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Before celebrating this too much, I urge people to read this article about how it has actually played out: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23939076/norway-el
by matsemann 9mo ago
Before celebrating this too much, I urge people to read this article about how it has actually played out: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23939076/norway-electric-vehicle-cars-evs-tesla-oslo https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23939076/norway-electric-...
These subsidies have insentivised more car culture. It hasn't fixed most of the issues around cars, just shifted the type of cars. Even possibly increased the amount of cars in the cities. Cars are dangerous, noisy, needs lots of space, microplastics from the tires etc etc., and we should've spent this money on things that could've helped to remove this reliance on cars.
40 billion NOK in subsidies each year. That's a new metro line every year. Or faster trains between cities. Things that could've improved our cities tremendously. You pay more in taxes for buying a new bike than people pay for a new electric car. It cost more for a ticket on public transport than all toll roads driving an electric car from far away into the city in rush hour. Of course people then drive instead of biking or taking the bus.
Yes, the incentives were great and needed in the beginning. But it has gone way, way too far.
- 1970-01-01 9mo ago>noisy Uhhh..
- matsemann 9mo agoAbove ~30 km/h the noise of a car is mainly from the wheels etc., not the motor. Trust me, you don't want to live next to a highway even if all the cars on it are electric!
- xiomrze 9mo agoAdd honking, brakes squeals, people blasting music with open windows, etc.
- 1970-01-01 9mo agoEVs use regen for 99.09% of stops. Honking and loud music is a street problem and has nothing to do with cars. In the horse and carriage days, drivers would be required to carry a bell and whistle to move your butt out of their way.
- 1970-01-01 9mo agoSaying EVs are still too loud, trust me is the knife's edge of complaining to complain. Just take the win.
- matsemann 9mo agoWhich "win"? There were multiple complaints here, not just noise. These EV incentives have actively hampered other goals and projects for a decade, one could argue it's a net loss.
- 1970-01-01 9mo agoEV road noise is not a valid and mature complaint for stifling EV adoption.
- antonvs 9mo agoThe point is not about "stifling EV adoption", it's reducing problematic levels of over-dependence on cars in general. EVs don't solve all the issues that cars raise. Noise is a relevant factor in that discussion, not compared to internal combustion engines[1], but compared to fewer cars in general. [1] The acronym for this did not age well
- amanaplanacanal 9mo agoThey don't solve all problems, but they do make solving the "too much CO2 cooks the planet" problem easier. I'm all for fewer cars too!
- matsemann 9mo agoGood thing I had other arguments and a whole article linked as well, then?
- mahkeiro 9mo agoI lived near a train line with a train every 5-15m 24h, Trust me, you don’t want to live near it either…
- jcgl 9mo agoYeah, that has societal cost too, to be sure. Which implies prima facie that such infra (roadways, high-frequency train lines) should be minimized. Since the throughout of mass transit is so much higher (iow, the societal cost per-user), mass transit is a better way to minimize those costs than cars.
- seanmcdirmid 9mo agoWhen I was looking for a house in Seattle, I checked out a nice townhome in Wallingford beneath the I5 ship canal bridge that had a great view of the city. But this was during COVID and the noise was still horrible, so I noped out of that quickly. It was all tire noise.
- vlovich123 9mo agoIt’s a stupid take IMHO because it’s not an either thing in politics. But yes, even EVs are noisy because there’s road noise from the tires which is the dominant noise on highways and can be substantial when lots of cars even at street speeds if there’s a lot of cars. And the wheel’s generate a lot of fine invisible particulate pollution in the air too. Plus there’s the “whoo” sound they all play when reversing ;)
- drunner 9mo agoTires cause a large amount of pollution and noise. More so than a typical engine above 25 to 30mph. So sure, electric helps, but as noted there is more traffic than before, which doesn't.
- pinkorchid 9mo agoTire noise is the major contributor at speed, and it looks like even in a typical US residential street with 20-25 mph speed limits, tire noise already dominates.
- spacebanana7 9mo agoThere's a separation between how many cars we should have and what kind of cars those should be.
- matsemann 9mo agoSure, but the incentives for the latter affect the former. I don't think those two can be separated in a debate?
- ubercore 9mo agoI'd argue rather than go too far, now-ish is the right time to start addressing the issues you raise around reducing car culture.
- WarmWash 9mo agoCars are not going away, there is one statement that ensures it: As public transport improves, traffic decreases, and the value a car provides increases. A 20 minute commute with no traffic and parking right in front because everyone else took the bus/train? Sign me up.
- monkey_monkey 9mo agoLuckily in these situations it's likely that huge tax costs will be pushed onto private cars. Sign me up to that
- bluGill 9mo agoYou can't sign up - at least not for long. As public transit improves companies quit putting in parking places up front - they still have shipping/receiving in back, but only delivery vehicles allowed. The parking lot is sold to someone else who just wants a building, increasing density. Meanwhile all those people riding transit means there is more demand for better transit. The above plays out over decades of course, and there are lots of competing factors.
- sfifs 9mo agoI'm curious. Where has this played out?
- bluGill 9mo agoManhattan, Toyoko... People still drive in cities, but the better transit is the worse driving becomes.
- jcgl 9mo agoI think you’re misattrubuting causation here. There are numerous factors that distinguish those two places. Chiefly, they are among the densest places in the world. Generally speaking, cars are at odds with such extreme density, simply due to geometry (i.e. how much space driving requires); it’s super easy to saturate driving supply in such places. Think of mass transit and driving as being in an equilibrium with each other. Depending on where the bottleneck is in driving supply, shifting driving demand to transit demand (via improved transit infrastructure) should most often improve driving. Extreme density like the places you mentioned is challenging just because space is at such an extreme premium. I would argue (and I’m not alone here) that it’s especially challenging because driving is consistently underpriced; the fair value of driving there is likely far higher than the cost that drivers pay. In such circumstances, oversubscribed car infrastructure is the natural outcome.
- thelastgallon 9mo agoPeople buy new cars (~10m/year in US) and when they are at that decision point, follow this algorithm. 1) Is there any way you can walk instead? 2) Can you bike? 3) Can you use an e-bike? 4) Can you use public transportation? 5) Can you move to a place where 1-4 are doable? 6) If none of the 4 above work, are you a 2 car family (most are), then one of the cars can be EV. While you have a gas car for longer trips, most likely a minivan. 7) Can you buy a used EV? (which is already manufactured!) 8) Can you buy a used plug-in hybrid? A plug-in hybrid can be 99% electric miles, most trips are short. 9) Can you buy a new EV? 10) Can you buy a new plug-in hybrid? 11) Can you buy a used gas car? A 2023 manufactured used gas car is identical to 2024, the delta of new features is negligible (maybe new colors?).
- PunchyHamster 9mo agoThat's nonsense. No significant amount of people goes "maybe I should move instead of buying a new care". People get car coz they don't want to be cold (and especially in northen countries) when going to work
- thelastgallon 9mo agoYou have no idea what you are talking about. Significant number of people take public transit (Moscow, NYC, Chicago -- lots of other cities) when its available. When you build an environment for cars and cars only, force everyone to buy cars, they have no choice but to buy car. Lots of European counties have been building biking infrastructure. They are all Northern countries.
- teunispeters 9mo agoI am in the prairies of Canada: 1) -20c weather or colder - not really 2) no, see previous. Bikes don't handle snow. 3) no, see previous. 4) no, unsafe. (this is a me problem. Until people stop smoking on or near public transit, it remains unsafe for me) 5) no, this is a really REALLY rude question. Part of it is city design prioritizing suburbs, but part of it is that the moving has a very high cost, and only increasing as property / rent prices continue to skyrocket. Mind, that's mostly a Canadian problem.... 6) An interesting question. This one works. 7) Not really, infrastructure isn't much present yet for used EVs. Mind, it's possible, just not easy to find. 8) same as previous 9) Not easily, prices are much too high. This may change with introduction of Chinese EVs though. 10) same as previous 11) MUCH easier than other options. In some parts, going back as far as 100 years is doable in getting a car. So we - when we finally needed a second car - went 11. Moving is out (cost of moving is comparable to buying a new car), and a new car is expensive enough that the cost is too high to carry. But then, we are not wealthy either, and I have no idea who can afford to buy that many new cars, but it ain't most people I've met or worked with. I see cars - like public transit in far too many cities in Canada - as pricing itself out of usability.
- ZeroGravitas 9mo agoThe incentives were obviously temporary and are already in the phase out stage with some starting being phased out since 2017.
- audunw 9mo agoI really don’t think the impact on car culture is that big. There are a LOT of other reasons not to drive a car in the cities. Our company just built a new office building. No additional parking was built (we are renting some spaces in an existing garage nearby but it’s a bit of a walk to the office). I don’t think it’s easy to get new parking built in Oslo. What we did get was a huge bike garage with bike showers. Even though I have an EV and access to parking, I bike to work in summer. Some of my colleagues also bike in winter. Yeah the subsidies are high, but so are the implicit subsidies for ICE cars. There was a new tunnel construction in Norway where they found they could save millions on reduced ventilation since the impact from EVs had already reduced pollution that much. I totally think we should reduce reliance on cars more. But Norway is already doing a LOT in that department. The public transportation of Oslo is already ridiculously good for a city that size. (How many US cities of that size has a metro?) We should consider the switch to EVs as a hard requirement to get rid of pollution and increase the energy efficient and long term costs with operating cars in the country. Now that the switch is complete (for new vehicles) we can shift the focus to making biking and public transportation even better. But we will always need cars. An electrician can’t take the bus to get to a job, and most pure office workers I know in the Oslo city do not drive to work already.
- PunchyHamster 9mo agoIt's not USA. "Car culture" is far less of a problem pretty much everywhere else
- matsemann 9mo agoI'm writing this from Norway. Car cultured absolutely is a problem here. You have people saying "if you don't like cars, don't live in the city", but then in the suburbs or towns nothing is walkable and you need a car to do anything. Society is shaped around cars, and in the city vast amount of area is designated cars.
- thelastgallon 9mo agoIt is not all wasted. Walk/bike environment would have been better, but EVs solve another problem, they add energy storage to the grid. Norway has excess production from wind, they can store it and sell it to rest of Europe at higher prices. Also, creating demand is important for scale, Norways EV demand played a (somewhat) crucial role in building up battery factories when it was still a nascent industry, help economies of scale. It may or may not have helped Norway directly, but out of all the Western economies, Norway performed the sacred function of the rich: support the growth of new technologies that will eventually help everyone.