EU Lawmakers Endorse Ban On Combustion-Engine Cars In 2035 (apnews.com) 207
The European Parliament on Wednesday threw its weight behind a proposed ban on selling new cars with combustion engines in 2035, seeking to step up the fight against climate change through the faster development of electric vehicles. The Associated Press reports: The European Union assembly voted in Strasbourg, France, to require automakers to cut carbon-dioxide emissions by 100% by the middle of the next decade. The mandate would amount to a prohibition on the sale in the 27-nation bloc of new cars powered by gasoline or diesel. EU lawmakers also endorsed a 55% reduction in CO2 from automobiles in 2030 compared with 2021. The move deepens an existing obligation on the car industry to lower CO2 discharges by 37.5% on average at the end of the decade compared to last year.
Environmentalists hailed the parliament's decisions. Transport & Environment, a Brussels-based alliance, said the vote offered "a fighting chance of averting runaway climate change." But Germany's auto industry lobby group VDA criticized the vote, saying it ignored the lack of charging infrastructure in Europe. The group also said the vote was "a decision against innovation and technology" a reference to demands from the industry that synthetic fuels be exempt from the ban, which European lawmakers rejected. If approved by EU nations, the 2035 deadline will be particularly tough on German automakers, who have focused on powerful and expensive vehicles with combustion engines while falling behind foreign rivals when it comes to electric cars.
Environmentalists hailed the parliament's decisions. Transport & Environment, a Brussels-based alliance, said the vote offered "a fighting chance of averting runaway climate change." But Germany's auto industry lobby group VDA criticized the vote, saying it ignored the lack of charging infrastructure in Europe. The group also said the vote was "a decision against innovation and technology" a reference to demands from the industry that synthetic fuels be exempt from the ban, which European lawmakers rejected. If approved by EU nations, the 2035 deadline will be particularly tough on German automakers, who have focused on powerful and expensive vehicles with combustion engines while falling behind foreign rivals when it comes to electric cars.
The green full cycle (Score:2)
I do not have the courage to read the source mandate, however I suspect it lacks a few key obligations (please prove me wrong otherwise!)
- Countries need to set up a proper, efficient, eco-friendly recycling infrastructure: those batteries are hell once they reach they're end-of-life
- Power outlets need to be standardized throughout the EU and a target of per-capita power stations must be set
- I hope also they set a target as to what percentage of power should come from renewables, otherwise you're just shi
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- Countries need to set up a proper, efficient, eco-friendly recycling infrastructure: those batteries are hell once they reach they're end-of-life
Not really. Lithium batteries are relatively easy to recycle. It just isn't cost-effective to do so as long as lithium is cheap enough to get out of the ground. Fortunately, they're also cost-effective to store until that is no longer the case. :-)
- Power outlets need to be standardized throughout the EU and a target of per-capita power stations must be set
They've standardized on CCS Type 2 since 2014. Even European-bound Tesla cars and superchargers have CCS Type 2 support (though the older V2 Tesla superchargers also have Tesla cords).
As for pushing up the number of stations... I have no idea what's happening
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As for pushing up the number of stations... I have no idea what's happening in that area.
Cnan't speak for the rest of Europe, but where I live there are charging stations at most parking lots, only for a subset of the entire lot but that is also increasing. Then there are charging stations at places like McDonalds and so on.
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Not really. Lithium batteries are relatively easy to recycle. It just isn't cost-effective to do so as long as lithium is cheap enough to get out of the ground.
Or while there weren't enough worn-out lithium batteries available for recycling to be worth building a plant to process them.
We're just getting to that point now. (Laptop batteries hardly count because, though there's a lot of them, they're tiny by comparison, so they only add up to a drop in the bucket.)
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Not really. Lithium batteries are relatively easy to recycle. It just isn't cost-effective to do so as long as lithium is cheap enough to get out of the ground.
Or while there weren't enough worn-out lithium batteries available for recycling to be worth building a plant to process them.
Right. There's also that. Economies of scale do tend to favor waiting until there are enough that you can process them continuously, rather than just a few per day.
Good (Score:4, Insightful)
A bit too late, but still the right decision and the right signal.
Of course, the usual deniers and morons will now claim that this is the economic end of the EU and other such nonsense. Instead, you should remember who invented the car and who still has a major part of the global car industry. Think that, for example, Audi, BMW, Fiat, Mercedes-Benz, Opel, Porsche, Volkswagen, Volvo and many others are all incapable of making electric cars work? Think that Scania, Iveco, MAN, Mercedes-Benz, Steyr, Unimog, etc. etc. are unable to make electric trucks work?
Think again. All they were lacking was incentives. And, of course, selling dirty cars to people is still more profitable. That will change.
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Volvo is Chinese now and almost all electric.
It's the only feasible place to make EV's at scale because they can stripmine for lithium and CCP worked a deal to make the Taliban fabulously wealthy in rare earth minerals.
EU ministers just want to feel powerfully virtuous so they ignore downstream effects. They don't even have a plan to power those EV's.
We'll see how WV vs. EPA turns out any day now. Perhaps the silliness can be brought in line with physical reality.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't even have a plan to power those EV's.
It's not up to EU ministers to power EVs. It's up to countries manage their electric infrastructure. The issue here is that not all countries are taking it seriously, this is an indication that they really should, they've got 13 years and it's time to plan ahead.
It's quite funny seeing the differences in marketing between countries. Spotify is great since the ads follow the language of the wifi network you're on. It's quite hilarious hearing Mercedes adverts for Smart cars in different countries:
Netherlands: "It's 2023, and Smart cars are only available electric. Get ahead of the revolution with the new Smart EQ Electric today!"
Germany: "It's 2023, and Smart cars are only available electric. So buy the Smart ForTwo diesel while you still can!"
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They don't even have a plan to power those EV's.
It's not up to EU ministers to power EVs. It's up to countries manage their electric infrastructure. The issue here is that not all countries are taking it seriously, this is an indication that they really should, they've got 13 years and it's time to plan ahead.
Indeed. If you actually want to get something like this done (and the incentives are there now), 13 years is a lot of time.
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It's only Volvo Cars, the personal transport entity, that's owned by Geely, after originally having been sold off to Ford. The Volvo group overall is still Swedish, including Volvo Lastvagnar(trucks and other industrial vehicles), Marine and Industrial Drivetrains etc.
Might want to work on curing that ignorance.
Nope, but dream on.... (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't about "denial" of anything.... This is about simple economics of scale and a realistic look at where we're at with electric power generation and storage today.
Electric vehicles are still in their infancy, compared to how long we've built combustion engine versions.
Most auto-makers haven't even committed to building plants to make their own battery packs. Instead, they have to bid for battery supplies from the few who DO make them. (Mercedes had a deal with Tesla to use their batteries, for example.)
And we know that until the technology advances further? The battery packs that work the best for the application still need some rare Earth materials like cobalt, which limits their production quantities.
By throwing a date out there that's far enough in the future (like 2038) -- at least you can hope and guess that things will be different by then, so the mandate will be much easier to meet. But with or without such a law, technology will advance and if it makes good economic sense to go EV by then, people will have done so!
I can't speak for France, but I know at least in America, we have a long way to go with providing a suitable electrical power infrastructure for charging large numbers of EVs. We *might* be ok if everyone was content to charge from a standard 15 amp, 120 volt wall outlet. But that will typically only charge your car at a rate of maybe 4-5 miles of range per hour. It's the expectation of fast charging that's really not feasible if you get more than a small percentage of EV users....
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This isn't about "denial" of anything.... This is about simple economics of scale and a realistic look at where we're at with electric power generation and storage today.
We haven't scratched the service of electric power generation for cars. To say nothing of actual smart charging which can help manage peaking issues on the grid, something which we haven't implemented yet because despite some close to million EVs being sold in Europe every year country's electrical infrastructure hasn't even demonstrated a need to address a problem yet.
Electric vehicles are still in their infancy, compared to how long we've built combustion engine versions.
Poor choice of wording. Electric vehicles came *before* the combustion engine equivalent. Electric engine propelled and battery powered carr
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Electric vehicles are still in their infancy, compared to how long we've built combustion engine versions.
Poor choice of wording. Electric vehicles came *before* the combustion engine equivalent. Electric engine propelled and battery powered carriages date back to the 1830s, whereas the first "motor car" came some 50 years later in 1886.
The person you answered to is probably just completely clueless. Tech history nicely demonstrates that electric vehicles are massively _simpler_ than ICEs. Really the only question is batteries and charging. The first one is solved, albeit not optimally. But there are lots of improvements all the time and lots of promising research directions. And here is the thing: If you replace a battery with different tech battery, you can typically just keep the rest of the vehicle. Power converters have gotten extreme
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Denier denies being a denier. What else is new.
Also, the European power grid does not suck, quite unlike the US one.
re: battery manufacturing (Score:3)
How is it "weird" when we know for a fact that most auto-makers aren't producing nearly as many EVs as they'd like to, simply because of inability to obtain enough batteries?
I went to the EV car expo in Austin, TX a couple years ago and that was the common theme echoed by everyone "in the know", even if they didn't want to publicize it. Everyone was all eager to show you samples of new electric vehicles that were "coming soon", yet most still can't be purchased easily by anyone wanting one of them because o
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Think that, for example, Audi, BMW, Fiat, Mercedes-Benz, Opel, Porsche, Volkswagen, Volvo and many others are all incapable of making electric cars work?
I'm quite sure they can make fine electric cars. They also know their markets and many people still prefer ICE. Government's will have to coerce people to make the switch, and governments that force too hard will find they are not in government anymore for long.
Our Canadian PM has also signaled 2035 as end of sale for new ICE vehicles. I just bought a new one last year and usually keep them 7 or 8 years, so I can buy another one in ~2017 and again in ~2034 and then consider whether it is worth just dr
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Think that, for example, Audi, BMW, Fiat, Mercedes-Benz, Opel, Porsche, Volkswagen, Volvo and many others are all incapable of making electric cars work?
I'm quite sure they can make fine electric cars. They also know their markets and many people still prefer ICE. Government's will have to coerce people to make the switch, and governments that force too hard will find they are not in government anymore for long.
Already too late. Also, people prefer ICEs because of what the market offers currently. That will change massively.
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Indeed. And Porsche has had working designs for ages.
The problem in Europe was simply that the profit with ICEs was higher and corporate greed and irresponsibility is a problem in Europe as well. Hence the EU decision.
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and governments that force too hard will find they are not in government anymore for long.
Doubtful. Have you seen how people outside of the USA are voting? The EU parliament has seen a massive surge in popularity for the greens running entirely on an environmental ticket, much of that new swing came from the land of the automobile, Germany, itself. This isn't restricted to Europe either, even countries historically who snort coal like cocaine such as Australia are seeing a huge swing against governments not pushing environmental reform. Heck they had to come up with a new term for independents w
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Have you seen how people outside of the USA are voting?
I see the pretty typical swinging of the pendulum between right and left oriented governments everywhere. I like that, it is totally in keeping with my belief in the adage that politicians are like diapers.
Ever consider whether you should just accept the fact that your dearly beloved engine running on fossil fuels is just old technology and time to be retired?
I love the technology in my car actually, it has come a long way since the carbureted cast iron small blocks of my youth. Electric is efficient and has lots of torque, but I find them completely soulless, more like an appliance. Same reason I prefer mechanical to digital watches. Complex things show a
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Complex things show a craftsmanship that simple things cannot.
Au contraire. Complex things show an inept designer that somehow made it work with a lot of problems and drawbacks. For the ICE, it starts with reliability, goes on with bad efficiency, low lifetime and high cost, oh, and there is the whole problem that is spews out a mass of poison. If you have any admiration for that you need to have your head examined.
A simple thing, on the other hand, is an indication of a master designer at work. It is far harder to come up with a simple solution for a problem than wit
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Of course, the usual deniers and morons
Any argument you had just failed because utterly the second thought out of your mouth is a deliberate insult to those with whom you do not agree. In the future try to show some character and class.
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Nope. I call the morons and deniers out because I know they will react. And I do not need arguments. I have facts. The morons and deniers cannot see that though. Just giving them the insults they so richly deserve up-front.
If you have a problem with that, have you forgotten where you are? This is /., not a distinguished high-class club or the like.
Are we really going to be ready to ban ICE by then (Score:2)
It seems like most car makers are struggling to get out their first electric vehicles in 2022-2023, and ICE powered cars still make up 90% of new car sales.
Do they really think that we'll be ready to fully cut over to electric-only by 2035? Will the charging infrastructure and power plants be in place to handle the increased electric demand? More importantly, will the car makers have a longer-range electric car out by then that most people can actually afford? Cars like the Tesla Model S and Hummer EV seem
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Note that for example, the Chevy Bolt will be priced at $26k USD for 2023, which isn't *that* much higher than the starting price for a Civic. There's a decent chance that battery technology will evolve to the point that even the initial purchase price will be cheaper for BEV than a gasoline, and a battery that will be durable enough to last as long as the more long lived combustion engines. Additionally, gas engines inflict a number of maintenance costs: oil, more quickly worn brake pads, various gaskets
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Chevy Spark (which despite the name, runs entirely on gasoline).
Spark makes me totally think of gasoline actually.
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Of course, keep in mind this is where we are *today*, a couple of years ago you weren't getting a BEV under 50k, and there's plenty of signs that there's room for continued improvement on cost, durability, and range/weight.
The batteries are the biggest problem, but they've been on average faring better than was feared, but improvements are coming along.
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Do they really think that we'll be ready to fully cut over to electric-only by 2035?
It's only about new cars. Charging networks will have 10 years starting 2035 to ramp up while people replace their vehicles. You also can expect an increase in new ICE car sales in the last months before the ban, and maybe a last-minute 2 year pushback because someone is not ready.
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It seems like most car makers are struggling to get out their first electric vehicles in 2022-2023
Huh? Who is struggling? The most popular EVs by sales in the EU are in decreasing order from 2021:
1. Volkswagen
2. Stellantis (That is FIAT Chrysler + PSA Group who merged last year)
3. Tesla (with only 14% market share)
4. Hyundai (a rounding error behind Tesla)
5. Renault
The even the laggards Daimler + BMW combined had about 13% market share last year for EVs making them almost as popular as Tesla. And Tesla's example is quite an interesting statistic since the Model 3 is twice as popular as the next most pop
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IMHO, too early (Score:4, Informative)
It is IMHO too early.
This means a shift towards electric cars. The problem is their range is so-so and the charging infrastructure is not there. The charging infrastructure point is very important. In many countries, people live in small apartments without garages: they cannot draw a cable from the nth floor to their car, eventually parked very far in congested cities.
We would need basically a charging terminal at each parking spot and that would be a humongous infrastructure investment. I already hear anecdotes in my country of origin of people missing work because they were unable to charge their electric car. Some employers negotiate a charging station in front of your apartment when they hire you but it is not common and they won't give you another one when you move places.
I short, while the idea sounds neat, they are not ready and they will not be ready in 2035.
I have not mentioned hydrogen because it is all pie in the sky nonsense
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And the dog ate their homework, too!
They should probably get a generator so they aren't stranded if the power goes out. And a bicycle in case the generator fuel runs out!
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The problem is their range is so-so and the charging infrastructure is not there.
What is so-so about the range of an electric car? I know 6 people with electric cars and none of them have ever charged their cars away from home. Sure they don't represent 100% of all use cases, but until the majority of people have an electric car the idea that range is some kind of a problem is asinine. At this point range-anxiety should be considered a medical issue like other irrational phobias.
Also charging infrastructure exists for most people, even more so Americans who tend to live in houses. Runni
Collectable or classic cars? (Score:2)
Does the law make any provision for classic or historic cars? Here in the United States lots of people have "Historic" cars i.e. cars more than 25 years old but there are a lot of people with 1960's & 1970's cars (one of my best friends has two pretty valuable Shelby Cobra Mustang's) that are considered historic and / or collectable. It would be a real shame if they couldn't drive them anymore.
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This is a ban on new sales. Says so right in the /. summary. Of course, eventually you will have to buy your gasoline from a chemist, just as Berta Benz had to do on the long distance ICE drive in Germany. Prices will be accordingly.
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Of course, eventually you will have to buy your gasoline from a chemist, just as Berta Benz had to do on the long distance ICE drive in Germany. Prices will be accordingly.
Nonsense. Gasoline is one of many components of the fractional distillation of oil. It used to be considered an unwanted byproduct in the production of kerosene and was often just burned off before it found a use as motor fuel.
As long as we are distilling oil there will be gasoline. I doubt we will go back to discarding it.
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Let me think, there was some problem connected with fossile stuff. Can't remember what it was now. Must have been unimportant.
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Must have been unimportant.
It's certainly not going to make it go away.
Electricity Network in the Netherlands is clogged (Score:2)
New businesses forced to generate own electricity: no room on network [dutchnews.nl]
The EU can demand things until they're blue in the face, but reality won't be denied.
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Do it (Score:2)
This is surprisingly bad news for Tesla (Score:2)
Cars will become a privilege of the rich (Score:4, Insightful)
The push to fully electric cars is plainly stupid. Even the top-of-the-range Tesla Model S which currently goes for over £75000 can only do 235 miles on a motorway in cold conditions. Meanwhile, people need cheap cars with long range in any conditions. See where we've gone wrong? The poorest in our societies, who need cheap cars the most because their local job prospect may be limited, will be left out in the cold.
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We should have force self-charging hybrids but make fully-electric optional. This would meet both long and short range demands while simultaneously significantly reducing fossil fuels.
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The push to fully electric cars is plainly stupid. Even the top-of-the-range Tesla Model S which currently goes for over £75000 can only do 235 miles on a motorway in cold conditions.
Why would you look to such an expensive car? There are cheaper cars with better range. A Zoe could be had for half that cost and has better range.
Also 235miles is commonly known as: "enough range to suit 99% of road users without ever needing to charge up away from home". It's time for range-anxiety to be classified as a medical condition along with other irrational phobias.
Complete utter bullshit (Score:3)
If I told you that I'd give you one million dollars in 15 years then would you take me seriously? You shouldn't because a lot of things can happen in 15 years. I could be hit by a bus. We could see the dollar become worthless. I might simply forget I made the promise and in 15 years you have to come to remind me, and maybe you get the money and maybe you don't. So if that's how you'd treat my promise then that's how you should treat this ban on internal combustion engines.
These politicians cannot enforce a ban on internal combustion engine vehicles that far out in the future. They have no authority to do so. Given the age of many of the politicians that make bullshit promises like this they may not even still be alive when 2035 comes around. I'm not taking this seriously. If we had a news media that was doing their jobs then they'd refuse to even print bullshit like this. They'd laugh in the faces of these politicians over such bullshit and then ask what they plan to do for the next 12 months.
If politicians took global warming seriously then they'd be working on things like nuclear fission power plants and carbon neutral synthesized hydrocarbon fuels. But they aren't taking the problem seriously so we get bullshit like this.
Every nation in the world has almost certainly had some government department do a study on what would be the most effective means to lower CO2 emissions. Because the laws of physics and economics are universal the answers are going to be the same the world over. There may be some local variations due to geography but for the most part the answers will be the same. We need more onshore windmills, hydroelectric dams, geothermal power plants, and nuclear fission power plants. Because hydrocarbons excel at storing energy, and we know how to store and move hydrocarbons safely, we will need hydrocarbon fuel synthesis facilities that can close the carbon loop on transportation fuels.
We know what the solutions are for minimizing global warming, and those solutions are also economically beneficial. This means we solved global warming, and politicians can only slow or speed along this process. Bullshit like subsidies for rooftop solar PV and offshore windmills only slow the process. Issuing permits for nuclear fission power plants speed up the process. Bullshit like banning ICE vehicles in 15 years only make people feel good about the progress, which will only enrage them later once they realize what bullshit these promises are in the end.
Re:Wow, that's stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
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You might be right- I don't have numbers or analysis, but remember to factor in that plants remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
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plants remove CO2 from the atmosphere
Only temporarily - that CO2 reenters the environment via the carbon cycle.
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All of it?
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Ethanol is more than just biofuel to replace cheap oil. It's actually a rather effective octane booster and replaced the MTBE that was used to replace lead in unleaded gas. Before
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Well, the thing is, we in the US throw OUT a ton of food, which indicates we produce many times more food than we need (also see the obesity problems).
I think we have plenty of land to spare to raise plants for other uses than
Re:Wow, that's stupid (Score:5, Informative)
"The ICE is just an engine."
They didn't forbid the ICE engine.
You can use any engine you like, as far as it emits zero CO2.
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Re:Wow, that's stupid (Score:5, Interesting)
But again, that overlooks closed cycle fuels where CO2 is emitted, but is reabsorbed by the plants used to grow the fuel.
That's because newer research indicates burning ethanol produces more CO2 than burning gasoline [reuters.com] even after the carbon that the plants absorb is take into account.
In other words, ethanol, at least from plant-based sources, is not particularly green. At best, it's a workaround, useful only if we ever get to the point where we have to have oil, but can't get it. At this point, I think the only people who still think ethanol is a good idea are the mega-farms that are collecting the corn subsidies.
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Land use changes are a one time cost. Once all the power to cultivate and process the corn come from renewable sources, there is no other source of CO2 to pump into the atmosphere, it all has to come from the air.
Now there isn't enough land for biofuel and our fertilizer use is already unsustainable, but that's orthogonal to CO2.
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As I understand it, the carbon release occurs every time a field is tilled when it otherwise would have been left fallow, because it is releasing methane from rotting plant matter in the soil, but I could be misunderstanding. And although technically that carbon came from the air, it's in a form that is worse as far as greenhouse gases go.
Then again, hydroelectric power arguably isn't green either, for basically the same reason.
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It's not like they are tilling deeper every year, the top soil is a substrate for fossil fertilizer and water and everything else comes from the air.
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And fertilizer. But again, rotting plants turn CO2 (bad) into methane (worse).
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That's because newer research indicates burning ethanol produces more CO2 than burning gasoline [reuters.com] even after the carbon that the plants absorb is take into account.
Note the words "Corn-based". Sugar cane, switch grass, and the source I quoted at the top don't have that problem; it's why I said "properly sourced". Ethanol from corn has that problem and is a poor source.
red barchetta (Score:2)
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It seems that the ban isn't really on combustion engines; it's a requirement "to cut carbon-dioxide emissions by 100%". I doubt that hydrogen fuel cells will be banned.
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Re:Wow, that's stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Only one part of what sucks about ICE is that we don't need carbon and various trace pollutants dumped in the atmosphere. The thing I don't like about ICE is that it is mechanical, requires maintenance .. oil changes .. things of that nature. Electric motors are getting rated for 1 million miles. Also, electricity is more widely available and can be generated easily. A box of explosions pushing me around is less than ideal. Once you switch to an electric car, you will know what I mean. Electricity is cooler than organic compound fuel.
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You people need to get off this "electric require no maintenance" bullshit. If it moves, it has moving parts, and moving parts wear and require maintenance, end of story on that myth.
You also need to drop the myth that electric cars are easy to maintain. Depending on the nature of the failure it might not be fixable at all. An most failures require special equipment and knowledgeable to repair.
The ICE isn't perfect but nether is the electric car.
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Well, that's pretty much the case for most people.
Not everyone has a private home with garage/car port where they can have off street parking and a dedicated home charging station.
Most apartment complexes do not and won't have them in the parking lots for a long time to come.
So, yes, this will be quite common for quite awhile to come.
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Re:Wow, that's stupid (Score:5, Interesting)
Once I switch to an electric car, I get to sit at a charging station for a few hours
I only know 6 people with electric cars. None of them have ever sat at a charging station, not even for a minute. Why would you when your car is always full every morning?
I did however have to sit at a charging station once when we took an electric taxi (taxi driver informed me my 130km fare wouldn't make it on his nearly empty battery). We pulled into a Total station, we ducked inside, the driver bought me a coffee for my troubles, and less than 10min later when the coffee was finished we went outside unplugged and on we went. And it wasn't a particularly fancy fast charger either, just a shitty 50kW one.
But you're trolling. There's no other reason for you to post shit you know to be outdated and wrong as an anonymous coward.
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Most people will not have home charging as an option for quite awhile to come.
There's a lot of people in apartment complexes that won't have hundreds of charging stations in the parking lots for the many tenets in the many units...lots of people rent. Lots of people don't have off street parking at their homes, so where do you put a char
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I haven't seen a lot of hydrogen *combustion* being proposed. If you want to go hydrogen, go fuel cell with an electric drive train for more efficiency, since energy production has to also be mitigated so efficiency remains important.
There have been some concepts, but it's mostly around being compatible with continued use of fossil fuels. It is true that hydrogen wouldn't have the CO2 problem, but combustion still isn't the most efficient way to use it. Of course the most likely source of hydrogen extracti
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Fuels are dangerous regardless. Liquid Natural Gas is being used for trucks right now.
Heat loss only goes up linearly with temperature differences, so hydrogen isn't suddenly in some whole different ballpark for the difficulties of use.
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Anything that can store enough energy to move a car a hundred+ miles (or km, or leagues) has enough energy to be lethal. Period. Doesn't matter if it's petrol, diesel, hydrogen, ethanol or an electric charge-- still equally dangerous.
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So the plant thing doesn't happen (Score:2)
Some studies have shown the increased temperatures and reduced amounts of water caused the plants to absorb less carbon because plants breathe and like anything that breathes you're losing moisture to the holes you're breathing through. In order to limit tha
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The carbon from the ethanol is effectively a fossil fuel without the fossils. It contributes to global warming significantly and more so than electric vehicles provided those vehicles are powered by renewables or heavily regulated natural gas plants.
That is flat out not true. The claim with battery-based electric cars is that they overtake CO2 emissions after about 5 years when the conventional car is running on gas. You will never catch a closed-cycle car running on ethanol sourced from things like sugar cane. Some sources can be carbon negative if the leftover biomass is sequestered.
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The ICE is just an engine. It's as good for the environment as the fuel you put in it and where you source it from. Oil is a bad choice, hydrogen and properly sourced ethanol are great options. Both fuels can create a closed loop, with hydrogen expelling water from where it can be sourced and carbon from ethanol being reabsorbed by the plants used to grow it. Both can outperform battery-based electric cars.
With renewably produced synthetic fuel and/or hydrogen you are right that they're not technically polluting from a greenhouse emission standard. You're ignoring some issues though. Synthetic fuels would still produce local pollution. Particulates, nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, not to mention the unburned fuel. Those are all still environmental contaminants and a closed cycle won't get rid of them. For hydrogen, you don't get the nasty stuff out of the exhaust pipe, but there are still
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The ICE is just an engine. It's as good for the environment as the fuel you put in it and where you source it from.
That's really not true, there's vastly more to it than that. But first, this other thing:
Oil is a bad choice, hydrogen and properly sourced ethanol are great options.
If you have hydrogen (let's just put aside where you're getting it for the sake of brevity) then it's daft to put it into an ICE. It's an ideal fuel to put into a fuel cell. Your system efficiency is going to be much higher with an EV with a fuel cell and a battery to do regen, and to permit the fuel cell to operate at its highest output efficiency.
The ICE is not only pathetically inefficient by comparison, and also mor
Too little. Too late. ICE is obsolete today (Score:2)
Too little.
Too late.
ICE is obsolete today. It will be gone from the market long before 2035.
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He he he!!
But will these countries manage to set up an EV industry before the Germans get going?
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I wonder how much of this is really driven by 26 countries wanting to stick it to the German manufacturing base.
That would be like shooting themselves in the foot, consider German car companies manufacture and source throughout Europe, hurting their local factories as well as carmakers from their country. The key to pulling this off is making charging as available as gasoline is now, IMHO.
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Most countries in Europe have at least several power plugs per capita.
Yes, but how many of them are usable? Not everyone has off-street parking. If I had an electric car I'd have to run a cable from my home, across a public footpath, to my car. Even assuming no-one steals it, it would only be a matter of time before someone trips and decides to sue.
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Yes, but how many of them are usable? Not everyone has off-street parking.
More than enough people for a *very* substantial market. And that's probably all it takes to jump-start the whole BEV ecosystem. It reminds me of worrying about how at one time only half of the population could buy a PC. The effort needed to go from 50% to 100% was much smaller than the effort to go from 1% to 50%.
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So because gas is so expensive, no one should consider an EV for their next vehicle acquisition? I don't follow...
Re: Let them drive EVs (Score:2)
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Right, and people will still have gas cars for years after 2035. The only people that might complain are people planning on buying a *new* car in 2035. They aren't banning gasoline, just new cars. Like you expect, I also expect EVs to be cheaper even for purchase price, and going lower end for an EV in the mid $20k I think would pay for itself in fuel and maintenance in under 100k miles compared to a cheaper gas vehicle.
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EVs are expensive and electricity costs are going to skyrocket too.
Living standards in Europe are going to go off a cliff.
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Of course, in 2023 we will have an EV that's $26k new without any incentives (Chevy Bolt EV), Assuming it goes about 200k miles, then you would save $15k in fuel alone (3 dollars a gallon, 30 miles a gallon, assuming roughly 1/3rd the cost for mostly charging from residential electricity. This assumes that battery technology stays still and doesn't manage to be more durable, dense, cheaper.
Normally, a free market could make sense, however the externalized costs associated with combusting fossil fuels are d
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If you can't handle that, you are unlikely to be in the market for an EV.
Yup. Had this conversation with my partner a week or so ago. Added up what we pay for gas + the car payment, and it's still cheaper than what the car payments would be for a used Chevy Bolt of similar vintage. Also, that's not factoring in at all for the fact that the Bolt would probably be more expensive to insure and electricity isn't free (I think we pay something like $0.12 per kWh).
Also, Florida, so the power bill sucks horrifically most of the year due to the cost of running the air conditioning (u
Re:Typical virtual signaling at its finest... (Score:4, Informative)
The city of Paris has rows and rows of EVs sitting in a junkyard because nobody will take them.
You should check your facts. [politifact.com] The cars come from a failed company and the cars were being resold.
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It's not that they can't be recycled, it's just cheaper to just use virgin mined/processed materials than spend all the R&D and effort to start recycling them.
The batteries don't take that much room, just stock pile them, eventually civilization dies or it will be economic to recycle them. If civilization dies, they are someone else's problem.