easier and raw/spannometric computation can be counting a 70/80% recharge per day per car.
Results are far bigger than yours :-)
And I forgot to mention that Australia is one of the few developed country with a very little mean density and population so you have many possible energy sources and few people who consume them...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid has some details.
Many Norwegians are still waiting for a "real" electric car to become available. Where a real car is defined by:
- Tesla range
- 450 liter+ luggage room
- Roof rack/box
- Tow bar
In particular with Tesla you get EITHER the tow bar (model X) OR the roof box (Model S). So even IF you splurge on a luxury priced car, it feels like compromising vs getting a gasoline car.
(Also Tesla is "very large", it does not fit comfortably in parking spaces; 180 cm wide cars are really a lot more convenient than 200 cm around here).
The moment anyone is ready to just deliver something like an electric Volkswagen Passat station wagon they will sell as many as they want in Norway. But, every single announcement fails to meet these criteria. It is a standard that lots and lots of gasoline cars fullfill, but currently no EVs. (Audi e-Tron is first, but still has a too large footprint, and also too expensive for most).