8 ms·

Not really, if you tax cars at ~100% on registration (eg: $50k car has $50k of tax on it for a total price of $100k), like Norway does, then it is pretty easy t

Not really, if you tax cars at ~100% on registration (eg: $50k car has $50k of tax on it for a total price of $100k), like Norway does, then it is pretty easy to get adoption when you zero rate or reduce that tax for (PH)EVs. It's effectively an enormous tax credit for EVs. I'm sure of the US govt increased the federal tax credit for EVs from $7.5k to $40-60k, you'd see similar adoption in the US too.

theon144 8y ago
No matter the reason, it's still just as remarkable, I'm not sure what you're implying.
olivermarks 8y ago
EV's are enormously subsidized in oil rich Norway, as they are in China. It is encouraging that such a cold country can run EV's though, it seems they generally perform much better in warmer climates
- ars 8y ago
  I think the issue in cold climates is not the battery itself, it's heating the cabin. With a combustion engine you use waste heat, but with a battery engine you use resistive heat and that comes right from your battery. A/C also uses battery, but heat uses more energy.
  - goodcanadian 8y ago
    A/C also uses battery, but heat uses more energy. I can't speak for all cars, but mine uses a heat pump for heat. Should have similar efficiency to A/C as that is exactly what a heat pump is.
    - Scoundreller 8y ago
      Their efficiency goes way down the colder it gets. They’ll work well at 5-10C, but frost up and require electrically-expensive defrost cycles when it’s colder than -2 or -3 C.
    - tigershark 8y ago
      Heat pump with outside temperatures below zero has same or lower efficiency than resistive heating.
      - Faaak 8y ago
        I suppose the cars heats resistively below zero, and with a heat pump above
      - g8oz 8y ago
        A modern heat pump with a variable speed compressor can be more efficient than resistive heat down to about -25 degrees Celsius (-13F). See Mitsubishi's Mr. Slim series. http://cdn.agilitycms.com/mesca/productdownloads/mem-201806-e-p-series.pdf http://cdn.agilitycms.com/mesca/productdownloads/mem-201806-... (page 13)
        tigershark 8y ago
        And if you use a ground source heat pump (that has to be interred) it would be even more efficient. So? I don’t think that you can put either of them in a car...
        g8oz 8y ago
        The offerings from Mitsubishi and similar ones from other Asian manufacturers like LG and Fujitsu are air source heat pumps. I see no reason why the tech can't be scaled down to fit a car. It's certainly a reasonable goal for auto parts suppliers to aim at.
  - p1mrx 8y ago
    Some EVs produce heat more efficiently using a heat pump, which is basically an A/C running backwards.
    - xxs 8y ago
      this works at 3-4C, falling down the efficiency drops off rapidly. House geothermic heating is very similar, except the collector is buried under the ground where the temperature doesn't really go negative C (until -30C and depends on the soil, etc). Overall for EV cars in cold winters producing heat is a non-trivial task.
      - olivermarks 8y ago
        IC engines drive all associated 'accessories' via belts where EV has to have dedicated battery draining motors for everything from windscreen wipers to hvac
        Rinzler89 8y ago
        That's not completely true. For fuel efficiency, most modern ICE cars drive all the accessories with electric motors, with only the AC and brake booster being powered by the ICE in some cases.
        olivermarks 8y ago
        Alternator charges battery
  - Scoundreller 8y ago
    Recommendation #1: heat the occupant, not the cabin Recommendation #2: pre-heat the cabin Recommendation #3: if/when driving in stop&go traffic, use the regen energy directly for heating to save some charge/discharge cycles. Recommendation #4: along with #2, use some phase change materials to “charge” some thermal batteries. #1&2 are a thing. Not sure about 3 and 4. 3 may require some predictive modelling to know if you’ll be driving in stop&go or not.
    - icebraining 8y ago
      How is #1 done?
      - Scoundreller 8y ago
        Heated seats and steering wheels.
      - jusssi 8y ago
        With a seat heater. They were popular in the old times, when engines were not digitally controlled and took a long time to heat up enough to provide any warming effect inside the car.
        LinuxBender 8y ago
        Also heated thermal underwear [1] [1] - https://www.amazon.com/J-Jinpei-Lightweight-Intelligent-Temperature-Rechargeable/dp/B07HRHJBNQ/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1546459920&sr=8-2&keywords=heated+thermal+underwear https://www.amazon.com/J-Jinpei-Lightweight-Intelligent-Temp...
      - avar 8y ago
        With clothing.
      - baroffoos 8y ago
        Dress properly for the weather.
      - 8y ago
  - londons_explore 8y ago
    Heat pumps can be used to heat the cabin with far less energy than resistive heaters. It's tricky to design them to be cheap, light, and work all the way down to -30C and up to 60C that cars are expected to be able to work in.
- pi-rat 8y ago
  As an interesting side note to this, while we might (temporarily) lose some range on cold winter days, our car batteries have remarkable little degradation compared to EVs from warmer climates. Used EVs imported from i.e. southern France to Norway usually have significantly lower remaining battery capacity than a car that has spent it's entire life in Norway. Seems heat really kills these things :)
  - pedrocr 8y ago
    I had never heard about this. Do you have a reference? How big is the difference?
    - pi-rat 8y ago
      I don't have any actual numbers, sorry. I just remember being warned to be careful about cars from hot climates (like southern europe, and some US locations) a few years ago when I was looking for a used Leaf. Demands for EVs were very high in Norway, and resellers had to import (and still do) used EVs from other countries. I found a life expectation chart for 3 US cities at [0]. It's well know that high temperatures (while in use and while in storage) degrade li-ion batteries[1]. However, electric cars have thermal management systems to try to protect the batteries from this effect (extreme heat and cold). Tesla have active water cooling, while Nissan Leaf use a simpler air cooling. They also use different battery chemistries that handle temperatures differently. If you have a look quick look at this talk[2] you'll hear that Nissan is using a chemistry that experience higher degradation under high temperatures than for example Tesla's choice. [0]: https://images.hgmsites.net/lrg/hot-weather-bad-for-electric-car-batteries_100394454_l.jpg https://images.hgmsites.net/lrg/hot-weather-bad-for-electric... [1]: https://www.plugincars.com/lithium-ion-batteries-can’t-stand-heat-122447.html https://www.plugincars.com/lithium-ion-batteries-can’t-stand... [2]: https://youtu.be/pxP0Cu00sZs?t=1516 https://youtu.be/pxP0Cu00sZs?t=1516
      - pedrocr 8y ago
        > a few years ago when I was looking for a used Leaf The Leaf was notorious for not actually cooling the battery so I can see how they would do better in Norway. Maybe the newest generations have improved on that. I'd be curious if that was the same for Tesla though, which supposedly keeps the battery temperate under much better control.
- Scoundreller 8y ago
  There are cold parts to the country, but a lot of the population lives in the South near the sea where the winter night time temperature doesn’t go much below zero Celsius. And your vehicle is exposed to more moderated temperatures if parked indoors (even the pad of an unheated garage retains heat). Plenty of parts of the US and Canada deal with much colder temperatures for months at a time.
  - acchow 8y ago
    According to the graphs here, the most significant drop in range is cooling from the 10-20C bracket down to the 0-10C bracket https://cleantechnica.com/2018/07/15/tesla-range-plotted-relative-to-speed-temperature-graphs/ https://cleantechnica.com/2018/07/15/tesla-range-plotted-rel...
    - Scoundreller 8y ago
      That makes sense (but wow the variability on their initial plots!). It would be nice to see plots for ranges of temps below 0C or temperatures where AC is desired. I think a lot of people think of Norway in winter like they think of N. Minnesota in winter.
throwaway12iii 8y ago
Fossil fuel cars get a huge discount for causing pollution and health problems. If other countries subsidized the damage that fossil fuel cars do as much as the USA then I'm sure there would be similar adoption as in the USA too.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- merpnderp 8y ago
  A brand new Ford Raptor will clean the air in most cities. You'd have to drive that 465HP fuel guzzling toy over 3,887 miles to equal the particulate output of 30 minutes of yard work with a 2 stroke engine. So not as much of a discount as you might have thought.
  - mavhc 8y ago
    It removes CO2? magic
    - jacquesm 8y ago
      He wrote 'particulate'.
    - wongarsu 8y ago
      Not CO2, but particulate matter [1]: basically tiny solid particles caused by exhaust, tires etc that stay suspended in the air. They are linked to a range of health issues in the concentrations found in many urban cities. When you hear about cities banning diesel cars or ICE cars or old cars, that's a measure to reduce suspended particulate matter, not CO2. But luckily unlike CO2, particulate matter can be caught by a HEPA air filter. 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particulates https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particulates
  - torpfactory 8y ago
    It is true that many cars will clean the air of particulate matter these days. That is the only kind of pollution that a modern ICE car will remove, but it is not the only kind of pollution worth talking about.... CO2, NOx and others are just-as, if not more important and your air filter won't do jack diddly for those.
NickM 8y ago
I'm sure of the US govt increased the federal tax credit for EVs from $7.5k to $40-60k, you'd see similar adoption in the US too. I get your point, but to be fair, the numbers in your comparison are a bit off, since a $40-60k tax credit would make many electric cars effectively free. That would be a much bigger incentive than what Norway has.
walshemj 8y ago
Its the same reason that diesel was so popular in Europe (with out the particlates though) also in some countries LPG.
rhacker 8y ago
Not really remarkable? Even if it's just "legislative decisions", it's fucking incredible that a country did what it did to get there. Do you really think the US is 2 inches away from shutting out it's internal big-oil? Even if tech isn't the solution, and it's just decisions, it can still be remarkable.
paulddraper 8y ago
> Not really, if you tax cars at ~100% on registration Your facts are correct, but that makes it no less interesting or incredible. > I'm sure of the US govt increased the federal tax credit for EVs from $7.5k to $40-60k, you'd see similar adoption in the US too. Okay. And if such an event happened, you'd not think it incredible?

theon144 8y ago

No matter the reason, it's still just as remarkable, I'm not sure what you're implying.

olivermarks 8y ago

EV's are enormously subsidized in oil rich Norway, as they are in China. It is encouraging that such a cold country can run EV's though, it seems they generally perform much better in warmer climates

ars 8y ago
I think the issue in cold climates is not the battery itself, it's heating the cabin. With a combustion engine you use waste heat, but with a battery engine you use resistive heat and that comes right from your battery. A/C also uses battery, but heat uses more energy.
- goodcanadian 8y ago
  A/C also uses battery, but heat uses more energy. I can't speak for all cars, but mine uses a heat pump for heat. Should have similar efficiency to A/C as that is exactly what a heat pump is.
  - Scoundreller 8y ago
    Their efficiency goes way down the colder it gets. They’ll work well at 5-10C, but frost up and require electrically-expensive defrost cycles when it’s colder than -2 or -3 C.
  - tigershark 8y ago
    Heat pump with outside temperatures below zero has same or lower efficiency than resistive heating.
    - Faaak 8y ago
      I suppose the cars heats resistively below zero, and with a heat pump above
    - g8oz 8y ago
      A modern heat pump with a variable speed compressor can be more efficient than resistive heat down to about -25 degrees Celsius (-13F). See Mitsubishi's Mr. Slim series. http://cdn.agilitycms.com/mesca/productdownloads/mem-201806-e-p-series.pdf http://cdn.agilitycms.com/mesca/productdownloads/mem-201806-... (page 13)
      - tigershark 8y ago
        And if you use a ground source heat pump (that has to be interred) it would be even more efficient. So? I don’t think that you can put either of them in a car...
        g8oz 8y ago
        The offerings from Mitsubishi and similar ones from other Asian manufacturers like LG and Fujitsu are air source heat pumps. I see no reason why the tech can't be scaled down to fit a car. It's certainly a reasonable goal for auto parts suppliers to aim at.
- p1mrx 8y ago
  Some EVs produce heat more efficiently using a heat pump, which is basically an A/C running backwards.
  - xxs 8y ago
    this works at 3-4C, falling down the efficiency drops off rapidly. House geothermic heating is very similar, except the collector is buried under the ground where the temperature doesn't really go negative C (until -30C and depends on the soil, etc). Overall for EV cars in cold winters producing heat is a non-trivial task.
    - olivermarks 8y ago
      IC engines drive all associated 'accessories' via belts where EV has to have dedicated battery draining motors for everything from windscreen wipers to hvac
      - Rinzler89 8y ago
        That's not completely true. For fuel efficiency, most modern ICE cars drive all the accessories with electric motors, with only the AC and brake booster being powered by the ICE in some cases.
        olivermarks 8y ago
        Alternator charges battery
- Scoundreller 8y ago
  Recommendation #1: heat the occupant, not the cabin Recommendation #2: pre-heat the cabin Recommendation #3: if/when driving in stop&go traffic, use the regen energy directly for heating to save some charge/discharge cycles. Recommendation #4: along with #2, use some phase change materials to “charge” some thermal batteries. #1&2 are a thing. Not sure about 3 and 4. 3 may require some predictive modelling to know if you’ll be driving in stop&go or not.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    How is #1 done?
    - Scoundreller 8y ago
      Heated seats and steering wheels.
    - jusssi 8y ago
      With a seat heater. They were popular in the old times, when engines were not digitally controlled and took a long time to heat up enough to provide any warming effect inside the car.
      - LinuxBender 8y ago
        Also heated thermal underwear [1] [1] - https://www.amazon.com/J-Jinpei-Lightweight-Intelligent-Temperature-Rechargeable/dp/B07HRHJBNQ/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1546459920&sr=8-2&keywords=heated+thermal+underwear https://www.amazon.com/J-Jinpei-Lightweight-Intelligent-Temp...
    - avar 8y ago
      With clothing.
    - baroffoos 8y ago
      Dress properly for the weather.
    - 8y ago
- londons_explore 8y ago
  Heat pumps can be used to heat the cabin with far less energy than resistive heaters. It's tricky to design them to be cheap, light, and work all the way down to -30C and up to 60C that cars are expected to be able to work in.
pi-rat 8y ago
As an interesting side note to this, while we might (temporarily) lose some range on cold winter days, our car batteries have remarkable little degradation compared to EVs from warmer climates. Used EVs imported from i.e. southern France to Norway usually have significantly lower remaining battery capacity than a car that has spent it's entire life in Norway. Seems heat really kills these things :)
- pedrocr 8y ago
  I had never heard about this. Do you have a reference? How big is the difference?
  - pi-rat 8y ago
    I don't have any actual numbers, sorry. I just remember being warned to be careful about cars from hot climates (like southern europe, and some US locations) a few years ago when I was looking for a used Leaf. Demands for EVs were very high in Norway, and resellers had to import (and still do) used EVs from other countries. I found a life expectation chart for 3 US cities at [0]. It's well know that high temperatures (while in use and while in storage) degrade li-ion batteries[1]. However, electric cars have thermal management systems to try to protect the batteries from this effect (extreme heat and cold). Tesla have active water cooling, while Nissan Leaf use a simpler air cooling. They also use different battery chemistries that handle temperatures differently. If you have a look quick look at this talk[2] you'll hear that Nissan is using a chemistry that experience higher degradation under high temperatures than for example Tesla's choice. [0]: https://images.hgmsites.net/lrg/hot-weather-bad-for-electric-car-batteries_100394454_l.jpg https://images.hgmsites.net/lrg/hot-weather-bad-for-electric... [1]: https://www.plugincars.com/lithium-ion-batteries-can’t-stand-heat-122447.html https://www.plugincars.com/lithium-ion-batteries-can’t-stand... [2]: https://youtu.be/pxP0Cu00sZs?t=1516 https://youtu.be/pxP0Cu00sZs?t=1516
    - pedrocr 8y ago
      > a few years ago when I was looking for a used Leaf The Leaf was notorious for not actually cooling the battery so I can see how they would do better in Norway. Maybe the newest generations have improved on that. I'd be curious if that was the same for Tesla though, which supposedly keeps the battery temperate under much better control.
Scoundreller 8y ago
There are cold parts to the country, but a lot of the population lives in the South near the sea where the winter night time temperature doesn’t go much below zero Celsius. And your vehicle is exposed to more moderated temperatures if parked indoors (even the pad of an unheated garage retains heat). Plenty of parts of the US and Canada deal with much colder temperatures for months at a time.
- acchow 8y ago
  According to the graphs here, the most significant drop in range is cooling from the 10-20C bracket down to the 0-10C bracket https://cleantechnica.com/2018/07/15/tesla-range-plotted-relative-to-speed-temperature-graphs/ https://cleantechnica.com/2018/07/15/tesla-range-plotted-rel...
  - Scoundreller 8y ago
    That makes sense (but wow the variability on their initial plots!). It would be nice to see plots for ranges of temps below 0C or temperatures where AC is desired. I think a lot of people think of Norway in winter like they think of N. Minnesota in winter.

throwaway12iii 8y ago

Fossil fuel cars get a huge discount for causing pollution and health problems. If other countries subsidized the damage that fossil fuel cars do as much as the USA then I'm sure there would be similar adoption as in the USA too.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
merpnderp 8y ago
A brand new Ford Raptor will clean the air in most cities. You'd have to drive that 465HP fuel guzzling toy over 3,887 miles to equal the particulate output of 30 minutes of yard work with a 2 stroke engine. So not as much of a discount as you might have thought.
- mavhc 8y ago
  It removes CO2? magic
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    He wrote 'particulate'.
  - wongarsu 8y ago
    Not CO2, but particulate matter [1]: basically tiny solid particles caused by exhaust, tires etc that stay suspended in the air. They are linked to a range of health issues in the concentrations found in many urban cities. When you hear about cities banning diesel cars or ICE cars or old cars, that's a measure to reduce suspended particulate matter, not CO2. But luckily unlike CO2, particulate matter can be caught by a HEPA air filter. 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particulates https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particulates
- torpfactory 8y ago
  It is true that many cars will clean the air of particulate matter these days. That is the only kind of pollution that a modern ICE car will remove, but it is not the only kind of pollution worth talking about.... CO2, NOx and others are just-as, if not more important and your air filter won't do jack diddly for those.

NickM 8y ago

I'm sure of the US govt increased the federal tax credit for EVs from $7.5k to $40-60k, you'd see similar adoption in the US too. I get your point, but to be fair, the numbers in your comparison are a bit off, since a $40-60k tax credit would make many electric cars effectively free. That would be a much bigger incentive than what Norway has.

walshemj 8y ago

Its the same reason that diesel was so popular in Europe (with out the particlates though) also in some countries LPG.

rhacker 8y ago

Not really remarkable? Even if it's just "legislative decisions", it's fucking incredible that a country did what it did to get there. Do you really think the US is 2 inches away from shutting out it's internal big-oil? Even if tech isn't the solution, and it's just decisions, it can still be remarkable.

paulddraper 8y ago

> Not really, if you tax cars at ~100% on registration Your facts are correct, but that makes it no less interesting or incredible. > I'm sure of the US govt increased the federal tax credit for EVs from $7.5k to $40-60k, you'd see similar adoption in the US too. Okay. And if such an event happened, you'd not think it incredible?