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Denmark to ban petrol and diesel car sales by 2030

592 points by afishisafish 8y ago

DerJacques 8y ago
While the promise sounds great, it's important to note that no law has actually been passed. Also, incentives to increase sales of electric vehicles are yet to be announced. Denmark's Scandinavian neighbour Norway is on the other side of the spectrum. Heavy subsidisation has caused every 2nd (!) car sold to be electric (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-environment-norway-autos/norway-powers-ahead-over-half-new-car-sales-now-electric-or-hybrid-idUSKBN1ES0WC https://www.reuters.com/article/us-environment-norway-autos/...).
- martin_bech 8y ago
  Incentives are to be anounced next week. If they follow the so called “climate panel” they will be horrible.. a Tesla will actually go up in price..
  - lucideer 8y ago
    Do you have a link to the "climate panel's" recommendations that increase the Tesla price? I can't find any specific recommendations with actual numbers, only general stuff on suggested areas for inventivising BEVs.
    - martin_bech 8y ago
      The idea is that EVs are fully taxed the danish 150% car tax (on top og the danish 25% sales tax) but get a discount of about 50.000 DKK or just under 8.000USD.. For a base Tesla Model S, that would mean a tax of about 120.000 USD..
      - daveFNbuck 8y ago
        What's the current tax on a base Tesla Model S?
        kalms 8y ago
        20% I believe https://www.tesla.com/da_DK/support/incentives https://www.tesla.com/da_DK/support/incentives (Danish)
        martin_bech 8y ago
        Yes but thats 20% of the 150% so more like 30%. As the system is now, it will be 40% of the 150% by january.
        daveFNbuck 8y ago
        So you're saying the taxes on a 65.200 USD car will increase by 30.000 USD, with only 8.000 USD in discounts to offset the increase?
        martin_bech 8y ago
        yes..
  - daveFNbuck 8y ago
    Tesla is already selling all the cars they can make. If the goal is a higher percentage of electric cars on the road, subsidizing them won't help. The more important thing is to incentivize other manufacturers to produce more electric vehicles.
    - bluGill 8y ago
      To play devils advocate: electric cars are a niche, Sure Tesla can sell out. The niche is large enough - for more players, but ultimately electric cars will top out at a small fraction of the total vehicle market. Of course this is predicting the future. Nobody does that well. In a few years we will have facts, but that doesn't say much about the future beyond that.
      - daveFNbuck 8y ago
        That's the future that governments are trying to avoid by subsidizing electric cars and/or restricting gasoline-powered cars.
        bluGill 8y ago
        There are some disadvantages of electric cars which may or may not be solvable.
        nielsbot 8y ago
        Sure, some ICE may remain around for special uses, but I guess the vast majority of people will be fine w an electric car. (Especially in 2030)
        logifail 8y ago
        By coincidence, I'll be picking up a brand new (ICE) vehicle from my dealer in just over 12 hours' time. The electric version of the vehicle I'm buying costs just a shade over twice as much(!) as the ICE version. I'm not fine paying more than twice as much for a product that in many respects is "less good".
- camelCaseOfBeer 8y ago
  Incentives are probably the most influential factor in the success of this effort. I wish them the best in making the world a better place but the cynic in me is skeptical. Generally top-down legislative approaches like, "it's illegal to sell a new internal combustion engine" flop, for example people will just buy and resell new cars to get around it. Better example, how corporations navigate tax laws. However if the incentives are carefully thought out, making ownership of a car that passes standards cheaper and less hassle to own, it can work. Controlling behavior is all about incentives, so behavioral economics bears no exception. In general I think a disparate amount of attention is paid to making top-down laws instead of addressing incentive. But that is beside the point. Now if only we could convince the 7 most polluting cargoships to curb emissions...
- deleted 8y ago
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- elyonkiNIR 8y ago
  Communism at its finest. There’s no way electric cars will go over 10% usage anytime during the next 100 years. Spain in the meanwhile has a huge potential. I don’t have source but currently about 35% of the cars are electric there, even though there are 0 incentives. Edit: would the downvoters care to explain?
- xxs 8y ago
  Isn't it ironic that most of welfare and subsidies actually come from the oil. Stuff like 25km of under sea tunnel leading to a town with sub 2k population is quite a common sight there. While Norway is an amazing country in many aspects, the amount of oil owned by a state company puts it in a rather unique position.
  - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
    Is it ironic? Creating a national investment fund from the oil bonus seems a far better choice than continuing as usual, or using it to pay for tax cuts (1980's UK). When the oil runs out, or is considered too damaging to use any more, the infrastructure will still be there, and so will the fund.
  - jopsen 8y ago
    Fair point, but I have a lot of respect for how Norway manages it's oil money.. State wealthfare fund and research in various techniques to minimize pollution from oil production.
  - thelaith5 8y ago
    This is a great article explaining how an Iraqi was largely the mind behind putting all the oil money in a state-owned fund as to avoid the damage that oil usually had done to any country that had discovered it. https://www.ft.com/content/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feabdc0 https://www.ft.com/content/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feab...
    - deleted 8y ago
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    - tomaskafka 8y ago
      Putting all oil money into state owned fund also kinda helps the people ruling the state :)
  - thomasahle 8y ago
    > Stuff like 25km of under sea tunnel leading to a town with sub 2k population is quite a common sight there. It's not really common. They only have one tunnel that's 24.5km ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tunnels_in_Norway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tunnels_in_Norway ) and it's not under the sea. The remaining are 10km or shorter. The longest undersea tunnel is 8.9km and it goes to a city with a population of 8,215. It goes to an entire island though, so a few more people than that benefit. Your overall point is completely right, but might as well get the facts straight, so people can compare and don't recite wrong information. Norway doesn't actually show up much on the list of longest tunnels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_tunnels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_tunnels
gambiting 8y ago
As great as it is, remember that hybrids are exempt. And the law is very lax when it comes to a definition of a hybrid - Range Rover has a model with a whooping 1 mile(!!!) of electric range, but of course it has an electric motor so it qualifies as a hybrid and could still be sold under this ban. I expect very very soon we'll see this kind of extremely minor electrification coming to all kinds of vehicles, where a tiny electric motor integrated into the transmission provides few extra HP of power just to call the car a hybrid.
- phil248 8y ago
  The 2019 Range Rover hybrid has an all electric range of 31 miles. Maybe an older model has a 1 mile electric range? That didn't pass the smell test so I had to look it up.
  - gambiting 8y ago
    Yeah the new 400e has more range. The original that came out few years ago had only 1 mile range, as mentioned in the brochure: https://www.landrover.com/Images/HYBRID_FAQ_GUIDE_Intreactive_tcm281-129251.pdf https://www.landrover.com/Images/HYBRID_FAQ_GUIDE_Intreactiv... "How far can my Range Rover Hybrid travel using just the electric motor? When Electric Vehicle mode is activated manually using the EV button, the EV light on the instrument cluster will glow green. The Range Rover Hybrid will drive silently at slow speeds for a distance of up to 1 mile/1.6km provided the hybrid battery is fully charged when EV mode is activated"
    - Retric 8y ago
      That's actually plenty of storage to be useful to a hybrid vehicle. Remember, that battery is always charged by the engine so the trade-off of less weight also means longer range. The vast majority of the efficiency gains in city driving from a non plug in Hybrid is regenerative breaking. Sure, slowing down across a huge mountain represents a lot of energy, but making stop an go traffic vastly more efficient takes very little storage.
billysielu 8y ago
2030 is ages away, try 2020.
- scrollaway 8y ago
  Out of curiosity, are you the kind of person who complains if Google shuts down a free product with less than a 1 year heads up? I wonder how some HN commenters would do at being head of state, sometimes. The bar seems to have lowered lately anyway. Edit: just to clarify and be less dismissive: Banning things everyone uses with little homework is a great way to fail at it. Since this is a tech forum, you can think of it kinda like upgrading your language, framework, kernel and landing a massive refactor, all at once, in production, without testing. It's like that, except you have tens-to-hundreds of millions of users, and their lives are at stake. Bans take time, otherwise they're not effective. Besides, if they had announced 2020, I'm nearly certain the parent comment would ask for 2019.
  - deleted 8y ago
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  - femidav 8y ago
    Bans like this are unlawful and should be countered by a revolution.
- jrnvs 8y ago
  Don't forget that car companies plan years ahead. Setting an end-date like this brings the subject on the table of the car companies' board rooms.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    And setting an impossible to implement date of 2020 is a great way to ensure they donate their money to whoever's running against you.
    - rcMgD2BwE72F 8y ago
seanalltogether 8y ago
Instead of governments announcing bans (I believe france announced a future ban a couple months back), I would rather see these governments committing to only purchasing electric vehicles for all government fleets. Why not put your money were your mouth is and help pump money into the industry via purchasing orders, rather then simply announcing a ban?
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  > Why not put your money were your mouth is "Rules for thee and not for me" The government is happy to tell everyone else what to do but when it comes time to buy their own vehicles they don't have to play by those rules so their decision making process does not reflect the presence those rules and they wind up buying ICE vehicles for the majority of use cases because from a strict numbers perspective those are what make sense in a majority of use cases.
- RobAley 8y ago
  Because this does exactly that, and more. The gov have effectively committed to buying only elecrtic fleets because thats all that will be sold.
  - seanalltogether 8y ago
    Not really, these bans are set so far in the future that they are almost meaningless, a problem for the next government to figure out, or delay even further. On the other hand, the current government could easily announce that starting in 2020 all new government fleet purchases are required to be electric and it would help create a lot of new competition to bid for those orders.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    This is leading by decree. At best the next government has to deal with it (or exempt themselves). Purchasing electric fleets in order to speed up development and adopting of EVs is leading by example.
- vegardx 8y ago
josu 8y ago
There is a long list of countries that decided to ban fossil fuel burning cars in the upcoming years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_banning_fossil_fuel_vehicles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_banning_foss... Personally, I don't think the ban will ever be enforced. It will create the right incentives and most car sales will be electric, but there will still be fossil fuel burning car sales.
- tedeh 8y ago
  Enforcing it is going to be quite simple. The "DMV" or equivalent will have a very hard time explaining why they are still giving out license plates for new vehicles that are not electric if the ban is made law.
  - josu 8y ago
    Yeah, I was referring to the fact that the regulation won't come into force and will keep getting pushed back.
  - gambiting 8y ago
    As I explained elsewhere - hybrids are exempt. And all current manufacturers can make all of their models into some extremely mild hybrids just to get around the ban. So expect to see a lot of models with 1bhp electric motors just to classify as hybrids coming out soon. And cars made before the ban will obviously be still allowed, so there's no issues there.
    - vegardx 8y ago
      I doubt it. This is already a solved problem. We have emission standards that makes those designs more or less pointless.
      - anticensor 8y ago
        Yes, by the time Euro 7 is out, no one will make highway-rated petrol engines that small.
reacharavindh 8y ago
Wonder what it'd do to the resale value of cars even before 2030. Denmark with their famous 150% registration tax already has cars being used much longer than what I've seen in other countries. I'd love to see the 150% tax waived off for 100% electric cars that are not luxury vehicles. Set strict constraints for a common man car, and incentivize it turning electric. Also, think about the charging infrastructure....
- jstanley 8y ago
  Why does it make any difference whether it is a luxury vehicle or not?
  - brixon 8y ago
    Because you need to always look like you want to tax the rich more.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 8y ago
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  - EpicEng 8y ago
    If you want to tax the crap out of vehicles (like Denmark) then it makes sense to give some relief to people who just need to get around as opposed to people who can afford a 50k+ car. I suppose.
  - ska 8y ago
    Why does (specifically) taxing any luxury make sense?
    - Grimm665 8y ago
      If you are going to introduce a flat tax on a good--say 5% for all members of society regardless of wealth--that tax would affect the poor more than it affects the rich, even if it is functionally the same amount of money. With this in mind, it may make sense to apply such a tax only to goods that are purchased more often by those that have the means to pay the extra tax without needing to make sacrifices for it, e.g. a luxury tax.
PopeDotNinja 8y ago
I went to Denmark last year and spent two weeks driving all over the countryside, and likely would have been difficult to reach with an electric car. Many of the places I visited would not have been accessible via public transit. I'm curious how future generations will reach remote places as we move away from fossil fuels. BTW, I loved Denmark :)
- ainiriand 8y ago
  I guess the solution is to provide more charging stations, isn't it? Looks pretty straightforward to me.
  - rcMgD2BwE72F 8y ago
    What's more widely distributed than electricity?
    - zymhan 8y ago
      Find me high-voltage high-amperage connections on the side of the freeway though.
      - Gravityloss 8y ago
        Denmark is small, flat and relatively populated and rich. Probably you're never far from a high voltage transmission line.
      - rcMgD2BwE72F 8y ago
        That doesn't cost much (far less than a gas equivalent) and can be installed alongside highways within weeks. If people purchase EV _en masse_, they'll have charging stations everywhere. There's no egg/chicken problem here.
        ben_w 8y ago
        Worldwide, transport energy use is about 150% total electricity use — 30PWh/y vs. 20PWh/y. I’m not saying we can’t upgrade production (I’m actually significantly more optimistic than the best case IAE estimates), but it’s not as trivial as just installing some new wires and transformers.
NTDF9 8y ago
This is great. I don't think we in the US realize how far ahead European countries are wrt EV. Their governments are working like startups to make this happen. Even if only cars get replaced (and not trucks or heavy vehicles), that's a huge boost. Further, I think the biggest gains of this are in emerging countries like SE asia, India etc. where the cost of oil fuel is much higher than the US. The market size willing to ride on this tech is insane.
netcan 8y ago
At the start, I thought these announcements and laws (eg Scotland) to ban ICE vehicles by 20XX were cheap politics. A promise Someone Else will deliver later, with credit due to you now. I've come around though. I think all the bastardized carbon accounting, market based solutions are on average quite bad. The idea of a neutral, "market decides" policy is a myth. These things are complex, and that compmexity is an opportunity for regulatory capture. For example, most European vehicle tax codes have been altered to reflect emissions. The upshot is that (1) new vehicles are 20% ish more efficient (2) older vehicles become uneconomical faster (3) people who drive older vehicles clear pay more tax. (4) Switching from a 10yr old ICE hatchback to a new one can easily save you $500 pa. Going from a new "efficient" ICE to an electric will save you a fraction of that. New car buyers pay less tax, old cars pay more. Vehicles hit junkyards faster. Manufacturers sell more cars. Over a decade we'll see a minor (maybe 20% at best) decrease in carbon emissions. Very little environmental juice for a lot of poor and middle class squeeze. A nice little sales boost for VW. There's a lot to be said for the simplicity of an outright ban. Ban ICEs. Ban commercial fishing. It worked for CFCs and market hunting. In retrospect, no one wishes we had split hairs with a complicated policy.
- NickM 8y ago
  I think all the bastardized carbon accounting, market based solutions are on average quite bad. I'm curious, do you think the whole idea of a market-based solution is bad, or do you just think that actual real-world implementations have been lacking so far? I mean, it seems to me that if you tax emissions strongly and uniformly enough, then at some point it has to have an impact. I think existing schemes have just been pretty weak. I agree that carbon taxes can potentially hit poor and middle class folks unfairly hard, but this can easily be solved via carbon dividend type schemes.
  - admax88q 8y ago
    > I think existing schemes have just been pretty weak. Most existing schemes seem to have been cleverly designed to avoid hitting certain industries with large enough lobbying power. Taxing/banning/regulating specific polluters rather than pollution itself is just ripe for regulatory capture.
Annatar 8y ago
Good luck with that, especially with banning ultramodern, low emission, high performance diesel cars. I was in Denmark last year to see what's going on over there and I observed the infrastructure very carefully: there is no widespread electric infrastructure for cars; it will be a gargantuan investment of epic proportions. Even if the infrastructure is put in, the current battery technology is only barely adequate for daily city driving. Everything else - forget it! So this is banking on future infrastructure improvement in batteries and recharging, and it's especially banking on invention of fast recharging. And it's assuming diesel engines and emissions will stand still, with no further improvements. Just wondering, Danes like to travel and they like to hitch a camping trailer to their cars and drive all over Europe; how will they be able to do that if their government bans sales of cars with internal combustion engines? Whatever stuff that government is on, it's gotta be potent; I'd like some of whatever they're smoking.
- alkonaut 8y ago
  The last gen diesels are about to be banned (e.g Stockholm and other cities eg in Germany). I expect Euro6 diesels to follow within 10 years and the number of cities with bans to grow. Charging infrastructure needs to be expanded everywhere but that needs to happen regardless. The need will just be more acute. Also note most in Europe have 230V at home including a lot of places in the Nordic countries that have 230V at every parking space for multi tenant housing for car heaters. Those are very handy for an EV parked overnight. The holiday issue is a real one. I drive a diesel that does 1000km in one go. I use that range in one day maybe 2-3 days per year during holidays. That would be impossible with an EV. I can get where I want but it would require a lot more planning and longer travels and recharge waits.
- petermonsson 8y ago
  I’m a Dane, I have leased a 24kwh BEV a few years ago. The charging infrastructure is fine and it is getting better. Denmark is not that big. I had a 30km commute each way. I live in an apartment, so that means public charging, which was no problem. I got 99 km at 110km/h on a full charge which means a 60 kwh battery will take me between the two furthest points in Denmark on two quick charges. The only parts that sucks about BEVs is that you can’t have a trailer attached and the price.
mrguyorama 8y ago
As an idealist I'm glad to see the world transition away from fossil fuels in any capacity. As a "Car Guy" however, there is a small sadness that I won't really get to experience much of the internal combustion engine. I feel like I was born a decade too late and a lot too poor. Similar to some techies who feel the missed the early internet.
- lsiunsuex 8y ago
  As a car guy also - I've thought about this... also. Best plan is pick a few "classics" be it 60s muscle cars or current muscle cars, and buy them before they hit scrap yards or are destroyed. Not an easy thing to do of course - cost of car, storage, restoration if it's old, but they can be saved and kept as toys. Restoring a 60s camaro has always been a dream of mine.
- FranOntanaya 8y ago
  The enjoyable cars and the context where they are driven e.g. tracks, events, may not change that much. The boring utilitarian combustion engines the large majority of humanity has ever experienced probably won't be missed, though. Boring cars were still boring a decade ago.
- floatrock 8y ago
  Why the sadness? As a "Car Guy" I'm thrilled about electric! Instant torque and acceleration, way more responsive than ICE. Just the other month there was the story where an electric shattered all the previous Pikes Peak records: https://www.teslarati.com/vw-id-r-electric-vehicle-pikes-peak-record/ https://www.teslarati.com/vw-id-r-electric-vehicle-pikes-pea... I mean, yeah, it doesn't have the same growl, but if you want raw performance, I'll take my spaceship whirl over rube goldberg-like thousands-of-tiny-explosions any day of the week.
  - lsiunsuex 8y ago
    the growl / sound / smell. The ability to modify, upgrade, "wrench on a car on the weekend" the ability to get beat on the track 1 weekend, drop a couple grand on new parts the next, then go back and beat them the following weekend. car shows and seeing a super charged mustang or camaro or twin turbos or something completely different someone came up with an idea for and built. the same way us programmers tinker and build stuff for the hell of it, is the same was us car guys build stuff and tinker for the hell of it. some take it seriously and go to track, some (me) just do it cause it's a nice break. spending a day installing a new exhaust can be fun. playing with 240volts of batteries (or whatever it is, lol) (if theres anything to play with) - not so much i'm thinking, lol...
moneil971 8y ago
The more countries that commit to this, the more innovation we'll see, happy to see this being taken seriously!
- femidav 8y ago
  Quite the opposite, actually. Governmental regulations kill innovations.
jillesvangurp 8y ago
I'm guessing economies of scale will finish the job somewhere over the next decade already. If you operating any kind of vehicles commercially, eliminating fuel cost should be high on your agenda. Whether it is taxi's, buses, police vehicles, delivery vehicles, etc. For that kind of market what matters is the total cost of ownership. This is why many taxis were early adopters of hybrids. As soon as they become affordable enough, they'll be going full electric. Currently battery cost and production volumes are the main limitation. As that improves, the market will gobble up whatever is being produced. This just puts the pressure on a bit more. 2030 is not even that ambitious.
- rootusrootus 8y ago
  Seems like we need to see about 10K less capital cost, and/or less atrocious depreciation, and TCO should come into line with a comparable ICE. Solve that and maintain the range we've got in the latest crop of EVs, and I think they'll take over pretty steadily.
m3at 8y ago
It's a step forward. However I'm surprised that the focus is still on individual cars, construction of an ev is still quite polluting. I expected to see suggestions about increase in public transportation coverage and frequency to compensate, or maybe steps towards self-driven collective fleets (2030 seems ambitious). I don't know Denmark, are public transportation already well developed? Or am I not cynical enough and it's just an economically driven decision?
- KozmoNau7 8y ago
  Public transit is relatively well developed. We're a relatively small country, very flat and reasonably densely populated. Obviously public transport is most well-developed in the larger cities, with several expansions in progress. But even rural areas are serviced by trains and bus lines. It may be slower in rural areas than taking the car, but you can make it work. At least you can do with one car per household instead of two.
xyproto 8y ago
This is a solid move. Better air quality and smaller chance of natural disasters benefits us all.
snambi 8y ago
denmark is the size of bayarea. Yes, they can move to electric cars, because a tesla will NOT run out of battery by travelling all over the country. OTOH, do they even need cars? Why can't denmark just use public transportation and abolish cars altogether?
- petermonsson 8y ago
  Rural areas are neither economical nor convenient for public transportation.
- Zekio 8y ago
  because public transportation in Denmark basically costs the same as owning a small car
noobermin 8y ago
People especially here constantly rail against Europe, specifically their start-up scene, against taxes, against regulations, etc. At the same time, our cities are unlivable, inaccessible, crowded, our infrastructure is falling apart, a widening gap between the wealthy and the poor causing increases in homelessness in cities and opiod addiction in rural areas. Western Europe isn't utopia, but in many areas, their policies are actually in the public interest and raise most people up[0]. [0] Perhaps not natives, but that's another story.
- BonjelaSoup 8y ago
  > "People especially here constantly rail against Europe" > "our cities" Where is "here" and "our cities"?
  - nojvek 8y ago
    Most likely US
  - stephengillie 8y ago
    People love to cherry pick a statistic from one European city, and ask why all of the American empire can't be like that. /s/public transportation/health care/cars/etc.
    - lasc4r 8y ago
      Cherry picking isn't really needed, infrastructure and health care are a disaster here. edit: For some perspective, there are 240,000 water main breaks every year in the US, wasting over 2 trillion gallons of treated drinking water. https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/drinking-water https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/drinking-w...
      - stephengillie 8y ago
        These statistics are only possible in a nation that has over 240,000 water mains (or do some break more than once a year?) A smaller nation can choose a solution that works better at smaller scales, but doesn't scare well - because they don't need it to scale much. A larger empire has fewer options.
nottorp 8y ago
Isn't Denmark the country that taxes new car purchases 120% of the price of the car already? I don't think they're a good indicator of the overall attitude of the EU.
- Zekio 8y ago
  yes, and you were close with 120% but it was recently reduced to 180% from somewhere north of that
  - KozmoNau7 8y ago
    Not quite. It used to be 180% for the high tier, 105% for the low tier. I don't know the cutover points used back then. Today, it's 85% for the low tier (below ~190K DKK) and 150% for the high tier above that. The cutover point will increase to account for inflation and such.
Necromant2005 8y ago
Electro cars are great, until you start count. Ok, if Denmark population is about 5.7M and based on aerostat (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Passenger_cars_in_the_EU https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...) there're around 500 cars per 1000 citizen. It means country holds ~2.5M cars right now. In general (based on https://www.worlddata.info/europe/denmark/energy-consumption.php https://www.worlddata.info/europe/denmark/energy-consumption...) every Denmark's citizen consumes 20kh per day. 1 of 2 citizen has a car. Electro car charging requires 50kh (average electro car consumption). So It means Denmark must increase electric production in 5!!! times. In order just a charge those new 2.5M cars. I'm now talking about infrastructure requirements for this signigficant electric consumption increase, I'm pointing to the basic knowledge (by wikipedia) that around 50% of energy comes from coal and all renewable are less than 5%. COAL! MORE COAL I SAID!
- floatrock 8y ago
  Yes you need more electricity but that’s offset by reduced gasoline. And you lower your total energy consumption because electric cars are 3-4x as efficient. Yes, this requires more energy infrastructure. But note that in the US the majority of new generation capacity added in the last few years has been renewable. And it’s not because we’ve passed any carbon tax, it’s because it’s now the most cost effective form. The bean counters love it. And of that new generation capacity that is wind, the largest manufacturer of wind turbines is Vestas, a Danish company.
- petermonsson 8y ago
  The last coal plant in Denmark will be retired in 2028. Current regulation requires large district heating to produce electricity (which is no longer economical due to abundance of cheap wind power) and this delays the conversion of the last coal plant.
- aembleton 8y ago
  That assumes that every car in Denmark will consume 50kwh per day. The 64kw Kona Electric will do 300 miles according to the WLTP [1]. So, that assumes every car does 234 miles every day, or over 85k miles per year. I can't find any solid data, but I'd assume its closer to 10k miles per year, or an eighth of what you're suggesting. That is still a lot, but it is achievable especially with more offshore wind. 1. https://www.hyundai.co.uk/new-cars/kona-electric https://www.hyundai.co.uk/new-cars/kona-electric
Necromant2005 8y ago
Coal price will rise. Oil will fall. Gas'll rise.
itry2develop 8y ago
They'll fall into economic or social chaos before then...
deleted 8y ago
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bachbach 8y ago
Atsushi Horiba seems to think this is rubbish. Does he have a point?
bcheung 8y ago
I have a hard time believing that the vast majority of cars won't already be 100% electric by then. Also, I doubt there will be nearly as many personal cars and that there will be much more ride sharing and public transportation options.
rb666 8y ago
This is really the only, and best, solution. It's simple and clear. Car manufactures cannot get around it with their bag of tricks. Plus, 12 years is a long long time.
rrcaptain 8y ago
While this is a good thing, it's not nearly sufficient to stop climate catastrophe.
- femidav 8y ago
  Nothing can stop the next climate catastrophe. Which is the next ice age by the way, and not some mythical global warming.
femidav 8y ago
Incredibly dumb move. CO2 is our friend, not an enemy.

592 points by afishisafish 8y ago

While the promise sounds great, it's important to note that no law has actually been passed. Also, incentives to increase sales of electric vehicles are yet to be announced. Denmark's Scandinavian neighbour Norway is on the other side of the spectrum. Heavy subsidisation has caused every 2nd (!) car sold to be electric (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-environment-norway-autos/norway-powers-ahead-over-half-new-car-sales-now-electric-or-hybrid-idUSKBN1ES0WC https://www.reuters.com/article/us-environment-norway-autos/...).

martin_bech 8y ago
Incentives are to be anounced next week. If they follow the so called “climate panel” they will be horrible.. a Tesla will actually go up in price..
- lucideer 8y ago
  Do you have a link to the "climate panel's" recommendations that increase the Tesla price? I can't find any specific recommendations with actual numbers, only general stuff on suggested areas for inventivising BEVs.
  - martin_bech 8y ago
    The idea is that EVs are fully taxed the danish 150% car tax (on top og the danish 25% sales tax) but get a discount of about 50.000 DKK or just under 8.000USD.. For a base Tesla Model S, that would mean a tax of about 120.000 USD..
    - daveFNbuck 8y ago
      What's the current tax on a base Tesla Model S?
      - kalms 8y ago
        20% I believe https://www.tesla.com/da_DK/support/incentives https://www.tesla.com/da_DK/support/incentives (Danish)
        martin_bech 8y ago
        Yes but thats 20% of the 150% so more like 30%. As the system is now, it will be 40% of the 150% by january.
        daveFNbuck 8y ago
        So you're saying the taxes on a 65.200 USD car will increase by 30.000 USD, with only 8.000 USD in discounts to offset the increase?
        martin_bech 8y ago
        yes..
- daveFNbuck 8y ago
  Tesla is already selling all the cars they can make. If the goal is a higher percentage of electric cars on the road, subsidizing them won't help. The more important thing is to incentivize other manufacturers to produce more electric vehicles.
  - bluGill 8y ago
    To play devils advocate: electric cars are a niche, Sure Tesla can sell out. The niche is large enough - for more players, but ultimately electric cars will top out at a small fraction of the total vehicle market. Of course this is predicting the future. Nobody does that well. In a few years we will have facts, but that doesn't say much about the future beyond that.
    - daveFNbuck 8y ago
      That's the future that governments are trying to avoid by subsidizing electric cars and/or restricting gasoline-powered cars.
      - bluGill 8y ago
        There are some disadvantages of electric cars which may or may not be solvable.
        nielsbot 8y ago
        Sure, some ICE may remain around for special uses, but I guess the vast majority of people will be fine w an electric car. (Especially in 2030)
        logifail 8y ago
        By coincidence, I'll be picking up a brand new (ICE) vehicle from my dealer in just over 12 hours' time. The electric version of the vehicle I'm buying costs just a shade over twice as much(!) as the ICE version. I'm not fine paying more than twice as much for a product that in many respects is "less good".
camelCaseOfBeer 8y ago
Incentives are probably the most influential factor in the success of this effort. I wish them the best in making the world a better place but the cynic in me is skeptical. Generally top-down legislative approaches like, "it's illegal to sell a new internal combustion engine" flop, for example people will just buy and resell new cars to get around it. Better example, how corporations navigate tax laws. However if the incentives are carefully thought out, making ownership of a car that passes standards cheaper and less hassle to own, it can work. Controlling behavior is all about incentives, so behavioral economics bears no exception. In general I think a disparate amount of attention is paid to making top-down laws instead of addressing incentive. But that is beside the point. Now if only we could convince the 7 most polluting cargoships to curb emissions...
deleted 8y ago
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elyonkiNIR 8y ago
Communism at its finest. There’s no way electric cars will go over 10% usage anytime during the next 100 years. Spain in the meanwhile has a huge potential. I don’t have source but currently about 35% of the cars are electric there, even though there are 0 incentives. Edit: would the downvoters care to explain?
xxs 8y ago
Isn't it ironic that most of welfare and subsidies actually come from the oil. Stuff like 25km of under sea tunnel leading to a town with sub 2k population is quite a common sight there. While Norway is an amazing country in many aspects, the amount of oil owned by a state company puts it in a rather unique position.
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  Is it ironic? Creating a national investment fund from the oil bonus seems a far better choice than continuing as usual, or using it to pay for tax cuts (1980's UK). When the oil runs out, or is considered too damaging to use any more, the infrastructure will still be there, and so will the fund.
- jopsen 8y ago
  Fair point, but I have a lot of respect for how Norway manages it's oil money.. State wealthfare fund and research in various techniques to minimize pollution from oil production.
- thelaith5 8y ago
  This is a great article explaining how an Iraqi was largely the mind behind putting all the oil money in a state-owned fund as to avoid the damage that oil usually had done to any country that had discovered it. https://www.ft.com/content/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feabdc0 https://www.ft.com/content/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feab...
  - deleted 8y ago
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  - tomaskafka 8y ago
    Putting all oil money into state owned fund also kinda helps the people ruling the state :)
- thomasahle 8y ago
  > Stuff like 25km of under sea tunnel leading to a town with sub 2k population is quite a common sight there. It's not really common. They only have one tunnel that's 24.5km ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tunnels_in_Norway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tunnels_in_Norway ) and it's not under the sea. The remaining are 10km or shorter. The longest undersea tunnel is 8.9km and it goes to a city with a population of 8,215. It goes to an entire island though, so a few more people than that benefit. Your overall point is completely right, but might as well get the facts straight, so people can compare and don't recite wrong information. Norway doesn't actually show up much on the list of longest tunnels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_tunnels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_tunnels

gambiting 8y ago

As great as it is, remember that hybrids are exempt. And the law is very lax when it comes to a definition of a hybrid - Range Rover has a model with a whooping 1 mile(!!!) of electric range, but of course it has an electric motor so it qualifies as a hybrid and could still be sold under this ban. I expect very very soon we'll see this kind of extremely minor electrification coming to all kinds of vehicles, where a tiny electric motor integrated into the transmission provides few extra HP of power just to call the car a hybrid.

phil248 8y ago
The 2019 Range Rover hybrid has an all electric range of 31 miles. Maybe an older model has a 1 mile electric range? That didn't pass the smell test so I had to look it up.
- gambiting 8y ago
  Yeah the new 400e has more range. The original that came out few years ago had only 1 mile range, as mentioned in the brochure: https://www.landrover.com/Images/HYBRID_FAQ_GUIDE_Intreactive_tcm281-129251.pdf https://www.landrover.com/Images/HYBRID_FAQ_GUIDE_Intreactiv... "How far can my Range Rover Hybrid travel using just the electric motor? When Electric Vehicle mode is activated manually using the EV button, the EV light on the instrument cluster will glow green. The Range Rover Hybrid will drive silently at slow speeds for a distance of up to 1 mile/1.6km provided the hybrid battery is fully charged when EV mode is activated"
  - Retric 8y ago
    That's actually plenty of storage to be useful to a hybrid vehicle. Remember, that battery is always charged by the engine so the trade-off of less weight also means longer range. The vast majority of the efficiency gains in city driving from a non plug in Hybrid is regenerative breaking. Sure, slowing down across a huge mountain represents a lot of energy, but making stop an go traffic vastly more efficient takes very little storage.

billysielu 8y ago

2030 is ages away, try 2020.

scrollaway 8y ago
Out of curiosity, are you the kind of person who complains if Google shuts down a free product with less than a 1 year heads up? I wonder how some HN commenters would do at being head of state, sometimes. The bar seems to have lowered lately anyway. Edit: just to clarify and be less dismissive: Banning things everyone uses with little homework is a great way to fail at it. Since this is a tech forum, you can think of it kinda like upgrading your language, framework, kernel and landing a massive refactor, all at once, in production, without testing. It's like that, except you have tens-to-hundreds of millions of users, and their lives are at stake. Bans take time, otherwise they're not effective. Besides, if they had announced 2020, I'm nearly certain the parent comment would ask for 2019.
- deleted 8y ago
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- femidav 8y ago
  Bans like this are unlawful and should be countered by a revolution.
jrnvs 8y ago
Don't forget that car companies plan years ahead. Setting an end-date like this brings the subject on the table of the car companies' board rooms.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  And setting an impossible to implement date of 2020 is a great way to ensure they donate their money to whoever's running against you.
  - rcMgD2BwE72F 8y ago

seanalltogether 8y ago

Instead of governments announcing bans (I believe france announced a future ban a couple months back), I would rather see these governments committing to only purchasing electric vehicles for all government fleets. Why not put your money were your mouth is and help pump money into the industry via purchasing orders, rather then simply announcing a ban?

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
> Why not put your money were your mouth is "Rules for thee and not for me" The government is happy to tell everyone else what to do but when it comes time to buy their own vehicles they don't have to play by those rules so their decision making process does not reflect the presence those rules and they wind up buying ICE vehicles for the majority of use cases because from a strict numbers perspective those are what make sense in a majority of use cases.
RobAley 8y ago
Because this does exactly that, and more. The gov have effectively committed to buying only elecrtic fleets because thats all that will be sold.
- seanalltogether 8y ago
  Not really, these bans are set so far in the future that they are almost meaningless, a problem for the next government to figure out, or delay even further. On the other hand, the current government could easily announce that starting in 2020 all new government fleet purchases are required to be electric and it would help create a lot of new competition to bid for those orders.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  This is leading by decree. At best the next government has to deal with it (or exempt themselves). Purchasing electric fleets in order to speed up development and adopting of EVs is leading by example.
vegardx 8y ago

josu 8y ago

There is a long list of countries that decided to ban fossil fuel burning cars in the upcoming years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_banning_fossil_fuel_vehicles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_banning_foss... Personally, I don't think the ban will ever be enforced. It will create the right incentives and most car sales will be electric, but there will still be fossil fuel burning car sales.

tedeh 8y ago
Enforcing it is going to be quite simple. The "DMV" or equivalent will have a very hard time explaining why they are still giving out license plates for new vehicles that are not electric if the ban is made law.
- josu 8y ago
  Yeah, I was referring to the fact that the regulation won't come into force and will keep getting pushed back.
- gambiting 8y ago
  As I explained elsewhere - hybrids are exempt. And all current manufacturers can make all of their models into some extremely mild hybrids just to get around the ban. So expect to see a lot of models with 1bhp electric motors just to classify as hybrids coming out soon. And cars made before the ban will obviously be still allowed, so there's no issues there.
  - vegardx 8y ago
    I doubt it. This is already a solved problem. We have emission standards that makes those designs more or less pointless.
    - anticensor 8y ago
      Yes, by the time Euro 7 is out, no one will make highway-rated petrol engines that small.

reacharavindh 8y ago

Wonder what it'd do to the resale value of cars even before 2030. Denmark with their famous 150% registration tax already has cars being used much longer than what I've seen in other countries. I'd love to see the 150% tax waived off for 100% electric cars that are not luxury vehicles. Set strict constraints for a common man car, and incentivize it turning electric. Also, think about the charging infrastructure....

jstanley 8y ago
Why does it make any difference whether it is a luxury vehicle or not?
- brixon 8y ago
  Because you need to always look like you want to tax the rich more.
  - deleted 8y ago
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- deleted 8y ago
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- EpicEng 8y ago
  If you want to tax the crap out of vehicles (like Denmark) then it makes sense to give some relief to people who just need to get around as opposed to people who can afford a 50k+ car. I suppose.
- ska 8y ago
  Why does (specifically) taxing any luxury make sense?
  - Grimm665 8y ago
    If you are going to introduce a flat tax on a good--say 5% for all members of society regardless of wealth--that tax would affect the poor more than it affects the rich, even if it is functionally the same amount of money. With this in mind, it may make sense to apply such a tax only to goods that are purchased more often by those that have the means to pay the extra tax without needing to make sacrifices for it, e.g. a luxury tax.

PopeDotNinja 8y ago

I went to Denmark last year and spent two weeks driving all over the countryside, and likely would have been difficult to reach with an electric car. Many of the places I visited would not have been accessible via public transit. I'm curious how future generations will reach remote places as we move away from fossil fuels. BTW, I loved Denmark :)

ainiriand 8y ago
I guess the solution is to provide more charging stations, isn't it? Looks pretty straightforward to me.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 8y ago
  What's more widely distributed than electricity?
  - zymhan 8y ago
    Find me high-voltage high-amperage connections on the side of the freeway though.
    - Gravityloss 8y ago
      Denmark is small, flat and relatively populated and rich. Probably you're never far from a high voltage transmission line.
    - rcMgD2BwE72F 8y ago
      That doesn't cost much (far less than a gas equivalent) and can be installed alongside highways within weeks. If people purchase EV _en masse_, they'll have charging stations everywhere. There's no egg/chicken problem here.
      - ben_w 8y ago
        Worldwide, transport energy use is about 150% total electricity use — 30PWh/y vs. 20PWh/y. I’m not saying we can’t upgrade production (I’m actually significantly more optimistic than the best case IAE estimates), but it’s not as trivial as just installing some new wires and transformers.

NTDF9 8y ago

This is great. I don't think we in the US realize how far ahead European countries are wrt EV. Their governments are working like startups to make this happen. Even if only cars get replaced (and not trucks or heavy vehicles), that's a huge boost. Further, I think the biggest gains of this are in emerging countries like SE asia, India etc. where the cost of oil fuel is much higher than the US. The market size willing to ride on this tech is insane.

netcan 8y ago

At the start, I thought these announcements and laws (eg Scotland) to ban ICE vehicles by 20XX were cheap politics. A promise Someone Else will deliver later, with credit due to you now. I've come around though. I think all the bastardized carbon accounting, market based solutions are on average quite bad. The idea of a neutral, "market decides" policy is a myth. These things are complex, and that compmexity is an opportunity for regulatory capture. For example, most European vehicle tax codes have been altered to reflect emissions. The upshot is that (1) new vehicles are 20% ish more efficient (2) older vehicles become uneconomical faster (3) people who drive older vehicles clear pay more tax. (4) Switching from a 10yr old ICE hatchback to a new one can easily save you $500 pa. Going from a new "efficient" ICE to an electric will save you a fraction of that. New car buyers pay less tax, old cars pay more. Vehicles hit junkyards faster. Manufacturers sell more cars. Over a decade we'll see a minor (maybe 20% at best) decrease in carbon emissions. Very little environmental juice for a lot of poor and middle class squeeze. A nice little sales boost for VW. There's a lot to be said for the simplicity of an outright ban. Ban ICEs. Ban commercial fishing. It worked for CFCs and market hunting. In retrospect, no one wishes we had split hairs with a complicated policy.

NickM 8y ago
I think all the bastardized carbon accounting, market based solutions are on average quite bad. I'm curious, do you think the whole idea of a market-based solution is bad, or do you just think that actual real-world implementations have been lacking so far? I mean, it seems to me that if you tax emissions strongly and uniformly enough, then at some point it has to have an impact. I think existing schemes have just been pretty weak. I agree that carbon taxes can potentially hit poor and middle class folks unfairly hard, but this can easily be solved via carbon dividend type schemes.
- admax88q 8y ago
  > I think existing schemes have just been pretty weak. Most existing schemes seem to have been cleverly designed to avoid hitting certain industries with large enough lobbying power. Taxing/banning/regulating specific polluters rather than pollution itself is just ripe for regulatory capture.

Annatar 8y ago

Good luck with that, especially with banning ultramodern, low emission, high performance diesel cars. I was in Denmark last year to see what's going on over there and I observed the infrastructure very carefully: there is no widespread electric infrastructure for cars; it will be a gargantuan investment of epic proportions. Even if the infrastructure is put in, the current battery technology is only barely adequate for daily city driving. Everything else - forget it! So this is banking on future infrastructure improvement in batteries and recharging, and it's especially banking on invention of fast recharging. And it's assuming diesel engines and emissions will stand still, with no further improvements. Just wondering, Danes like to travel and they like to hitch a camping trailer to their cars and drive all over Europe; how will they be able to do that if their government bans sales of cars with internal combustion engines? Whatever stuff that government is on, it's gotta be potent; I'd like some of whatever they're smoking.

alkonaut 8y ago
The last gen diesels are about to be banned (e.g Stockholm and other cities eg in Germany). I expect Euro6 diesels to follow within 10 years and the number of cities with bans to grow. Charging infrastructure needs to be expanded everywhere but that needs to happen regardless. The need will just be more acute. Also note most in Europe have 230V at home including a lot of places in the Nordic countries that have 230V at every parking space for multi tenant housing for car heaters. Those are very handy for an EV parked overnight. The holiday issue is a real one. I drive a diesel that does 1000km in one go. I use that range in one day maybe 2-3 days per year during holidays. That would be impossible with an EV. I can get where I want but it would require a lot more planning and longer travels and recharge waits.
petermonsson 8y ago
I’m a Dane, I have leased a 24kwh BEV a few years ago. The charging infrastructure is fine and it is getting better. Denmark is not that big. I had a 30km commute each way. I live in an apartment, so that means public charging, which was no problem. I got 99 km at 110km/h on a full charge which means a 60 kwh battery will take me between the two furthest points in Denmark on two quick charges. The only parts that sucks about BEVs is that you can’t have a trailer attached and the price.

mrguyorama 8y ago

As an idealist I'm glad to see the world transition away from fossil fuels in any capacity. As a "Car Guy" however, there is a small sadness that I won't really get to experience much of the internal combustion engine. I feel like I was born a decade too late and a lot too poor. Similar to some techies who feel the missed the early internet.

lsiunsuex 8y ago
As a car guy also - I've thought about this... also. Best plan is pick a few "classics" be it 60s muscle cars or current muscle cars, and buy them before they hit scrap yards or are destroyed. Not an easy thing to do of course - cost of car, storage, restoration if it's old, but they can be saved and kept as toys. Restoring a 60s camaro has always been a dream of mine.
FranOntanaya 8y ago
The enjoyable cars and the context where they are driven e.g. tracks, events, may not change that much. The boring utilitarian combustion engines the large majority of humanity has ever experienced probably won't be missed, though. Boring cars were still boring a decade ago.
floatrock 8y ago
Why the sadness? As a "Car Guy" I'm thrilled about electric! Instant torque and acceleration, way more responsive than ICE. Just the other month there was the story where an electric shattered all the previous Pikes Peak records: https://www.teslarati.com/vw-id-r-electric-vehicle-pikes-peak-record/ https://www.teslarati.com/vw-id-r-electric-vehicle-pikes-pea... I mean, yeah, it doesn't have the same growl, but if you want raw performance, I'll take my spaceship whirl over rube goldberg-like thousands-of-tiny-explosions any day of the week.
- lsiunsuex 8y ago
  the growl / sound / smell. The ability to modify, upgrade, "wrench on a car on the weekend" the ability to get beat on the track 1 weekend, drop a couple grand on new parts the next, then go back and beat them the following weekend. car shows and seeing a super charged mustang or camaro or twin turbos or something completely different someone came up with an idea for and built. the same way us programmers tinker and build stuff for the hell of it, is the same was us car guys build stuff and tinker for the hell of it. some take it seriously and go to track, some (me) just do it cause it's a nice break. spending a day installing a new exhaust can be fun. playing with 240volts of batteries (or whatever it is, lol) (if theres anything to play with) - not so much i'm thinking, lol...

moneil971 8y ago

The more countries that commit to this, the more innovation we'll see, happy to see this being taken seriously!

femidav 8y ago
Quite the opposite, actually. Governmental regulations kill innovations.

jillesvangurp 8y ago

I'm guessing economies of scale will finish the job somewhere over the next decade already. If you operating any kind of vehicles commercially, eliminating fuel cost should be high on your agenda. Whether it is taxi's, buses, police vehicles, delivery vehicles, etc. For that kind of market what matters is the total cost of ownership. This is why many taxis were early adopters of hybrids. As soon as they become affordable enough, they'll be going full electric. Currently battery cost and production volumes are the main limitation. As that improves, the market will gobble up whatever is being produced. This just puts the pressure on a bit more. 2030 is not even that ambitious.

rootusrootus 8y ago
Seems like we need to see about 10K less capital cost, and/or less atrocious depreciation, and TCO should come into line with a comparable ICE. Solve that and maintain the range we've got in the latest crop of EVs, and I think they'll take over pretty steadily.

m3at 8y ago

It's a step forward. However I'm surprised that the focus is still on individual cars, construction of an ev is still quite polluting. I expected to see suggestions about increase in public transportation coverage and frequency to compensate, or maybe steps towards self-driven collective fleets (2030 seems ambitious). I don't know Denmark, are public transportation already well developed? Or am I not cynical enough and it's just an economically driven decision?

KozmoNau7 8y ago
Public transit is relatively well developed. We're a relatively small country, very flat and reasonably densely populated. Obviously public transport is most well-developed in the larger cities, with several expansions in progress. But even rural areas are serviced by trains and bus lines. It may be slower in rural areas than taking the car, but you can make it work. At least you can do with one car per household instead of two.

xyproto 8y ago

This is a solid move. Better air quality and smaller chance of natural disasters benefits us all.

snambi 8y ago

denmark is the size of bayarea. Yes, they can move to electric cars, because a tesla will NOT run out of battery by travelling all over the country. OTOH, do they even need cars? Why can't denmark just use public transportation and abolish cars altogether?

petermonsson 8y ago
Rural areas are neither economical nor convenient for public transportation.
Zekio 8y ago
because public transportation in Denmark basically costs the same as owning a small car

noobermin 8y ago

People especially here constantly rail against Europe, specifically their start-up scene, against taxes, against regulations, etc. At the same time, our cities are unlivable, inaccessible, crowded, our infrastructure is falling apart, a widening gap between the wealthy and the poor causing increases in homelessness in cities and opiod addiction in rural areas. Western Europe isn't utopia, but in many areas, their policies are actually in the public interest and raise most people up[0]. [0] Perhaps not natives, but that's another story.

BonjelaSoup 8y ago
> "People especially here constantly rail against Europe" > "our cities" Where is "here" and "our cities"?
- nojvek 8y ago
  Most likely US
- stephengillie 8y ago
  People love to cherry pick a statistic from one European city, and ask why all of the American empire can't be like that. /s/public transportation/health care/cars/etc.
  - lasc4r 8y ago
    Cherry picking isn't really needed, infrastructure and health care are a disaster here. edit: For some perspective, there are 240,000 water main breaks every year in the US, wasting over 2 trillion gallons of treated drinking water. https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/drinking-water https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/drinking-w...
    - stephengillie 8y ago
      These statistics are only possible in a nation that has over 240,000 water mains (or do some break more than once a year?) A smaller nation can choose a solution that works better at smaller scales, but doesn't scare well - because they don't need it to scale much. A larger empire has fewer options.

nottorp 8y ago

Isn't Denmark the country that taxes new car purchases 120% of the price of the car already? I don't think they're a good indicator of the overall attitude of the EU.

Zekio 8y ago
yes, and you were close with 120% but it was recently reduced to 180% from somewhere north of that
- KozmoNau7 8y ago
  Not quite. It used to be 180% for the high tier, 105% for the low tier. I don't know the cutover points used back then. Today, it's 85% for the low tier (below ~190K DKK) and 150% for the high tier above that. The cutover point will increase to account for inflation and such.

Necromant2005 8y ago

Electro cars are great, until you start count. Ok, if Denmark population is about 5.7M and based on aerostat (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Passenger_cars_in_the_EU https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...) there're around 500 cars per 1000 citizen. It means country holds ~2.5M cars right now. In general (based on https://www.worlddata.info/europe/denmark/energy-consumption.php https://www.worlddata.info/europe/denmark/energy-consumption...) every Denmark's citizen consumes 20kh per day. 1 of 2 citizen has a car. Electro car charging requires 50kh (average electro car consumption). So It means Denmark must increase electric production in 5!!! times. In order just a charge those new 2.5M cars. I'm now talking about infrastructure requirements for this signigficant electric consumption increase, I'm pointing to the basic knowledge (by wikipedia) that around 50% of energy comes from coal and all renewable are less than 5%. COAL! MORE COAL I SAID!

floatrock 8y ago
Yes you need more electricity but that’s offset by reduced gasoline. And you lower your total energy consumption because electric cars are 3-4x as efficient. Yes, this requires more energy infrastructure. But note that in the US the majority of new generation capacity added in the last few years has been renewable. And it’s not because we’ve passed any carbon tax, it’s because it’s now the most cost effective form. The bean counters love it. And of that new generation capacity that is wind, the largest manufacturer of wind turbines is Vestas, a Danish company.
petermonsson 8y ago
The last coal plant in Denmark will be retired in 2028. Current regulation requires large district heating to produce electricity (which is no longer economical due to abundance of cheap wind power) and this delays the conversion of the last coal plant.
aembleton 8y ago
That assumes that every car in Denmark will consume 50kwh per day. The 64kw Kona Electric will do 300 miles according to the WLTP [1]. So, that assumes every car does 234 miles every day, or over 85k miles per year. I can't find any solid data, but I'd assume its closer to 10k miles per year, or an eighth of what you're suggesting. That is still a lot, but it is achievable especially with more offshore wind. 1. https://www.hyundai.co.uk/new-cars/kona-electric https://www.hyundai.co.uk/new-cars/kona-electric

Necromant2005 8y ago

Coal price will rise. Oil will fall. Gas'll rise.

itry2develop 8y ago

They'll fall into economic or social chaos before then...

deleted 8y ago

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bachbach 8y ago

Atsushi Horiba seems to think this is rubbish. Does he have a point?

bcheung 8y ago

I have a hard time believing that the vast majority of cars won't already be 100% electric by then. Also, I doubt there will be nearly as many personal cars and that there will be much more ride sharing and public transportation options.

rb666 8y ago

This is really the only, and best, solution. It's simple and clear. Car manufactures cannot get around it with their bag of tricks. Plus, 12 years is a long long time.

rrcaptain 8y ago

While this is a good thing, it's not nearly sufficient to stop climate catastrophe.

femidav 8y ago
Nothing can stop the next climate catastrophe. Which is the next ice age by the way, and not some mythical global warming.

femidav 8y ago

Incredibly dumb move. CO2 is our friend, not an enemy.