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Leaving exotic sport cars aside Europe will not be ready for the ban of new ICE cars in 12 years. Most consumers can't afford an EV, the electricity production

Leaving exotic sport cars aside Europe will not be ready for the ban of new ICE cars in 12 years. Most consumers can't afford an EV, the electricity production is not there yet, the distribution grids are undersized, a lot of people living in old apartment buildings that can't support many chargers, a lot of people park on the street, so on and so forth. When the ban hits the price of second hand ICE cars will explode. This will mean in practice that a lot of people will not be able to afford a car any more. Now this might be a feature, not a bug, depending on how you look at it.

MrMan 4y ago
bullshit fantasy
xwdv 4y ago
It’s a feature. Europe of all places can tolerate a society of minimal private car ownership.
- TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
  Europe in cities? Maybe. Europe overall? Absolutely not.
  - kybernetyk 4y ago
    Didn’t you know? For the typical HN poster living in SF or NYC Europe is a 15 minute walkable Utopia where no one pays for health care.
- expertentipp 4y ago
  Ermm.. no. The cars will simply become luxury for few and the remaining precariat will pay per minute. Cars themselves are a valid concept.
- richrichardsson 4y ago
  In towns/cities, yes. Rural Europe is a disaster if you don't have a your own transport, as either there is no public transport, or it's atrocious (eg. 2 buses a week in some places).
  - arp242 4y ago
    Hence the usage of the word "minimal", or so I would imagine. Plus the only reason that's the case is because there's little demand for it. That is: people have cars. "Europe" is a big place with lots of differences so I can't generalize to the entire continent, which includes places I've never even been to, but quite a few places could almost entirely eliminate car ownership within a matter of years if they wanted. Whether that's desirable in the first place is something I'll leave for everyone to decide for themselves, but it really is just a question of "want" rather than "can".
    - jwestbury 4y ago
      The problem here is that "minimal" car ownership due to high prices does not mean car ownership concentrated amongst those who needs cars, necessarily.
- trabant00 4y ago
  It can with people making some sacrifices. What I don't like about this is which people will make said sacrifices, meaning the low income part of the population. Which will have to either pay more rent by moving into the city where they can easily access public transport and/or waste hours of their life each day. I'm not excited by the current number of cars either, don't get me wrong. It just saddens me the working class has to pay the price, again.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    I can't tell if this weirdly popular opinion is concern trolling or not, but if you actually do really care about the working class, then the EV transition is a good thing for them. Less pollution, less disease, less war, less imports, cheaper transport, higher standard of living. Its a win win win win and you have to have your head deep in far right conspiracy nonsense to believe otherwise.
- dividedbyzero 4y ago
  Large cities, sure. But people in rural areas absolutely need a car to function.
  - xwdv 4y ago
    Only because things are so spread out. With no public transport.
RobotToaster 4y ago
[flagged]
pjc50 4y ago
Realistically it's going to get pushed back or heavily caveated. But also, a lot can be done in 12 years if there is a will to do it - and imposing this deadline is part of trying to make that happen. It also depends on whether there are any oil price shocks in that time. The EU banned incandescent light bulbs and apart from minor whinging there's been no real problems. This is a bigger version.
- jaclaz 4y ago
  >The EU banned incandescent light bulbs and apart from minor whinging there's been no real problems. CFL's were progress, right?
arp242 4y ago
> Europe will not be ready for the ban of new ICE cars in 12 years Maybe. Yet I still think setting a hard clear deadline is a good thing, even if it ends up getting delayed in the end. It creates clear goals and focusses what we want to work towards, rather than a vague "in the future we'll be able to solve things, somehow". And who knows ... lots of things can be possible with sufficient pressure.
- TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
  Impossible deadline is nonsense. It did not worked in 5 years plans of communist central planning committee, it does not work in software engineering, it is not going to work here either.
  - 95014_refugee 4y ago
    It does work in software engineering. You are mis-characterizing both problems in essentially the same fashion. The purpose of setting a deadline is not to achieve a specific thing at the nominated date, but to establish bounds on the timeline for activity. We know well that unbounded schedules fail to motivate action; so we set a boundary and then compromise on what is delivered over the resulting interval. The 2035 deadline is a forcing function. It exists to frame discussion and to instill a sense of urgency.
    - TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
      Impossible deadline does not force function. Impossible deadlines are getting ignored. I can't rewrite Linux Kernel in 2 weeks, so scratch that from my queue and lets go with more sensible ticket.
      - mywittyname 4y ago
        12 years for a ban on ICE is not an impossible deadline on the order of "rewriting a linux kernel from scratch in 2 weeks." This is more akin to getting to the moon by the end of the decade. ICE bans are already taking effect in cities across Europe. Viable transportation alternatives already exist for people in these cities. As the bans become more common place, the pain points will be identified and resolved. Twelve years is a long time. The world has changed a lot since 2011.
nforgerit 4y ago
How is "electricity production is not there yet for EV" a case for E-Fuels that require a factor of 4 or so of renewable electricity? How are most consumers going to pay >3EUR per liter? How does all that make sense given we have highly efficient EV? I really don't get those "pro e-fuel arguments" if I'm supposed to forget that we're talking about luxury sports cars.
martin_a 4y ago
I call bullshit on this. There will be lots of used BEVs in the market in 12 years from now. Nobody knows how electricity production will look like in 12 years, but it seems like there will be more and more renewables. Distribution grids might change somewhat in 12 years, too. People don't need to charge BEVs everyday, also nobody knows how public charging infrastructure will look like in 12 years, so no problems for people in "old apartment buildings". Lots of speculation, little information.
- michaelt 4y ago
  > Nobody knows how electricity production will look like in 12 years Maybe not - but in the UK we know how long it takes to flood a valley for pumped hydro storage, or to build a new nuclear plant, or to roll out new equipment to people's homes (like smart meters) - More than 12 years. So we don't know what electricity production will look like - but we surely know what it won't look like.
bwindels 4y ago
EVs are more expensive initially, but cheaper in the long run. I bought a 20k EUR EV last year (VW e-up, great car). After ~8 years it will be cheaper overall than a 10k EUR ICE car. Petrol prices will probably go up faster than electricity as well, so likely even less. So apart from subsidizing the purchase price which already happens widely, perhaps the government should provide cheap loans for people who don't have the initial capital to buy an EV. Also, There are signs we've already hit the peak for conventional oil. This report [1] claims that by the 2030s Europe will see its access to oil reduced by 10-20%. So running an ICE car will only go up from here. There's good reasons to assume the costs of EVs will only go down. Wrt to the grid, the french grid operator RTE published a study [2] saying that they estimate that by 2035 there will be 15.6 million EVs on the road, a bit half of the 38m total cars on french roads today. The study says this would represent 8-10% of today's electricity consumption and would pose no danger to the stability of the grid. About 2 million new cars are sold here every year, so after 2035 the percentage would go up by 1% every year to 20% or so. A challenge but definitely feasible. 1: https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/oil-what-are-the-risks-for-the-future-of-europes-supply-the-new-shifts-report-about-peak-oil/ https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/oil-what-are-the-risk... 2: https://www-rte--france-com.translate.goog/actualites/developpement-du-vehicule-electrique-et-systeme-electrique-une-faisabilite-sereine-et?_x_tr_sl=fr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-rte--france-com.translate.goog/actualites/develo...
- TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
  From my experience taking charge on Ionity for 0,79EUR/kWh means that it is more expensive than gas. And because I just moved to another country, and live in apartment, I don't have place to charge. Thing is that there is more than 50% people in EU who has no place to charge at home, because they are living in apartments. SO they will be charging on expensive Fast DC chargers. It will be more expensive than owning an ICE and also massively less comfortable because you will be waiting on car to get charged, thus wasting your time.
  - bwindels 4y ago
    Yeah, granted, this is a problem indeed. My 8 years payback time is based on off-peak charging at 0.15EUR/Kwh at home. You typically have less car ownership in cities though...
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
I think the opposite, the transition will go so well, that most places will bring the bans forward in time and those that don't will still see ICE disappear. EVs are already cheaper and better, they're only going to get more so. Business cost savings will drive the transition. e-fuels will be a big thing for long distance air travel and similar tech for chemical feedstocks but everyone else has better options already.
anonyfox 4y ago
The issue is simple: we need to stop emissions from individual mobility, no matter what. soon. it probably needs the ban first to build up enough political/economical motivation to solve subsequent problems. "affordable cars" is way below "habitable planet" in my prio list.
user-one1 4y ago
If the scenario you are describing actually happens, the rules will be changed. It's not like they are set in stone and politicians will react if they start losing votes on this kind of apocalyptic scenario. They won't say this out loud because it would defeat the purpose of the rule in the first place.

MrMan 4y ago

bullshit fantasy

xwdv 4y ago

It’s a feature. Europe of all places can tolerate a society of minimal private car ownership.

TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
Europe in cities? Maybe. Europe overall? Absolutely not.
- kybernetyk 4y ago
  Didn’t you know? For the typical HN poster living in SF or NYC Europe is a 15 minute walkable Utopia where no one pays for health care.
expertentipp 4y ago
Ermm.. no. The cars will simply become luxury for few and the remaining precariat will pay per minute. Cars themselves are a valid concept.
richrichardsson 4y ago
In towns/cities, yes. Rural Europe is a disaster if you don't have a your own transport, as either there is no public transport, or it's atrocious (eg. 2 buses a week in some places).
- arp242 4y ago
  Hence the usage of the word "minimal", or so I would imagine. Plus the only reason that's the case is because there's little demand for it. That is: people have cars. "Europe" is a big place with lots of differences so I can't generalize to the entire continent, which includes places I've never even been to, but quite a few places could almost entirely eliminate car ownership within a matter of years if they wanted. Whether that's desirable in the first place is something I'll leave for everyone to decide for themselves, but it really is just a question of "want" rather than "can".
  - jwestbury 4y ago
    The problem here is that "minimal" car ownership due to high prices does not mean car ownership concentrated amongst those who needs cars, necessarily.
trabant00 4y ago
It can with people making some sacrifices. What I don't like about this is which people will make said sacrifices, meaning the low income part of the population. Which will have to either pay more rent by moving into the city where they can easily access public transport and/or waste hours of their life each day. I'm not excited by the current number of cars either, don't get me wrong. It just saddens me the working class has to pay the price, again.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  I can't tell if this weirdly popular opinion is concern trolling or not, but if you actually do really care about the working class, then the EV transition is a good thing for them. Less pollution, less disease, less war, less imports, cheaper transport, higher standard of living. Its a win win win win and you have to have your head deep in far right conspiracy nonsense to believe otherwise.
dividedbyzero 4y ago
Large cities, sure. But people in rural areas absolutely need a car to function.
- xwdv 4y ago
  Only because things are so spread out. With no public transport.

RobotToaster 4y ago

[flagged]

pjc50 4y ago

Realistically it's going to get pushed back or heavily caveated. But also, a lot can be done in 12 years if there is a will to do it - and imposing this deadline is part of trying to make that happen. It also depends on whether there are any oil price shocks in that time. The EU banned incandescent light bulbs and apart from minor whinging there's been no real problems. This is a bigger version.

jaclaz 4y ago
>The EU banned incandescent light bulbs and apart from minor whinging there's been no real problems. CFL's were progress, right?

arp242 4y ago

> Europe will not be ready for the ban of new ICE cars in 12 years Maybe. Yet I still think setting a hard clear deadline is a good thing, even if it ends up getting delayed in the end. It creates clear goals and focusses what we want to work towards, rather than a vague "in the future we'll be able to solve things, somehow". And who knows ... lots of things can be possible with sufficient pressure.

TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
Impossible deadline is nonsense. It did not worked in 5 years plans of communist central planning committee, it does not work in software engineering, it is not going to work here either.
- 95014_refugee 4y ago
  It does work in software engineering. You are mis-characterizing both problems in essentially the same fashion. The purpose of setting a deadline is not to achieve a specific thing at the nominated date, but to establish bounds on the timeline for activity. We know well that unbounded schedules fail to motivate action; so we set a boundary and then compromise on what is delivered over the resulting interval. The 2035 deadline is a forcing function. It exists to frame discussion and to instill a sense of urgency.
  - TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
    Impossible deadline does not force function. Impossible deadlines are getting ignored. I can't rewrite Linux Kernel in 2 weeks, so scratch that from my queue and lets go with more sensible ticket.
    - mywittyname 4y ago
      12 years for a ban on ICE is not an impossible deadline on the order of "rewriting a linux kernel from scratch in 2 weeks." This is more akin to getting to the moon by the end of the decade. ICE bans are already taking effect in cities across Europe. Viable transportation alternatives already exist for people in these cities. As the bans become more common place, the pain points will be identified and resolved. Twelve years is a long time. The world has changed a lot since 2011.

nforgerit 4y ago

How is "electricity production is not there yet for EV" a case for E-Fuels that require a factor of 4 or so of renewable electricity? How are most consumers going to pay >3EUR per liter? How does all that make sense given we have highly efficient EV? I really don't get those "pro e-fuel arguments" if I'm supposed to forget that we're talking about luxury sports cars.

martin_a 4y ago

I call bullshit on this. There will be lots of used BEVs in the market in 12 years from now. Nobody knows how electricity production will look like in 12 years, but it seems like there will be more and more renewables. Distribution grids might change somewhat in 12 years, too. People don't need to charge BEVs everyday, also nobody knows how public charging infrastructure will look like in 12 years, so no problems for people in "old apartment buildings". Lots of speculation, little information.

michaelt 4y ago
> Nobody knows how electricity production will look like in 12 years Maybe not - but in the UK we know how long it takes to flood a valley for pumped hydro storage, or to build a new nuclear plant, or to roll out new equipment to people's homes (like smart meters) - More than 12 years. So we don't know what electricity production will look like - but we surely know what it won't look like.

bwindels 4y ago

EVs are more expensive initially, but cheaper in the long run. I bought a 20k EUR EV last year (VW e-up, great car). After ~8 years it will be cheaper overall than a 10k EUR ICE car. Petrol prices will probably go up faster than electricity as well, so likely even less. So apart from subsidizing the purchase price which already happens widely, perhaps the government should provide cheap loans for people who don't have the initial capital to buy an EV. Also, There are signs we've already hit the peak for conventional oil. This report [1] claims that by the 2030s Europe will see its access to oil reduced by 10-20%. So running an ICE car will only go up from here. There's good reasons to assume the costs of EVs will only go down. Wrt to the grid, the french grid operator RTE published a study [2] saying that they estimate that by 2035 there will be 15.6 million EVs on the road, a bit half of the 38m total cars on french roads today. The study says this would represent 8-10% of today's electricity consumption and would pose no danger to the stability of the grid. About 2 million new cars are sold here every year, so after 2035 the percentage would go up by 1% every year to 20% or so. A challenge but definitely feasible. 1: https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/oil-what-are-the-risks-for-the-future-of-europes-supply-the-new-shifts-report-about-peak-oil/ https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/oil-what-are-the-risk... 2: https://www-rte--france-com.translate.goog/actualites/developpement-du-vehicule-electrique-et-systeme-electrique-une-faisabilite-sereine-et?_x_tr_sl=fr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-rte--france-com.translate.goog/actualites/develo...

TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
From my experience taking charge on Ionity for 0,79EUR/kWh means that it is more expensive than gas. And because I just moved to another country, and live in apartment, I don't have place to charge. Thing is that there is more than 50% people in EU who has no place to charge at home, because they are living in apartments. SO they will be charging on expensive Fast DC chargers. It will be more expensive than owning an ICE and also massively less comfortable because you will be waiting on car to get charged, thus wasting your time.
- bwindels 4y ago
  Yeah, granted, this is a problem indeed. My 8 years payback time is based on off-peak charging at 0.15EUR/Kwh at home. You typically have less car ownership in cities though...

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

I think the opposite, the transition will go so well, that most places will bring the bans forward in time and those that don't will still see ICE disappear. EVs are already cheaper and better, they're only going to get more so. Business cost savings will drive the transition. e-fuels will be a big thing for long distance air travel and similar tech for chemical feedstocks but everyone else has better options already.

anonyfox 4y ago

The issue is simple: we need to stop emissions from individual mobility, no matter what. soon. it probably needs the ban first to build up enough political/economical motivation to solve subsequent problems. "affordable cars" is way below "habitable planet" in my prio list.

user-one1 4y ago

If the scenario you are describing actually happens, the rules will be changed. It's not like they are set in stone and politicians will react if they start losing votes on this kind of apocalyptic scenario. They won't say this out loud because it would defeat the purpose of the rule in the first place.