They have much longer than 9 years to get the infrastructure right.
The average car age in the US is roughly 12 years old. I imagine is is roughly the same in the UK. That means even if they stop selling new ICE cars in 2030 the average car might still be an ICE into the 2040s. Assuming no further restrictions it probably wouldn't be until the 2050s that it would become truly difficult to find a used ICE car.
Obviously the UK would need to improve in the meantime, but they would basically have 30 years to get their EV infrastructure into the position it works for every car owner.
No, these seem like pretty solid questions to ask if you are going to be forced to buy an electric car, not just if society is going to go all electric. Unless we're trying to convince people to just stop buying cars altogether in 2030.
That was my point. You aren't going to be forced to buy an EV. The used market for ICE vehicles can be expected to be robust for some 15-20 years after the ban on new cars goes into effect.
Newer cars will have improvements in other things besides motive power, like safety features. Are we going to force people who are not in a situation where EVs are usable, to forgo safety measures as well?
I'm also sure at some point someone somewhere might be inconvenienced by decisions like this, but we are going to have to just accept that if we want to combat climate change. Maybe you object to it for a political or ideological reason. However it doesn't make sense to blame that objection on the lack of currently existing infrastructure when it would be 20-30 years before we truly need that level of infrastructure.
I don't agree. Where I currently live, there are often waitlists for rationed time at workplace charging spots. The person who you initially responded to also has massive issues charging anywhere outside the home. We are already at a point where electric infrastructure is woefully inadequate to deal with the influx of EVs in the current market, which isn't all that EV friendly; this will be catastrophic once all new cars are required to be EV-friendly.
The correct choice to combat climate change would be to actually make credible, large investments in national EV charging networks, not pooh pooh the issue and tell motorists to eat cake.
>Obviously the UK would need to improve in the meantime, but they would basically have 30 years to get their EV infrastructure into the position it works for every car owner.
I acknowledge it needs to improve. However conversion of infrastructure doesn't need to be completed by 2030. A gradual increase in infrastructure over the next 20-30 years can get the job done and is eminently doable.
This isn't what's "works for every car owner", this is "works for even a majority of car owners". The current setup is terrible, the current investment pace is terrible, and there are currently no actionable plans to do better. And here we are talking like a ban is supposed to be feasible and this is going to get bearable in a nine-year timeframe.
We're not talking about the conversion of infrastructure, we're talking about the existence of adequate infrastructure. Other countries with electric transitions have clearly put public funding for infrastructure in place, and that's why it's not punishing for them to mandate it, because they are already ready.
2020 - EV infrastructure works for a minority of drivers.
2030 - EV infrastructure works for the average driver.
2045 - EV infrastructure works for all drivers.
Also I was talking about conversion because it isn't like the ICE infrastructure is going to persist in perpetuity. That real estate can be converted over to public EV chargers as the ratio of cars on the road change. Right now Tesla's fastest chargers can do an 80% charge in less than 30 minutes. If the industry is able to cut that in half over the next 20 years, recharging an EV isn't really going to be any less practical than refueling an ICE vehicle. We aren't going to need a dedicated parking space with a dedicated charger for every car by 2030.
But I think you're right about the bigger issue — Norway's further along the road, and has been able to fix the infrastructure enough that people don't complain much, and has done so in much less than those 30 years. There are complaints, e.g. about building coops that won't let people install chargers in shared garages.
Here is my source[1]. Average age for vehicles in operation is 11.9 years. 1 in 4 cars are at least 16 years old. Do you have a source on your claims?
[1] - https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/28/25percent-of-cars-in-us-are-...
"according to the research, the average age of all cars on UK roads has increased from 6.7 years in 1994 to 8.3 years in 2019."
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-8739771/Bri...
So the average car is getting older, but still far from 12 years.
I seem to find useful pages only in German now (I am in Germany), which I expect wouldn't help you much, but statista.com and wikipedia.org has both, and if you wade through all the irrelevant graphs on statista you'll typically see that total/new is in the low teens for western countries (I checked three now, e.g. 47m/3.4m for .de, almost 14y lifetime or 7y average age).
It doesn't have to magically be "perfect" on Jan 1, 2030.
In the UK around 2.3 million vehicles are sold per year[1]. Which means in 2030 about that many electric cars will be sold, and so on for each year. The ICE vehicles that were sold in 2029 won't magically stop being used, they'll just slowly fade out.
So in reality they have until well into the 2030s (even 2040s) before the very vast majority of vehicles will be all electric.
Of course this is a big challenge, and it will require effort. Anything worth doing is difficult.
The other choice is we sit around and do nothing. I know which option I prefer. And at 38 years old, it isn't up to me. Talk to people who are 15-25 and ask what kind of air they want to breath and what kind of world they want to live in. This is a decision for them, not for us.
[1] https://www.marklines.com/en/statistics/flash_sales/salesfig...
I don't know what kind of air they want, but it doesn't look like they are doing much to stop polluting.
If they wanted to, they could stop buying so many clothes or wear them for more than a season...
https://indigohoneycomb.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/fash.png
https://assets.weforum.org/editor/4DxwPKr6vDnGTAjAheQiVQrcrv...
See?
Nobody likes a bit of truth
People only want to believed the stories they already believe in.
As I've written in another comment
"Praise EV and you'll look cool, blame fast fashion and they'll hate you"
Point proven.
Parking garages could add charging stations for all their customers and get paid for that.
Parking places on the streets could be equipped with charging stations, one per place. It's going to be more complicated than laying fiber optics but doable. It's a new grid as big as the current one and for higher wattage.
Finally, if you have to park where there are no charging stations, oops.
Gas stations that can refill N cars per hour will be able to recharge a fraction of them, bad news for those businesses.
Of course this is true only if we'll have to charge. If battery swap becomes common then the problem will be solved. Yet, the volume and the weight of a battery is still greater than the volume and weight of the gasoline storing the equivalent energy. The logistics will be more complicated. I expect to see power plants dedicated to charging: charge batteries -> load them on a truck -> deliver to "EV stations" -> bring back the exhausted batteries -> check if they're still OK -> loop again.
BTW, even a 30 amp EVSE isn't great in an apartment. Because commercial service is almost always 3 phase, you'll only get 208v. That's 6.2 kW. In my townhouse, I have a 40A 240V circuit (50A at the breaker, but the 80% rule means the EVSE only puts out 40A). That's 10 kW. A 61% increase.
Perhaps if electric vehicles were mandated, fast charging stations would be more widely available...
And, eventually, you'd need the number of ICE vehicles to be low enough that ubiquitous gas stations won't be economically viable anyway.
Norway has already shown the road to getting to mostly EVs. It costs money. But they can easily ban ICE cars because they've put their money where their mouth is.
It literally doesn't matter that everybody on Hacker News would agree with this, HN is definitely not a representative sample on many topics.
If you think mankind is smarter, look at politics of lately, look at covid-related deniers, folks rejecting masks due to some wacky conspiracy, 5g/chipping and so on and on.
Forcing folks like this while we give places like China, India or other polluters a free pass? Not only are people expected to pay the bill (research, transition), but it literally won't matter on global scale that they do.
It's not for the polar bears, it's for us. Massive droughts and rampant storms are going to be far worse than needing to charge electric cars.
What is your alternate plan? I would love to have a less disruptive path forward.
Where is the negative externality in your example?
It's the beauty of driving
I'm all in favour for people to stop driving if they don't like it, I can't wait for the day where I can be among the few owners of a mechanical car that I drive when I need to relax, outside of the cities, just don't call what other people enjoy stupid, please
Before anybody jumps at me, I quit driving for commute or day by day activities 7 years ago and when I need a car now I use car sharing (I spent around 25-30 euros a month, it really is nothing compared to what I used to spend when I owned a car).
But please don't tell me that one of those electric smart is a real car
The feeling is just not there
I enjoy it too, my last car was a Mercedes AMG with a modified exhaust and a tune map. I loved it.
But no, it was stupid. The climate is fucked and I literally had a car where the ECU would inject fuel and cut ignition just to produce the loud BRAP BRAP BRAP noise when changing gears. Literally burning fuel to make a noise and not move the car forward.
Like, these two are not mutually exclusive. It was incredibly awesome and incredibly stupid at the same time.
For driving experience of course I would pick the AMG over my electric car. But it's not a sustainable position to be in.
Not because of manual gears...
Or because people love to drive
But because we move too many things burning fossil fuel
Pleasure is never stupid, before considering driving stupid, there are many things I would call it first
For example drinking beer, to quote you "you are literally burning fossil fuel to produce something that poison you"
The war on ice is wrong in many ways similar to the war on drugs: it is punitive only for the final user.
Do you really want people to stop using cars?
Instead of putting public money in private companies to help people buy the expensive new electric cars, give the money directly to people to not use the car and see what they use the money for, so you can better understand what their needs are, instead of creating an artificial one.
Stop? Nope. Vastly reduce reliance? Yep. Remove all subsidy to this mode of transit? Yes.
Global warming in my opinion is only the tip of the iceberg of "things car-based society has hurt". The massive sprawl induced by subsidized car infrastructure has many societal impacts, pollution is only one small item of a huge list.
We agree
You make an important point, the exact one that makes me doubtful that EV transition should be subsidized, again.
EV incentives will go to the same actors that created these conditions and is going to pay for the same infrastructure that made our cities a living hell.
Instead of banning cars, remove the need to use them.
Instead of subsidize car makers, subsidize the rethinking of the entire mobility plans
If people won't need cars, they won't use them
If people feel that they invested in new "safe" EV cars, even the young people who show no love for cars (not wrongfully) will start using them, because they are new, they are modern, they are safe and probably smell good too and for sure they signal that you care about the environment, so you won't keep them hidden in the garage, you'll use them as much as you can (also to maximize the investment)
Which will bring us to the same point we are now: much of the cities public real estate is eaten by roads and parkings while walking is disincentivized because everything useful, from IKEA to the shoe shop, are in some giant mall out of town unreachable without a car
We need to get rid of cars as a social need, EV or not, it is a really bad habit to rely on them other than for fun and the occasional emergency
A bunch of purists with then argue that despite the fact they can't reliably tell the simulated electric from the original in blind a/b testing that the original is still better because it has "soul".
https://www.google.com/amp/s/jalopnik.com/this-chinese-elect...
Engine braking is an important part of driving safely because it avoids losing control of the steering wheels and can be used to drive at constant speed or slow down on slippery surfaces (snow, ice, water etc.)
There's a reason if trucks are still mainly manual and even the automatic transmission in trucks is not the same used in cars (it's much more advanced and it's more a computer activated gear than simply automatic)
The reasons why trucks don't usually have automatic transmissions is that the torque needed to move such a huge mass would destroy nearly every traditional hydrokinetic transmission, only recently dual clutches have started getting good enough to be installed in trucks, and indeed most new tractors you can buy now from Volvo, Mercedes or Scania are all automatic. It has nothing to do with safety, it was a technical limitation. And for braking trucks have a separate engine retarder that has nothing to do with the transmission.
are you chosing it or how much?
the answer is no.
you can't become an expert if you aren't allowed to control the parameters.
> The reasons why trucks don't usually have automatic transmissions is that the torque needed to move such a huge mass would destroy nearly every traditional hydrokinetic transmission
that's another point, automatic transmission is more expensive, less robust and increases the cost of the vehicle without adding any other benefit than being 'easier' to operate.
would you fly on a plane where the pilot only knows how to use the autopilot?
that's where safety comes in, when things take more time to master, people tend to become better at them
Manual gear is not stupid, it is simply technically superior (it costs less and lasts more).
That doesn't mean we should have levers and clutches, that's the simplistic view of wannabe futurists, trucks have something much more similar to a semi-automatic (with 10, 12, 13 gears) than a full automatic one.
Truth is car makers need to sell more cars and will gladly make them do all the work "automatically" so people don't have to learn how to do it properly.
If they don't do something now, the 15 years old of today will grow up without cars and in a generation cars would be a thing of the past (that would be great!).
How to make them survive? Well, first of all don't make them useless, make them electric and costly and cover the added cost with people taxes that go directly in car company's pockets.
Secondly make them "easy" and "cool" and "sexy" so that a teenager doesn't have to learn to drive, that's scary and dangerous, like... do you really still practice to learn? what are we, cavemen?
And make them as complex as possible, so that the price won't ever go down and a Renault Zoe will cost as much as a Tesla (a Model 3s cost about 35k, a Zoe around 33k. It's just ridicoulus!).
We live in the era of the iPhones where the promise is that anybody can do what any other people can do, even though there are people that spent their lives learning something and other that did not (I did not, for example).
Of course it is possible when what you can do is dictate by the manufacturer, because "it dangerous out there, think of your old parents! would you give them a smartphone that let them do whatever they want? of course not"
Would you give your children an ICE car?
With manual transmission?
Are you a criminal?
The whole idea that you don't know how to not destroy the planet and the car needs to teach you how to drive responsibly, while the same car has been built by those that profited from destroying the planet's environment, always fascinated me.
How did it become a good idea in people's minds?
Uhm, yes of course you are, at least in most cars you can chose the level of regenerative braking, the same you would in a manual car. The effect is the same as if you were going downhill and decided to stay in 4th, 3rd, 2nd or even 1st gear - it's up to you. The mechanical result of it is exactly the same as when using engine braking, so I'm really not getting what you're trying to argue here.
>>you can't become an expert if you aren't allowed to control the parameters.
Except that you are, I honestly think you aren't very up to date with what the current designs are, and almost certainly you haven't driven an electric car.
>>that's another point, automatic transmission is more expensive, less robust and increases the cost of the vehicle without adding any other benefit than being 'easier' to operate.
Again, you operate on "common knowledge" from at least 10 years ago. The "traditional" hydrokinetic automatic - absolutely, sure. But those aren't really being used in most cars nowadays. Modern Dual-Clutch automatic is as light as a manual, marginally more complex than one(because in fact is is a manual in operation), and indeed, has other benefts like improved fuel consumption and vastly faster shift times than any manual transmission can even dream of having. Again, I doubt you have actually driven one recently or at all.
>>would you fly on a plane where the pilot only knows how to use the autopilot? that's where safety comes in, when things take more time to master, people tend to become better at them
Sure, if your goal is to have everyone on the road be a professional driver, then yes, I 100% agree with you. I think people should be trained like in Germany, where a part of training is going on the Autobahn and driving at 200km/h+ for a little bit. I'd love that. I also think that my opinion on this topic is irrelevant because like I said earlier for most drivers this level of skill is unnecessary. Funnily enough, the exact same argument has been used to argue against autopilot in planes though - that its introduction will lead to pilots becoming inept and unable to act in emergencies. And that has actually happened in at least one documented plane crash - the autopilot disengaged and the pilots couldn't figure out why and the plane crashed. But....that doesn't change the fact that overal the introduction of autopilot has decreased the amount of accidents by several orders of magnitute - it made flying safer for everyone, even if it meant that pilots are now slightly worse at flying without it.
>>Manual gear is not stupid, it is simply technically superior (it costs less and lasts more).
Yeah except that in practice it doesn't, because people wear out manual transmissions all the time by being crap at using it. My dad used to have a car repair shop and someone who isn't "passionate" about cars will destroy a manual by just being an idiot at how they shift gears. People constantly break them by not using the clutch properly, shifting at the wrong moment, staying in the wrong gear for too long.....you physically cannot do this in an automatic, because you don't get to change the gears yourself - so in practice and for "an average consumer" they last longer.
Besides, I just want to point out - I love how you took my argument against a blanket ban on ICE cars, and you turned it upside down into an argument about manual cars and the love of driving. I have started by, and continued to argue that the ban is stupid because: 1) people will need ICE cars
2) There are enthusiasts who should be able to keep driving them if they already own them
For my enthusiast driving needs, please give me a good MX-5 or a roll cage equipped Impreza, any day please. But for most cars for average consumer shouldn't be anywhere near like that. They should be electric, they should be full of safety tech, and they should baby their drivers and passangers. Like, again, like I said multiple arguments ago - these are not mutually exclusive positions to take.
Of course I did.
And if you compare features and prices, they offer a way worse experience than a traditional car.
I've also driven rally cars professionally and on track sometimes with semi automatic gears.
I just lack the vocabulary to talk thoroughly about it in English (sorry, I studied business English and then computer science, not mechanical engineering...)
The state of the art is absolutely better and has been for decades, but the state of the art is not what people drive everyday.
The most popular EV right now in Europe is the Renault Zoe, which honestly is good, but far from great (and you can buy the same exact car with an ICE engine for 10k less, it's 30% less!)
Smart EQ is on the rise given the small size which is a great quality in many EU cities, it's as bad as the ICE one. At least it's affordable.
Except for Tesla all the other offer a very bad experience for the price, even the BMW i3 is not what you would expect from a 40 thousands euros car.
> People constantly break them by not using the clutch properly, shifting at the wrong moment
As I said I grew up in a repair shop too, imagine what they do to their cars when the same people think that an automatic is easier to drive so they put even less effort to it.
They destroy every other piece of the car, irresponsible people will be irresponsible.
I am not rooting for ice cars, but for letting cars go as a necessity and think of something else.
Electric cars are just another way to keep producing the same old product in a slightly different way.
They give a false sense of security and of progress.
But we are gonna have a black market for hacks and modified parts (batteries probably) anyway and they will be as dangerous as the traditional cars we have right now for pedestrians and other road users.
The problem with cars is barely the pollution, it's the effect that they produced on our environment, especially the highly dense urbanized areas of the World
If they were harder to drive and operate there will be less of them around
We got rid of people dying by falling from horses by not riding horses anymore as a standard way to travel
How many people do you see flying a plane?
A Cessna is not more expensive than a high end Tesla
P.s. flying without autopilot is barely possible, using an autopilot without mastering flight first is unimaginable
P.p.s. the same people not using the clutch correctly are going to mess with the engine controls on their new electric cars. How is that going to be better? Are they magically going to be better at operating machinery? Or will they care less because "EV are the future they almost drive themselves?"
P.p.p.s. the number of fatalities is constantly going down because there are more and more mandatory safety devices on cars, but the number of accidents is almost steady (at least in Italy) also considering that the number of km driven went down due to 2 global economic crisis and a pandemia in 20 years and the increase of restricted areas in cities. But, and this is the bad news, there were more cars in Italy in 2019 than ever before, 1.4% more than 2018.
In red goal for 2020 victim reduction, in black actual number of victims
https://www.pneurama.com/ew/ew_articolo/images/weekly_it/ima...
I live in an apartment and charging an EV would cost way more than gas. Even the cost of having a charging pole would be more expensive per month than I pay for gas (charging not included and likely also expensive). And, as you mentioned, be way more inconvenient in some situations.
But can't it still be worth it? It is just one, very minor, out of countless sacrifices we will undoubtedly have to make.
Why fight this one?
With all this said, I am presuming what you have. If you tell me the car you drive, I can look at their stock and give you a more informed statement.
I currently have an electric vehicle - the only kind of usage scenario where it works and is absolutely brilliant is charging at home. That's about it. Public charging is a joke, vast majority of stations either don't work, are occupied most of the time, or cost so much money to use that it would literally be cheaper to drive a diesel car.
We visited our friends some time ago in London for a few days(before lockdown). They live in an apartment so no way I could run a cable to the parking space. No problem I thought - there's a Shell station nearby with a charging point, several ChargeYourCar points at car park not far away, and I could see on ZapMap that there were two charging points on the street - and worst case scenario there are rapid chargers along the way at few motorway stops.
We got there and basically - all ChargeYourCar points were out of order for 3 days we were there, the 2 charging points on the street were only for permit holders(something that ZapMap didn't mention), and the one single charging point at the Shell station nearby was occupied every single time I checked. So we stopped at the motorway services in the end, where they had 4 rapid charging points - all taken. We waited 30 minutes for someone to leave, once they left the car wouldn't connect - had to ring up the number on the charger, finally the customer service advisor restarted the point for me and it started charging. Only another 45 minutes of waiting and we had enough charge to get home. Oh and the charge was literally £0.49/kWh(I pay £0.05/kWh at home on a night tariff) - I had a Qashqai 1.6dCi few years ago that I could fill up for that much and drive down to london and back.
Again, the car itself is brilliant. It is the future. I have no idea how people still drive around in cars that burn anything to move - they are loud, having to have gears is stupid, having to keep buying fuel is stupid.
And yet.
I can't imagine that the UK government and the private sector will get their act together and somehow, in 9 years, the infrastructure will be amazing, and they will find answers to questions like how do you charge at an apartment or a house with no dedicated parking space. I'm eagerly awaiting to hear about these solutions.