Norway Says Half of New Cars Now Electric Or Hybrid (phys.org) 160
AmiMoJo quotes a report from Phys.Org: Norway, which already boasts the world's highest number of electric cars per capita, said Monday that electric or hybrid cars represented half of new registrations in the country so far this year. Sales of electric cars accounted for 17.6 percent of new vehicle registrations in January and hybrid cars accounted for 33.8 percent, for a combined 51.4 percent, according to figures from the Road Traffic Information Council (OVF). In February, those proportions fell slightly but remained high at 15.8 percent and 32 percent, respectively. While cars with combustion engines are heavily taxed, electric vehicles are exempt from almost all taxes. Their owners also benefit from numerous advantages such as free access to toll roads, ferries and parking at public car parks, as well as the possibility of driving in bus lanes.
cars bad, buses good. (Score:4, Insightful)
i hate when cars are in bus-only lanes. The purpose of the lanes is to allow buses to bypass traffic. it doesn't help when its' so clogged by cars that the lane moves at the same speed as the general purpose lane. thanks a lot, cars!
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You're just jealous ,i,, ,,i, :-)
I enjoy my HOV driving and my free bridge, ferry and highway tolls.
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i hate when cars are in bus-only lanes. The purpose of the lanes is to allow buses to bypass traffic. it doesn't help when its' so clogged by cars that the lane moves at the same speed as the general purpose lane. thanks a lot, cars!
The railway line through Silicon Valley was originally used to carry canned fruit to the port of San Francisco. Now it's used by commuters. It's okay for transport infrastructure to be used for different purposes when the circumstances change.
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i hate when cars are in bus-only lanes. The purpose of the lanes is to allow buses to bypass traffic.
The purpose of bus lanes is to force people to use public transportation by giving it an unfair advantages by forcing everyone to waste resources so that it can monopolize them, which in turn actually creates traffic congestion. It's a stupid idea by and for stupid people.
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The purpose of bus lanes is to force people to use public transportation by giving it an unfair advantages by forcing everyone to waste resources so that it can monopolize them, which in turn actually creates traffic congestion. It's a stupid idea by and for stupid people.
There would be less congestion if the road wasn't full of 4-8 person vehicles being used to transport a single driver to their destination.
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There would be less congestion if the road wasn't full of 4-8 person vehicles being used to transport a single driver to their destination.
Put them on a rail, instead. Then they can run right up one another's arses without causing problems.
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The purpose of bus lanes is to force people to use public transportation
More encourage rather than force.
by giving it an unfair advantages by forcing everyone to waste resources so that it can monopolize them, which in turn actually creates traffic congestion.
In many big cities, the public transport networks shift more people than private cars do on a daily basis. If you make the public transport worse, more people will use cars instead and that will create far worse congestion.
Certainly at busy times in L
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The purpose of bus lanes is to force people to use public transportation by giving it an unfair advantages by forcing everyone to waste resources so that it can monopolize them, which in turn actually creates traffic congestion. It's a stupid idea by and for stupid people.
I'm not even sure what gibberish you've written there, but it sounds like you're saying that bus lanes create congestion?
Cars do not scale in large cities, any simpleton knows that. And if you do some simple math, you'll realise there not enough land to build enough roads for everyone to drive their own car. So what's your solution smart one?
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Based on my own experience, bus lanes often do create congestion.
Causes of congestion are well understood, and more lanes for cars doesn't help [wired.com]
Anyway the real problem is city planning. Because of traditions, everyone believes that higher density is the way to go. But it is the opposite. We should lower density by spreading out cities. Lower density not only means higher quality of life, but also lower congestion. More particularly, city centers should be eliminated. Office and shops should be spread out. to avoid everyone going at the same place at the same time.
Most cities have growing populations, and to cater for more people you can only go out (sprawl), or go up (density).
Sprawl means you need a car to get around, but the car simply does not scale as a solution in large cities, it is the cause of congestion. Underground/overhead rail is the only transport solution that scales to city sized populations. And Rail works best when everyone is within walking distance of a station (ie hi
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Causes of congestion are well understood, and more lanes for cars doesn't help
Yes, but bus lanes don't help either.
Underground/overhead rail is the only transport solution that scales to city sized populations.
Right! Bus lanes are stupid. What's wanted is parking garages where you can catch a PRT pod... and a PRT system to go with that pod
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Right! Bus lanes are stupid.
But still less stupid than cars...
What's wanted is parking garages where you can catch a PRT pod... and a PRT system to go with that pod
Also more stupid than bus lanes. In large, dense cities, to move large amounts of people you need large vehicles. These are trains and buses, not cars, robot cars, cars on rails, or any other variation of the car. Cars are the stupidest option available.
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In large, dense cities, to move large amounts of people you need large vehicles.
That's a stupid idea, and it's not backed up by anything. Buses tend to spend a lot of time severely underutilized, which is a problem that smaller vehicles won't have.
These are trains and buses, not cars, robot cars, cars on rails, or any other variation of the car. Cars are the stupidest option available.
They don't require you to share, which is a massive feature; I've been on buses, and I don't like being on them. They also don't require you to go places you don't want to go, as buses do. They don't make you wait for lots of other people to get their shit together during embarkation or disembarkation, as buses do. They don't take massive amo
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That's a stupid idea, and it's not backed up by anything.
A subway train is capable of moving 75000 people an hour. You average freeway lane moving at 110km/h tops out at about 2000 people per hour. It's not even close.
Buses tend to spend a lot of time severely underutilized, which is a problem that smaller vehicles won't have.
Even then they still beat average people moved per hour. The stats vary depending on road type, city density etc, but where I live, in rush hour we move less than 1000 cars per lane (mostly with one person in them), The bus service moves almost 10000. Again, not even close .
They don't require you to share, which is a massive feature; I've been on buses, and I don't like being on them. They also don't require you to go places you don't want to go, as buses do. They don't make you wait for lots of other people to get their shit together during embarkation or disembarkation, as buses do. They don't take massive amounts of energy to start and stop, as buses do. Large vehicles are idiotic and that you believe they are good is ridiculous. They are terrible even from an efficiency standpoint, and they are also terrible in every other way. The only thing good about them is that they require less human labor, but the human labor component is being removed.
A bus uses about 2-3 times as many resources as a car yet moves 100 times as
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The purpose of letting electric cars drive in the bus lane is because electric cars had such limited range that it solved a few issues to have electric cars in that late.
- If the car died due to lack of charge, it was closer to where it could be pushed off the road.
- Sitting in stop and go traffic was devastating to battery life, so people couldn't get to or from work on a charge
Basically, it made electric cars a practical option before the technology came up to speed.
This is 2017 where
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it doesn't help when its' so clogged
If you're at the point where your bus lane is "so clogged" due to incentives given to EVs to use underused infrastructure then I think the world has become a better and above all cleaner place.
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I'm pretty sure you don't know a damn thing about traffic, infrastructure utilization, or tube cloggage.
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I think you don't understand my point. But I'm not going to spell it out for you either.
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I don't think you understand what "underused infrastructure" means. The optimum density on a freeway lane is 50 cars per mile, or cars approx 4-5 car lengths apart. This gives you the maximum flow (cars per hour). If you add more cars, flow goes down, and your infrastructure becomes sub-optimal. So, now you understand. you're welcome!
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Before EVs, the bus (& taxi) lanes were never clogged here in Oslo, they did in fact have significant spare capacity.
When the regulators wanted to encourage EVs they said up front that we can let them drive in the bus lanes, but only up to a point: As soon as there are enough of them that they actually slow down the buses, then we'll take away that incentive.
This duly happened a year or two ago, for a few highly congested stretches, and now you cannot drive E18 bus lanes during rush hours unless your EV
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I think this is the way it has to be. keep ratcheting up the requirements in order to keep the lane free. Some metrics: a freeway lane moves best when it has 50 cars per mile. bumper to bumper, it has 100+ cars per mile. Gridlock, 200 cars per mile.
So if you have a 4 lane freeway that is bumper to bumper at rush hour, that is 400 cars per mile. you add a fifth carpool lane that you want to keep to 50 cars per mile. This means that only 10-15% of cars should qualify for the carpool lane. You need to change y
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cars move one person at a time. a bus moves 40 people. a single bus only lane can take 3 lanes of cars off the freeway. it makes less congestion for everybody.
With enough tax incentives... (Score:5, Interesting)
Norway's got one of the highest car taxes in the world, particularly on heavy, polluting, big engine cars. A base model Ford Mustang will cost you $83k. Make that $136k if you want the V8. When you can buy a Tesla at same price as in the US with no VAT, no car taxes it'll be popular. And hybrids get enough tax breaks to offset most the cost difference, basically you can get one you can plug in and charge for near free at roughly the same price as the gas guzzler only version but with reduced luggage space. And we're not doing it to bring in taxes, we have oil and are rich. We have some kind of eco-Messiah complex thinking what the five million people in Norway do will save the world. I swear, living here sometimes feels like a TV show and you're just waiting for someone to jump out and say you're on hidden camera. Except you're not and we keep coming back for more.
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Wonderful, that tesla will cost about 1/3 or more rd of an average person's house payment a month and wont drive you to work cause outside of like 3 major cities in the US there is no mass transit worth using
so what the fuck are you suposta do, a used 45mpg 8 year old crackerbox cost's damn near 15 grand, or in otherwords what they cost 8 years ago, lets make the situation worse cause batteries!
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Remarkable GDP per capita is all due to oil? (Score:2)
Norway has nice standing in the GDP per capita rankings: http://statisticstimes.com/eco... [statisticstimes.com]
But, would you agree that this is largely due to oil exports? If oil suddenly became a worthless commodity, would Norway fall to approximately the same place as Sweden in this ranking?
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Interesting list, there is only one "Korea" on there...
Re:Interesting list (Score:2)
That is interesting. It's because the source data [imf.org] also has only one Korea.
The source is the International Monetary Fund... a pretty weighty organization. I won't second-guess their list.
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No, cos they had the excellent sense to put billions into a sovereign wealth fund.
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thinking what the five million people in Norway do will save the world
Or maybe they realise pollution is local and the issues facing Paris with smog, or most of Europe with nasty diesel smell is something they want to get away from.
To be honest, I don't give a crap about the world and I think we can probably manage a few degrees climate change, but I can't wait for my local city to go electric, and global warming is not the reason to go electric, local pollution is.
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Ridiculous taxes and exemptions will do that (Score:4, Informative)
Car Taxes
http://www.expatarrivals.com/n... [expatarrivals.com]
Exemptions for electrics
https://electrek.co/2016/11/09... [electrek.co]
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Ridiculous taxes and exemptions will do that
It's only ridiculous until you begin calculating the cost of actually removing the car's pollution from the environment. After that, it's quite reasonable.
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To be a fair comparison I guess this needs to be compared against taxes/exemptions that are applied to the gas industry that keeps normal ICE cars running though, right?
I live in central London where the pollution is simply staggering because of the diesel fumes everywhere. I think huge incentives for electric cars (& disincentives for ICE cars) is something they should be doing basically immediately.
In fact they recently announced a fairly punishing tax on old (pre 2006) cars - £10 per DAY
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I visited there when diesel cars were a bit of an oddity and the air wasn't exactly like the top of Ben Nevis even then.
I remember scratching my arm for a few seconds and noticing that my nails were absolutely black underneath.
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I will not buy an electri car until (Score:1, Insightful)
they can go the same distance as my current gas-powered Honda Accord, which is just under 500 miles tank. Until then, it's not worth it.
"I won't buy an automobile until it can eat hay (Score:5, Insightful)
and be bred to create more automobiles." - random moron in 1910.
But it wasn't better in every single way, was it? (Score:2)
The car had higher initial capital cost, it required special fuel (you couldn't just feed it hay), and it couldn't be bred to create more cars.
Similarly electric cars are more pleasant in some ways: you can charge it at home over night (no more trips to the gas station a couple times a week), less polluting, quieter, quicker, cheaper on a per-mile basis...but they aren't UNIFORMLY better.
Your assumption that a new technology has to be UNIFORMLY better to be successful is silly.
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4 hours there and 4 hours back, not really that unusual of a commute when you live outside of a city
Not really that unusual?? Are you having a larf? I would wager that even in the most flyover of flyover country, an eight hour daily commute is actually *quite* unusual, as in, the sort of commute that fewer than 0.1% of the population would do. As if it were normal to leave the house at 5am, drive 4hours, work till 5pm, and get home at 9pm!!
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they can go the same distance as my current gas-powered Honda Accord, which is just under 500 miles tank. Until then, it's not worth it.
I won't buy a silly little gas powered car until I can hitch my house to the back of it and tow it down the highway. Until they can haul 80,000 pounds it's not worth it.
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I won't buy a silly little gas powered car until I can hitch my house to the back of it and tow it down the highway. Until they can haul 80,000 pounds it's not worth it.
For people with long commutes, either all employers need to have EV charging or range needs to increase. It's very well to say people shouldn't commute long distances, but many people don't have the means to live nearer work, or they have other reasons to live away from it like they're trying to raise a family but the available work is in a bad place to raise kids, like SF.
I, for one, tend to only go on relatively long drives, and no current EV would suit my needs. I'd really love to own an EV, because I am
Trump says (Score:2)
there are no electric cars in Norway, and if there were they would use more gasoline and produce more CO2 than gas burning cars. So take that high-and-mighty Norway!
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Hu? Most electricity in Norway comes from Hydro power. ...
And that most Teslas are old in Norway should be no secret
Honest Question: (Score:2)
I thought batteries for electric cars performed badly in cold weather. Wouldn't Norway be a place where you wouldn't want to use electric only vehicles?
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Ever heard about:
a) global warming?
b) golf stream?
Norway is not as cold as one would imagine. Considering that it is 2000km long from north to south there is a great difference between north and south, too.
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Ever heard about:
b) golf stream?
I have to admit, I've never heard of Golf Stream [playgolfstream.com] until now. If I played golf, it might be interesting.
Gulf stream.
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Pretending you don't understand someone because of a trivial mistake doesn't make you look smart, it makes you look like a pedantic smart-ass.
This is especially true since we're discussing Norway, so there's a good chance that the GP is Norwegian and it is actually spelled with an "o" in Norwegian and most other Germanic languages. You should appreciate the fact that people from other parts of the world learn your language and contribute to your knowledge of things outside the US, not annoy them with your s
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GP is German, but your point still stands.
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And both golf as well as gulf are valid english words :D so no red underlining.
Except on this broken windows 10 installation where every word except "so" and "red" is red underlined (why red is not red underlined is beyond me).
Re:Honest Question: (Score:4, Informative)
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I thought batteries for electric cars performed badly in cold weather. Wouldn't Norway be a place where you wouldn't want to use electric only vehicles?
It's not actually that cold in Norway, considering how far North it is. I live in Trondheim in the middle of the country and in January the average temperature was just above freezing. Some interior areas of the country are a lot colder but most of the population lives near the coast where it's not really that cold in the winter.
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Norwegian with electric car here, proud owner of a Leaf since August. No problem experienced this winter, even the days when it was cold enough that if you tried to wash your car the hot water would freeze on impact and keep the dirt in place for a few days (yes I managed to do that).
The problem is not the batteries themselves (though there could be if you hit 40 degrees below zero), but that electric power is used for car heating, which in gas cars is taken from the combustion exhaust. This means that I lo
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I suppose they could really help the working man by getting rid of environmental controls altogether. It's a balance, and personally I'm glad the US didn't go the way of Europe and encourage cheap, high-polluting diesel cars.
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Yeah diesel is pretty bad. Yet the life expectancy in the USA is lower than in the EU. So I guess it didn't turn out to be that bad.
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Yeah diesel is pretty bad. Yet the life expectancy in the USA is lower than in the EU. So I guess it didn't turn out to be that bad.
Diesel isn't bad. It produces more NOx, although that virtually goes away when you use urea injection. But it produces no more soot, and gasoline engines produce finer and thus more dangerous soot.
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Yeah, if urea injection was commonplace that would be a great solution. However it adds weight, complication, and expense to a car, and most diesels don't have urea injection.
You mean, they don't in Europe. But if they simply mandated US-like levels of emissions for diesels, the manufacturers basically would have had to use them, and today they'd either have less diesels or more urea injection. Don't believe the bullshit about urea injection being expensive, either. It ain't. That "cost" that they talk about for the system includes development costs, and they're having to pay that now but in the future they're just going to be licking and sticking. They use simple, inexpensive i
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Well someone has to use the diesel. You can't produce 100% gasoline from oil cheaply even if you wanted to. That's not how refineries work. Oil is distilled in fractions and while you can adjust it with hydrogen or carbon injection it isn't particularly cheap either.
The major issue with diesel is the sulfur content (particulate emissions) and its perfectly possible to reduce the sulfur content but you need to do some engine modifications similarly to when gasoline cars switched to unleaded.
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I suppose they could really help the working man by getting rid of environmental controls altogether. It's a balance
Like pissing yourself to keep warm, it is something that works in the short term only. What would really help everybody is increasing competition, by requiring all car manufacturers to make their parts universally compatible - by which I mean that you should be able to interchange parts for the same function across all brands. As it is now, they go out of their way to design all parts of cars in such a way that they have a monopoly on spare parts. Monopolies hurt consumers, especially the less well off.
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I'm glad the US didn't go the way of Europe and encourage cheap, high-polluting diesel cars.
To be fair, though, Europe did that because the tests showed diesel cars to be less polluting and more economic than petrol cars. Where they have been stupid was not in making that decision, but in trusting the industry to self-regulate and be honest, which they invariably turn out not to be. This is just one more example of why it isn't a good idea to simply deregulate without thinking. It would be great if governments would be guided by evidence rather than ideology and religious belief.
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still less than ice...
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The effect:
1) Fewer cars on the road, less traffic, pollution, etc...
2) Fewer cars imported (good for balance sheets),
3) Many old cars on the road (bad for the environment, safety)
Because the taxes are so high it simply prices anything put the cheapest cars out of the market for most people. This doesn't just affect the rich, albeit they are the primary benef
Re:Tax Breaks for the Wealthy (Score:5, Interesting)
I just bought a 2013 Chevrolet Volt for $11,000 plus fees ($12,295 total). The car is in excellent condition, even at 68,000 miles; the internal combustion engine has been run way more than necessary, with only 3% of its lifetime drive being on battery.
The 2013 Volt is an excellent car. The battery lasts about 38 miles, and I have a 13 mile commute; I use 66% of the battery both ways. The generation-2 Volt has a 53 mile all-electric range; 90% of commutes are below 60 miles, and 68% are below 15 miles, so the 2016 and later Chevrolet Volt runs all-electric nearly 100% of the time for over 90% of daily commuters, and the 2015 and earlier Volt runs all-electric nearly 100% of the time for over 75% of daily commuters.
The 2013 Chevrolet Volt had an MSRP of $41,000. I got mine for $11,000. The car was bought by my dealer in October, 2016.
Rich people's cars go out the door in 3 years for newer, fancier cars. Look at the Chevrolet Volt battery and structural support members [hgmsites.net], and compare that to the Chevrolet Bolt battery [hybridcars.com] and its base panel [autoindustryinsider.com]. By re-enginering the Chevy Volt battery base panel to be a stressed member battery pack, like the Bolt, you could get another 50-75 miles of range--raising the 58 mile range of the Generation 2 Volt to a 108 or 133 mile range without crowding out the existing supports. This would add several thousand dollars to the cost, although newer technology (including more automation in factories) will bring that down.
The end result: a PHEV with 108+ miles of all-electric range and a total 475+ miles of combined range, with an electric recharge time (at 3.3kW, 240V at 13.75A) of under 8 hours (under 4 hours with a 6.6kW circuit--240V on a 30A circuit [boschevsolutions.com]). Recharge rate at 3.3kW is 14.5 miles per each hour of charging; if the charge circuit were re-specced to 6.6kW for this hypothetical vehicle, it would recharge 29 miles of range per each hour--nearly the full range of the Generation 1 Volt.
Note that upgrading my home electrical to add a 40 amp, 240V charging station (9.6kW) for the Volt and future EVs will cost me under $1,000. Using a Level 1 charger plugged into a normal 15-amp receptacle (no electrical upgrade) restores 4 miles per hour of charge, making an overnight charge (8pm to 8am) a 48-mile top-off. The Chevrolet Volt includes such a charger.
So rich people are eating the cost of these new, high-end cars (okay, GM made a non-shitty vehicle; I'm impressed); and non-rich people are purchasing them for around $10k-$15k (I actually saw a 2015 Volt with under 5,000 miles for $16k! They're over $30k MSRP!). Essentially, some rich guy bought me a $30,000 car, and I bought the other $11,000. I got my last car (a 2004 Mazda 3) for $14,000.
The total pollution produced by a Chevy Volt is lower than the total pollution produced by a Toyota Prius, including its total manufacture and electrical refueling. My utility offers me EV charging rates with 3.8 cents distribution, plus taxes, plus 20 cents per kWh peak electrical rate and 9.3 cents per kWh off-peak; I currently pay 8.79 cents per kWh at all times (no off-peak advantage) to an electrical supplier who ensures generation of 100% solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal for every kWh I consume, which is less than the off-peak rate. My total current electricity cost is 15 cents per kWh, versus EV rates (using 70% coal, 5% oil, and a lot of natural gas) of 15.51 cents per kWh.
Currently I'm driving on 100% clean energy. The Generation 1 Voltec platform, from 2011 vehicles, has seen regular lifecycles in excess of 90% electrical miles and 100,000 miles, including several samples exceeding
Re:Tax Breaks for the Wealthy (Score:4, Insightful)
People driving beaters in my home town don't have $11k, nor the credit to finance such a purchase. They buy cars for under $2k and drive them for 10-15 years.
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People driving beaters in my home town don't have $11k, nor the credit to finance such a purchase. They buy cars for under $2k and drive them for 10-15 years.
Since you can't buy a new car for under $2k we'll assume they are buying second hand. And where do you think second hand cars come from?
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beater == second hand in rough shape
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beater == second hand in rough shape
Yes I know, and where do they come from?
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People driving beaters in my home town don't have $11k, nor the credit to finance such a purchase. They buy cars for under $2k and drive them for 10-15 years.
Thanks for the edge case. When 70% of Americans drive electric vehicles we can start addressing those edge cases too.
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about 70% of car buyers in the US are buying used cars, not new cars. There isn't a huge inventory of used EV, and with questions around the service life of batteries and high replacement costs, I suspect used EVs will not be considered a very good deal by many buyers.
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So what does the used car market have to do with new cars again? You're missing the point. You're coming up with so many reasons that people won't buy something when the simple fact is that it's not in the plan to get them to do so.
EVs are a trickle down economy. You start with the rich to fund you. You build economies of scale. You work on new cars. THEN you can work on battery replacements, and finally your poor little people on government handouts who can only afford a $1000 car will be buying them too.
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the middle class and below aren't buying new cars. Tax breaks on EV, benefits for driving in car pool lanes, etc are applying to people above middle class.
But here's the thing, you don't need to provide tax breaks on EVs.They are already beneficial to their owner. Quiet, lower maintenance, avoid smell gas stations, charging at night is cheaper than buying gas.
It may not be cost effective to buy a used EV if the repairs on them can't be done cheaply. Right now I think the best deal for an EV is to lease one,
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But here's the thing, you don't need to provide tax breaks on EVs.
It's a question of speed. Tax and regulation. Two handles governments have to drive policy. If the goal is to increase adoption of EVs they can provide tax breaks, tax the competition, or regulate the competition (or in the cases of many places, all of the above).
You don't need to provide tax brakes if and only if the adoption level is inline with desired policy.
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The U.S. Highway System is an example of socialist government program that you probably are fine with having. It is not operated as a for-profit private-owned business.
Everything you don't like isn't automatically "communist". As long as we have a regressive tax system you really don't have a leg to stand on in this argument.
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Yes, and people who can afford an $11k car aren't the rich and famous top-1%, either. I can actually afford to buy a $40k car, and I make $77k; the average purchase price for cars tended to hover around 56% of income up through 2000, last I looked (back as far as the 1950s). I actually considered buying a $35,000 car, and would have needed about 5 months to save up a down payment to get me under $300/month payments--that is, $15k purchase price. If you make $32k/year ($16/hr), that's a car payment repre
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Average American household income is around $55k. Congratulations, you're doing well. And that $77k probably goes further if you don't have kids, or at least are able to split child care duties with a spouse.
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Average American household income is around $55k
Yes, $27/hr, as I said.
Congratulations, you're doing well.
40% better than the average.
that $77k probably goes further if you don't have kids, or at least are able to split child care duties with a spouse.
That depends. The low-income bar to raise a child to age 18 is somewhere around $140k; the median is often cited at around $1M. The low bar is some $8k/year; the first dependent nets you a $3,000 child care credit for up to 35% of expenses; plus your spouse and child are both dependent deductables ($4,025 each), giving you some $2,000 of reduction there. With $10k of expenses, you can get child care down to around $5k/year or $416/month, representing
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Not realizing they pay $2k a year for gas, soo ... over 10 years, that's:
$2k for the purchase
$20k for gas
$?? for maintenance and repairs.
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Using 120V mains kinda hobbles EV charging in the US. It's not as bad as Japan where they have 100V, but for comparison a standard European socket is 230V/15A and adds about 15 miles of range per hour.
I imagine faster chargers will become standard. In Europe 3.3kW is the minimum, with 230V/32A giving over 7kW being standard for dedicated charge points. 7kW is ideal because it's easy to supply from a single phase (32A is used for things like electric cookers and water heaters too) and and adds 30-40 miles of
Re: Tax Breaks for the Wealthy (Score:2)
You do realize that virtually all US homes are connected to multiple phases of 120 volt power and have those phases can be connected to outlets providing 240 volts and typically 30 to 60 amps. Nobody has to charge their EV at 120/15.
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It doesn't do anything of the sort. Virtually every house in the US has 240V available. Most houses have 200A service.
Sure, if you're plugging in to a 120V wall outlet with the charger that comes with the car, it's a bit slow (and it's actually what I do, it charges my Ford C-Max quite nicely overnight) but if I needed faster charging it would take me maybe a couple hours to pull a 240V circuit to a L2 EVSE, and it wouldn't be any harder for me to pull a 50A circuit than a 30A circuit.
Most days, the 15-20
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What I mean is, you can't just roll up at your friend's house and charge at 3.3kW because if they have suitable sockets they will be 120V.
Dedicated chargers are not particularly expensive, but still more so than a basic domestic socket. Some car parks and businesses have installed outdoor mains sockets for car charging and other uses. EV owners use them to run pressure washers and stuff like that.
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Well, if your friend lives close to the edge of your range, it might make a lot of sense to charge there. And if I'd installed a permanent L2 charger at home, I'd leave the cable that came with the car in the car, I know my car has a spot to store it, most others do too. And my friends who live far enough away for it to matter have things like "get an electric car" on their list of things to do as soon as they can afford it, so at some point I wouldn't even need my own cable. So yeah, charging at a frien
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Actually, if the car had more than 100 miles of range, I could keep it topped up with night time charging. Generally speaking, if I get home as late as 10pm and run this at 120V 12A until 8am, that puts 40 miles on the car; if I drove 40 miles every day in a Mazda 3, I'd have to refuel it every 6 days, at a cost of $158/month. I spent $50/month on fuel and refueled every 12-16 days; I drive about 30 miles on the average day.
I'll drop in a 240V circuit because, at 3.3kW, that bumps me 10 miles instead o
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You are lucky, this does not exist in Canada, I found a 2012 Volt for $14000 and 80'000 miles and that's it...
I finally bought a Sonata Hybrid 2013 with 25'000 miles for the same price, not that bad, but in full EV mode at 60mph range is about 3 miles
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You could try to move even further from work. That way you can make a 400 or 500 Km daily commute and reverse common sense even more.
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We should probably start taxing the batteries because of the pollution they currently create.
We're already applying the appropriate tax rate.
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That they create at initial manufacture, and create again when the materials are reclaimed.
The usual sort of paper-mill like pollution at the factory, NaHS (Sodium hydrosulfide) being the obvious one used in recycling a battery for its metals (cobalt especially).
But you're damned no matter what you do, even if you walk to work calories you took in order to have energy to walk has some environmental cost. It's a matter of degrees. Riding a solid rocket engine to work would be one of the least environmentally
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Strangely enough, walking to work is one of the least environmentally friendly forms of transportation. Even if you got all of your calories from sustainably farmed, vegetable based foods, humans are just abysmal when it comes to efficiency. It's why I laugh when any of my friends brings up that 5 Hour Energy crackpot who thinks he can power the third world with bicycle based generators. The food required would cost more than buying a generator or a pack of solar cells and a battery.
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Obligatory Black Mirror:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Well, not lugging 2000 pounds of steel around does give walking certain advantages.
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Strangely enough, walking to work is one of the least environmentally friendly forms of transportation. Even if you got all of your calories from sustainably farmed, vegetable based foods, humans are just abysmal when it comes to efficiency.
You are mistaken. One reason humans are bad at efficiency is we burn a LOT just to keep our body warm, our brain alive and our organs ticking over. That's actually where you burn the majority of your energy by quite a wide margin unless you're doing something like hikin
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There's also the thing that walking doesn't emit PM10s, NOx or any other nasties. The food production might, but it's not done in the cities where lots of people are breathing it.
Healthy, fit humans are actually pretty efficient walkers. We store energy in our tendons and release it with each step when we walk with a flowing, steady gait. On the other hand, I injured my back replacing the water pump in the cold morning a couple of days ago, and that's really not working for me right now. Walking around currently consumes considerable energy. It's probably still more efficient than using a car, at least if I eat a potato or something. On the other hand, if I'm running on beef jerky..
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You vastly underestimate the longevity of a Tesla battery pack. Say you drove at a constant 70 MPH (unrealistic) for 5000 hours, that would only be 350,000 miles. There are plenty of Tesla drivers with much more than 350k on the clock and well over 90% remaining capacity.
Standard lifetime for a battery is to 80% remaining capacity, which for a Tesla pack using Panasonic cells will be around 900,000 miles. In another few years someone will hit a million in a Model S.
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Only if the battery powers the drive train. So, no. But nice try.
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Only if the battery powers the drive train. So, no. But nice try.
My old manual car could start in gear - enough to get a stalled vehicle off the train tracks.
Stupid modern cars need to be put in neutral before the starter motor will turn.
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If you turn the key with gears engaged, a manual car will lurch forward. I'm not sure that is a feature. :-)
But it does count as battery powering the geartrain. Briefly
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If you turn the key with gears engaged, a manual car will lurch forward. I'm not sure that is a feature.
There's a bunch of manual cars with a neutral safety switch now.
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Hmm, let's take a wild guess:
1. Market maturity. They're just further behind on the adoption curve
2. The familiarity of an ICE, and the range reassurance that brings
Both of these factors will obviously weaken over time.