14 ms·
Electric cars grab almost half of sales in Norway
- adrianN 7y agoIn Germany, hybrids are usually lumped together with fully electric cars. Even with that trick, only a few percent of the cars on the road are electric.
- agumonkey 7y agowhat's the sentiment about vw id3 ?
- IAmEveryone 7y agoI'd say "nervous" captures it best. Or maybe the quip about the US, originally, "doing the right thing after having exhausted all other options". Combustion engines, and Diesel especially, also require a lot more manpower to assemble. Spiegel, the largest and well-respected magazine, just quoted relative figures of 10 (Diesel):4 (Gasoline): 1 (Electric). So even if German manufacturers happen to survive the transition with market share intact, a lot of jobs are on the line. And that's a big "if". Not only is there a lot of know-how that will become rather worthless. Consumers may well consider electric vehicles a new category, making brand value not transferrable. The silver lining may be that the importance of cars for German industry, while big, is often overstated, especially outside Germany. The true strength of the country is in thousands of engineering SMEs you and I have never heard of, excelling in specialty B2B products. Stuff like pumps and industrial tooling and whatnot.
- agumonkey 7y agoThanks, very interesting and understandable. That said, fear is rarely the right reason to avoid evolving. Better embrace the change and make your employees expert on electric motors and assembly.
- sergiosgc 7y ago> Consumers may well consider electric vehicles a new category, making brand value not transferrable. I guess this is the reasoning behind Kia's very strong investment in electric cars. They never managed to break the image of European cars having the best engines [1], and look at electric as an opportunity to break the stronghold. The risk for the European auto industry is real, and present in the market. [1] European diesel and gasoline engines are indeed an engineering marvel, so the technological moat is real, but eroding due to a technology phase-out. Interesting times ahead.
- WorldMaker 7y agoKia (and Hyundai their ouroboros relative; apparently they each own minor stakes in each other and which is the parent company depends on which financial winds you prefer) is presumably also feeling a lot of pressure from the home Asian markets. Nissan believed almost ten years ago that EVs were the only path forward and has R&D invested to that point (the Leaf, their Renault portfolio). Toyota also accidentally built themselves a fiefdom with the Prius despite their leadership still thinking Hydrogen might still upset EVs (which looks increasingly unlikely for cars; maybe for other diesel uses), but with the luck that a good Hydrogen drive chain is a good EV drive chain with a different "battery". Plus, all the Chinese EV-only brands trying to disrupt the car industry entirely (BYD, Nio, etc). With BMW and VW both talking about plans to have their entire catalogs electrified as soon as 2023, German manufacturers may finally be feeling the existential crisis at hand and are trying to compete. (It's American manufacturers that are probably the most at risk right now. GM and Ford aren't yet feeling enough pressure from Asian imports nor Tesla. The irony of "dieselgate" helping the US EPA force the hands of European manufacturers more firmly towards EV fleets, but not appearing to make a similar strategic impact on American manufacturers fleets is probably going to be fog thick in the next few years.)
- nradov 7y agoThose numbers don't make sense. It certainly doesn't take 2.5× more labor hours to assemble a diesel drive train then a comparable gasoline one. The difference is really marginal. Some parts are more complex and have to be stronger, but others are simpler.
- xbmcuser 7y agoHow is the number of cars on the road now relevant to popularity of electric cars.
- Shivetya 7y agowell that is why when you read announcements about upcoming electric cars coming from various manufacturers you have to look very closely. One term is "electrified" which in real speak means PHEV and not BEV which is what they hope you think.
- ptah 7y agoIn UK I find electric cars are significantly more expensive and out of reach of the average car buyer, even with government subsidies. is this the case elsewhere? why are they so expensive? EDIT: I have a hybrid, but the equivalent electric is double the price
- Filligree 7y agoElectric cars are more expensive to build, which may or may not be made up for by increased general reliability. On the other hand, in Norway the vast majority of the price tag is taxes. This helps.
- agumonkey 7y agowhat's more expensive ? beside the battery ?
- adrianN 7y agoI'd guess much lower production volume.
- gameswithgo 7y agoits just the battery I think
- magicalhippo 7y agoMainly the battery it seems[1]. Apparently the ICE costs about the same to the electric motors and power electronics, rest of the car is more or less the same. [1]: https://youtu.be/N0RCZVY9Dvk?t=2141 https://youtu.be/N0RCZVY9Dvk?t=2141
- agumonkey 7y agoI think most EV design are actually simpler than ICEs. No gearbox, massively simpler engine. Other than that yeah.. seats, doors, wheeldrive... same old.
- simonsarris 7y agoIt's really gas producing Norway: 3rd largest nat gas exporter. They're ~13th in oil exports. ...And 2nd in worldwide median income, which is half the real reason here. The other half is that Norway has very favorable tax treatment for electric cars vs not (which is at least mentioned in this article thankfully). But being the 13th largest oil exporter seems like a very dim relation that's not really relevant, except as a cute thing. It's like saying "Wood houses popular in Granite-producing New Hampshire." "Ad blockers popular among ad producing community." etc [note this was commentary on submission title chosen, which previously was the same as the article: "Electric cars grab almost half of sales in oil-producing Norway"]
- braythwayt 7y agoThere's a little more than cuteness here. If a country has a large economic interest in producing fossil fuels, there are often political forces driving consumption of fossil fuels, and undermining any and all attempt to even discuss the consequences of fossil fuels. Looking at the US, the oil industry has long used its muscle to drive (heh) the use of automobiles and internal combustion engines, and to suppress initiatives to slow, halt, or reverse climate change. And that's the interesting thing here: How is it that Norway's economy is so dependent upon its fossil fuels, but this doesn't appear to blind it to the consequences of fossil fuel use?
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoNorway has a lot of hydro, so they are also heavily dependent on renewable energy, and one is much easier to export than the other.
- WhompingWindows 7y agoOne factor may be government, vs private parties, control of the companies. For the largest company Equinor, read this quote: The current company was formed by the 2007 merger of Statoil with the oil and gas division of Norsk Hydro. As of 2017, the Government of Norway is the largest shareholder with 67% of the shares, while the rest is public stock. The ownership interest is managed by the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy.
- punnerud 7y agoIt is more than half now, and it combined the hybrid cars that often don’t charge from the wall. The total percent of “electric cars” is still around 5% overall.
- manmal 7y agoCan you link a source for that?
- magicalhippo 7y agohttps://www.ssb.no/en/transport-og-reiseliv/statistikker/bilreg https://www.ssb.no/en/transport-og-reiseliv/statistikker/bil... About 7% of cars at the start of 2019.
- punnerud 7y agoI also have the raw data on type of cars, registration date, car owner etc from Hedemark/Norway if someone could find use of it. We used it to develop an AI/ML model in PyTorch to detect ev-cars from hourly meter reader data. The paper: https://www.sintef.no/en/publications/publication/?pubid=CRIStin+1697556 https://www.sintef.no/en/publications/publication/?pubid=CRI...
- reddotX 7y agoTesla sold 3,760 vehicles in Norway in June, for a 24.5% share of all cars during the month, and was also the top-selling brand for the first six months!!
- umvi 7y ago3,800 cars constitutes 1/4 of the entire country's monthly car sales? Norway is a lot smaller than I realized (I'd guess the majority of US states have more car sales per month than that).
- adambyrtek 7y agoNorway population seems to be just 5 million over an area slightly bigger than Germany which has 82 million people, so it's very sparsely populated.
- Sharlin 7y agoSparsely populated on average. Most people live on the southern coast.
- mikestew 7y agoStates? I don't have numbers at hand, but I'd bet a paycheck that there are U. S. cities in which more than 3.8K cars are sold every month.
- rdruxn 7y agohttp://www.laalmanac.com/transport/tr02.php http://www.laalmanac.com/transport/tr02.php Looks a lot higher than that. Though 2016-2017 took a slow turn.
- mxfh 7y agoThe year to date aggregates are here in the second row per model. 3000 is per month. https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiNjFjNTI1YjUtODA3MC00NTliLWFiMGEtYjYyZWY5ZmM2NGQxIiwidCI6ImYwOGMzNTQyLWY5NWYtNDE3ZC04NmU5LTZhZWQ5NzY1ODRhMCIsImMiOjh9&pageName=ReportSection8a226dc669a1921864c7 https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiNjFjNTI1YjUtODA3MC00N... via https://ofv.no/registreringsstatistikk https://ofv.no/registreringsstatistikk The bottom row total are per month and YTD As of March 2019 Norway has 2,727,686 registered passenger cars.[1] Totals new cars per year: 2019: 78,209 (up to June) 2018: 147,939 2017: 158,650 Besides 1986 (167k), the number was always below 160k per year in recent decades. [1] https://ofv.no/kjoretoybestanden/kj%C3%B8ret%C3%B8ybestanden-31-3-2019 https://ofv.no/kjoretoybestanden/kj%C3%B8ret%C3%B8ybestanden...
- alltakendamned 7y agoI am curious how well the batteries do in the cold temperatures. Though maybe it's only people in the south driving one ?
- magicalhippo 7y agoDepends on what you mean by cold. Well below freezing they're not very happy and have significantly reduced range and power delivery until they heat up. This issue can be solved by pre-heating the batteries prior to driving. With a Tesla you can trigger the heating from the Tesla app on your phone. With the BMW i3 you can plan a departure time, and if it's plugged in it will make sure the car is charged and batteries are heated if needed (Tesla has no such plugged-in restriction). Other cars may have similar systems. Winters in Norway are usually quite cold, below -15C is common in the capital which also has the majority of the EVs. So this is something to keep in mind, but is usually not an issue once you get used to it.
- alltakendamned 7y agoThanks for your insights. Winters here can get down to around -25C and I'm curious what the real world performance is in such a case. Even though I'll need to look out for a new car in the next 18 months, I fear it's a bit too early for a Tesla in these conditions.
- magicalhippo 7y agoMy 2018 model BMW i3 reported about half the normal range when we drove it during -20C without pre-heating it this winter. When pre-heated the range reduction is primarily due to the occupants using electricity to heat up the cabin. But, as mentioned that doesn't mean half the range is gone, after a while the batteries heat up and you get more available range. But it can take about an hour or more, depending on driving, so you're looking at a fairly substantial hit regardless. Another point is that the car won't supercharge if the batteries are too cold. If you regularly see -15C or below, you might want to consider a car which allows you to remote start the heating and run the battery heater from the batteries themselves, like Tesla does.
- kzrdude 7y agoCars are ridiculously expensive in Norway, and lower taxes on electeics mean that Teslas can compete with that
- Scoundreller 7y agoSo the question is: how is the lost tax revenue being made up?
- magicalhippo 7y agoPartially by postponing or cancelling planned projects. For toll roads by pushing back the planned shutdown of the toll collection. This has been become a bit of an issue for politicians, as the trend towards EV has been much stronger than anticipated.
- magicalhippo 7y agoAs a Norwegian who just replaced a diesel car with an electric car, there are a few factors which is making EVs very attractive here: - EVs are VAT (25%) exempt, and in addition avoid the extra duty due to no CO2 or NOX emissions. As an example a VW Golf 1.0 115HP TSI[1] gasoline version is about 37.5k USD from dealer. Without VAT or emission duties[2], that Golf would be about 23k USD, where 8.4k USD is the emission duties. - Many people have a relatively short commute, so limited range EVs like Nissan Leaf or e-Golf do just fine. - A lot of our roads, especially in cities, have road toll. EVs have for many years been exempt. Recently this changed, but EVs still only pays 50% of regular cars. [1]: https://www.volkswagen.no/content/dam/vw-ngw/vw_pkw/importers/no/bilmodeller/brosjyrer-og-priser/golf/Volkswagen-Golf-tekniske-data.pdf https://www.volkswagen.no/content/dam/vw-ngw/vw_pkw/importer... [2]: https://www.skatteetaten.no/person/avgifter/bil/importere/regn-ut/ https://www.skatteetaten.no/person/avgifter/bil/importere/re...
- Scoundreller 7y ago> - Many people have a relatively short commute, so limited range EVs like Nissan Leaf or e-Golf do just fine. Doesn’t this negate a lot of the benefits of de-ICEing vehicles? Why doesn’t the government use gas tax increases as a tool instead of up-front discounts? Getting the 100km/day driver to change from ICE to electric would have 10x the impact as the 10km/day driver.
- adrianN 7y agoICE cars pollute especially strongly on short trips in cold temperatures as all exhaust treatment systems need to get up to temperature before they work.
- gambiting 7y agoYep. Especially modern diesels are just a nightmare of incredibly complex systems all existing purely to keep the engine somewhat clean when it's cold - once it warms up(which can be as much as 10-20km in really cold climates, more than the commute for many people) it's fine, but keeping it efficient while cold is a huge challenge.
- alkonaut 7y agoNorway has a system of big one time fees for new vehicles based on weight, emissions and so on. An ICE car can easily have an added fee of more than 100% the base price of the car. Add some sales tax to that and an ICE car that isn’t ultra luxurious in the US but is big and heavy will be very expensive. How about an F-150 for $120k? Similar for an X5 40i. The equation is basically that you can get two Model3 for the price of an F-150
- crimsonalucard 7y agoOnce all cars are electric is global warming no longer an issue? What is the main benefit of electric?
- oldgradstudent 7y agoAir quality. Even if there was no efficiency gain, electric cars move pollution out of city streets and into less densely populated areas. If electricity is produced using less polluting methods like hydroelectric plants, then there's net benefit.
- crimsonalucard 7y agoSuch a massive push just for moving the pollution somewhere else.
- llukas 7y agoMoving? Power plants have air filters. I don't see how thousands of small scale filters that may or may not be maintained (ie. in some countries people cut DPF out) are better than one big efficient properly maintained industrial filter. Also decoupling power generation from consumption allows for making overall car energy usage greener over time. Not possible with ICE. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-15/electric-cars-seen-getting-cleaner-even-where-grids-rely-on-coal https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-15/electric-...
- crimsonalucard 7y agohttps://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/electric-cars-co2-emissions-global-warming/ https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/electric-cars-... This article says that electric cars actually produce more CO2 emissions. Hard to know what the truth is when sources are conflicting. A conservative and logical estimate is that Electric Cars emit more CO2 gas overall because it requires an extra conversion step. Gasoline automobiles: Source --> Kinetic Energy Electric automobiles: Source ---> Battery Power --> Kinetic Energy Of course the real answer could be far more complicated since even gasoline distribution causes energy usage itself. The controversy and hardness to find a definitive answer makes it reasonable for me estimate that electric cars don't really do any obvious net change in energy efficiency OR green house gas reduction At All. It doesn't match the hype.
- jwr 7y agoMeanwhile in Poland… A new law is being prepared (just got through the senate and went to the president for final approval) that introduces subsides for EVs, and… wait for it… Natural-gas powered vehicles. Yup. LNG. And the subsidy for those is supposed to be TWICE as much as for electrics. This sounds mind-bogglingly insane, but starts making a little sense once you realize that Poland has almost no natural gas production, and buys it, mostly from Russia. There is no facepalm emoji big enough to finish this with. For Polish readers, see http://moto.pl/MotoPL/7,170318,24943189,doplaty-do-samochodow-elektrycznych-coraz-blizej-senat-przyjal.html http://moto.pl/MotoPL/7,170318,24943189,doplaty-do-samochodo... for details.
- m0zg 7y agoAccording to the article, they give up to $20K for an LNG car. That's quite a subsidy, if it's not a Google Translator screw-up. I was going to say that electrics shouldn't be subsidized at all (because that'd just be subsidizing the rich), but the amount of subsidy changes my position: with a $20K subsidy something like Nissan Leaf becomes quite affordable.
- mymythisisthis 7y agoI'm thinking I'd rather buy an LNG (natural-gas) it is the cleanest burning fuel, and the money goes to Russia (as opposed to Saudi Arabia). LNG is the cleanest burning fuel, and the money goes to a democracy ( a weak democracy, but still a democracy).
- 7y ago
- rv-de 7y agoMeanwhile in Germany: »BMW executive and board member Klaus Fröhlich told reporters this week that the shift to cars powered by electricity is "overhyped," and said that there is "no" consumer demand for them.« https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/28/19154233/bmw-electric-vehicles-ev-event-executive-overhyped https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/28/19154233/bmw-electric-veh... * face-palm *
- oldgradstudent 7y agoHe probably means there's no consumer demand without massive government subsidies as in Norway.
- lpcvoid 7y agoI would give him the benefit of a doubt to have access to advanced, internal statistics. I believe him.
- _ph_ 7y agoThere is a solid interest in elektric cars. Even the old i3 is difficult to get by. I have quite some colleagues, who drive 3 series BMWs as company cars, who would like a BMW electric car. Of course they are eyeing the Model 3 instead now.
- emptyfile 7y agoAmazing that this comment is downvoted, truly amazing.
- dang 7y agoWould you please read the site guidelines and follow them? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dang 7y agoThis is becoming a perennial. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19566051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19566051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18806930 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18806930 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16001298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16001298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11874552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11874552