Small vehicles have been killed by regulation. No chance to build a two-stroke engine anymore, at least for a car. Expensive crash test regs. Noise and pollution regs. And, if you do electric, heavy batteries.
The "weaker regulations" are primarily CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) regulations, which were intended to limit gasoline usage to prevent dependency on foreign imports after the oil shock in the 1970s. EVs don't use imported fossil fuels, so CAFE regulations don't make sense. We just need to keep increasing the fraction of locally produced, renewable energy supplying the grid.
Another huge reason is that China outright banned the use of gasoline powered motorcycles in many big cities; since the majority of people just can't afford a car, the only replacement they could have is electric bikes.
Maybe one day we'll also see gasoline powered personal vehicles be banned in the West ? I kind of doubt it, seeing how important the car is in our society, even though there is some progress towards it (see for instance the car-free days in Paris (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36243119), and I'm sure in other places as well)
That's why we need regulations that will ban the sale of any new non-eletric vehicle in the next 5-10-15 years. Thankfully Europe is going in this direction. Asia not so much.
This is about banning the sale of new gas-powered cars. I'm unsure why letting manufacturers sell new gas-powered cars would make it better with respect to your conversion kits idea.
Not banned, but gas will become too expensive to operate them except in special circumstances. Once we start factoring in the cost to recapture the carbon emitted from combustion engines they will be instantly uneconomical.
The way we regulate in a lot of Europe, may hit some issues as more electrics go on the road. Petrol taxes are a pretty important revenue source. Exempting electrics from that (by default) and all the other taxes help make them viable will eventually result in a meaningful revenue loss. It's also problematic to selectively benefit people who buy new cars and can afford to pay more upfront but less in running costs.
It's funny the next article under "new" is about europe banning gas vehicles.
I personally have a long list of problems with banning gas vehicles (I'd say it's insane really), but something that could easily be addressed is how manufacturers are using the shift to electric to enforce vendor lock in and steal personal data.
There is absolutely no reason why a precondition of driving an electric car should be having an app, sharing data with the manufacturer, or any of that nonsense. And this "outage" is one of the more obvious consequences. Before we even consider trying to make electric cars more popular, there needs to be open infrastructure and maintenance that doesn't depend on any proprietary crap manufacturers are trying to shove down our throats.
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