[kelvin]

Saw this the other day and thought it was interesting (don't know the original source). US states that charge an additional annual fee for owning an EV. Supposed to make up for lost tax revenue from declining sales of fuel.





It got me interested in looking into how the UK will cover the gap in revenue from lost sales of fuel. Do people think a tax per mile the most likely outcome? As per this report: https://thenextweb.com/news/mandatory-road-pricing-to-plug-uks-40bn-tax-gap-after-shift-to-evs

For EV owners the next few years before any new regs come in could be the cheapest window of opportunity for driving costs.

Tax at charging source - that's what the smart meter is all about isn't it?

[unclesomebody]

EVs aren't a golden bullet to end climate change. I don't think anyone believes that and until we move away from the fetishization of the private car and we are still stuffed. The "youth" seem to understand, especially a lot of those who live in cities, but the city leaders are still a long way behind the curve.

This is very true. Scotland is going to be rolling out free bus travel for everyone under 22 and some of the mandate was driven by behaviour change in the next generation. If you can solve their travel habits and get people out of the idea of "needing" a car then you can make some real emissions savings from transport. The problem is that the government doesn't quite understand what "good" public transport looks like yet.

In my head it's something like an uber-pool (or Moia) which takes you to a seamless interchange in an efficient location onto a bigger vehicle (like a coach) which runs quite frequently on trunk roads and connects with another uber-pool like service on the other end. In essence you can get from pretty much anywhere to pretty much anywhere on a single ticket, with zero emissions, and without an insane time penalty vs a car. The actual customer experience also needs elevated so you're not squished into an uncomfy seat. I guess this is why I'm doing what I'm doing...  Invest now! 

Back in the real world, I want to get to the south of France for 2 weeks in the summer with my bike. Eurostar aren't accepting bikes "because of Covid" so my only option is to fly or drive. Which is rubbish for multiple reasons.

[Paul B]

Are they also not accepting bike bags*?

I was looking to take mine a few places in the NW and found a first come first serve basis for the three spaces allowed on our local trains.

I found on a forum someone that had the problem a lot and would just whip the wheels off into bin bags* and then one for the frame.

[petejh]

EVs aren't a golden bullet to end climate change. I don't think anyone believes that and until we move away from the fetishization of the private car and we are still stuffed. The "youth" seem to understand, especially a lot of those who live in cities, but the city leaders are still a long way behind the curve.

This is very true. Scotland is going to be rolling out free bus travel for everyone under 22 and some of the mandate was driven by behaviour change in the next generation. If you can solve their travel habits and get people out of the idea of "needing" a car then you can make some real emissions savings from transport. The problem is that the government doesn't quite understand what "good" public transport looks like yet.

In my head it's something like an uber-pool (or Moia) which takes you to a seamless interchange in an efficient location onto a bigger vehicle (like a coach) which runs quite frequently on trunk roads and connects with another uber-pool like service on the other end. In essence you can get from pretty much anywhere to pretty much anywhere on a single ticket, with zero emissions, and without an insane time penalty vs a car. The actual customer experience also needs elevated so you're not squished into an uncomfy seat. I guess this is why I'm doing what I'm doing...  Invest now! 

Back in the real world, I want to get to the south of France for 2 weeks in the summer with my bike. Eurostar aren't accepting bikes "because of Covid" so my only option is to fly or drive. Which is rubbish for multiple reasons.

In this future of low emissions public transport how do you stop the pleasure of traveling abroad in comfort and with the freedom to explore on a whim becoming once again something only the wealthy can enjoy? Because that's what's likely to happen once you price out the masses from owning private cars/vans, and expect public transport to take precedence. If every popular destination is to have sufficient pools of individual hire vehicles - presumably with the much reduced lifespan typical of current hire vehicles (who wants to hire a 10-year old vehicle) - then how is this really any better than individual ownership of the same vehicles? If reduced private ownership is really going to be pushed as a serious policy then the most likely outcome I can see is reduced freedom for all but the wealthy, who'll continue to do whatever they please.

[Paul B]

I seem to be losing a little (on the original topic). I nearly had her with a Mini EV but the lack of a five door option is a deal breaker; other options appear to be more than she's wanting to spend.

The BMW is now on Autotrader if anyone is after a 430i Gran Coupe (a very nice example if I do say so myself  )

[SA Chris]

In this future of low emissions public transport how do you stop the pleasure of traveling abroad in comfort and with the freedom to explore on a whim becoming once again something only the wealthy can enjoy? Because that's what's likely to happen once you price out the masses from owning private cars/vans, and expect public transport to take precedence. If every popular destination is to have sufficient pools of individual hire vehicles - presumably with the much reduced lifespan typical of current hire vehicles (who wants to hire a 10-year old vehicle) - then how is this really any better than individual ownership of the same vehicles? If reduced private ownership is really going to be pushed as a serious policy then the most likely outcome I can see is reduced freedom for all but the wealthy, who'll continue to do whatever they please.

Surely private vehicle ownership and hiring of a vehicle on holiday are two different things. I think the habit that is trying to be broken is the default of car use for the majority of journeys; commuting to workplace, shopping and urban recreation. For "rural recreation" not serviced by regular routes, there would be co-operative vehicle use.

When on holiday you would like to think people would adopt the same familiar pattern. Use public transport when you can, hire an EV on the days needed.

We went on holiday to Jersey a few years back for a week, and got a family bus pass for the week. Price was negligible, service was reliable, routes were clear and easy to follow, and it was fun chilling with the kids, chatting with locals and the driver and watching the world go by rather than coping with driving, parking etc etc. Dare say apparently at peak holiday you can be left waiting by the roadside sometimes.

[petejh]

I think the habit that is trying to be broken is the default of car use for the majority of journeys; commuting to workplace, shopping and urban recreation. For "rural recreation" not serviced by regular routes, there would be co-operative vehicle use.

When on holiday you would like to think people would adopt the same familiar pattern. Use public transport when you can, hire an EV on the days needed.

My point was more that the environmental benefit of switching to EVs comes from their lack of tailpipe emissions from burning fossil fuels, while their biggest impact comes from production of the vehicles - which as said requires a massive increase over the next 10-20 years in the mining and smelting of various metals required for batteries and the electrical infrastructure surrounding the electrification of transport.
It stands to reason then that if the environmental benefit of EVs is the lack of tailpipe emissions then how much or little people drive will make *very little difference to damaging emissions. What will make the biggest difference is how many EVs are produced, as this is where most of an EV's environmental impact comes from. So from an atmospheric emissions point of view it appears to make little sense to reduce people's private ownership of cars, as the cars would still need to be produced for people to be able to rent. You could argue a policy of dissuading private ownership might actually *increase*, not decrease, the total number of cars needed to be produced (and thus total carbon emissions), due to people not wanting to pay good money to rent old cars. While they'd be happy enough to privately own and drive an older EV car to get value for money.

It's all conjecture as we don't know what the future holds, just pointing out a policy of reducing private vehicle ownership mightn't necessarily be the panacea some people would like to think. Unless the policy is to reduce us all to caged blobs prohibited from travelling freely...


*There are other smaller scale benefits to driving less - such as less particulate emissions from rubber and brake pads, less maintenance of roads etc. But CO2 equivalent from tailpipes is the big one.

[teestub]

From what I’ve seen from Tesla previously I think the idea is that you reduce the overall amount of cars by people only having them when they need them. So for example if you needed a car from the airport to your digs, then  the next day to take you to Ceuse in the morning and take you back to your digs in the evening, you’d get this, but the rest of the day that car would be off ferrying other people about. 

Obviously there’s a lot to work out in the detail and a lot of this will come down to the legality of cars driving themselves around, but such a system could reduce the amount of cars required massively.

[tomtom]

From what I’ve seen from Tesla previously I think the idea is that you reduce the overall amount of cars by people only having them when they need them. So for example if you needed a car from the airport to your digs, then  the next day to take you to Ceuse in the morning and take you back to your digs in the evening, you’d get this, but the rest of the day that car would be off ferrying other people about. 

Obviously there’s a lot to work out in the detail and a lot of this will come down to the legality of cars driving themselves around, but such a system could reduce the amount of cars required massively.

This ^^

As a friend of mine (who's friends with head of Tesla UK) said, simply too much has now been invested in self driving cars for them not to happen. All the main manufacturers (as well as Uber, Apple etc..) are billions deep in investment in this.

Car ownership will fade in the future. After all, whats the point in owning £30k's worth of steel and Li-ion battery that spends 95% (or more) of its time sat doing nothing. You'll sign up to a club/service and a car will appear and take you to where you want to go - and disappear....

Johnny cab anyone?

[petejh]

It'll certainly be interesting to watch it all unfold, whatever it ends up looking like. I can imagine the concept working well enough in cities/towns, I find it more difficult to imagine it working as well as the current system in rural areas. Maybe some hybrid of long-term lease for people in rural communities (long term being more than a day!).

[Fultonius]

From what I’ve seen from Tesla previously I think the idea is that you reduce the overall amount of cars by people only having them when they need them. So for example if you needed a car from the airport to your digs, then  the next day to take you to Ceuse in the morning and take you back to your digs in the evening, you’d get this, but the rest of the day that car would be off ferrying other people about. 

Obviously there’s a lot to work out in the detail and a lot of this will come down to the legality of cars driving themselves around, but such a system could reduce the amount of cars required massively.

Yeah, most cars are used about 90% of the time, max. Typically less.

Most cars die from old age, not mileage. And they're built to last about as long mechanically as they do structurally. The whole design ethos could shift to having cars that could easily do a million miles*, but be used (collectively) for a much higher proportion of the time.

Ideally they'd be parked out of town, underground, charged and auto-driven on demand to your door. That way city parking is freed up for bike lanes.

Very easy for EVs so long as batteries can be replaced....economically and environmentally.

You're right though, EVs (under current grid, mining, production etc.) are just offshoring emissions and other environmental impacts. So we'll need to deal with that along the way.

Small busses with an uber style pickup with multiple drop-offs (shared flex route rides) would revolutionise city transport.

[teestub]

It'll certainly be interesting to watch it all unfold, whatever it ends up looking like. I can imagine the concept working well enough in cities/towns, I find it more difficult to imagine it working as well as the current system in rural areas. Maybe some hybrid of long-term lease for people in rural communities (long term being more than a day!).

Yeah I think there’s always going to be outlying cases like holidaying in remote locales (where ICE may still be needed for some time?) and people who live in remote rural areas. But when you take the UK for example and see that the average annual mileage is <10k and average journeys are <10 miles there’s a lot of cars currently sat around they would come into play.

[andy popp]

From what I’ve seen from Tesla previously I think the idea is that you reduce the overall amount of cars by people only having them when they need them.

This +1. I haven't owned a car in 18 months and hope never to again. I will acknowledge three things immediately. A. I live in a city and one that is incredibly cycle friendly, and B. has great public transport (there has to be a bus or metro stop with 500m of every residence) and C. it's in a country with no climbing, so I'm not looking driving to climb all the time. So it's easy for me to be smug.

I've hired a car for a total of 12 days in that time, all for exactly the issue Pete identifies, rural trips (though one of them was possible by train). I used conventional car hire firms because, at the moment, they are still cheaper than car share schemes for multi-day periods. But there are lots of alternatives for shorter term needs. There are firms with their own fleets that can be picked up and dropped off anywhere in the city. I just went on a 20 minute walk and passed a couple, all electric, parked up. With the app I could have hired any of them on the spot and driven off. There also seems to be schemes where people hire out their private vehicles when they know are going to be idle, again via an app (not saying any of this is specific to Denmark, I'm sure there are similar all over UK cities). But all of it seems predicated on minimizing the time a car is not in use, combined with a set-up that makes it easy not to use a car for short journeys (and sky high taxes on new vehicles).

Personally I am very happy not owning a car.

[tomtom]

Unfortunately street car hire seems a way from seamless here.

We’ve good friends who live right in town and haven’t had a car for years. They use the Enterprise car club (there’s a spot for a couple of cars near them) and it’s sadly quite unreliable. Booked cars not being there - the keyless starting not working etc…

“Teething troubles” possibly and if the marketplace were bigger these issues would disappear as people would simply use another firm…

I expect in 10-20 years time we’ll all be wondering why we ever bothered to actually drive ourselves somewhere!

[andy popp]

Unfortunately street car hire seems a way from seamless here.

I've not tried it so maybe there are similar problems, but my vague impression is that it functions - and I'm sure you're right that time, and markets, will bring improvements. At the very least, being without a car begins to look viable.

[remus]

I expect in 10-20 years time we’ll all be wondering why we ever bothered to actually drive ourselves somewhere!

While I would love to be proven wrong I think this is very optimistic.

Waymo is the one of the most advanced companies doing self driving cars, yet despite 12 years of work, plenty of very clever people and billions in capital they're still only offering a very limited service in a single city in the US. Expanding that out to the point where no one drives themselves any more is a huge leap (culturally, legally and technologically).

From my outside perspective, it seems like the issue is that current self driving cars work extremely well 95% of the time, but that last 5% (driving in a snowstorm being a good example of a pathological case) is proving very stubborn, and for widespread adoption to become a reality you need to nail down that last 5% otherwise robot cars will start killing people which is always a bad look! Having said that, driving is already relatively dangerous, so maybe it's just a PR problem, and if self driving cars do work out as significantly safer on average then maybe adoption isn't so far off after all.

[tomtom]

Hi Remus - yes it’s interesting too that we’ve not heard much about the whole driverless car shebang for a while. Possibly EV’s and COVID are more in the limelight.

For me it’s basically a data and software problem. We’ve got the cars - got the sensors - so it’s about getting enough data to represent what dumbasses humans are to cover 99.99% (or a suitable number) of all driving eventualities. Then writing software to cope/cover that.

[teestub]

From my outside perspective, it seems like the issue is that current self driving cars work extremely well 95% of the time, but that last 5% (driving in a snowstorm being a good example of a pathological case) is proving very stubborn, and for widespread adoption to become a reality you need to nail down that last 5% otherwise robot cars will start killing people which is always a bad look! Having said that, driving is already relatively dangerous, so maybe it's just a PR problem, and if self driving cars do work out as significantly safer on average then maybe adoption isn't so far off after all.

I think this is it, I bet that driverless cars are already way safer than someone driving and texting, but there’s always going to be a PR issue around a robot killing someone rather than another person, so the safety level is going to have to be magnitudes higher than human controlled driving before it’s accepted.

I’ve also read some articles previously about the sort of ‘trolley problem’ situations that having two or more self driving vehicles heading into a dangerous situation throw up. I’m sure the late stage capitalism solution will be that you’ll be able to pay more to make sure it’s the other car that gets in trouble!

[SA Chris]

Plus if it disobeys the first law things get messy. I've seen I, Robot.

https://xkcd.com/1613/

[galpinos]

I think this is it, I bet that driverless cars are already way safer than someone driving and texting, but there’s always going to be a PR issue around a robot killing someone rather than another person, so the safety level is going to have to be magnitudes higher than human controlled driving before it’s accepted.

They are already statistically safer, though obviously the sample size and scenario variation for driverless are tiny compared to human driven vehicles. As said above, human error is tolerated, machine not so much. In the UK, breaking traffic laws is generally accepted. Though drink driving seems to have been reduced (though my mum's social circle still seem pretty fuzzy on what is legal), speeding, jumping red lights, driving along pavements etc is all tolerated.

Also in the UK, you have to get past the culture:

1. Cars are freedom - they allow people to go where they want, when they want. As our culture trends more and more to the "I want this now" side of the spectrum this is a very tough habit to break. Driverless pool cars won't provide you with this freedom.
2. Desire - they have been sold as an aspirational purchase for a long time. We are taught to aspire to owning a premium brand car, despite the fact it's on a deal that costs you more than your rent and sits outside your shitty apartment for 95% of it's life. If you've got a BMW/Audi etc, you've made it. This will slowly change to owning (well leasing) a Tesla/Polestar/eTron but the issue will be the same.

[SA Chris]

Attitudes will slowly change. Remember back in the 60s and 70 smoking was cool and everyone did it, it was portrayed as aspirational (Peter Stuyvesant ads were the first time I ever saw skiing ).

[galpinos]

Attitudes will slowly change.

Time is not something we have a lot of.

[SA Chris]

Calm down Captain Mainwaring

[petejh]

Timely opinion piece in the telegraph today. I don't agree with the negativity of the tone or some of his details - prices of the cheaper shorter range EVs will likely be manageable for most people; and mining can also transition in part to lower carbon energy; and the comparisons of wind farms/gas-fired power stations etc. don't necessarily add up. But I do agree with the message that society should be more honest about the details behind the new infrastructure and tech we're transitioning to, which the early-adopters it appears to me often fail to acknowledge. Also agree that the transition risks pricing a lot of people out of travelling with the same freedom they've enjoyed for the last few decades (current travel restrictions excepted!). That there's a commodity supercycle is now beyond doubt and personally I'm doing extremely well out of it, some of my commodities investments are now up hundreds of percent - I doubt I'll be one of those priced out of travelling
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/05/14/electric-cars-onwards-green-transition-will-unleash-monster/


''Green transition will unleash monster price rises and do nothing to save the planet
The mining capacity needed for the world to achieve net zero simply doesn't exist

It has become something of a cliche, but it also happens to be true. If you want to do your bit for the planet, forget Tesla and other super expensive electric vehicles; just carry on driving the same old gas-guzzling banger you’ve always had.

As much if not more carbon tends to be expended producing a new car as actually driving it. You are going to have to do an awful lot of miles in the old one before you match the carbon costs of buying a newer version.

It was a slightly different, but similar point that Carlos Tavares, chief executive of the world’s fifth-biggest car maker, Stellantis, was making this week when he said that “green inflation” could soon make owning a vehicle the preserve of the rich.

The prevailing narrative – both in the motor industry and among political leaders sold on the idea that the transition to an emission-free world can be accomplished without significant damage to lifestyles – is that as demand grows, the price of EVs will steadily come down until they are eventually accessible to all.

Not so, argues Tavares; the coming energy transition is going to be hugely resource intensive, driving up costs across the board.  He didn’t quite spell it out, though he hinted at it, so let me do so instead; it is entirely plausible that the monumental carbon costs of establishing the new infrastructure needed for a net zero world, nevermind its physical cost, could itself trigger the very same environmental catastrophe it is supposed to forestall.

Green lobbyists vehemently dispute such claims, pointing out that though the transition will burn a lot of carbon initially, this will progressively decrease, eventually disappearing entirely.

Yet whatever the modelling used, it is pretty much unarguable that going green will, to begin with, create a huge surge in global emissions. The transition will also result in myriad other forms of environmental and biodiversity destruction.

Reducing our emissions here in Britain isn’t going to be of much use if all we are in fact doing is exporting them. A large part of that reduction stems from the decline in old, energy intensive smokestack industries, priced out of the market in part by rising energy costs.

The solar panels that litter the landscape allow our own coal powered stations to be switched off, but are likely to have been manufactured in China using the very same as the main energy source. By reducing our own emissions, we are paradoxically only increasing them at a global level.

Ministers worry about how to save the sad remnants of Britain’s once mighty steel industry, but for PR purposes refuse to sanction a new mine in Cumbria that would provide the relatively low cost coking coal that might help, preferring instead a long winded public inquiry and in the meantime the much higher carbon footprint of importing the stuff from Russia and beyond.

Already the coming energy transition is driving a quite considerable jump in inflation. One of the big stories of the week has been a surge in US consumer price inflation to more than 4 per cent, the highest level in more than 10 years. The US Federal Reserve insists that the increase is only  temporary. Believe it if you will; not many people at the coal face of rising prices do.

Nor does Ivan Glasenberg, boss of one of the world’s largest mining finance houses, Glencore, who this week pointed out that the Chinese were progressively “tying up” great swathes of the world supply of cobalt, the metal needed for the lithium ion batteries used in longer range EVs.

In a report published last week, the International Energy Agency found that an energy transition such as the one planned by President Biden in the US, if applied globally, would cause demand for key minerals such as lithium, graphite, nickel and rare-earth metals to explode, rising by 4,200 per cent, 2,500 per cent, 1,900 per cent and 700 per cent respectively by 2040.

As things stand, the capacity needed to bring about such a transformation simply doesn’t exist. Massive, emission inducing investment in new sources of supply is required to meet the likely demand.

“The mineral requirements of an energy system powered by clean energy technologies differ profoundly from one that runs on fossil fuels”, explains Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA. “A typical electric car requires six times the mineral inputs of a conventional car, and an onshore wind plant requires nine times more mineral resources than a similarly sized gas-fired power plant. The energy sector’s overall needs for critical minerals could increase by as much as six times by 2040 [on current plans for reducing emissions]”.

Another commodities super-cycle, similar to ones driven, first, by industrial renewal after the second world war and later by Chinese industrialisation beckons, powering a seminal shift into a new inflationary age. None of this to argue that we shouldn’t even be trying. It’s just that the politicians need to be a bit more honest about the consequences, as well as less starry eyed about the prospects of success.''

[Scouse D]

The surge in carbon usage that you assert will happen makes plenty of assumptions based on previous industrial practices on maximising profit and short termism. This is the age of climate change and there are many people out there going about this change with genuine foresight.
I encourage you to watch this Pete

All of these' statistics' quoted by lobby groups (of which the IEA is one https://johnmenadue.com/fossil-fuel-lobbyists-modus-operandi-impact-solutions/) are hilarious. “The mineral requirements of an energy system powered by clean energy technologies differ profoundly from one that runs on fossil fuels”, explains Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA. “A typical electric car requires six times the mineral inputs of a conventional car, and an onshore wind plant requires nine times more mineral resources than a similarly sized gas-fired power plant. The energy sector’s overall needs for critical minerals could increase by as much as six times by 2040 [on current plans for reducing emissions]”

you are quoting fossil fuel lobbyists


"Nine times",  this "six times" that.  No mention of that once operational the carbon production of a wind farm is near zero. Conveniently omitting the fact that the operational cost of a gas plant are not really the issue. The issue being that all the gas is SET ON FIRE after.

The similarly amazing argument as 'So much energy is needed to make a battery compared to a fuel tank'... yes, which you then fill with fuel over and over again and SET It ON FIRE.

In many of these arguments against electric vehicles the arguments of initial carbon outlay are overhyped. Yep, you have to build new infrastructure which requires carbon outlay, but that doesn't mean we should all just say 'fuck it' lets carry on the same and hope for the best.
Burning fuels as a way of life, and a way of some people getting rich is on the way out. I don't really think the opinions of Ivan Glasberg ( or to give him his full title; Multi billionaire Coal Magnate Ivan Glasberg) are going to be particularly even handed.