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> I live in a top EV market, Norway. It is the top EV market. > I figure most other countries will be the same. Most other countries are not Norway, it is a
by jacquesm 8mo ago
> I live in a top EV market, Norway.
It is the top EV market.
> I figure most other countries will be the same.
Most other countries are not Norway, it is a very wealthy, tiny market (150 K vehicles/year) with lots of hydro and not representative of the typical vehicle market in Western Europe and definitely not representative of the situation in the rest of the world.
EVs are the future, there is no doubt about that. But that future will not arrive everywhere at the same point in time and Norway is very far ahead of the rest of the world due to a fairly unique set of circumstances: exporting your own oil and gas to be able to have a 'clean' (and up to recently heavily subsidized) transportation network is in a way just a gigantic bookkeeping trick.
- lukan 8mo agoNo, it is a real invewtment in the right direction. The oil states in the middle east could have made such investments, too. Lots of EV powered by solar panels paid for with oil dollar. But they did not (in a significant way).
- SupremumLimit 8mo agoSure, but there is also China where over half of new vehicle sales are EVs. Denmark is at 70%, Sweden, Iceland, Finland and the Netherlands are all above 50%, a bunch of other countries in the EU are at one third EVs. In India, 5% of sales are EVs but that is double of the year before and all the big car manufacturers in India are now offering EVs. Even Australia is at 14% after stalling on EVs for years. So change is unfolding quite quickly compared to previous years. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ev-share-new-car-sales-by-country-2019-vs-2025/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ev-share-new-car-sales-by-c...
- moogly 8mo agoThose numbers include PHEV cars. As a BEV owner, I consider PHEV to be more ICE than BEV. BEV numbers are not as impressive, but we're getting there, slowly but surely. A bit slower than I would've hoped.
- whateverboat 8mo agoIn many countries, it will be PHEV for a long time because the electricity capacity and grid is just not there. India for example.
- bluGill 8mo agoMy Phev is about 80% ev. It uses a tank of gas a month, replacing a nearly identical vehicle (similar body and same engine - though other things have changed) that needed one or two tanks a week.
- dalyons 8mo agosadly thats not the norm. Various recent studies from the EU based on real world vehicle data show that actual savings from the PHEV category are about ~20% less emissions than a pure gas version. Aka, they are just gas cars. Despite manufacturers claiming ~70-80% for emissions credits. The category is today kind of a scam, in aggregate. It doesnt have to be - bigger battery strictly-series EREVs would likely show better numbers than the weak-ev phevs sold today.
- ZeroGravitas 8mo agoOne key element is whether the incentive/penalty is attached to buying the vehicle or buying the fuel. PHEVs in a world that includes externalities in the cost of fuel will be used in EV mode more. Same vehicle different outcome. Currently it's a mishmash with some countries penalizing electricity use while subsidizing fuel sales in lots of different little ways. In general it's trending in the right direction though.
- bluGill 8mo agoPHEVs when you already own them cost vastly less in electric mode. That people don't bother plugging them in is because they don't care about cost enough to bother to see if there is a difference.
- bwestergard 8mo ago"exporting your own oil and gas to be able to have a 'clean' (and up to recently heavily subsidized) transportation network is in a way just a gigantic bookkeeping trick" How so? If every oil exporter used some of their oil revenue to switch to EVs, that would, all things equal, hasten the transition to EVs. The U.S. is not doing that.
- yndoendo 8mo agoI still find it funny when it comes to oil between the USA and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia started moving the electrical system to renewables where USA is doubling down on fossil fuels. Saudi Arabia is the drug dealer that knows you don't consumer your own supply unless you must were the USA consumes the crack they sell. My next vehicle will 100% be pure EV, not Tesla.
- appreciatorBus 8mo ago> the drug dealer that knows you don't consumer your own supply unless you must So true. There's nothing incompatible at all with: a) realizing that earth has gifted you with a valuable but limited & polluting energy source b) realizing that you'd be foolish to get you own country hooked on it, but it's not a bad business if you can get other countries hooked on it. Instead we get oil rich areas seemingly determined to show off how much of their oil they can waste.
- rob74 8mo agoWow, so now the US oil barons who lobbied Trump to kill renewables and EVs are even worse than Mohammed "Bonesaw*" bin Salman Al Saud? That's really something, if you look at it that way... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Jamal_Khashoggi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Jamal_Khashog...
- jacquesm 8mo agoEither you're too smart for me or I just can't follow you, but could you please expand a bit on your comment? I find it hard to link it to the parent, but I realize that may be on me.
- speedgoose 8mo agoAt least it doesn’t smell ICE fumes downtown. That’s neat.
- nxm 8mo agoHaven’t smell fumes downtown in 30 years since catalytic converters became prevalent
- Tagbert 8mo agoIn the US, near a major roadway on a cold morning, the fumes are strong. Not every car or truck is maintained properly and running in cold weather really magnifies that effect.
- speedgoose 8mo agoYou can try to bike behind a hybrid during a cold winter morning.
- dzhiurgis 8mo agoYou might have very good smog checks. Here in NZ I've recently replaced my Tesla's HEPA air filters which includes carbon filter which. I've got them slightly cheaper from somewhat ok supplier. Turns out there's ton of fake filters out there (i.e. vacuum filters). I was suffering every day I was driving it. Smog is insane everywhere.
- expedition32 8mo agoMost of the profits come from rich countries. And even then especially the more expensive cars. (Personally I am fine driving a 10 year old shit box because for me it is just a means of going from A to B and rather spend my money on other things)
- jacquesm 8mo agoMy daily driver is approaching the ripe old age of 30, my main reason is a lack of software.
- speedgoose 8mo agoI’m what part of the world do you live to have a carbureted car from the late 90s?
- jacquesm 8mo agoNetherlands. And fuel injection has been a thing since the 1930s for Diesel and the 1950's for vehicles. Yes, it has an ECU and ooh, gollies there is software in that. But it's completely invisible from an interaction point of view, there are no screens, all the buttons just do what they are told, there are no 'upgrades', no bugs, interfaces, restarts and attempts to kill me through 'assistance'.
- speedgoose 8mo agoI understand the appeal. Do you use paper maps too or you have a smartphone on the dashboard ? That would be a bit cheating.
- jacquesm 8mo agoI know where I'm going :)
- antonvs 8mo agoIt’s interesting to see how people who grew up with smartphones think. It’s entirely possible to get around without smartphones or paper maps. There are road signs, written directions, verbal directions. The main time I used to use a paper map was driving long distance trips in a foreign country.
- onlyrealcuzzo 8mo agoI mean - how are you defining most? Most countries are quite poor and/or have small populations and aren't buying many vehicles period. About ~45% of countries have smaller populations than Norway, and Norway is in the top ~25% of countries by size of the auto market... Most countries are not the China and India, yet they make up almost 45% of the global population. The US and China make up about 45% of the auto market... There's a lot of European, Asian, and Latin American countries that have more in common with Norway than they do with the US or China or India.
- jacquesm 8mo agoOk, we'll replace 'most' with 'all except for Norway'.
- pyuser583 8mo agoThere is still one country that uses leaded gasoline for personal cars. For automobiles, the future comes very slowly.
- skissane 8mo ago> There is still one country that uses leaded gasoline for personal cars. That was true five years ago, but no longer-Algeria, the last country to allow it, banned leaded petrol in 2021 - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-58388810 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-58388810
- tialaramex 8mo agoIt's actually not clear to me in what sense "banned" is used here. The UK never formally "banned" leaded petrol. They banned sales of new cars which need it, and then later told places which sell petrol that they can only have a small portion of their fuel as leaded, and then (as anticipated) market forces did the rest. AFAICT it would still be legal for the place on the bypass near me to sell leaded fuel but they don't because (a) the market is too small, not worth it and (b) as a result wholesalers don't offer the product, so if they wanted to sell it they can't get it anyway.
- Symbiote 8mo agohttps://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/1998/70/oj/eng https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/1998/70/oj/eng This EU directive banned the sale of leaded petrol in the UK on 1 January 2000.
- tialaramex 8mo agoHmm. The thing is, EU directives aren't themselves law, or rather, in a sense they are but they're laws for the EU member states, telling them that they need to legislate to achieve this thing but without specifying how. The EU can write legislation which is binding on actual citizens, but it mostly writes directives, like this, which just tell the member states to do the legislating. So, was this directive actually implemented by the UK before it left? Or did they go "Eh, we achieved the intended goal anyway, no action" ? This way the EU doesn't have to worry about weird edge cases where the EU wants to control Foozling of Doodads but it turns out that in Poland ordinary people often Foozle their own Doodad at home and so their approach needs to consider individual citizens who want to Foozle a Doodad, but in Ireland that's crazy and you pay one of a few dozen Registered Doodad Foozlers to do it at scale, requiring a very different regulation to achieve the same goal.
- jiveturkey 8mo ago> It is the top EV market. per-capita or by total volume? i ask because a sibling or child comment says that the number of cars sold in norway is pretty small (in part because the population is small). a quick google says 180k cars sold in norway in 2025 (we can round up to 100% EV) and 34M sold in China. It also says China has 50% EV sales. So by total volume Norway isn't close to the top.
- raw_anon_1111 8mo agoThey seem to be solving the “Resource Curse” quite well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse
- shiroiuma 8mo ago>But that future will not arrive everywhere at the same point in time and Norway is very far ahead of the rest of the world due to a fairly unique set of circumstances: exporting your own oil and gas to be able to have a 'clean' (and up to recently heavily subsidized) transportation network is in a way just a gigantic bookkeeping trick. Not really. Even in a hypothetical future where all road vehicles are electric, we'll still need fossil fuels for a while. For one thing, it's probably going to be a while before airplanes can go electric. And production of plastics will probably need petroleum for a long time.
- bluGill 8mo agoCars are the vast majortity of oil use though. The rest is more than a rounding error but not much more.
- shiroiuma 8mo agoAir travel and shipping are more than a "rounding error". https://personal.ems.psu.edu/~pisupati/ACSOutreach/Petroleum_2.html https://personal.ems.psu.edu/~pisupati/ACSOutreach/Petroleum... Admittedly this data is a little old (20 years), but today's numbers probably aren't that different. It shows, out of US petroleum production, that only 47% is used for gasoline. 8% is used for jet fuel, 22% for diesel and heating oil, 5% for coke, 3% for asphalt, etc. 53% is not a "rounding error".
- rossjudson 8mo agoTop market? I'm pretty sure that's China. Speaking of bookkeeping tricks: Kneecapping renewable energy (wind), cancelling the EV future in the US, and then starting a war in the strait of hormuz will someday be acknowledged as the finest moment of the oil industry, maximizing profit in the face of all reason.