> For example, laws banning gasoline cars by 2035 are as useful as laws banning flip phones by 2015 would have been.
If that were true, there wouldn't be any such laws in discussions and in the books. Just like there never was a law to ban flip phones, people just migrated on their own.
There are lots of incentives to push people to EVs such as federal tax breaks and HOV lane access.
> any sort of enforcement policy that mandates private citizens must purchase and drive EVs would quickly get shot down in court.
Citation? Have any been shot down in court? There are plenty of locations that have passed laws that all new cars be EVs after year 20XX (for example 2035 in California).
I suspect most of those will be reverted as overly optimistic, but for now, they are in place.
> Many governments have announced that by 2040 it'll be illegal to sell cars with such engines.
That's very much incorrect. What they've all said is that it will be illegal to sell cars with only such engines. In particular, plug-in hybrids will be allowed, and will probably be the biggest success both commercially and for the environment.
I mean, if I can have something like the latest Mercedes C350e or BMW 530e, but with a bit faster charging and a ~50 mile electric range, that's going to beat an electric 300+ mile range car any day of the week once the subsidies start wearing off (which is a lot sooner than 2040).
Not even close. There are a lot of people who cannot afford EVs. There are a bunch of people who cannot afford a new car at any price. Most of the people you see on the road driving 20-year-old cars are not doing it by choice.
There are also a lot of people who could afford an EV but do not have a place to charge one, because they live in an apartment complex without chargers or need to use street parking. No, charging your car at work is not a good solution because there would not be enough chargers if everyone had to drive EVs.
The burden of banning internal-combustion vehicles would disproportionately fall upon renters and the poor, who are also the people most affected by noise pollution.
>If the state government was serious about this, they would be installing chargers all over the place.
Just a reminder for everyone, the average car on the road is over a decade old. Since this ban only applies to new cars, electric cars are unlikely to be a majority on the road until the 2040s possibly even the 2050s as maintaining old gasoline cars will become more desirable the harder they are to purchase new. There is plenty of time to build out the charging infrastructure and chargers will naturally be built in larger numbers as demand for them increases.
>Regulatory mandates and incentives. The classic carrot and stick approach.
What regulations drove todays adoption of the car?
Good grief. How about good 'ol market forces? EVs with range extenders to bridge the shortcomings of today? If you have the time and for lower cost on a trip, plug in. If you need the speed/convenience of gas you pay for it - but most trips would convert to electric. Gas would be reserved for the edge cases. Cars will still fundamentally work like cars when people need them to, but you can also get the benefits of the EV lifestyle.
Compromise without having to compromise on utility. It's win-win.
Mass adoption of transitional technology will do more to galvanize support for vast charging networks far more quickly (by - here's the crazy thought - producing actual demand!) then trying to conjure them out of sheer will and regulation.
>To be frank, it surprises me that I can go around in my car still at all. Burning diesel to move people should be banned by now, especially with the market flooding with EVs.
Do you think everybody can afford to buy a new car, especially an EV?
The reason these bans are in place is because they are necessary, and they are necessary because most cars are old because most people can't afford to switch. It's effectively a tax on the poor.
>The opposition to EV is beyond stupid at this point.
You really ought to consider why before calling it stupid. EVs are basically a non-starter if you need to tow or drive long distances quickly for reasons such as children and trucking.
> 100% of new vehicles being EV in 9 years isn’t that fast. Assuming the average vehicle lasts ~25 years that’s a ~30+ year transition that simply looks scary to start with.
I feel this distinction needs to be made every time there's talk about banning ICE.
I have yet to see any proposed laws that completely ban ICE. It's always a ban on selling new ICE. You'll still be able to buy used ICE, and they will eventually fade away through attrition.
> but if we optimize our rules a bit, many of the great reasons to own a car might go away.
The reasons are mostly unaffected by your adjusted "rules" (read: prohibitions). It won't get any less convenient and time-saving because you make it more expensive. You can never replace my saved time with anything worthwhile. Especially when I don't believe in the "greater good", whatever it is for you today (apparently the CO2 footprint).
> Your CO2 footprint is unsustainably big, even with an EV car, and your children have to face the consequences.
No, it's not. And first and foremost I am responsible for spending as much time as possible with my children and to keep them safe. Sorry if it feels inconvenient and scary for you, but it's not a priority for me.
> it is also ironic, that young children are the ones benefitting the most from carless environments, which is kind of the reason why young families often move out the the suburbs.
Perhaps you don't know much about young families. Most leave to the suburbs because there are too many people in the cities (= high cost of living and housing). And you know what's essential in the suburbs? Yes, cars.
> electric trucks make gas mileage and emissions irrelevant.
The majority of pickups being sold are still ICE, so gas mileage and emissions are definitely still relevant.
Also, electricity needs to come from somewhere, and for now it still comes mainly from burning fossil fuels. So miles per kWh and their associated emissions are still relevant when it comes to EVs.
> But I can also recognize that other reasonable people need or want trucks and that's fine.
I agree it's not for me to decide what kind of car or truck other people should drive. But I do think the government should at least structure taxes and laws to incentivize people to drive cars with fewer social costs (emissions, safety of others in a collision, road wear, parking space, etc). Currently the US government is doing the opposite, by offering a larger tax credit for EV Trucks and SUVs, for example.
> You only need a few minutes of thought to understand why electric vehicles will never be able to replace internal combustion engines as things stand today.
You only need a little thought to see that each increment of electric vehicle adoption shifts the market context and incentives away from “as things stand today” in a way which makes your claim, to the extent its true as written, irrelevant in practice.
Oh, I forgot about all those buses constantly crashing. They account for 0.6% of all traffic accidents.
> Yes, because it comes with great utility as well.
A small portion of drivers need their vehicles for a utilitarian purpose. The vast majority use them simply as personal transportation. It's similar to guns. A very small amount of them are used for a utilitarian purpose, and the rest are owned for fun, yet they kill 33,000 every year. If ownership were limited only for utilitarian purpose, these numbers would go way, way down.
> You could ask the same questions about smoking (in private), drinking alcohol, lack of exercise, flying in airplanes etc. - are you going to forbid all of these?
Flying in airplanes? There is no significant health risk from airplanes. The rest are perfectly fine to do in private. The reasons why cars might be eliminated has nothing to do with private use - it has to do with its impact on the public.
> If you take away a market, you'll hamper progress.
An existing market does not necessarily result in progress. We (the US) had the largest auto market in the world for almost the entire history of automobiles, now second to China. We had not only the technology, but actual electric cars, 130 years ago.
Rough timeline:
The first crude electric car was introduced 185 years ago, around 1832. The first successful American electric car was introduced in 1891, with multiple makes and models produced in 1893.
By 1900, one third of all cars produced in the US were electric.
In 1908, the Model T gas-powered car was introduced, and in 1912, the electric starter. The practicality of this method ends the commercial viability of electric cars by 1920.
In 1966, Congress introduced a bill recommending electric cars to reduce air pollution. In the 70s, an oil crisis sparks massive consumer interest in electric vehicles.
In 1997, 30 years later, Toyota introduced the Prius, a hybrid. Within three years Honda, GM, Ford, Nissan, Chevy, and Toyota all produce ALL-electric vehicles.
Here we are, 20 years later, with a lot of hybrids, and one or two all-electric vehicles, pretty much all of which are too expensive or impractical for widespread adoption.
We have invented electric cars twice. Both times the market did not choose progress.
> people realize most EVs are vastly, vastly inferior to what they were supposed to replace
I don't know how anyone with any knowledge of EVs whatsoever can make this argument in 2023. Maybe this was forgivable 10 years ago, but now? This feels like bad faith.
> The future is hybrid
The future of personal transport vehicles is battery-electric, full stop. Why? Because you no longer need any of the trappings of an internal combustion engine. People forget why cars were awesome in the first place -- because you didn't need a horse anymore. In the same way, the big gain in the BEV is NOT adding the battery and the electric motor, it's getting rid of the ICE.
> So, obviously other factors were driving that trend
Yes, gas sales are nearly zero in US, they are just starting. I agree other factors were driving that trend. Probably gas stations figuring out that its not a viable business. But now, EV sales have started. 25% of cars sold in California are EVs and growing. If gas stations have gone down 50% (202K to 115K) without any EVs, we can predict they will go down faster with EVs.
> gas sales industry was continuing to meet consumer demand
There is no consumer demand for gas sales, any more than there is a demand for whale oil or kerosene. There is a consumer demand for lighting, and whale oil, then kerosene were used in lamps obsoleted by electric lamps. Similarly, there is a consumer demand for going from point A to point B, most people are not gas-holics, they'll use whatever fuel is cheapest (first and foremost) and convenient. Well, EVs are most convenient, you can charge anywhere you park, it is hard to think of any building (home, work, shop) without electricity. If the biggest challenge that mankind is faced with is running a cable from a building to parking lot and we fail spectacularly at that, we are doomed. However, we have precedence that we can do this. Standard oil is built in consumer demand for lighting and kerosene lamps. When light bulb was invented, its not just about convincing people to buy electric lamps. It is also about doing the far harder things of producing electricity and distributing it. This grid was built and people switched to electric lamps. So, I am someone confident people will figure out how to run a cable from a building to parking spot. US has 2 billion parking spots and ~250 million cars, just converting a small fraction to EVs is enough.
An EV is a bigger breakthrough than a smartphone (which is primarily a content/addiction delivery mechanism). An EV solves energy storage, an unsolved problem of civilization. EVs can provide passive income. Folks who participated in a VPP pilot with powerwalls made $150/day [1], this is the very definition of passive income. A powerwall has 13.5kWh capacity vs car batteries of 80kWh, there is nothing preventing cars from supplying power to the grid at peak prices and making bank. Most of our electricity bill is for peak power, which is from costly natural gas peaker plants. These will all be replaced.
Next, there is significant curtailment of renewables, which overproduce and there is no demand. Power prices go negative (200 million times/year [2]), which means an EV owner can be paid for the privilege of charging his car. I can think of at least a few people who'd be interested in getting paid for charging their car, or even charge for free.
An EV is primarily an energy storage device (idle in parking lot 95% of the time), which provides elastic demand, as well as supply. Nothing else on the grid has this capability. This capability changes things permanently. Think of a time before information storage, youtube/instagram/tiktok -- all of this content and businesses were not possible before we figured out how to store information (hard disks, ssds). EVs bring that capability. This is a significant civilization upgrade that will enable many things in the future.
> technology gets better over time (see: the past 1000 years)
> can't judge today what an EV will be like in 50 years
i can't wait for 50 yrs to have EV be better than ICE cars. If they aren't better _today_, i cannot switch. I would assume the majority of consumers have this attitude.
Therefore, in order to transition to EVs for environmental reasons, you either force consumers to have a lesser product by legislation, or improve EVs so that they are the natural choice to purchase.
I don't believe consumers would be willing to suck up a legislated rule that forces them to consume an inferior product, and so they would choose not to elect someone that stand for such.
Therefore, the only realistic way is to have EVs be _better_ than ICE. I think they are on the cusp today though, and soon will surpass ICE.
> internal combustion engine has too many moving parts.
It does. But then the simple EVs aren't a that much cheaper than those complicated ICE cars. Where is the $9k efficiency basic model that someone in a lower income bracket could afford? Mention the government incentives and credits and talk about the cheap recharge cost compared to a tank of gas, less maintenance costs, and all of the sudden a lot of people will start listening. Most EV cars start at $20k and up from what I remember. That's more than the MSRP of a new Honda Civic. Few American consumers will choose a more expensive model, with less range, and long recharge cycle. There'd have to be some serious tax incentives/penalties or a huge jump in gas prices for people to start seriously considering EVs as their next car.
I get the point of electric taxis about maintenance, but there are only so many taxis around. Some are even regulated based on a medallion system. So I am afraid just taxis might not be enough to revolutionize the car industry.
>However, if they are no longer necessary, then everybody stands to benefit economically because it's an inefficiency that we can eliminate. We can be nostalgic about it and lament tangential benefits that would be lost, but ultimately that's the reality.
Agreed. Seventy years ago, typists were employed by the thousands, but society adjusted, for the better at that.
>This doesn't apply to the vast majority of car journeys, and the infrastructure we enjoy at low cost is propped up by those.
I, for one, enjoy low-cost infrastructure, and so does anyone struggling to pay their bills.
The main reason the EV industry is growing is due to governmental support, not pure customer demand. The cost of EV charging infrastructure will amortize, but the economics of the eventual dominance of EVs (in its current state, mind you) will mostly hurt the poor in the near term, not help them. Perhaps there may yet be a turning point in the future.
> The problem is, increasing taxes on gas will disproportionately affect the poor who can't afford to buy an EV (and again, are unlikely to live somewhere with a charger)
But banning ICE cars is clearly even worse for those unable to afford an EV, right? Unless policy-makers think that precommitting to ban ICE cars by 2035 will lead to a sudden flurry of new EV development _that wouldn't have happened if they had just precommitted to adding large carbon taxes by 2035.
If that were true, there wouldn't be any such laws in discussions and in the books. Just like there never was a law to ban flip phones, people just migrated on their own.
There are lots of incentives to push people to EVs such as federal tax breaks and HOV lane access.
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