People buying that (kind of) car don't care, and I doubt there's so many of them that it would significantly skew the numbers (GLE class is not even in the list - assuming GLC and GLE are similar enough for this particular list, even GLC are modest numbers and they're plug-in hybrid, which is better than a mild hybrid).

However I do agree with you that many of the cars - essentially the entire milid-hybrid (MHEV) segment, IMO - is there just to get the numbers (electric motor kicks in just enough to lower the max CO2 in special cases). Locally (Croatia, HR), virtually all new cars have at least a MHEV option and some have no non-e option at all. They're really pushing it hard.

Even though MHEV could be considered "lipstick on a pig", it still has two useful effects:

- If it does lower CO2 emission in worst cases (start, overtake, etc), it still means it lowers the overall CO2 at least somewhat - every little bit helps.

- It normalizes electric vehicles. There are a people here who have extremely negative (subjective) opinions on them, and I'm talking general public, not petrolheads. Once you get a Slav to understand his (it's always his) beloved Golf running on batteries is not an abomination, the floodgates are open

Due to high gas prices, main impediment to switching to fully electric cars is not cost but infrastructure. In Croatia there's very little of it and it's often vandalized or gas-powered cars are parked in charging spots, etc. Thus a pleasant road-trip to the country or the coast turns into a logistical nightmare.

Similarly, for plug-hybrids, a lot of people that would have the means to buy such a car usually live in apartment buildings, often without dedicated parking spots so you have to hunt for a space around the block and you can't just plug in your car overnight.

MHEV like Audi or MB do not help in overtaking or in the city. It's only for coasting, there is a small electric motor that will only help to re-start the engine. It's basically a better start-stop for driving on highways - you don't notice that the car is in "neutral" gear with the motor turned off. It helps a bit, but I would definitely not call this a hybrid, not even a mild hybrid. But - I saved 50% of the registration tax, so I don't complain.

> It's only for coasting, there is a small electric motor that will only help to re-start the engine [but not really pull the vehicle].

Classifying a car as a mild hybrid electric vehicle on the basis of nothing but a glorified starter motor doesn't sound entirely unlike something Volkswagen Group might try to get away with, but this doesn't seem like a fair assessment. Doesn't conventional coasting mean that the ICE still is driving the wheels — at idle RPM? So if instead the clutch decouples, the electric motor has to make up the difference, right? That's not nothing when you consider that diesels (such as your Audi) output significantly more power at idle RPM (and also use more fuel, I'd guess?) than petrol engines (relative to max power).

The engine decouples and either shuts down completely (if you don't have Start-Stop switched off) or it just idles on low RPM. Before the Audi I had a BMW that wasn't classified as MHEV and it still would decouple the engine during coasting (in Eco mode), but it would not turn it off because this would add a delay of 1-2 seconds until the engine is ready again (and it didn't have the additional battery + electric motor to start it in these conditions). The small electric motor helps to quickly start the motor in this decoupled mode (which again is not something that only hybrids have) and so it can be turned off for up to 40 seconds of coasting. All of this can be disabled in the Settings menu and the engine will never go into "coasting" mode and this coasting mode will almost never be triggered in the city anyway (you can see that it will shift from a specific gear like 6 to just "D" - and then you know that the engine is decoupled). Anyway, I and many others (most?) turn off the start-stop right when you start the vehicle. I just don't like that the engine turns off on every intersection and then you have a second of delay and slow response + more wear on engine for so many starts and stops. In this case it will still coast with the decoupled - but idling - engine.

Also by coasting I mean condition where the car has enough momentum and either goes downhill or there is a slower speed limit ahead (this is detected automatically from map data) and the car knows that it can just decouple the engine. This is evaluated by the car based on some conditions, it's not controlled by the driver.

Thank you! I just quickly looked up some terminology and it turns out the mode I'd been thinking of is more properly called ‘coasting in gear’, which is indeed not at all implied by the more general term ‘coasting‘. Now that I know what's what, I agree that Audi's quarter-assed implementation shouldn't qualify as ‘MHEV‘.

More information directly from Audi: https://www.audi-mediacenter.com/en/techday-on-combustion-en...

"The 48-volt-based MHEV technology is particularly more comfortable and efficient. If the driver takes his foot off the accelerator at a speed between 55 and 160 km/h (34.2 to 99.4 mph), the car can coast for up to 40 seconds with the engine off completely. During slow coasting, the start-stop phase already begins at 22 km/h (13.7 mph).

Once the driver accelerates again – whether from a stop or while driving – the vehicle restarts quickly and very comfortably: the BAS revs up the internal combustion engine to the target speed, then injection occurs again and, in the case of a gasoline engine, ignition. While the conventional pinion starter remains on board, it practically comes into play only at the initial starting, if the engine oil is still cold and viscous. In such a situation, the belt of the BAS could slip through. "

Btw, expect huge taxes to hit electric cars in Europe. The European governments have a significant part of their budget coming from gas tax and they are not happy with that revenue stream going away. For those not from Europe: It is pretty common for us to have to pay $4-5 tax per gallon of fuel.

The UK government is doing the complete opposite in fact. They’ll give you a grant towards the cost of a new EV, a grant for a wall box to be installed at you home, 0% tax on company car benefits if it’s an EV, 0% road tax, etc. They’ve even just moved The ban on new petrol and diesel sales forward to 2030.

Fuel duties help to offset the negative externalities to society of driving, namely CO2 emissions, pollution and congestion. With EVs tou don’t have emissions and pollutions and the health problems they bring so there’s no negatives to offset (ie fuel duty revenue will go down, but so will spending on health and environmental related issues)

There’s still the congestion any vehicle can cause and I think we’ll move to a much different form of vehicle taxation over the next 20 years, perhaps with more toll roads or even surge pricing style taxation for usage of roads.

> The UK government is doing the complete opposite in fact. They’ll give you a grant towards the cost of a new EV, a grant for a wall box to be installed at you home, 0% tax on company car benefits if it’s an EV, 0% road tax, etc.

Taxing will have to change and evolve either way.

Today it makes sense to incentivize the move to EVs. But this says nothing about what will happen when everyone is there and people no longer have the option of buying or using an ICE. Some years from now taxing EVs with some form of "road tax" (today included in the price of fuel) will be the low hanging fruit and the technological means may already be there. Your car will likely be able or even required to log and report the distance driven for taxing purposes.

If truly autonomous vehicles do catch on and incentivize moving away from private ownership, it will also have a huge impact on the way cars are taxed or how the taxes are passed on to the user.

The easiest way to replace petrol tax would be to simply charge with the MOT. Road taxes in general raise about 10p per mile driven (including petrol, VAT on petrol, and VED, but excluding VAT on new cars, which is a significant amount - about £10b a year based on 3 million cars a year at £20k a year)

It would work as "You've done 10,000 miles since your last MOT, you have to pay your £1k tax bill". Travel abroad and you could register the mileage when you leave and when you get back easily enough. Final bill on scrapping or on SORN.

That wouldn't allow the differential road pricing that tracking fans want, and wouldn't work in Ireland, but would work in GB right now.

Of course you have! Emissions from tires and brake pads are very significant. CO2 and pollution from driving is just externalized - where do you think all that electricity for charging EVs is coming from? Also, pollution from manufacturing EVs is still there.

Emissions from brake pads on EVs are almost non existent (regen braking). This is a vast departure from combustion powered vehicles where PM from braking systems, from exhaust catalytic converters etc. etc. contribute a lot of the grime you see at the edge of a motorway. EVs do make this better.

Tire emissions are NOT a factor we need to be concerned with however :-) Tire manufacture, sure. From waste - most definitely. But emissions from driving are not something to worry about even with the billions of miles driven annually on tires.

Last time I looked at PM2.5 I found the source below[1]. Which lists PM2.5 from tire wear at 0.001 gm per miles. Which is less than brake wear at 0.003. Notable that as you said EV's have much less brake wear.

https://www.bts.gov/content/estimated-national-average-vehic...

[1] Was a lot harder to find it again because someones running an SEO agitprop campaign to blame PM2.5 on tires instead of diesel exhaust. I had wade through GIS pages of trash websites to find it again.

Yeah that looks about right. Brake pad PM2.5 is 3x that of tires but both pale into insignificance next to exhaust PM2.5 at almost 10x that of brake pad and tire emissions added together.

The nice thing about EVs is those exhaust emissions are moved away from the tailpipe in populated areas to power generation facilities.

The efficiency of electric vehicles is almost 3x that of the gasoline cycle of drilling, transporting, distilling, transporting again, combusting then achieving almost 30% motion from the chemical energy of gas.

So because of this efficiency there’s just less emissions overall even though the emissions are away from population centres.

Then lastly, the emissions are consolidated in one place so capture and cleaning becomes viable.

EVs are not perfect but they are so much better than gasoline powered vehicles that if you can at all accomodate the switch, then it would be great to consider it.

The sun and wind? If everyone went to smart charging infrastructure your vehicle could easily stay topped up during excess generation.

> If everyone went to smart charging infrastructure your vehicle could easily stay topped up during excess generation

...and yet from today's headlines:

British coal plants fired up to meet temporary electricity shortfall. Remaining UK coal plants, including Drax, supply 6% of grid’s electricity to cover power supply drop and colder weather

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/nov/26/british-coa...

Also note:

"renewable electricity was in relatively short supply in western Europe too, meaning the UK would need to keep running its coal plants while exporting power to France and to the Netherlands via cable interconnectors"

Don't forget the UK is FAR ahead of the US when it comes to renewables, which of course is easier when you have a single national grid (and can buy spare French nuclear when you have a dip in capacity)

Emission from brake pads is way less than ICE cars due to regenerative braking of the EV motors; one pedal driving is awesome.

This is a good article which answers most of your doubts:

https://www.motorbiscuit.com/are-electric-cars-worse-for-the...

Spoiler alert: EV pollutes less than ICE

I am aware that EVs pollute less. But parent comment claimed that pollution doesn't exist at all which is simply false.

Fair enough, it exists in some regard... let's change that to pollution caused by the powerplant of the vehicle.

I'm not wholly informed here, but just by using common sense, I can only imagine we're talking fractions of a percent for brake pad and tyre pollution, so I wouldn't pick that hill to die on personally.

Correct, the potential CO2 emissions are externalised but the electricity can come from wind, sun, nuclear, or even fossil fuel power stations that run more efficiently and cleanly than an ICE.

Also, I'll take the emissions from tires and brake pads over those from an engine for sure.

Even if the energy source would still be purely fossile-based (which it isn't), it would still be a net win, since large power plants are more efficient than ICE vehicles and are better set up to reduce emissions other than CO2.

Yeah you can put good filters and carbon sequestration tech onto those plants much easier than putting it onto all cars.

1). Every year the percentage of renewable electricity is increasing on the grids worldwide so over time electric cars will pollute less. 2). Looking at the parts of an electric car vehicle compared to petrol/diesel cars electric car production has less pollution. 3) Electric cars have regenerative braking so even the brake pads pollution is less in electric cars

>> With EVs tou don’t have emissions and pollutions

You don't have them at the tailpipe, which I guess is really the key thing because it means a reduction in asthma and deaths due to PM in habited areas.

You do still have emissions, they're just emitted away from where humans live. It's a great improvement but not a complete solution.

These replacement taxes need to come from road use charging, to deal with congestion during commutes.

Shifting non-essential travel to an hour earlier or later in the day will have a hugely beneficial impact in unclogging many cities.

How does one classify travel as essential or non-essential?

"Essential" means "all bosses have agreed on this arbitrary time to start work so all workers can enjoy congestion and stuffed subways".

We pay similar gas tax in the US, but we don't pay it at the pump. There are direct subsidies around $20 B/yr [1] and indirect ones, such as $2 T for a couple of gulf wars which were clearly about oil. Then there's spills, climate FUD from the oil companies [2] which will cost us for centuries in floods, fires, and other climate exacerbated disasters.

If anything we need to tax the hell out of fossil fuel to break even with its actual costs.

1. https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel-subs...

2. https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2019-10-21/oil-com...

I wonder why people aren’t excited about hybrids, they seem like a genuine next step of automotive engineering to me. Petrolheads of all people hate it the most, and that feels wrong. If you think twin turbo is superior to single, then THS II should be vastly more so.

I personally blame it to Toyota’s horrible packaging. The thorough objective horrendousness of Prius is inexcusable, especially the latest ones. But that shouldn’t decide on the technology!

It adds a lot of weight for not a lot of benefit, on either side. A pure-electric drive gives amazing benefits in torque and latency reduction, but the motors on MHEVs and even PHEVs don't give enough "oomph" to justify the complexity, the cost, or the added weight.

The Koeingsegg One:1 is exciting. The BMW i3 is exciting. The Jaguar I-Pace is exciting. Heck, the Tesla is exciting. The BMW 3-series hybrid is $15,000 more for not a whole lot.

> exciting

(Full disclosure: two working parents, three young kids, not a lot of spare time and even less spare money...)

We own two (ICE) cars, a seven-seater that's diesel-powered and a four-seater that's petrol. Neither of them are even remotely "exciting" (both have the smallest, most economical engines that the manufacturer offers for that model). We would not be looking for "exciting" in a replacement for either of them, either.

What I am looking for is a like-for-like replacement that isn't hugely more expensive.

With electric, I'm struggling.

We [very briefly] sat in the battery version of the four-seater in the showroom when we bought the petrol, it cost more than twice as much, range was dire, and the sales guy pointed out that it wouldn't hold its purchase value as battery technology is changing so rapidly. So that was that :(

I would love to switch to electric, but right now we don't have the spare cash to throw around.

"Exciting" might be great for persuading petrolheads and/or the wealthy and/or the virtue-signallers to switch, but for everyone else, what can pure-electric offer?

Insightful!

I feel the same, I sold my car 8 years ago and never bought a new one since, I'm planning to get a new one (hopefully kids, old parents, I'm gonna need it sooner or later) but I am struggling too.

I usually use the Renault Zoe as an example, the EV model costs 40% more (~26,000 euros VS ~37,000 euros) for no - obvious - added benefit, it's the same exact car.

I've been researching and thanks to state bonuses I could buy a Renault Twingo EV for ~17,000 euros, it's a very good deal but it's a smaller car, not that it's a problem now, I still mainly drive inside the city, but it makes me think of the economy of the operation: I need it for a future larger family, I should settle down on a smaller car.

I'm probably getting it anyway and I am also excited about it, but really it shouldn't be about excitement, it should be about being a better deal overall.

Because it drives like crap compared to an all petrol vehicle, that's why. Toyotas feel like they're all made for grannies - you step on the acceleration and it's just sluggish. My mom test drived one and bought a Seat instead. Another guy told me he drove a company Toyota hybrid and he'll be getting a petrol BMW. There you have it.

It’s Toyota dragging down the technology by making horrible cars, clearly, themselves conscious or not.

Like, Fisker Karma was basically as fast and quick as a Tesla. Lots of hybrid hypercars are faster than petrol counterparts. It’s Toyota Prius that’s smearing hybrids.

Yes, this is important. As soon as you start counting hybrids the statistics become somewhat meaningless, not all hybrids are created equal. Some almost seem to just amount to greenwashing, but maybe I'm just cynical.

Some aren't even about greenwashing, they're actually about increasing performance; I'd say that's worse from an environmental point of view.

Full EVs are always more performant so if it’s for performance then it’s fine the petrol cars will eventually lose out.

> Full EVs are always more performant [..]

Q: Would any of us consider "range" as a performance characteristic? If not, why not?

Range doesn't get the ladies attention.

There was a fun segment on this in an old Top Gear. A race to see how far you can get on a single tank of gas.

Clarkson thought the challenge was dumb and picked a big comfy car with a massive engine. He might not win but at least he’s gonna enjoy himself.

Ended up winning. The massively overpowered engine was chilling at highway speeds so much it barely used any gas.

Another fun comparison was when they took a Prius and a M5. When the M5 was chilling at a slightly fun speed, the Prius was struggling so hard that it had double the fuel consumption of the M5.

Cruising speed matters.

A single tank of gas: isn't that then mostly a matter of the size of the tank? My friend with his Jeep can go very far, no issues, but filling the tank costs an arm, a leg and a kidney. Gas consumption is horrible, it just has a huge tank.

That said hybrid systems are basically KERS: they matter when slowing down (charging the battery instead of warming up brakes), and at very low to low speeds (better efficiency of the electric engine compared to a gasoline engine). I would not expect a trip on the highway without traffic to be better at all with a hybrid car than with a gasoline car.

But, within Europe, most of the driving is done under 50km/h and within the cities, where hybrids shine.

I agree that hybrids are a stupid solution, a full EV is way to go, but, for example, there are only two superchargers for Tesla in whole Berlin, which has almost 4 million population. The infrastructure has to be improved and the batteries needs to get larger or more efficient, because I find stopping every 2hrs to charge your car for 30 minutes stupid.

Hybrids are just a band-aid solution until we have proper (and cheap) EVs.

Fast charging is not really needed in cities where daily driving distances comfortably fit into almost all EV-s ranges. What is needed is parking space in residential areas with access to Type2 charging.

Access to a parking space with charging, any kind of charging, is the reason I don't own an EV yet. Japan is really lagging behind here: the building I live in was finished in March 2020, it's not even one year old, and there's no way to charge an EV car in the parking spots!

> I would not expect a trip on the highway without traffic to be better at all with a hybrid car than with a gasoline car.

Hybrid systems allow the gas engine to (essentially) always run at its ideal speed if it is running at all, storing extra energy when less is needed and drawing power from the battery when more is needed. On an idealized highway drive, with cruising speed at exactly the pure gas car engine’s ideal speed, with no variations due to turns, hills, traffic, etc., this is no benefit, but real highway driving tends to differ from this ideal enough that hybrid cars have benefits even in freeway driving.

This is true of a second-generation hybrid, like the BMW i3 (with range extender). A first-gen hybrid, which is most hybrids (including the Infiniti QX60, the BMW 3-series (not i), the Mercedes E-class) still power the wheels primarily with the gas engine, and only use the electric engine in certain reduced circumstances. With the gas engine directly driving the wheels, you don't get a lot of benefit from the hybrid except in start-stop conditions.

The first-gen/second-gen language is a bit odd. More common would be “mild” vs. “full” hybrid, but most hybrid cars sold, in the US at least, are full hybrids (what you call “second-generation” hybrids); Toyota Prius nameplates alone account for almost half of all hybrids that have been sold in the US, and all of those are full hybrids.) It may be that mild hybrids dominate if you are counting individual models, but certainly not if you are counting vehicles.

While cruising speed matters, the reason manufacturers of "economical" cars, like the Prius in your example, optimise for lower speeds is because that's where the vast majority of your time will be spent.

Top Gear's challenges were very entertaining, but they were very far from being scientifically meaningful in any way.

You’re right. Different cars are designed for different places. You want a small efficient car in the city, and a comfy cruising car on the highway.

I’ve driven both types on their home turf and in the wrong environment and it makes a huge difference.

The only truly bad type of car is an SUV. Bad everywhere.

My Ford Expedition is perfect for hauling a trailer, my family and our dogs. It has third row seating so my three kids aren’t all squished on one bench while the second heater/blower in the back is an absolute godsend when it’s -25F, as is the 4x4 when (not if) I get stuck

> hauling a trailer, my family and our dogs

vs. how often are you driving alone in that monster truck?

It’s about 50/50

Was the challenge done with a single tank of gas or a specific amount of gas? I'm guessing a car with a massive engine has a much larger tank.

Top Gear is entertainment and not car journalism. It's scary to see how people take it seriously.

I wouldn’t take environmental advice from top gear. I seriously doubt the accuracy of this

The original poster is slightly mis-remembering the episodes in question. In the first scenario much of it was down to the big car having a really big gas tank and thus going further on a single tank of gas than the smaller, more economical, cars.

In the second case they where driving the Prius around a race track as fast as they could make it go (ie nothing like cruising on normal roads) while with the M5 following at the same pace. And in those conditions the M5 did use less gas, but I don't recall it being half as much.

Did the M5 happen to follow in the slipstream? That basically nullifies energy demand at high speed...

This kind of test is mostly for showmanship. There's even a chance that an M5 will get better fuel consumption than a Prius due to the way the test was designed: making the Prius run at the absolute limit in circumstances that cannot be replicated in any reasonably legal setup on a public road, like racing. Even when "cruising" at top speed the Prius should be more efficient than the M5 at the same speed.

An M5 won't have better fuel consumption than a "normal" small car in any situation that you could reasonably see on the road.

I agree. It's automotive themed entertainment. While not totally scripted they have a plot picked out.

But you're among an online community that thinks the Hilux episode was a scientifically controlled experiment so that's gonna be an uphill battle.

Why do you think that increasing performance in itself bad for the environment?

Not so much increasing performance, but what's required for that, e.g. the extra weight of the battery and motors to provide ~10km of electric-only range on the McLaren P1.

If it’s just a way to gain the ability to consume even more energy per launch from a stop light, it’s bad. And when most ICE setups (including hybrids that use electric to boost ICE peak output) talk about increasing performance, it’s about acceleration, not efficiency.

Faster you go the more fuel you burn per mile above around 50-60mph depending on the car

The faster you accelerate the more you’re going to braking to slow back down again (unless you’re accelerating onto open roads)

Performance cars are more likely to be driven by people who don’t care about the environment and drive as such.

Tires wear out faster

...

> Performance cars are more likely to be driven by people who don’t care about the environment and drive as such.

I think the success of Tesla says otherwise. There are lots of us who enjoy performance cars who care about emissions. Even someone who drives an Audi v8 car is doing less damage than the single person cruising in a huge truck/suv.

It’s relative- the high performance Tesla’s are worse for the environment than the low performance ones.

EVs are a different category to ICE cars so comparing across them is strange

This is quite silly - a Tesla X or e-Hummer are still better for the environment than any ICE car.

That probably holds true in case they have the same usage patterns.

Does your theory still hold if I drive only 2000km/year in an older car versus a Tesla X or e-Hummer? I don't pretend to have the answer to that question, but there is an environmental cost to producing a car too...

i doubt that very much

Are we supposed to accept your profession of doubt as a form of evidence or argumentation?

no

Most people buying new vehicles have to (well they don't have to but it's the reasonable thing to do) consult their spouse. This is why certain outlier models are so popular. They facilitate "everyone wins" compromises.

One person wants a practical crossover because that's what is most practical for the situation. The other wants a fun convertible. They buy a 4dr Wrangler because it's both. Everyone goes home happy.

Same thing happens with Tesla.

One person wants to buy a fuel sipping subcompact because that's what makes practical sense for the situation. The other wants a high performance sedan. Tesla checks both boxes so that's what they get. Everyone goes home happy.

Edit: I know you all are recoiling in horror at the thought of having to run your car purchasing decisions by the other decision maker in your household but if you're gonna click the WrongThink(TM) button why don't you at least humor me and tell me why I'm so wrong.

The usual argument basically boils down to "gluttony and pride are deadly sins". You shall only consume/have/want the necessary minimum, any more is morally suspect, even absent objectively apparent problems.

"The puritan hated bear baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators"

Because we don’t need to increase performance, if we think if performance as horse powers and speed. Cars are fast enough, even too fast for private vehicles.

Living in Germany it is quite ridiculous that we don’t have speed limits on certain parts of the Autobahn, nobody needs to drive 200 km/h. You won’t get faster from A to B, it’s dangerous, it’s stressful, you need more energy. If you want to race, go on a race track. I assume it even costs us more to maintain roads so that you are able to drive more than 140 km/h.

Nobody needs to have sex more than a few times in their lives. You wanna limit the sex lives as well?

Basically, your morality is all wrong. The point of life (for humans, at least) isn't to do what we need - that's only the lowest, most basic level of Maslow's pyramid. It's self-actualization, which essentially means fulfilling autonomously chosen goals. You might see no reason to drive 200km/h, but others might - why limit them? The only potential reason is safety, but hey, people enjoy plenty of extreme(-ly dangerous) sports, so clearly there are reasons to trade off safety as well.

In addition, an appeal to safety doesn't actually make sense in this instance - why would 120km/h be better than 200km/h? I mean, it's slightly safer but still incredibly unsafe! If we prioritized safety over all else, we'd all be driving at most 30km/h! So clearly "safety" isn't a good, objective reason - at best, it's a subjective, arbitrary threshold, but then we ought to recognize that diifferent people will make different tradeoffs regarding safety.

If it's your hobby and like driving 200 km/h, sure please do, on a separate track where it is as safe as possible. But driving it on _public_ roads is inherently dangerous to others. Our society has all kind of rules around protection of others. There are laws and rules around food safety, gun safety, distribution of drugs, hunting, using heavy equipment, operating boats and planes. Often you need a license to do these things.

Noone trains for driving at high speeds in driving school. Also a lot of folks do not understand the relationship between velocity and the time you need to come to a stop. So 120km/h is way better than 200km/h. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3D7XYQExt0

> If it's your hobby and like driving 200 km/h

This is just so wrong. Have you actually ever done that? For example between Jena and Chemnitz, when traffic is light it is so incredibly safe and relaxing.

Don’t confuse fast driving with reckless driving. No speed limits will stop reckless drivers. Even so, it’s totally possible to drive recklessly at 140 kph. Just go figure around Leverkusen literally every day.

I chose a dangerous sport on my own. The car speeding with 200km/h into your car, will have an impact on your life even if you stick to 120km/h

See my edit, it addresses your point: "speeding with 120km/h will have an impact even if you stick to 60km/h".

“Because we don’t need to increase performance, if we think if performance as horse powers and speed. Cars are fast enough, even too fast for private vehicles.”

This is like trying to sell people on veganism by arguing that food doesn’t need to taste good.

The great thing about Autobahns is freedom.

If I travel in Spain, the speed limit is 120km/h. Now they have removed the 20 kms/h extra you could do for overtaking other cars. It is ludicrous.

Everybody goes over the limit, and hence everybody goes against the law, and everybody could be fined with 300 euros, like my father 1 month ago.

In cities, they are putting limits under 30km/h.

Politicians love the fines because it is an extra tax of an extra billion euros nobody controls.

The great thing isn't freedom, it's that the huge speed differences between cars help a lot with keeping drivers focused. People drive instead of just waiting out the time until their exit pops up on the nav. This effect has quite a bit of inertia so that even the speed-limited parts benefit from it so that a blanket speed limit would likely make the already limited sections less safe, after adapting to the relative ease of blanket speed limits. Chances are that overall safety would still increase, but I'm not sure of that (short term it would definitely increase, but that effect could quickly erode as people get used to it).

Reducing the speed limit saves lives and reduces overall traffic as people switch to alternative modes of transport.

Do you object to seatbelt laws under the premise of "Freedom"? What about car safety standards? Isn't it more "Free" if we can make whatever car I want and sell it to whomever wants to buy it, even if it kills millions every year?

The truth is that we need to look at improving society holistically, which means implementing and designing society in a way that benefits humankind over the long term. Civilization isn't very "Free" but it's a trade off we make to live in a fair and progressive society, and allows us to combat things like covid, natural disasters, growing populations and other challenges that face the human race.

i naively support the argument for speed limits concerning safety and emissions.

at the same time i know that the freedom to drive fast does not really impact crash or efficiancy metrics very much and having been to countries with universal speed limits i can confirm that it is an agonizing drive if everybody is going slow (120kph) to the point that i wonder if the resulting boredom is causing a lot more accidents.

> Living in Germany it is quite ridiculous that we don’t have speed limits on certain parts of the Autobahn, nobody needs to drive 200 km/h.

Why? Did you ever have to drive 1000 km for work in one day?

"Nobody needs to..." - always such a pathetic argument

Agreed. It's a variation on the old "Stop having fun!" complaint that people who lead lives of quiet desperation trot out every so often.

Guess we should all eat the most environmentally friendly food too. No one needs to ever eat meat or almonds or anything of the sort because it’s just not efficient.

While we’re at it, let’s get rid of heating past 60 F. You can always wear a sweater or a thicker blanket. It’s not like it’ll be a great inconvenience like not having any heating would be, you’ll still be able to do all the necessary tasks.

Your argument is “people don’t deserve to enjoy anything.”

It's kind of funny how comments like this get downvoted into oblivion. Too many ideologically-motivated HN users have access to the downvote button and they use it to suppress anything that threatens certain sacred narratives. This place is a lot less open to intellectual curiosity than it says on the tin.

The general trend means more charging stations, more acceptance, a soon to come second hand market for EVs, more investment in batteries, etc...

Overall good, even if hybrids are terrible.

good point. The report does say "electrified" vehicle vs "electric"

Can you elaborate on "nothing environmentally friendly about that vehicle"?

I thought hybrid is the only sane approach as you can cover 90% of your trips electric with a small battery. Or is the fuel motor always on in this car?

This popped up recently on the news: https://www.transportenvironment.org/press/plug-hybrids-new-...