6 ms·

EU Parliament confirms 2035 ban on new petrol and diesel cars

39 points by clouddrover 4y ago

LinkLink 4y ago
In all except rural Europe which will likely hurt tremendously because of this, most people likely will not care too much. Unlike America a car is not a requirement in most of Europe due to public transportation being allowed to develop instead of it being neutered and made just good enough to exist.
- _hypx 4y ago
  Millions of people in Europe don’t have garages or easy access to charging stations. This policy is basically impossible in the near-term. The bet is that somehow in 12 years all of this gets solved. There is a real chance that ends up being the next biodiesel mandate and fails.
  - Kukumber 4y ago
    ban on "new sales", not on "existing cars" so people will still be able to use their current one, and replace them with Electric or Hydrogen when it's time to replace their car they'll probably then ban petrol/diesel from big cities, so they encourage people to upgrade
    - _hypx 4y ago
      In that scenario people will just keep their old cars for far longer than what the planners are imagining. Like Cuba which still operates cars from 60 years ago. The danger is then you have a society dominated by very outdated cars and a greatly reduced industrial base.
      - Kukumber 4y ago
        Cuba has old cars because of US sanctions that killed their economy and couldn't import anything Here it's different, purchasers have still access to cars, so when they need to change, they can change, and what's gonna be available is EVs, by the time they upgrade, infrastructure will be much different than what it is today Doing it gradually is better, gives time to strengthen the grid network, gives enough time for innovations to come into the market, so people don't produce much tech junk and a recycling industry can emerge
        _hypx 4y ago
        The infrastructure may never materialize. Not to mention that the amount of EVs may never materialize, as they are hugely dependent on raw materials and can be subjected to OPEC-like embargos. It could easy turn into a vast market of used cars and very few new ones.
        mattashii 4y ago
        The infrastructure is already materializing. >50% of the 119k public charge points in NL were installed within the past 2 years, providing their services to 328k BEVs. And if you don't ever want to wait for a charge, then you can often use public transit, or ride a bike.
        _hypx 4y ago
        You will need millions, and that includes a vast number of fast chargers plus grid upgrades.
        Kukumber 4y ago
        it's mentioned that it's 0 emission cars 0 emission cars aren't just EVs you have fuel cells too with hydrogen by 2035, lot can happen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WeoeJyJmN4&t=455s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WeoeJyJmN4&t=455s
        4y ago
- 988747 4y ago
  Actually, rural Europe is the place that will benefit from it: EU has been subsidizing photovoltaic installations on single family homes for like a decade now, and switching to EV makes most sense to people that can easily produce their own electricity. It's people in cities that will be forced to compete for limited charging stations that will suffer.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  The only thing holding back public transportation in most of the US is lack of sufficient tax base. Recall that the UK is smaller than Oregon and has 15x the taxpayers. Even so, having visited areas of the UK outside London, there are plenty of spots with decidedly mediocre public transit availability.
  - henriquez 4y ago
    But the UK is no longer part of EU Europe is pretty damn big and train rides are expensive.
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  This is not quite correct. A car is very much a requirement for a lot of people. The structure of society is build around cars. This begins if people need to care about family members living 20-30km away. This become an immense logistical challenge without a car. People would need to reduce their working times and still would suffer an immense hit to their free time since any other transport option needs twice the time at least. People say public transport is widely spread in Europe, but that is just not true. The cities are decent, but otherwise using public transportation is a huge time sink. Some dream to reduce individual traffic down to 10-20%, but I believe this is a naive pipe dream and will be a huge hit to life quality for the majority. We also have no infrastructure for EV at all. Most people don't have a garage to even be able to get a dedicated charging station. Public infrastructure would cost billions and energy demand is also a problem... If EVs cannot be produced in a large number for whatever reason, resources or infrastructure problems or whatever, car manufacturers will demand billions upon billions from the Union because it forced them to switch. This is again a bad policy. If EVs are an alternative and affordable, they will remove combustion cars from the streets without any ban.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  In many European cities not everyone is priviledged to live near a bus stop or subway line, and even so, not all lines have a connection every 10 minutes.
frank_bb 4y ago
[dead]
enlyth 4y ago
I wonder what the future used car market will look like when all new vehicles are eventually electric. Right now I'm driving a 10 year old Toyota which I bought for £5k and I could probably drive it for 10 more years if I continue taking care of it. Will there be a similar type of deal available once most cars are electric?
- scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
  Here on the mainland EU I get the nasty impression that vehicles migrate. From West to East and from 1st world to 3rd world. Richer countries effectively off-load to buy brand-new. Ideally this probably shouldn’t be so and hopefully some electric cars will be actually built to last. That would be the green way to do it.
  - nonethewiser 4y ago
    Not a chance. The trend is towards disposability. Tends to happen when you stick batteries and software in something.
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      You can buy a brand new EV today that is no more software-centric than the equivalent ICEV. There is no requirement that going to battery power means cars become more disposable. If anything, we should be able to leverage the technology to make them last even longer.
      - lakomen 4y ago
        [flagged]
        rootusrootus 4y ago
        You ought to be sorry, if namecalling is your idea of a rebuttal. This is HN, FFS, not Reddit. I have an EV in my driveway right now that has less technology than most modern ICEVs.
nonethewiser 4y ago
Wow. This is awful.
KptMarchewa 4y ago
Good, reducing our dependency on dictatorships is paramount.
rwb_1912 4y ago
I find some of the concerns written about lack of charging infrastructure odd. Won’t petrol stations just become fast electric charging stations with cafe and wifi to take meetings…? Electricity is available in everyone’s home which I expect to service 80-95% of charging demand anyway. I’d expect long >300km trips to be <5% of in total transportation?
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  They better increase in size 25x times to accommodate the backlog of cars waiting to charge.
0rzech 4y ago
If they ban petrol and diesel cars, then they should do it equally - including luxury cars, supercars etc.
- aitchnyu 4y ago
  If the luxury, sports and race cars were supposed to be "trickle down providers" of tech, why didnt they shift towards fuel econnomy yet?
Loveaway 4y ago
Great news. Can't happen fast enough if you ask me, I hope we'll see a massive push for EV infrastructure soon. Soo many car these days, the noise and air pollution is getting ridiculous. Try having a peaceful, relaxing walk in a city during busy hours, it feels like you're living inside an ICE. Super agitating. Only solution is to become tone deaf. Or noise canceling headphones. Then you go far away into rural nature and can't help but think something went really wrong with humanity at some point.
fwlr 4y ago
According to BP (pdf https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/country-sites/en_au/australia/home/products-services/fuels/opal-factsheet-storagehandling.pdf https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/country-sites/en_au/austra...) stored fuel whether petrol or diesel has a shelf life of about one year. If no new ICE cars are sold in Europe past 2035 as per this law, and existing ICE cars have a generous twenty-five year lifespan, we can estimate that Europe will lack the infrastructure to support daily use of your ICE car by around 2060.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Have you calculated what the minimum volume of a refinery is to continue to be economically solvent? How long a combustion vehicle lasts is immaterial, what’s important is at what part of the demand death spiral the petrol supply chain no longer operates. You’d want to track refinery volumes and closures to know when the last barrel of gasoline will be produced at scale, at which point folks would have to covert to ethanol for local production and consumption (or biodiesel for diesel engines). https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/ev-impact-electric-vehicle-growth-to-sever-oil-from-key-market-66514990 https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights... https://www.snl.com/articles/409665336.png https://www.snl.com/articles/409665336.png https://archive.is/PKBhP https://archive.is/PKBhP
euroderf 4y ago
So if my e-bike craps out in the boonies, can I take a charge off an e-car ? If not, why not ? Why aren't e-cars making electric power like totally fungible ?

39 points by clouddrover 4y ago

In all except rural Europe which will likely hurt tremendously because of this, most people likely will not care too much. Unlike America a car is not a requirement in most of Europe due to public transportation being allowed to develop instead of it being neutered and made just good enough to exist.

_hypx 4y ago
Millions of people in Europe don’t have garages or easy access to charging stations. This policy is basically impossible in the near-term. The bet is that somehow in 12 years all of this gets solved. There is a real chance that ends up being the next biodiesel mandate and fails.
- Kukumber 4y ago
  ban on "new sales", not on "existing cars" so people will still be able to use their current one, and replace them with Electric or Hydrogen when it's time to replace their car they'll probably then ban petrol/diesel from big cities, so they encourage people to upgrade
  - _hypx 4y ago
    In that scenario people will just keep their old cars for far longer than what the planners are imagining. Like Cuba which still operates cars from 60 years ago. The danger is then you have a society dominated by very outdated cars and a greatly reduced industrial base.
    - Kukumber 4y ago
      Cuba has old cars because of US sanctions that killed their economy and couldn't import anything Here it's different, purchasers have still access to cars, so when they need to change, they can change, and what's gonna be available is EVs, by the time they upgrade, infrastructure will be much different than what it is today Doing it gradually is better, gives time to strengthen the grid network, gives enough time for innovations to come into the market, so people don't produce much tech junk and a recycling industry can emerge
      - _hypx 4y ago
        The infrastructure may never materialize. Not to mention that the amount of EVs may never materialize, as they are hugely dependent on raw materials and can be subjected to OPEC-like embargos. It could easy turn into a vast market of used cars and very few new ones.
        mattashii 4y ago
        The infrastructure is already materializing. >50% of the 119k public charge points in NL were installed within the past 2 years, providing their services to 328k BEVs. And if you don't ever want to wait for a charge, then you can often use public transit, or ride a bike.
        _hypx 4y ago
        You will need millions, and that includes a vast number of fast chargers plus grid upgrades.
        Kukumber 4y ago
        it's mentioned that it's 0 emission cars 0 emission cars aren't just EVs you have fuel cells too with hydrogen by 2035, lot can happen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WeoeJyJmN4&t=455s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WeoeJyJmN4&t=455s
        4y ago
988747 4y ago
Actually, rural Europe is the place that will benefit from it: EU has been subsidizing photovoltaic installations on single family homes for like a decade now, and switching to EV makes most sense to people that can easily produce their own electricity. It's people in cities that will be forced to compete for limited charging stations that will suffer.
rootusrootus 4y ago
The only thing holding back public transportation in most of the US is lack of sufficient tax base. Recall that the UK is smaller than Oregon and has 15x the taxpayers. Even so, having visited areas of the UK outside London, there are plenty of spots with decidedly mediocre public transit availability.
- henriquez 4y ago
  But the UK is no longer part of EU Europe is pretty damn big and train rides are expensive.
raxxorraxor 4y ago
This is not quite correct. A car is very much a requirement for a lot of people. The structure of society is build around cars. This begins if people need to care about family members living 20-30km away. This become an immense logistical challenge without a car. People would need to reduce their working times and still would suffer an immense hit to their free time since any other transport option needs twice the time at least. People say public transport is widely spread in Europe, but that is just not true. The cities are decent, but otherwise using public transportation is a huge time sink. Some dream to reduce individual traffic down to 10-20%, but I believe this is a naive pipe dream and will be a huge hit to life quality for the majority. We also have no infrastructure for EV at all. Most people don't have a garage to even be able to get a dedicated charging station. Public infrastructure would cost billions and energy demand is also a problem... If EVs cannot be produced in a large number for whatever reason, resources or infrastructure problems or whatever, car manufacturers will demand billions upon billions from the Union because it forced them to switch. This is again a bad policy. If EVs are an alternative and affordable, they will remove combustion cars from the streets without any ban.
pjmlp 4y ago
In many European cities not everyone is priviledged to live near a bus stop or subway line, and even so, not all lines have a connection every 10 minutes.

frank_bb 4y ago

[dead]

enlyth 4y ago

I wonder what the future used car market will look like when all new vehicles are eventually electric. Right now I'm driving a 10 year old Toyota which I bought for £5k and I could probably drive it for 10 more years if I continue taking care of it. Will there be a similar type of deal available once most cars are electric?

scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
Here on the mainland EU I get the nasty impression that vehicles migrate. From West to East and from 1st world to 3rd world. Richer countries effectively off-load to buy brand-new. Ideally this probably shouldn’t be so and hopefully some electric cars will be actually built to last. That would be the green way to do it.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  Not a chance. The trend is towards disposability. Tends to happen when you stick batteries and software in something.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    You can buy a brand new EV today that is no more software-centric than the equivalent ICEV. There is no requirement that going to battery power means cars become more disposable. If anything, we should be able to leverage the technology to make them last even longer.
    - lakomen 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - rootusrootus 4y ago
        You ought to be sorry, if namecalling is your idea of a rebuttal. This is HN, FFS, not Reddit. I have an EV in my driveway right now that has less technology than most modern ICEVs.

nonethewiser 4y ago

Wow. This is awful.

KptMarchewa 4y ago

Good, reducing our dependency on dictatorships is paramount.

rwb_1912 4y ago

I find some of the concerns written about lack of charging infrastructure odd. Won’t petrol stations just become fast electric charging stations with cafe and wifi to take meetings…? Electricity is available in everyone’s home which I expect to service 80-95% of charging demand anyway. I’d expect long >300km trips to be <5% of in total transportation?

nonethewiser 4y ago
They better increase in size 25x times to accommodate the backlog of cars waiting to charge.

0rzech 4y ago

If they ban petrol and diesel cars, then they should do it equally - including luxury cars, supercars etc.

aitchnyu 4y ago
If the luxury, sports and race cars were supposed to be "trickle down providers" of tech, why didnt they shift towards fuel econnomy yet?

Loveaway 4y ago

Great news. Can't happen fast enough if you ask me, I hope we'll see a massive push for EV infrastructure soon. Soo many car these days, the noise and air pollution is getting ridiculous. Try having a peaceful, relaxing walk in a city during busy hours, it feels like you're living inside an ICE. Super agitating. Only solution is to become tone deaf. Or noise canceling headphones. Then you go far away into rural nature and can't help but think something went really wrong with humanity at some point.

fwlr 4y ago

According to BP (pdf https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/country-sites/en_au/australia/home/products-services/fuels/opal-factsheet-storagehandling.pdf https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/country-sites/en_au/austra...) stored fuel whether petrol or diesel has a shelf life of about one year. If no new ICE cars are sold in Europe past 2035 as per this law, and existing ICE cars have a generous twenty-five year lifespan, we can estimate that Europe will lack the infrastructure to support daily use of your ICE car by around 2060.

toomuchtodo 4y ago
Have you calculated what the minimum volume of a refinery is to continue to be economically solvent? How long a combustion vehicle lasts is immaterial, what’s important is at what part of the demand death spiral the petrol supply chain no longer operates. You’d want to track refinery volumes and closures to know when the last barrel of gasoline will be produced at scale, at which point folks would have to covert to ethanol for local production and consumption (or biodiesel for diesel engines). https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/ev-impact-electric-vehicle-growth-to-sever-oil-from-key-market-66514990 https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights... https://www.snl.com/articles/409665336.png https://www.snl.com/articles/409665336.png https://archive.is/PKBhP https://archive.is/PKBhP

euroderf 4y ago

So if my e-bike craps out in the boonies, can I take a charge off an e-car ? If not, why not ? Why aren't e-cars making electric power like totally fungible ?