Norway Powers Ahead (Electrically): Over Half New Car Sales Now Electric or Hybrid (reuters.com) 192
Sales of electric and hybrid cars rose above half of new registrations in Norway in 2017, a record aided by generous subsidies that extended the country's lead in shifting from fossil-fuel engines, data showed on Wednesday. From a report: Pure electric cars and hybrids, which have both battery power and a diesel or petrol motor, accounted for 52 percent of all new car sales last year in Norway against 40 percent in 2016, the independent Norwegian Road Federation (OFV) said. "No one else is close" in terms of a national share of electric cars, OFV chief Oeyvind Solberg Thorsen said. "For the first time we have a fossil-fuel market share below 50 percent." Norway exempts new electric cars from almost all taxes and grants perks that can be worth thousands of dollars a year in terms of free or subsidized parking, re-charging and use of toll roads, ferries and tunnels.
Easy to do for Net Energy Exporting countries (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Easy to do for Net Energy Exporting countries (Score:5, Informative)
Norway is diversifying away from oil production and into renewable energies like offshore wind farms and hydroelectric power generation. The same technologies used to make oil rigs and power lines resistant to salt water corrosion can be used for offshore wind farms as well. With a population around 5 million and twice the land area of the UK, they can make fast economic changes. Plus they invested the revenue from the oil industry into a trust fund for the country.
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That's all true but doesn't change the original AC's point: Norway is only able to do so because they made vast amounts of money from Oil.
Presenting them as some kind of ideal "look how great they are, they're the furthest along in the migration to EV's" without explicitly acknowledging that they can only do so because the they extracted giga-tons of carbon from their soil that is now heating up the planet is intellectually dishonest.
Posted AC to conserve the mod point I gave the original AC.
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In other words, they managed to maintain their sovereign wealth fund, rather than blowing it like petrojurisdictions like Venezuela and Alberta did, and now can channel that money into the next generation of energy production and use. You'll note that Saudi Arabia is doing the same thing now, but on an even larger scale.
The fact that major oil producing nations like Saudi Arabia and Norway are clearly planning for a post-oil future ought to tell you something.
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the same place the fossil fuel subsidies come from?
Norway does not subsidize fossil fuel production or consumption. To the contrary, it is heavily taxed.
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Yes, they do. And it adds up to a much bigger subsidy than the electric vehicles get.
https://www.earthtrack.net/doc... [earthtrack.net]
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0... [nytimes.com]
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Except, your little excerpt left out the sentence that started that paragraph:
So, not only is the definition of "subsidy" used in this report not a "stretch", but it's actual
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Provided by the crows!
Re: Easy to do for Net Energy Exporting countries (Score:3)
Right. Good on them.
Why aren't other oil rich countries doing the same?
Why doesn't the US do the same?
They seem to be smarter and less corrupt than others.
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Why doesn't the US do the same? For starters, it doesn't impose crushing taxes on the private ownership of vehicles. If you already own a vehicle in the US, it's because these kinds of policies didn't exist there in the past.
This is Norway choosing to loosen it's iron grip on the free market to favor one particular option and pick a winner.
"Norway loosens oppressive tax regime to benefit electric cars"
It sounds a lot less impressive all around when you acknowledge that Norway is actively sabotaging average
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Fossil fuels in the US benefit from massive subsidies and get a free ride on the pollution they create. This is a huge market distortion so not exactly a "free market".
Norway rightly taxes fossil fuel cars to make them pay for their pollution and fuel subsidies.
You really have to ask why the US has distorted the "free market" in favor of fossil fuels. (Hint: follow the money)
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Why doesn't the US do the same?
Because electric car subsidies are one of the least effective methods to help the environment.
Spending the same amount of money on literacy and contraceptives for 3rd World women will have 100 times the impact over a century.
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Transportation related CO2 emissions are the greatest single source of climate change. Makes sense to tax fossil fuel cars and subsidize EVs.
(The rest of you comment is irrelevant to this discussion.)
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Transportation related CO2 emissions are the greatest single source of climate change. Makes sense to tax fossil fuel cars and subsidize EVs.
(The rest of you comment is irrelevant to this discussion.)
Transportation is not the greatest single source in the US.
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissio... [epa.gov]
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I was about to ask that same question, thanks.
Ever heard of "shell game"? (Score:2)
> Makes sense to tax fossil fuel cars and subsidize EVs.
Not when you need to
1) run a fossil-fueled electric generator
2) put up with line losses getting the electricity to charging sites (or home garages)
3) put up with the inevitable conversion losses during battery-charging (2nd law of thermodynamics)
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Only fools are building new fossil fool fueled generators.
Line losses are a rounding error.
Charging losses are less than 10%
OTOH, fossil fuel engines waste 75% of the energy input.
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Why doesn't the USA do the same? Think about what Norway has and the USA does not. Norway has hydroelectric coming out their ears. The USA does not.
What's green energy and grows all over the USA? Sounds like the start of a joke, and I guess it is. The answer is corn. While Norway has been building hydro dams for practically centuries now the USA had to look for other means to get green energy.
I've heard that burning coal to charge electric cars would be greener than burning gasoline in cars. That's g
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Solar and wind are cheaper than coal, nuclear, natural gas.
Corn ethanol has been shown to be more expensive and more polluting than oil as well as damaging the environment. It is subsidized to help our poor farmers and is a boondoggle.
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Let's assume what you say is true, and I won't say that it is or isn't. For now.
How long have we seen solar and wind cheaper than coal? Wind got to be cheaper than coal when? 5 years ago? 10? 25? What about solar? When did that become cheaper than coal? Last week?
In Norway coal never really caught on, hydro was just too cheap to not use. In the USA we've been burning coal for 150 years until the economics shifted. It's going to take time for the electrical industry to shift. A coal power plant is
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Just about everything is cheaper than natural gas. ... cheaper than anything
https://www.eia.gov/electricit... [eia.gov]
The table doesn't include solar and wind but the prices on these have dropped to about 3 cents/kwh
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Did you even read that chart? Look at the bottom.
Gas Turbine and Small Scale category consists of gas turbine, internal combustion, photovoltaic, and wind plants.
That chart is in mills/kWh. A mill is a tenth of a cent. So, yes, according to that chart wind and solar is quite likely 3 cents/kWh. Also according to that chart nuclear is 2.5 cents/kWh. Fossil steam is not defined on that chart but I assume that lumps coal and natural gas boilers together so we cannot see if coal or natural gas is cheaper from this chart. Hydroelectric is cheapest of all, which is not surprising, but we just can't build more dams unl
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Corn ethanol is not very energy efficient. Go for Gen IV nuclear and electric cars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Easy to do for Net Energy Exporting countries (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really an example to the world though, the countries with massive oil based trade surpluses and huge amounts of hydro-potential are Norway and Norway.
This is just Norway investing in autarky, it's not really very interesting for the rest of the world. Unless you want to emigrate to Norway, which wouldn't be a bad idea.
Re:Easy to do for Net Energy Exporting countries (Score:4, Insightful)
Interesting that in Norway, a country that is sparsely populated in many parts and very cold (which reduces range) a lot of people like EVs. All the rubbish about them being unsuitable for the mass market or countries where you need to travel far or with bad weather is demonstrably wrong.
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How many households have pure electric (not hybrid) as their only car? I very much doubt it exceeds a single digit percentage.
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Norway is promoting electric vehicles because it has serious air pollution problems. They could address this by banning the use of wood burning, which is popular there, but because they have a lot of renewable energy reserves offering an electric car carrot is more politically feasible than threatening the public with a wood stove stick.
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It seems like they would be far better off working to wean people off of wood stoves. It seems like the biggest pollution problems would be the dense urban centers rather than the boonies. Managing what's going on in their bigger cities doesn't seem like it would be such an insurmountable problem.
If they don't have a car culture (like LA), then switching to electric isn't going to buy them much there.
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Yeah, banning wood stoves is the obvious solution. But getting people to change their behavior is difficult and it takes a long time, even when that behavior is killing them. If you need a quick change in results you need to do the non-obvious as well as the obvious.
well, OK (Score:4, Insightful)
Norway exempts new electric cars from almost all taxes and grants perks that can be worth thousands of dollars a year in terms of free or subsidized parking, re-charging and use of toll roads, ferries and tunnels.
Well, OK ... if you basically paid me to own one, I'd probably have one too.
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It's anything but "pays you to own one". It's just that ICE vehicles are super-expensive, while EVs are just "normal priced". The other incentives, like parking, don't amass to that much money on average, and there's no tax deduction or rebate or anything like that (like the US's deduction).
On one hand, the government misses out on all of those sales taxes for EVs. On the other hand, I'm sure that a lot of people were buying a car specifically because they could afford an EV and wouldn't have purchased a
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As a general rule, Tesla owners [teslamotorsclub.com] tend to put as many or more miles on them per year as the national average.
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I wonder how many of them *travel* with their EV?
My guess is all of them? I mean You can literally travel all through the Scandinavian countries on pure EV using only Tesla superchargers and they aren't even the most common charging methods around up there.
We just spent Christmas up at the arctic ocean. While passing Setermoen I couldn't help but notice two Teslas at the supercharger. Now given less than 10% of the only 5million people in Norway inhabit the top 2/3rds of the country, and that Setermoen's population is only a tad over 2000 people like most
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Probably the biggest reason Norway is in front is that their per-capita incomes are so high
Yeah, but they have high tax rates to match (personal income taxes are over 50%). That's another big reason why Norway can afford this kind of largesse.
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No, ICEs face huge taxes and EVs avoid them, like I explicitly stated.
No, a Tesla does not produce 17,5 tonnes of CO2 to manufacture [greentechmedia.com]. That was not a peer-reviewed "study" and was based on data that was never valid let alone currently valid. More to the point, Tesla is moving toward having their production entirely solar powered.
The problem with watering with saltwater is that you leave the salts behind in your soil. And basically turn it into a salt pan. And nothing grows on salt pans. Forget the problem
marginal power (Score:2)
That greenwash wasn't peer reviewed either. Tesla's batteries are currently built with marginal electricity, so they must be made from deployable power, which is fossil fuel or nukes.
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Who cares if gas cars are base and EVs are discounted, or if gas cars are taxed and EVs aren't: the end result in both cases is Gas cars cost more. You're just arguing over semantics and how you want to feel about it.
It's like paper bags in California: they charge 10 cents for one at the store. They could have easily made it a 10 cent discount to NOT use the bag, but they want you to pay and, most importantly, FEEL GUILTY about that purchase.
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They also only talk about percentage, not absolute numbers. The article does mention that Norway only has a population of 5.3 million though.
This [countryeconomy.com] shows they Norway only has a market for about 200k vehicles per year.
The US market is about 17600k vehicles per year for comparison. This [fleetcarma.com] suggests that the US has almost 200k electric vehicles a year sold - so a greater total number than Norway.
So I guess the US is not doing too bad in aggregate, even without crazy subsidies, but we're doing really poorly as a
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Except that's 15M people in places that have car ownership on par with places like New York City. It's not really much of an opportunity to drive demand.
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An alternative solution would be to charge people what their internal combustion engine costs and let the market decide between ICE and electric. Then you could let the market decide the right mix of ICE and electric vehicles.
The thing is people would never stand for paying the true cost of their ICE vehicles.
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Well, OK ... if you basically paid me to own one, I'd probably have one too.
This is true, but once you get started, you might find that you actually like or even love electric cars. I got a 3 year lease on a Nissan Leaf to use as a daily commute to work car (over 40 miles in total for going to work and coming back). I loved having an electric car. It cost me about $1 a day in electricity to drive it. My friends loved riding in the car and my (at the time) girlfriend loved riding in it too. I have relatives I need to see who moved away and unfortunately my other car basically d
Not a free market decision (Score:2)
"Norway exempts new electric cars from almost all taxes and grants perks that can be worth thousands of dollars a year in terms of free or subsidized parking, re-charging and use of toll roads, ferries and tunnels."
Re:Not a free market decision (Score:5, Insightful)
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> The "free market" doesn't take into account externalities, such as pollution, so I'm glad that it's NOT a "free market" decision.
What makes you think the externalities are dealt with? You're just kidding yourself that there are none. It's not in your face somewhere you can see it so you don't think it exists.
Besides, Europeans already tax the fuel like crazy. Even if you leave the car itself out of it, you still have a means to directly charge for the relevant "externality".
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Re:Not a free market decision (Score:5, Insightful)
And how would pollution be accounted for, particularly when in most environments it actually takes time for pollutants to build up to a level where they start a problem? To my mind, a keen capitalist in such a "free market" would busy himself maximizing profits by ignoring pollution, and then walk away once the extent of the damage he had done became evident. And low and behold, that's often what has happened:
Sydney Tar Ponds [wikipedia.org]
The coal and rust belts throughout the industrialized world are filled with these sort of toxic dumps, and guess who is on the hook in most cases for cleaning them up. That's right; the taxpayers within those jurisdictions.
In fact, that's not even the limit of how evil industries can be. The sugar and tobacco industries not only sold products highly dangerous to human health, but used junk science to hide the fact that they were killing people... for decades. And who was left responsible for decades worth of cancers, heart disease, diabetes, and so forth? That's right, the taxpayer (or in the US, in many cases, those who paid health insurance premiums). These companies became some of the most successful companies in the world, raking in vast profits, and letting governments and insurance companies deal with the carnage they were producing.
Sorry mate, your free market is an utter fantasy, a religion as daft as $cientology. Free markets cannot be unconstrained, and there must be regulation in place, because its government's job to look out for the people. I'm all onboard for capitalism and free enterprise, but the idea that some guy who makes thousands of times my hourly wage gives one single fuck about my wellbeing or that somehow he'll feel the need to moderate his company's actions for my best interests is, well, just plain absurd.
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There's no such thing as a free market decision then. Every industry has at some point or another been the subject of some form of government subsidy or tax barrier against it.
Re: Not a free market decision (Score:5, Informative)
The tax is not the same for all fossil cars. Where on earth do you have that from?
There's 3 parts of the "engangsavgift" (one time tax, paid as you buy it):
Weight:
351-1200kg: 26.51NOK/kg
1201-1400kg: 66.05NOK/kg
1401-1500kg: 206.41NOK/kg
> 1500kg: 240.06NOK/kg
CO2 (based on released grams per kilometer):
0-75g: 0NOK
76-100g: 914.7NOK/(g/km)
101-130g: 955.49NOK/(g/km)
131-200g: 2685.98NOK/(g/km)
> 200g: 3449.8NOK/(g/km)
NOX:
70.94NOK per mg/km
You add these together to find your engangsavgift.
The tax easily runs to more than 100.000USD for land rovers.
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Start subsidy to to eliminate hybrid cars (Score:3)
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Since hybrid cars still use fossil fuels, they should start subsidizing electric cars to eliminate hybrids.
Better idea: Let's use meaningful policies to drive economic change rather than unrealistic stretch goals that kneecap the industry before it even starts.
Practically forced (Score:2)
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It's not clear that the current incentives will lead to the price gap closing.
The price gap is quite clearly on the road to closing. Battery costs are plummeting. To date the drop in battery costs has been used to produce BEVs with greater range at the same price as older models with shorter range. But now that ranges are reaching the point where they are adequate for most people, manufacturers will instead start using savings on battery cost to drop the price of future models compared to today's models.
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" But both are (tens of) thousands of dollars more expensive than a basic gasoline counterpart. "
Only if you ignore the billions of subsidies for the oil industry.
Some countries even conduct wars costing trillions to secure the fuel for those gasoline cars.
Since car owners are also taxpayers, they pay for those too, even those having only electric vehicles.
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The reason why (Score:2)
Given Norway's per capita GDP (Score:2)
"generous subsidies" (Score:2)
so, electric not competitive
have to steal from working people with less income to afford one
nice
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yes, special interests with lawmakers in their pockets get laws passed to benefit the few at the expense of the many. This is called corporate fascism; it's not new and it's not good.
Let's all remember... (Score:4, Interesting)
...that Norway is NOT ONLY a fabulously wealthy petro-state, but far more prudent about what they do with the funds than other oil-rich countries.
Using them as an example of anything in terms of social policies is hardly exportable to most other country's circumstances.
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Using them as an example of anything in terms of social policies is hardly exportable to most other country's circumstances. ... the bad evil communists ...
Of course it is!
The other countries would be exactly the same as Norway if they had done the same politics Norway did after WWII.
But alas
Re: Let's all remember... (Score:3)
Yes, most other Petro states are happy to just keep the ruling class in hookers and blow. Hard to imagine them being socially responsible.
They pay you to buy it, so why wouldn't you (Score:2)
"Norway exempts new electric cars from almost all taxes and grants perks that can be worth thousands of dollars a year in terms of free or subsidized parking, re-charging and use of toll roads, ferries and tunnels."
EV and hybrid cars must be pretty unpopular if they need so many incentives to induce sales.
The thing that surprises me is (Score:2)
It is one thing to use an electric car in southern California. Use one 10 miles from town, in 6 inches of snow in near/sub zero temps, spinning out, etc.
Also, if I need to pay 60k+, I will lean toward a Large, Gas Powered, 4 wheel drive, SUV.
But then, I am older and could be set in my ways and maybe don't see the light
Just
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From what I've heard from Tesla Model S drivers, they're actually great winter cars. They're on the heavy end of the scale, with a low centre of mass. Plus all but the cheapest versions have 4WD, each powered by their own electric motor (which the computer can control as necessary to maintain traction). Add in the torque characteristics of the electric motors and you're golden.
Cold can affect batteries, but Tesla has great battery management with active heating and cooling as necessary. You're gonna lose so
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TBH I have lived in the Twin Cities in Minnesota for the last 30 years
The main roads are kept open, but the smaller cars can not get over the bank from the
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If you are plugging the thing in overnight anyway, couldn't you use the wall current to keep the battery warm while charging? The batteries could warm themselves up before operation if it is cold out and the car is not plugged in. My electric snow blower will do this if it detects the batteries are cold when you ask it to start up.
"New" car sales (Score:2)
So, what fraction of Norway's cars are EV/Hybrid? (Score:2)
Note that statement, which refers to new cars SALES. It does NOT refer to the total number of vehicles on the road.
Hell, the USA could brag that EV sales are up 86% over last year's numbers (ok, the year before last, since we don't have numbers for '18 yet). That's even better than Norway's growth rate (40% last year, 52% this year is only a 30% growth rate). Neither number (Norway's or our's) means a hill of beans without some ind
Re:So, what fraction of Norway's cars are EV/Hybri (Score:4, Insightful)
Well you're never going to get to a significant fraction of the cars on the road being EV without a significant fraction of sales being EV. Usable EVs have only been around for a couple of years. Even if 100% of sales had been EV from the day they were released, it would be a while before they represented the majority of cars on the road.
But what this news does suggest is that we're starting to enter the era of runaway EV adoption, and I imagine my 2-year-old daughter will never drive an ICE (if she even drives a car at all).
There is also some speculation that--despite the usual "lifespan" of an ICE car--the transition could actually happen much faster than most people expect. That's because once a critical mass of cars are EV, you lose the infrastructure (gas stations, engine shops) that support ICE cars, driving ever more rapid adoption of EVs. It happened with the conversion of cameras from film to digital. People who bought expensive film cameras and planned to keep them for a decade or more quickly changed their tune once the critical mass of digital was reached and all the film developers started shutting down.
This is great for everyone... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Developing WMD's isn't all that expensive.
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Norway does not need a proper defense against, lets say the Russians.
1)
There is Sweden and Finland between Norway and Russia.
2)
If the US had not made "communism" and "Russia" the number one bad guy on the planet, why would need anyone a defense against them?
Aggression (Score:2)
If the US had not made "communism" and "Russia" the number one bad guy on the planet, why would need anyone a defense against them?
Ask Ukraine.
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> If the US had not made "communism" and "Russia" the number one bad guy on the planet, why would need anyone a defense against them?
The US didn't do that. The Commintern did.
Also, it was Kruschev that started the cold war with Trump style blustering nonsense.
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1) Norway shares borders with Russia. Sweden does not.
2) Ask any eastern european about Russia and communism. They were occupied by Russia for almost half a decade.
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The US pays the largest part of the NATO budget (source: CNSNEWS) [cnsnews.com] and supplies the largest amount of troops, tanks, planes, etc. (source: wikipedia) [wikipedia.org].
So yes Norway's defense is basically externalized.
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So if the US said to NATO, or a specific country, we will no longer offer our money/troops in your defense how would that countries spending have to change to ensure it it had the right size military to defend itself? The military spending would have to increase and therefore either the taxes of that country will go up even more or a lot of the social services would have
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Norway has a lot of money due to exporting fossil fuels like oil and natural gas. Good job Norway: you are causing global warming.
They are alleviating that by going all in on electric, Are you suggesting they should not?
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They should stop producing oil and natural gas first. Buying a Tesla with money you made selling oil does nothing for the globe.
And hand over the business to petrostates who won't buy a Tesla with their profits? The demand for oil and gas is currently there; it doesn't go away just because you stop selling. Might as well fill that demand and use roll the money back into reducing future demand.
Re: Why Norway is Rich (Score:2)
At least they recognize the problem and are trying to do something unlike the US where the Koch brothers run government is subsidizing fossil fools.
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Buying Teslas (and Leaf's Prius's, etc.) with oil money. Great idea!
The oil money won't last.
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Indeed. Oil producers aren't producing oil because they think it's fun. They do so because people want to buy it.
If you want to cut oil consumption, you have to attack demand, not production. Stop production in one place, it just moves elsewhere.
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More like 30,000 tons or 30 million tons. ;D
Or are you thinking about the amount you could mine, then you might be right
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"There's not enough Lithium for the world to transition to all electric vehicles."
That's because all those bipolar people are _eating_ it.
We need the Lithium for batteries with 2 poles, not people with 2.
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Same with me in Illinois with a C-Max energi. Normal electric range is 20-24 miles when warm. Car this morning reported a 15 mile range. Even on gas it is low as normal highway mpg is around 45. Wife drove 100 miles the other day and only got 35. Brutal cold is hard on mileage
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Not many EVs up north though. Distances are too long. Most EVs in norway are clustered ariound the bigger cities both because driving distances are less and because they are excempt from road tolls which are common in the urban centres. The temperatures in these areas are more modereate, though there is little evidence that EVs suffer hugely in the cold. 20-30% reduced range seem to be the norm, but keep in mind that snowy roads and winter tires also degrade range so it is not just about the cold. Also the