Norway Becomes First Country To Sell More Electric Cars Than Petrol Vehicles (independent.co.uk) 165
Norway has become the first country to have sold more electric cars than petrol, hybrid, and diesel engines in a year. The Independent reports: Electric cars comprised 54% of all new vehicle sales in Norway for 2019. The Norwegian government plans to ban the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2025, and is using tax breaks and financial incentives to encourage the purchasing of more sustainable vehicles. Battery electric vehicles made up 54.3% of new car sales in 2020, up from 42% in 2019, according to figures published by the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV) on Tuesday.
Cars with diesel-only engines have fallen from a height of being 75.7 per cent of the Norweigen vehicle market in 2011 to just 8.6 per cent in 2020. "We're definitely on track to reach the 2025 target," said Oyvind Thorsen, the chief executive of OFV. The most popular model in the country was the Audi e-tron sports utility and sportsback vehicles, with the Tesla mid-size Model 3 taking second place.
Cars with diesel-only engines have fallen from a height of being 75.7 per cent of the Norweigen vehicle market in 2011 to just 8.6 per cent in 2020. "We're definitely on track to reach the 2025 target," said Oyvind Thorsen, the chief executive of OFV. The most popular model in the country was the Audi e-tron sports utility and sportsback vehicles, with the Tesla mid-size Model 3 taking second place.
Sure nice to be an oil exporter (Score:4, Insightful)
Car sales and taxation are massive parts of the budgets, most countries can't politically afford their level of subsidies (which is not to say they can't afford them, it's just impossible politically).
Re:Sure nice to be an oil exporter (Score:5, Interesting)
As the production of EVs ramps up, the price will come down through the economies of mass production.
We should appreciate the Norwegians for paying the price to pave the way for the rest of us.
Re:Sure nice to be an oil exporter (Score:4, Informative)
As the production of EVs ramps up, the price will come down through the economies of mass production.
We should appreciate the Norwegians for paying the price to pave the way for the rest of us.
Norway buys about 140K cars/year, compared to say 23 million in China or even Turkey's 620K. Norway is no where near the top 20 in sales; so I doubt they will have much of an impact on economies of scale.
Re: Sure nice to be an oil exporter (Score:5, Insightful)
They will have an impact on policymakers who need to be convinced it's doable.
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As the production of EVs ramps up, the price will come down through the economies of mass production.
We should appreciate the Norwegians for paying the price to pave the way for the rest of us.
Norway buys about 140K cars/year, compared to say 23 million in China or even Turkey's 620K. Norway is no where near the top 20 in sales; so I doubt they will have much of an impact on economies of scale.
Not anymore, but Norway was the one of the world's largest EV markets (#2, I think) for a long time. While not a big part of the total car market, it was an important market for the EV manufacturers so they had markets to sell to while making EVs better and better.
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As the production of EVs ramps up, the price will come down through the economies of mass production.
We should appreciate the Norwegians for paying the price to pave the way for the rest of us.
Norway buys about 140K cars/year, compared to say 23 million in China or even Turkey's 620K. Norway is no where near the top 20 in sales; so I doubt they will have much of an impact on economies of scale.
Not anymore, but Norway was the one of the world's largest EV markets (#2, I think) for a long time. While not a big part of the total car market, it was an important market for the EV manufacturers so they had markets to sell to while making EVs better and better.
Worldwide EV sales were 2.17 million in 2019. Europe sold 590 million EV's. Norway was #3 in 2019, ahead of Germany but way behind China and the US. In Q4 2019 the US sold nearly as many EV's as Norway sold cars. While no doubt Norway provides useful information on EV operation, durability, etc.; economies of scale will not come from their sales. The most interesting thing is for economists to learn how tax breaks impact vehicle purchase and repair decisions, IMHO.
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As the production of EVs ramps up, the price will come down through the economies of mass production.
We should appreciate the Norwegians for paying the price to pave the way for the rest of us.
Norway buys about 140K cars/year, compared to say 23 million in China or even Turkey's 620K. Norway is no where near the top 20 in sales; so I doubt they will have much of an impact on economies of scale.
Not anymore, but Norway was the one of the world's largest EV markets (#2, I think) for a long time. While not a big part of the total car market, it was an important market for the EV manufacturers so they had markets to sell to while making EVs better and better.
Worldwide EV sales were 2.17 million in 2019. Europe sold 590 million EV's. Norway was #3 in 2019, ahead of Germany but way behind China and the US. In Q4 2019 the US sold nearly as many EV's as Norway sold cars. While no doubt Norway provides useful information on EV operation, durability, etc.; economies of scale will not come from their sales. The most interesting thing is for economists to learn how tax breaks impact vehicle purchase and repair decisions, IMHO.
I was thinking earlier, when total EV sales were far lower than they were today. As time passes, Norway is going to trend towards the midget in car sales it usually is with its small population. Being by far the largest EV market in Europe also means a lot for many different brands - the China market is for Chinese brands only, and sales for non-Tesla EVs in the US have been low AFAIK.
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140 K cars a year is orders of magnitude smaller than sales in other countries,
140K car users is orders of magnitude more than the number of QA, test engineers and usability testers
We would know what works, what does not, which is more painful, what concern is overblown, and what issues were not know before etc...
Re: Sure nice to be an oil exporter (Score:2)
Fools focusing on purchase price remind me of those clueless people who got a 'free" iPhone and spent years locked into expensive contracts.
My Tesla saves me about$5000 a year on fuel and maintenance.
Maths!
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It's possible in Norway because refined fuel exports make them a lot of money. The less fuel burned domestically the more they can export. What also makes it politically possible is there's not a lot of long distance travel by car in a nation that small and mountainous.
Most nations could not afford this, politically or economically. Norway can because the income from fuel exports more than make up for the loss of domestic fuel and car taxes.
Re:Sure nice to be an oil exporter (Score:5, Informative)
Small? The distance from the southern point to the northern point is about 2500 km by road. About the same as Athens to Hamburg. Or just a bit shorter than Houston to New York.
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Yes small. I could drive 2500 km without leaving Texas or California. Just two states of the 50 of the country that I am in. Silly Euro newbs with their distorted sense of scale. ;)
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Unless you count Mexican Baja California too, driving the distance from the southern most part of California to the northern most part is less than 1500 KM.
San Diego to Seattle is 2000 KM. The entire length of the west coast is "small". Sure.
East to west Texas and North to South Texas are about about 1300KM. Your sense of scale is off.
Re:Sure nice to be an oil exporter (Score:5, Insightful)
As a Norwegian I am officially offended here... One of the greatest points of pride of Norway is that if you flip the nation around Oslo, North Cape would land in Rome. Roads are long and there are some with very minimal infrastructure, so if anything it is a lot more challenging than realising this in e.g. the Netherlands or New York.
The origin of our battery vehicle policy is a protectionist hack around EU laws against direct state handouts. The government wanted to support local car production by company Think [wikipedia.org], that specialised in battery cars when no one was making them. They made a law that exempted battery cars from VAT and gave them a bunch of privileges, and when Mitsubishi, Nissan and Tesla showed up they could not simply roll them back as it suddenly had become an international sensation.
Contributing factors are the very cheap electrical power, expensive gas (aligned to Europe), and low speed limits (it's rare to see above 80 km/h). As most Norwegians heat their homes and cook with electrical power, most homes have very high power requirements (my flat is 9 kW), which makes it easy to accommodate a charging car (2-3 kW).
You want something for free? Follow this scheme (which we should have been using from the start, if we could predict the success EVs would have had):
This scheme has the advantages that:
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As a Norwegian I am officially offended here... One of the greatest points of pride of Norway is that if you flip the nation around Oslo, North Cape would land in Rome. Roads are long and there are some with very minimal infrastructure, so if anything it is a lot more challenging than realising this in e.g. the Netherlands or New York.
What are Norwegian driving habits? How often do they take a long trip that requires recharging the battery en-route?
Distance is not an issue when most trips are short and cars can be easily recharged at home; so there is never a problem with having to find a charging station and waiting for your vehicle to charge. Even the average American commute to work could easily be done in an EV.
Long trips are still an EV's weak point; given the challenges and time required for recharging vs getting gas for an ICE p
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>Long trips are still an EV's weak point; given the challenges and time required for recharging vs getting gas for an ICE powered car. Once EV's overcome the issues of charging time and availability of charging locations, EV growth will be greater; especially in areas where longer trips are much more prevalent.
Bjorn Nyland routinely does 1000km (~620mi) road trips in EVs while reviewing them. Most trips, including charging stops, are ~12 hours or less.
He also livestreams at least some of these test drive
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In my Model 3 Tesla, it's really not bad. I have the Performance version on 20" super sticky tires, so it's actually a little worse for me than the average Tesla Model 3 owner...
Just before lockdown, it looked like I needed to go to Atlanta GA from Boston MA. I really hate flying, so I considered driving the Tesla, stopping overnight about halfway in Richmond VA.
To get to Richmond is 9 hours, 5 minutes of driving, with 2 stops to charge, totaling 41 minutes.
From Richmond to Atlanta is 9 hours 40 minutes of driving, with 3 stops totaling 52 minutes.
(btw, these are numbers for today, in winter, which means they're very conservative, i.e. I calculated using a highter-than-summertime energy consumption. In summer it would take even less time to charge).
So, traveling most of the way down the east coast of the United States, I spend 93 minutes charging. At my age, I need to stop every now and again to pee, so if you assume I spend 10 minutes at each stop finding a restroom and maybe grabbing a coke, I only spend about 43 minutes waiting around for the car to charge. From Boston to Atlanta!
If you're one of those "drive straight through" people (I fall asleep if I try to do that) it's 18 hours, 13 minutes of driving, and 1 hour 44 minutes of charging. So, you could eat 3 of your meals indoors instead of eating in your car and arriving with the whole car smelling of rancid french fries ;-)
The story is not quite as pretty for a non-Tesla owner. Although Electrify America has been putting in lots of DC fast chargers, that network is not as robust as the Tesla one, so there are fewer chargers to pick from, and they've had some maintenance issues. They'll continue their build out and fix the maintenance issues (which happened because nobody was making chargers that could deliver the desired charging rates at the time, and so there were new designs that had teething problems. There's no reason to think they won't solve that and be just as good as the Tesla network).
There's literally no place I wouldn't just hop in my Tesla and start driving to. Yes, I'll spend a maybe 10% of the drive time charging, but for most people quite a bit of that will overlap with rest breaks, meals, etc.
I'll politely disagree that long trips are the issue. I think the real issue is towing trailers. The aerodynamic drag of pulling a trailer really increases energy consumption in both EV and ICE. In the case of EV, this causes excessive charging time on a long trip. So, if you happen to pull a trailer a lot (I don't) then I'll agree that long trips are an issue. But if you don't often pull a trailer, I'd say long trips are a non-issue for Tesla owners, and soon to be a non-issue for most newer EVs...
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I'll politely disagree that long trips are the issue. I think the real issue is towing trailers. The aerodynamic drag of pulling a trailer really increases energy consumption in both EV and ICE. In the case of EV, this causes excessive charging time on a long trip. So, if you happen to pull a trailer a lot (I don't) then I'll agree that long trips are an issue. But if you don't often pull a trailer, I'd say long trips are a non-issue for Tesla owners, and soon to be a non-issue for most newer EVs...
Good points. I'd agree that the charging issue may be more of perception than reality, especially for Tesla owners, but nonetheless it persists.
For me, it's not so much a range, since most EV's are good for 4-5 hours of driving and at that point a rest stop is probably needed anyway; but of convenience. With an EV, you can't simply pull off at an exit and easily find a charging station; thus the need to plan ahead more than in an ICE vehicle. That is especially true if you are not on a major highway. I
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I'll politely disagree that long trips are the issue.
I disagree. Even with the significant infrastructure for Tesla, as you say, you spend 10% of your trip time recharging but also you have to put significant time into planning for that because of the limitation on where you can charge. Same trip with a gas car and you can put almost no time into planning stops. With rare exceptions, fuel stops can be done pretty much anywhere along the way when the vehicles needs gas and if it doesn't line up with a natural break time, a fuel stop can be no more than 5-10
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As most Norwegians heat their homes and cook with electrical power, most homes have very high power requirements (my flat is 9 kW), which makes it easy to accommodate a charging car (2-3 kW).
The lowest level of service available for a home in the USA is 220V @ 100A, or 22kW; the only other option available to most residential customers is 200A. I don't know what it's like in other countries, but I know that 9kW is not very much. My apartment in Austin had at least three 110V @ 15A circuits, or 5kW, and that was with gas heat, but an electric [mini] dryer (and washer, stacked.) I think there were actually four circuits but since it was in one of the more expensive complexes in town they handled
Re:Sure nice to be an oil exporter (Score:4, Informative)
The lowest level of service available for a home in the USA is 220V @ 100A, or 22kW; the only other option available to most residential customers is 200A. I don't know what it's like in other countries, but I know that 9kW is not very much. My apartment in Austin had at least three 110V @ 15A circuits, or 5kW, and that was with gas heat, but an electric [mini] dryer (and washer, stacked.) I think there were actually four circuits but since it was in one of the more expensive complexes in town they handled everything for me, I never had to do so much as change a light bulb.
I think the two most important factors in your EV adoption are the price of fuel and the massive taxes placed on only ICEVs. Both of which, BTW, make sense to me— but would immediately kick Americans' asses. Even if there were enough EVs available for us all to switch, not enough of us could afford to do so.
When I lived in NY, ConEd home service could offer 120V @ 100A or 200A (don't remember which), which would make 12kVA or 24kVA, but the actual fuses were 15A which meant I could easily trip them. I don't know about the whole of Europe, but in Greece for example the minimum service is single phase 230V @ 35A (8kVA), but it is common to opt for tri-phase 230V that starts at 3x25A (17kVA). Since you need an RCD relay at the top and they are usually made up to 40A, I don't think you'd consider more than that anyway. Home fuses are generally 16A except for the ones for kitchen circuits and the ones for water heating which are at usually 25A. The fact that the US home with the low voltage did not have great Amp fuses was quite limiting, definitely not good to plug in a car. Any Greek home should allow you to plug at least in the kitchen for 5.75kVA, anywhere else for 3.7kVA. And I'd think that 3.7kVA (230V @ 16A circuit) should be the minimum that would be available across Europe (well for reasonably modern installations) which should be enough for a car as the GP suggested.
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Many if not most American homes have a receptacle delivering 220V @ 15A in order to provide for an electric clothes dryer. But that's not most relevant, what really matters is what level of service comes to the panel, because you can add a receptacle for a reasonable cost if the panel is anywhere near your parking.
Dryer outlet is 30A (Score:3)
A standard US dryer outlet is 220V@30A, not 15A. 15A is generally 120V and intended for lighting and "convenience lighting". These days, most outlets are actually fed by a 20A breaker, not 15A.
And yes, it's not that expensive, compared to the price of a car, to run an outlet from your panel to the garage, because there's like a 80% chance the panel is actually IN the garage.
At which point you can put in a 240V@50A outlet if you want. They're generally used for heavy duty commercial grade welders.
120V service? (Score:2)
120V service would basically mean that you were living in the tiny area originally serviced by Edison. The switch to 240V services was really far back. A direct 120V service would thus be for something special, because you're in that specific bit.
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The first home I owned (in the USA) had a 60 A, 120V panel with 15A fuses. A number of older areas in cities don't offer 240V (or 220V as you said) but only 208V.
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Oil companies might not care, what they can't sell inside Norway they can sell outside.
But gas station chains, car engine mechanics, these would care.
Re:Sure nice to be an oil exporter (Score:5, Informative)
They don't subsidise any more, they just give tax breaks. I.e. fossil cars are punished to offset the damage they do.
Norway has invested a lot in infrastructure. Much of it was done by private companies but the government has made sure that e.g. people can charge at home. I suppose you could call that a subsidy, but only if you also accept all the benefits that fossil cars have had over the years are also subsidies.
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They don't subsidise any more, they just give tax breaks.
You repeat yourself sir.
But of course you would with your muddled and arrogant thinking. Go defend some women you idjit. Your idiocy is not needed here.
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There are important differences. Tax breaks reduce the cost to the buyer, they don't help the manufacturer beyond encouraging sales. In this case though it's probably a net benefit for the taxpayer due to reduced spending elsewhere, e.g. social medicine, cleaning public spaces and buildings, climate change.
The USA is an oil exporter (Score:2)
And most of us can't afford EVs either.
There's ever so slightly much more to it than that.
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What is our revenue from exported oil per capita?
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Sure they can. Just change the name of the subsidy and "energy subsidy" and write in the fine print to simply redirect funds from oil and coal. You don't even need to add anything to the budget to subsidize this orders of magnitude higher than it's already being subsidised in most of the world.
Problems due to tax subsidiaries (Score:2, Informative)
This leads to many problems, and government gives subsidiaries to EV buyers.
When a car is in an accident, it quickly gets scrapped instead of repaired, as there is no tax reduction, subsidiaries on spare parts, and insurance rules are to scrap any car that costs more that x% to repair. So environmental impact of EV in Norway is way higher than in other countries.
Re: Problems due to tax subsidiaries (Score:2)
Re: Problems due to tax subsidiaries (Score:5, Informative)
... now all you need is a source reference for your claim.
There was actually an article [www.nrk.no] - related to a TV program - on this subject this week.
Though I would like to clarify that EVs aren't subsidised (with the exception of not having to pay VAT), but rather get a very healthy tax rate (0) in a car tax system based on emissions of the cars being sold.
This differs from other countries where you have taxes covering EVs as well as other cars, but give some sort of subsidy - e.g. a certain amount per car.
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Gas cars don't get subsidies for repairs either.
So if EVs are not repaired because of a lack of repair subsidies, why are gas cars repaired?
How is the situation different?
The fact that EVs were subsidized when originally purchased should be irrelevant.
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So if EVs are not repaired because of a lack of repair subsidies, why are gas cars repaired?
Because the tax break for new EVs but not the parts makes it much cheaper to buy a new car than to buy the individual parts. There is no tax break for gas cars so the parts becomes proportionally cheaper compared to buying a new car.
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Gas cars don't get subsidies for repairs either.
So if EVs are not repaired because of a lack of repair subsidies, why are gas cars repaired?
How is the situation different?
The fact that EVs were subsidized when originally purchased should be irrelevant.
Think of two cars that cost 1000 NOK from the manufacturer. Car A is an EV, and car B is an fossil car. The price to the customer will be 1000 NOK for car A, and let's say 1500 for car B (emission taxes plus VAT). The insurance companies will fix a car if the cost to repair is less than 60% of the cost of a car, so it will only repair 600 NOK damage to the EV but 900 NOK for car B.
Note that the cost to repair them could be fairly similar, given that the taxes (VAT) are the same for both cars.
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I would think at a bare minimum the battery pack (if it was undamaged) would still be worth a good chunk of change.
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This leads to many problems, and government gives subsidiaries to EV buyers. When a car is in an accident, it quickly gets scrapped instead of repaired, as there is no tax reduction, subsidiaries on spare parts, and insurance rules are to scrap any car that costs more that x% to repair. So environmental impact of EV in Norway is way higher than in other countries.
Whatever environmental impact Norwegian EVs have is drowned out by the environmental damage done by Norway's fossil fuel exports.
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This leads to many problems, and government gives subsidiaries to EV buyers. When a car is in an accident, it quickly gets scrapped instead of repaired, as there is no tax reduction, subsidiaries on spare parts, and insurance rules are to scrap any car that costs more that x% to repair. So environmental impact of EV in Norway is way higher than in other countries.
Whatever environmental impact Norwegian EVs have is drowned out by the environmental damage done by Norway's fossil fuel exports.
Where the oil comes from doesn't matter much when you burn it, so the net damage from Norway there - compared to getting the oil from Saudi-Arabia etc - is 0.
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Where the oil comes from doesn't matter much when you burn it, so the net damage from Norway there - compared to getting the oil from Saudi-Arabia etc - is 0.
That is only true if we have an unlimited supply of cheap oil. In reality, Norway's exports have increased supply, lowered prices and increased consumption of oil.
Not a criticism of them. Who would say no to trillions of crowns over the last 40 years? That's like $1million per family. Of course they can subsidise a few cars - they are richer than Oprah.
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That is only true if we have an unlimited supply of cheap oil.
Saudi Arabia has plenty of spare capacity and can pump for $2 per barrel.
The only restraint on their production is maintaining prices.
So if Norway produces more, the Saudis produce less. The total oil produced is the same.
The moral responsibility lies with the consumer of oil, not the producer.
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The moral responsibility lies with the consumer of oil, not the producer.
If you hand a child a gun and they shoot someone, you're both responsible... but depending on their age, it may be more you than they.
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Accountancy is the art of
1. Counting the right things.
2. Not double-counting them.
It's OK to count carbon emission at the point of extraction, or the point of use. But if you do both, you double count them. Unless you want to elucidate about how to split the responsibility for the world's carbon pollution, you can't really say the extraction drowns out the EV use.
(Another matter is that Norway's per capita carbon emissions are still fairly high, EVs or no EVs.)
Re:Problems due to tax subsidiaries (Score:4, Interesting)
Accountancy is the art of
1. Counting the right things.
2. Not double-counting them.
It's OK to count carbon emission at the point of extraction, or the point of use.
I heard that oil extraction and gas production (from that oil) have large environmental impact, comparable to burning end product. So you can count the same fuel twice: it's production and it's burning.
Re:Problems due to tax subsidiaries (Score:4, Informative)
Norway has electrified the drilling platforms and have a significantly lower emissions per barrel produced compared to other offshore operations.
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Accountancy is the art of
1. Counting the right things. 2. Not double-counting them.
It's OK to count carbon emission at the point of extraction, or the point of use.
I heard that oil extraction and gas production (from that oil) have large environmental impact, comparable to burning end product. So you can count the same fuel twice: it's production and it's burning.
The impact of producing it is in Norway is just a couple of percent of the total emissions. This is much, much higher for e.g. oil tar sands. In any case, the resposibility of the emissions for production belongs to Norway, the emissions by using the end product for whoever burns that.
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as it's also used as spinning and cold reserve for their wind. ...
Perhaps you want to google what a "spinning" and a "cold" reserve actually is.
Hint: a hydro plant is neither
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A hydro plant does not function as both.
As it is neither. Perhaps you want to open a dictionary about terms used in electricity production.
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>Perhaps you want to open a dictionary about terms used in electricity production.
https://www.electricalengineer... [electrical...eering.xyz]
"Cold reserve: The generating capacity of a reserve which is available for service but is not operational." - Hydro turbines that are not currently flowing. Takes a few minutes to open the valve and get them going. Hydro qualifies as cold reserve.
"Hot reserve: The generating capacity which is in operation but not in service." - I don't imagine Hydro generally has turbines flowing without gen
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First of all: hydro does not need a few seconds to start running. It basically starts instantly, and is in a few seconds on grid frequency. :P
Secondly: cold refers to a hot plant, aka fossile plant, that is currently, as the name implies: cold. So: no, a hydro plant is not part of the "cold reserve"
"Spinning reserve: The generating capacity which is connected to the bus and is ready to take the load." - Any Hydro turbine that isn't running at full capacity would qualify under this definition,
No it does not
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No, it's you who need to do some actual accounting, rather than waving around claims without trying to actually count the impact of those claims being true.
When you do that, you see that Norway comes fairly high up still [wikipedia.org], despite the electrification. Presumably other factors (like Norway being really rich) make up for it - you'd have to consult the actual reports to find out.
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No, wrong. They estimate at the point of use, not the point of extraction. They even subtract emissions related to production from exports, and add emissions for imports.
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So I went digging and I found some REALLY creative accounting. Not only do they get (self) penalized for hydrocarbons, they even get penalized for daring to survive in the north. Reminder: those reporting mechanisms are internal, not external. It's the nation itself that reports those numbers, makes standards for how to check for those numbers and collates the numbers. The single stupidest one is where they heat their homes in winter while not living in cities, so they burn wood as has always been done. Whi
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This leads to many problems, and government gives subsidiaries to EV buyers.
When a car is in an accident, it quickly gets scrapped instead of repaired, as there is no tax reduction, subsidiaries on spare parts, and insurance rules are to scrap any car that costs more that x% to repair.
What do subsidies have to do with scaping a car or using parts? Your comment makes no sense.
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It makes sense.
Instead of repairing a broken combustion engine car, they might buy a new ev, which might be worse for the environment.
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The vast majority of vehicles which are in serious accidents are "totaled" and scrapped anyway. Automobiles are the most aggressively recycled consumer good on the planet. The battery packs from crashed EVs, if not deflagrated, are sold on to the secondary market where people use them for solar batteries in both fixed and mobile installations. The rest of the vehicle is broken up for parts which are used to keep other vehicles on the road. Today's vehicles are almost all unibody and made with a mixture of s
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The mining of battery materials will be an operation comparable to oil/coal extraction and refining
Actually it won't. They have nothing in common except that the resources are "underground".
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Well, in both cases, you dig up dirt, process it, creating tailings and tailings ponds full of toxic crap that is going to leak into your water supply after the oil mining company sends its profits elsewhere and declares bankruptcy. This is Canadian bitumen mining, which the Alberta government reassures us is amongst the cleanest in the world.
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No-one ever complained about the mining for batteries for their phones/laptops etc.
That sounds like bullshit. You can probably find dozens of counterexamples on this site alone.
People who dump batteries in the household bin need educating.
And places where you can't easily turn in batteries need to be forced to take them. The transfer station where I used to live would take basically any kind of battery EXCEPT lithium, and they wouldn't take ANY of those unless they were sealed into an electronic device you were recycling. That is a recipe for landfilling lithium packs.
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It is profitable to recycle certain things, EV batteries seem to be one of them.
Of course, they will probably do it in such a way that it will be massively polluting, because it's cheaper. But they will still do it.
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Most plastic is not really recyclable, which is a problem that was known since the very beginning.
Lithium ion batteries are highly recyclable, and the ones used in cars are designed to be recycled as easily as possible.
You realize the objection "we don't have enough stuff to make batteries!" and "batteries won't be recycled!" are mutually exclusive, yeah?
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When it comes to lead acid batteries, recycling works very well with even the plastic, polypropylene mostly being recycled and that new battery in your car being about 80% recycled material.
https://recyclenation.com/2014... [recyclenation.com]
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Well compared to the environmental problems with digging up oil and processing it, it is still relatively minor.
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ICE vehicles also consume large amounts of oil to be manufactured, it's not like they're harvested from a forest or something. From the steal and aluminium to the plastics to the noble metals in the catalytic converters, all involve the same kind of stuff, like mining to build.
Considering how much of an ICE vehicle is currently recycled, even with how labour intensive it is (just draining all the fluids and dealing with them takes labour), I don't see why electric would be different. At least wouldn't have
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OK. The problem is we're kinda stuck using vehicles, so it comes down to which is better, ICE or electric. There's arguments both ways.
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Well, I'll start out by agreeing completely about too much driving.
This leaves the question whether batteries are worse for the environment. Do they drip everywhere? Are there leaks when transporting the batteries to market and refilling them? Can you look at the mining operations from space and easily see the environmental damage? I'd guess both oil and battery mining can support repressive governments.
As for recycling, the easy fix is to make it profitable. Bottles and cans here are worth a nickel or dime
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Diesel cars are expensive (Score:3)
While diesel cars have had a few advantages, I can see in Europe that the tide was turning, purely because diesel cars invariably stink, walk past a whole bunch of them taking off and it's difficult to breath, and more and more cities are prohibiting them to be driven on their streets.
However, with all the additional systems to control emissions, they've gained a reputation of becoming rather expensive to maintain and repair. Quite a shame, because diesels were known to be more reliable, and go back far enough, the mechanically injected diesels of old don't need any electronics; the battery was only used for starting the engine and electronics not related to the engine, such as lights and radios.
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Diesel was promoted in some European countries, particularly France, as being cleaner and better for health. That turned out to be completely wrong so there is a u-turn in progress.
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It's never that simple, but if you were to only look at CO2, then I think you can argue that diesels pollute less. The process is more efficient, so they extract more work from the fuel than a corresponding petrol engine.
One way or another, I think we can start to see that the electric car is not going to fizzle out, I suspect that these countries like Norway are trying to give some political certainty to tell everyone that this is the way forward.
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Yep, that's basically the mistake they made, only looked at CO2. Ignored all the other shit coming out of the exhaust.
Re:Diesel cars are expensive (Score:4, Interesting)
Diesels with SCR and DEF injection are cleaner than gassers, because DEF injection eliminates nearly 100% of diesel NOx, and because gassers put out just as much soot as diesels [slashdot.org]. Meanwhile, it takes less energy to make diesel. Well-to-wheel, diesel is cleaner than gasoline.
Diesels without DPFs emit no more soot than gassers, but it's greasier, so it sticks to things more and you see it more. But because gasser soot is all PM2.5, it's much more dangerous than diesel soot. It sticks to your lungs, and persistent carbon irritants are known carcinogens.
So no, they did not make a mistake. Diesels actually are cleaner than gassers, provided you have DEF injection to handle the NOx. They run lean all the time so they don't emit the unburned HC that gassers do at startup. They keep promising us heated catalysts to solve that problem for gassers, but then they don't deliver them.
HCs are the single worst ICE emission no matter how you measure, and gassers emit more of them (and more volatile HCs) than diesels. The whole idea that gassers are cleaner than diesels is spectacularly ridiculous, because we have all the evidence in the world that the opposite is true. Yet people continually ignore it because they are prejudiced against diesel and want to confirm their prejudices.
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It's never that simple, but if you were to only look at CO2, then I think you can argue that diesels pollute less.
Unless you bought a VW which cheated on the emissions controls.
interesting (Score:2, Insightful)
so what they are basically doing there is using moneys earned from what is essential for "traditional" cars to advance progress in the area that obsoletes this very source of income. which reminds me of Sun Microsystems.
Sun: Let's make software that only runs on our hardware, but it is so fantastic everyone wants to buy our hardware!
Also Sun: Let's also make Java so that they don't actually have to buy our hardware.
we sort of know how it turned out for Sun and Java. hmm...
Fnords on the Fjords (Score:2)
Fnords on the Fjords look like Fords.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Reminds me of a TV advertisement that Meridian Energy in New Zealand was showing a few years ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:A midget pretending to be a giant. (Score:5, Informative)
"Limited land area" lol.
2500 KM from north to south.
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But they drive them roughly half as many miles.
Be hard for distance to not be a major factor.
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If they are driving on average half as many miles as we are, then arguably the distance is not a major impediment, but that's true only specifically because they are not making long trips by car. Norway has a well-developed rail network [wikipedia.org], with 4,087 km of rail, of which 2,622 km is electrified. Shorter trips on average means EVs are more feasible on average, and one would expect that alone to have resulted in more EV adoption.
Re:A midget pretending to be a giant. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yay to Norway.
So the equivalent of one large city in the US, in a seriously limited land area and an automotive market 1/100th the size.
Norway is very long; it would reach from the top of Florida to Boston. So although the total area is small, driving distances can be pretty big, especially since there's few really long stretches of straight road due to the terrain. I'm actually surprised that current electric cars can produce ranges that are useful in Norway unless the ECs are mostly being used around cities, in which case the principle is applicable in any country.
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You don't drive to the north of Norway, you fly. Everything else is at most 200km away.
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WTF would you fly across Norway? You're talking about the country with the most beautiful stretch of roads in the world. You know how Americans are obsessed about road trips? Well Norway is where Europeans go to have their road trips.
I fly everywhere. Sometimes even as short as 30min flights. I fly from city to city in the UK. Norway... That's a place you land in Stavenger rent a car, and then go for the most beautiful drive you'll ever have.
People who fly across Norway are missing the greatest part of Nor
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Well, for long time there just wasn't any way to drive all the way.
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Battery EVs: 76,800 (up 27%, at 54.3% market share).
Plug-in Hybrid EVs: 28,904 (up 50%, at 20.4% market share).
Total: 105,704 (up 33%, at 74.8% market share).
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Nobody's driving from North Central Norway to the south coast (where most of the population is located at).
And when did I say that? Can you say: Strawman argument
And by logistics, I'm talking nationally.
Again you do know the population of Norway stretches across 148,000 square miles right? You do understand what the means right?
Ignorance is bliss, right?
That perfectly describes you. Have you even looked up the geographic spread of Norway before you spouted your nonsense?
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Ah. And NOW we come to the ceremonial splitting of hairs. . . .You cited the geographic area of Norway.
Let me say this very slowly as you don't seem to understand: Norway is a country of 148,000 square miles. That requires a lot more "logistics" than cities of a few hundred square miles. Is that clear enough for you?
And I pointed out something perfectly obvious. Most of the population is coastal.
So that means absolutely no Norweigans ever require ground transportation in the interior of Norway. Ever. They all use boats to get everywhere. Is that your point?
So you're not going to have the types of logistical problems you'd have in coverage that you would in the US. With vast tracts of the country that need to be covered.
Please look at the geographic distribution of Norway before proceeding.
Again, a huge chunk of that 148,000 miles is essentially uninhated. Mostly the interior of the country.
"Chunk" does not mean "ALL". Some Norweigans will still have t
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Much of it uninhabited or nearly so along the interior of the country. Again, wilderness does NOT get provisioned the same way dense urban areas do.
Sigh. Let me speak slowly: Some people live in the interior of Norway. They rely on cars as their predominant form of transportation. Norway is reducing their reliance on petroleum based cars in favor of electric ones despite this logistical problem. Is that clear?
See my point above about low/no population areas not being provisioned the same as dense urban areas.
You have no point here: Despite your so called "not being provisioned" Norway is still converting their cars to electric.
I'm saying provisioning for an electrical car network is going to lag, or just be nonexistent in many areas of the interior though.
Again: Somehow Norway is doing something that you say large US cities cannot do because "LOGISTICS".
MY FUCKING ENTIRE POINT!
Your entire point is that
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LOL @ drive across Europe in a day. Like, maybe if you pick the "across" the same way you could claim to have gone across the US from the East coast to the West after you drive from Orlando FL to Tampa!
Driving through Norway (end-to-end) alone would take about five days of 8+h/day. My brother who's into road trips drove across the continental US to visit me (from VA to WA and back) and it took far less time than the one he did from Finland to Odessa, Ukraine even with the sight-seeing. Granted we tend to ha