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Brussels is planning to go EV only by 2035. At this point, there is alost no significant investments in charging capacity. Even worse, landlords are refusing t

Brussels is planning to go EV only by 2035. At this point, there is alost no significant investments in charging capacity. Even worse, landlords are refusing to install charge points in basement garages, presumably because of insurance costs. I'm not against EV at all, even though it is overhyped on the one side and demonized on the other. What bothers me is the hypocrisy in messaging. You can not pretend going full EV in 10 years and not be on a never befote seen giant grid replacement right now. So what is it? Are you going to make car ownership in the city a 1% privilege? Will not much change but will everybody have to pay the exemption fee (oh yes, that exists)? Both can be an acceptable position, just don't pretend.

arghwhat 2y ago
It is true that politicians are not pushing charging infrastructure sufficiently - which they absolutely could, seeing they push other ridiculous and costly requirements like absurd parking space allocations - and that this needs to change. This is unfortunately common in politics. It is far, far cheaper to say things than to do things, and if they can both look good for the people that care about this, and avoid risking annoying anyone that don't care by making proposals they could protest over, then it that ends up being a win-win for them. Politics is unfortunately mainly PR these days. But the reason EVs need to be "overhyped" is because ICE's are not sufficiently demonized to show their true gap. We keep turning our blind eye to ICE's because it is more convenient, and if we keep pretending ICE's are "maybe not great but okay", then EVs have to look ridiculously amazing to show their gap and be worth the infrastructure investment. In reality, EVs are the "okay-ish" baseline, and ICE's should be banished all the way back to the 17th century for anything but very specific commercial applications that currently have no suitable replacement.
deleted 2y ago
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Cthulhu_ 2y ago
Yeah I'm fairly sure both politicians and car manufacturers are dialing back on their EV push; governments' subsidy pots are emptied out, there's no healthy secondhand market yet, and there's heavy competition and/or market dominance (including raw materials and batteries, but also government-assisted low prices) from China. I think that's got politicians nervous. News from Germany is that VW is closing down its German car factories. That's a huge setback. https://www.ft.com/content/f32c172b-d5e9-4397-8831-c61987380e6d https://www.ft.com/content/f32c172b-d5e9-4397-8831-c61987380...

arghwhat 2y ago

It is true that politicians are not pushing charging infrastructure sufficiently - which they absolutely could, seeing they push other ridiculous and costly requirements like absurd parking space allocations - and that this needs to change. This is unfortunately common in politics. It is far, far cheaper to say things than to do things, and if they can both look good for the people that care about this, and avoid risking annoying anyone that don't care by making proposals they could protest over, then it that ends up being a win-win for them. Politics is unfortunately mainly PR these days. But the reason EVs need to be "overhyped" is because ICE's are not sufficiently demonized to show their true gap. We keep turning our blind eye to ICE's because it is more convenient, and if we keep pretending ICE's are "maybe not great but okay", then EVs have to look ridiculously amazing to show their gap and be worth the infrastructure investment. In reality, EVs are the "okay-ish" baseline, and ICE's should be banished all the way back to the 17th century for anything but very specific commercial applications that currently have no suitable replacement.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Cthulhu_ 2y ago

Yeah I'm fairly sure both politicians and car manufacturers are dialing back on their EV push; governments' subsidy pots are emptied out, there's no healthy secondhand market yet, and there's heavy competition and/or market dominance (including raw materials and batteries, but also government-assisted low prices) from China. I think that's got politicians nervous. News from Germany is that VW is closing down its German car factories. That's a huge setback. https://www.ft.com/content/f32c172b-d5e9-4397-8831-c61987380e6d https://www.ft.com/content/f32c172b-d5e9-4397-8831-c61987380...