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The UK plan for no ICE vehicles to be sold by 2030 is fairly ambitious. I'm seeing more and more electric vehicles on the roads, but I think some regular custo

• knoebber 6y ago
  California is banning sales of new internal combustion engines in 2035 as well. That should help incentivize the tech/infrastructure a bit.
  • duxup 6y ago
    I wonder what the yin and yang / success rate of such mandates are / how the response really goes. I remember the light bulb rules at a national level had to be rolled back when there just wasn't enough capacity to replace them all with non incandescent options.
    • dm319 6y ago
      The light bulb rules in the UK were frequently snorted at, but everyone has moved over now, and whether it is associated with it or not, we're using less electricity these days too.
• tyho 6y ago
  The 2030 date will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. So long as "everybody" truly believes the Governments threat to effectively ban ICE sales after 2030, then clear economic opportunities to service the future demand for electric cars and charging infrastructure become apparent. This sidesteps the issues with network effects. You don't have to worry about building a charging network before electric cars become widespread, because the Government is sending a clear signal of when that transition will happen.
  • rasz 6y ago
    Just like Brexit.
  • 0xffff2 6y ago
    >So long as "everybody" truly believes the Governments threat to effectively ban ICE sales after 2030 Will anyone believe that though? Given the propensity of virtually all governments worldwide to do less than promised and the overwhelming amount of infrastructure still needed, I don't take this date seriously at all.
    • Gwypaas 6y ago
      The EU legislation regarding CO2 emissions has teeth, and no respite has been given. This is the reason so many PHEVs are being introduced lately, they are about the only way to comply except pure BEVs. Sure, UK is not EU anymore but the legislation is felt worldwide. Before 2020: https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/transport/vehicles/cars_en https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/transport/vehicles/cars_... From 2020 onwards: https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/transport/vehicles/regulation_en https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/transport/vehicles/regul...
      • buran77 6y ago
        > they are about the only way to comply except pure BEVs On paper. In reality [0][1] unless you drive all electric all or most of the time the actual, real life CO2 emissions are far worse. Because now you have an ICE engine that hauls around an extra battery and electric motor, occasionally inefficiently charging the battery by burning gasoline. Many (most?) PHEVs owners don't have charging at home (reason to buy hybrid), and the rest of the charging infrastructure is far more inconvenient to use than a gas station. Depending on where you live it may also prove more expensive to drive electric. Add to this the small battery and you see why most of them are driven mostly in ICE mode. This being said, if I were in the market for a new car I really wouldn't care about what the government promises will happen in 2030. I'd look around to see what makes sense for me. Is the government doing anything about it? Are they heavily investing in making this a reality (new chargers, new electrical infrastructure, etc.)? Talk is cheap. [0] https://theicct.org/publications/phev-real-world-usage-sept2020 https://theicct.org/publications/phev-real-world-usage-sept2... [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/02/05/revealed-plug-in-hybrid-cars-emit-three-times-co2-real-world/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/02/05/revealed-plug-in...
• bpodgursky 6y ago
  Given that the entire length of Britain is 600 miles, going ICE-free seems almost... easy, compared to the US. You really don't have the concerns about long-haul trips impacting range. Obviously there are point-charging concerns etc, but that's something you can throw small money at to fix. You don't really need to convince consumers they won't be stranded in the mountains and freeze to death.
  • ghaff 6y ago
    There are areas of the US where electric will probably be a tough sell as someone's only vehicle for certain types of trips and driving. Is it a large percentage? Probably not. (And before someone says just rent a car for those times. For a lot of driving away from pavement, you can't rent vehicles even if you wanted to.)
  • mywittyname 6y ago
    Long haul trips were never the biggest concern for EV adoption, that's something that can largely be worked around through planning. The biggest concern has always been charging infrastructure. EVs are great for people with garages, but not so much for the people in cities with no dedicated parking spot. Banning ICEs is probably the best mechanism to get society to solve this problem. Otherwise, most city-dwellers will just sit back and continue to drive ICE cars waiting for someone else to solve the charging issue.
    • bpodgursky 6y ago
      I don't know why you assert this. It is the concern for literally every person I know who would otherwise have bought an EV, including myself. People like the freedom to take longer road trips without meticulous planning, and without sticking to certain interstate routes which skip the interesting parts of the country.
      • mywittyname 6y ago
        I never said it wasn't a concern, I said it wasn't the biggest concern. If all the gas stations around your house disappeared, would your first concern be how you are going to get to Indianapolis? No. It's going to be how are you going to get work/school/etc everyday (assuming you don't work in Indianapolis). EVs have an issue where most drivers have to own their own gas-station equivalent. And people without the space to put a personal "gas station" can't really own one. At that point, they don't give a damn whether they can drive to Indianapolis. Solving the day-to-day charging problem for people without the space for personal charges will, as a side-effect, also solve the issue for driving long distances. Because the issue with going long distances in an EV comes down to availability of charging.
• ajross 6y ago
  > the number of high-speed chargers are tiny (think a couple of locations per large city) That's not so far off. Even large cities in North America have no more than a few dozen gas stations (and the UK likely fewer still due to things like London's congestion pricing reducing vehicle count). Once-a-week-or-so fueling doesn't really require a huge amount of infrastructure. That's one of the reasons we're all addicted to driving in the first place, after all. And charging stations are, of course, absolutely dirt cheap to build relative to fuel stations. They'll keep up with demand easily as the driving stock expands. The limit, if there is one, is going to be the electrical distribution infrastructure. High voltage lines into cities aren't as cheap as we'd want.
  • maxerickson 6y ago
    I've been mapping Michigan gas stations on OpenStreetMap so I have some data ready at hand here. Wayne County, which is essentially all part of the Detroit metro area, has more than 800 retail fuel establishments licensed by the state of Michigan. (I don't think my point particularly rests on how the Detroit metro is defined; Detroit itself has 349 gas stations)
    • ajross 6y ago
      Well, OK, but I'm not sure that really reflects the subject under discussion (a recognized place with a sign or whatever where you know you can drive in and fill up). I mean, to be glib: I have no Detroit-area GIS experience whatsoever, but I can type "gas station" into a Google Maps search for the area and count how many flags I see. And it's absolutely not 800. Indeed, it looks like 40 or so. Surely there are technicalities that make other places "technically" gas stations too. But then, there are technicalities that make any AC outlet a charging station -- virtually every large retail facility near me has one or two car chargers, for example.
      • maxerickson 6y ago
        Based on having reviewed a bit more than 1/2 of the ~4000 in the state, they are almost all gas stations with a canopy and convenience store. There's some older places with no canopy and some boat and rec fuel sales, but a few dozen. Michigan likely has "lots" of gas stations, as regulation has historically been friendly to personal vehicles, but I wouldn't take Google as gospel. later: the Google results appear to be paginated to ~20 results at a time.
• seanalltogether 6y ago
  The number of people in the UK and Ireland that have to park overnight on the street is way too high to start banning ICE vehicles within the next decade. Electric infrastructure isn't enough, they will have to completely revamp entire neighborhoods to provide space for permanent and predictable overnight parking for residents.
  • rini17 6y ago
    After street lighting was upgraded to more energy-effective LEDs there's surplus capacity. Making every pole available for slow overnight charging does not mean to "completely revamp entire neighborhoods". The possibility to sell the electricity might even become attractive for municipality or utility. Also, parking is going to be overhauled anyway, after decades of cars occupying every nook and cranny, there's a strong push to free the streets.
    • davidhbolton 6y ago
      I lived in London until 2015 and took a recent look on Street View where I lived (Search for E10 6QB if you want to see) . It was a typical London street where everyone parks nose to nose. There's about 20 cars for every lamp post. No way could you charge every car that way. With the typical 50-70% street occupancy. You'd be lucky to find a spare lamp post.
      • chrisseaton 6y ago
        > There's about 20 cars for every lamp post. Maybe the real problem is we have too many cars in the first place? Maybe we should limits cars to one per couple or something like that?
        • pjc50 6y ago
          That is one car per couple, or less, in central London! Well, apart from the oligarchs.
      • magicalhippo 6y ago
• Shivetya 6y ago
  Own a TM3, my issue isn't traveling from city to city but its instead trips where the round trip is over two hundred but I am not traveling by any major route. There are lot of what I call "country drives" where the quick route may not involve highways and with an ICE car those country bumpkin gas stations are all you see. So until charging becomes as ubiquitous to where the country store has "two pumps" or such people are going to find situations where it does not work or only works on a good day. hence the reason I am an advocate of range, range, and more range. Range that lets you make big round trips without charging are the goal. I know many say "they don't need range" or whatnot and can use a short range city car, well that same rule applies to ICE but you will see the market for those small lower end lower range ICE cars was never great so why would an EV market of the same be different? Soon even low 200 mile range BEVs will be looked at similar to how many look at the sub 150 crowd today; Mini should have been ashamed to release their car; and 250-350 will be the norm (numbers in miles, so KM is 400 to 560)
  • ghaff 6y ago
    Yes, with very few exceptions, late night driving, very rural locations (where you at least want to top off sooner than you normally might), etc. you basically don't need to plan driving an ICE. There will be some sort of gas station along your route. You're almost certainly not going to have to alter your route for sake of hitting a gas station in time. (And even if you have to wait for an available pump somewhere, the car in front is only going to take a few minutes to fill up.)
• headmelted 6y ago
  This. Although I think it will happen. Thankfully I charge my car at home and that’s enough for me about 99% of the time. There’s a fairly reliable CHADEMO pretty close by regardless, which helps. The infrastructure in the UK has been really neglected though. They pushed hard early on, but since then they just let the L2’s fail for months then it’s a coin toss as to whether they fix them or just decommission them.
• 4b11b4 6y ago
  This might suggest 2030 might not be ambitious but right on time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2yvsmDvxvA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2yvsmDvxvA
• arkh 6y ago
  > no ICE vehicles Even with chargers everywhere there will be a problem: we'll have to produce a lot more electricity. And when we start reading about possible blackouts in some countries in Europe due to environmental decisions 2030 feels like not far enough. Solar and wind won't be enough. Nuclear suffers from NIMBY. So what? We'll produce electricity from oil, coal and gaz? Awesome way to move the emission problem. Same method as moving production and recycling to Asia and Africa.
  • icebraining 6y ago
    Solar, wind and geothermal are definitively enough. Also, remember that the goal is not to eliminate ICE cars in 2030, just not produce any new ones.
  • viraptor 6y ago
    > We'll produce electricity from oil, coal and gaz? Yes, it's still better because you can move the electricity production to another source, but you can't move the petrol production the same way. If it buys time, it's still an approach to a better future even if it's not immediate.