
New diesel and petrol vehicles to be banned from 2040 in UK - noir-york
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-40723581
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jacknews
2040? The rate things are going they should be considering banning the USE of
fossil-fueled cars by 2040, except for some specialized categories.

But in any case outright bans don't seem to me the best idea, they should just
give advance notice of swingeing environmental taxes to come.

~~~
cjrp
If you ban the use of these cars then you also need to account for some kind
of scrappage scheme for people with now-outlated ICE cars. Otherwise you're
disproportionately affecting people who can't afford to get rid of their
faithful 150k mile diesel in favour of a £10k+ new car.

~~~
dalbasal
Many carbon reduction (or insidiously, pro car sales) policies have this
effect. Poorer people spend a bigger portion of income on petrol, so
petrol/carbon txes hit them harder. registration taxes or other requirements
favour newer, more expensive cars (richer owners) which perform better
relative to new (more carbon focused) standards.

In terms of political dynamic (in some of europe, in any case) the "side" of
politics most concerned with avoiding regressive taxes is also the side most
concerned with carbon levels, so we don't tend to have that discussion play
out.

~~~
cjrp
> the "side" of politics most concerned with avoiding regressive taxes is also
> the side most concerned with carbon levels, so we don't tend to have that
> discussion play out

That's a really interesting point. I'm not sure what the solution is? A
scrappage scheme open to everyone (regardless of income) may not be
financially viable, so then do you apply means testing or something? Hmm.

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pistonhead
I know that petrol and diesel contribute massively to the air quality issues
we have in major cities like London (where I live and work), but as a car
lover I'm also disappointed by this measure and what it would mean for people
like me who love our cars.

What I'd like to see more than anything is the following:

1\. Diesel powered vehicles are banned from London's congestion charge zone
from 2020. If you want to drive in this zone you must drive a petrol, PHEV or
fully electric vehicle. Government provides incentives for taxi drivers to
trade in their old diesel taxis for PHEV or electric.

2\. All London transport is fully electric by 2020. Their current hybrid buses
are a joke. They spend about 5 seconds between stops on battery mode and then
almost immediately start up their diesel engines on leaving each stop.

3\. All new econobox cars are fully electric within the next 5 years. UK
government invests in providing charging stations at existing petrol stations
across the UK.

4\. Sports cars and performance cars still use petrol engines. We also undo
the "engine downsizing" trend that was started to help meet unrealistic
emissions regulations tests. When on boost, small turbo-charged petrol engines
use more fuel than their larger, naturally aspirated predecessors.

~~~
gargravarr
I drive a classic Toyota Supra and agree that I don't want to see ICE-powered
cars banned completely. Where the government screwed up was with diesels;
other than higher CO2 per mile, petrol-powered cars are actually quite clean,
and we have ways (at least theoretical) for dealing with CO2. We have no idea
how to deal with diesel emissions - NO2 and particulate matter are a big
question mark.

Hybrids are also very silly - while on one power source, the other is dead
weight, which requires more energy to propel, dragging the efficiency down.
They're a stopgap measure, nothing more. I agree that public transport needs
to go pure-electric/zero-emission very soon - as soon as a bus pulls away, it
spews a visible cloud of black diesel smoke, no matter how old it is or
whether it's a hybrid.

A major problem I see is that many young people (myself included) are totally
priced out of homeownership and therefore dependent on renting housing,
meaning I cannot get access to a charging point at home. Even as a petrolhead,
I would be interested in driving an electric car day to day or purely as a
mode of transport, keeping my Supra for recreation only.

I checked the Supra's most recent MOT and it almost meets the 2008 (most
recent) petrol emissions standards, with CO emissions off by a mere 0.2%.
Larger, port-injected engines are clean enough to remain in use. Direct-
injection petrols also suffer from higher NO2 emissions just like diesels, due
to the higher combustion temperatures, so not only do these small engines use
more fuel under boost (where they are most of the time), they produce worse
emissions too.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
_" Hybrids are also very silly - while on one power source, the other is dead
weight, which requires more energy to propel, dragging the efficiency down.
They're a stopgap measure, nothing more."_

Extra batteries are also a heavy load, whether full or empty. So it's not that
simple a calculation. Also, the power sources do often work together, in
various ways, so it's not always a question of two parallel systems, but
rather considering it as a whole system working together, which in many case
is better than either alone.

As battery prices fall, and energy densities rise, and fast charge solutions
are rolled out widely, then pure EVs will push out hybrids, but they'll be
around for a while and have already saved a whole lot of money (it surprises
me how little people consider efficiency when thinking about moving
civilization forward and making everyone wealthier) as well as toxic emissions
and greenhouse gasses.

~~~
gargravarr
You're right in that it is indeed more complex, especially since hybrids use
electric propulsion almost all the time. My point was that, while operating in
pure battery-electric mode, the engine and fuel are nonfunctional and must be
dragged around. An engine driving an electric generator is indeed more
efficient than a pure ICE drivetrain, but versus the potential efficiency of a
pure-electric power source, that's why I said 'dragging the efficiency down'.

I agree completely, hence my comment about them being a stopgap measure. Once
pure-EVs are able to offer comparable range and charge time to a tank of fuel,
hybrids will be consigned to history.

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interfixus
1997: Legislation to ban sales of CRT television and computer screens by 2020.

Politicians. Heartfelt sigh.

~~~
robmcm
I don't think any manufacturer will be (or want to be) selling ICE cars in
2020, but it gives those manufacturers a mandate to push ahead with
deprecating ICEs without scaring share holders.

~~~
phreeza
That seems _extremely_ optimistic, that is 29 months from now. I don't know
how long development cycles are in the car industry, but I am pretty sure
there are many engineers working on ICE cars to be released in 2020 right now.

~~~
djaychela
I think they meant 2040, not 2020?

~~~
robmcm
Yes I did, sorry... getting confused with this and Flash ;)

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gargravarr
As both a petrolhead and a UK resident, I do think this is moving in the right
direction. The internal-combustion engine has had its day. Electric and
alternative-fuel vehicles are rising in efficiency and range, and it's
becoming much more practical to ditch fossil fuels. The number of scandals
that have come to light over increasingly tight emissions regulations shows
that there is no future in burning fuel. Hopefully the price of electric cars
will continue to fall as battery technology improves, although we do still
need to address the problem of emissions from manufacturing the batteries in
the first place and emissions from generating electricity to charge them.
Also, hopefully 2040 is a hard deadline, and car makers will retire the ICE
before that point.

That said, I hope the use of older cars won't be outright banned. Even though
electric cars are becoming much better performers with improving technology,
you cannot beat the roar and power curve of a combustion engine around a track
or twisty road. Hopefully they'll go like horses - electric cars will take
over point to point transport, while ICE-powered vehicles will be for
recreation.

Elsewhere, while this is a good start, I think we seriously need to rein in
the emissions of EVERYTHING that burns fossil fuels. Power plants are already
under scrutiny, but shipping is not - it's becoming increasingly clearer that
container ships, which burn low-quality heavy oil in international waters,
contribute vastly more to air pollution than a large number of cars.

~~~
pistonhead
> you cannot beat the roar and power curve of a combustion engine around a
> track or twisty road. Hopefully they'll go like horses - electric cars will
> take over point to point transport, while ICE-powered vehicles will be for
> recreation

This this this. I think electric cars are great and should replace all non-
recreational modes of transport. However, they simply do not compare to the
joy and involvement you get from ICE cars. The sound and torque curve is
critical for the experience, as is the involvement from a manual transmission
and three pedals. I hope that petrol cars will live on.

~~~
mattmanser
I was in rural France a couple of weeks back.

Idyllic, apart from motorbikes deciding to rev round those twisty bends every
now and then. Everyone who _lives_ near those twisty roads hate you. All of
them mentioned the motorbikes.

I live in the middle of a city, the noise is high, but the really bad noise?
Guys on motorbikes and ferraris and all the other petrol head vehicles.
Revving up streets, powering from 0-30 as quick as they can, dangerous and
noisy. The noise echos up the buildings and affects everyone in those
buildings. Hundreds of people annoyed for one person's little thrill.

Personally I'm all for the complete banning of all these vehicles, right now,
they are a horrid detriment to everyone in ear-shot of them, for the pleasure
of one.

If you want speed, go to a race track.

~~~
IshKebab
I agree. I think recreational use of ICE vehicles is fine from an emission
point of view, if not many people do it. But this noise is another matter.
Those petrolheads are going to be exactly the ones with deliberately and
obnoxiously loud cars and bikes.

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cjsuk
Well that's going to be interesting. We're already reaching end of life for
some of our older nuclear reactors, coal plants are closing as they are unable
to comply with EU emissions regulations and we're basically propping the whole
thing up with gas and coal. Every new infrastructure project in this space is
a walking disaster of cost and chaos. And to add insult to injury we're doing
a very stupid thing and bailing out of Europe which means it's going to cost
more to import electricity.

So, what are we going to power our cars with? I'm betting I'm on a bicycle
again in 2040. Perhaps "peak car ownership" is over.

And what are we going to do with all the petrol and diesel cars then? Bury
them? Recycling them is more difficult than it looks.

~~~
Jean-Philipe
I don't own a car. Neither does any of my friends. I go to work by bike, and
travel by train. I may want to have a car one day for travelling, when train
or plane not an option, but not for use in daily life. I think peak car usage
is already happening now in some places in western and central Europe[1]

[1]
[http://www.economist.com/node/21563280](http://www.economist.com/node/21563280)

~~~
laydn
Just curious, do you, or any of your friends who don't own a car, have any
children?

I'd like to have a "carless" lifestyle as well, but I find that having two
children makes it quite difficult to not own a car.

~~~
ekianjo
Exactly. When you start to consider the cost and inconvenience of travelling
with several family members the car becomes quickly the best option.

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dalbasal
This is slightly meta, but I'm curious about this concept of legislating for
the distant-ish future.

My immediate reaction is "cheap" trick, quite literally. It's cheap in the
sense that the political/public opposition will be pretty weak on legislation
that happens 23 years from now. The authors won't be around to deal with the
consequences.

It also feels a little wrong to deciding things They will presumably still
have a parliament in 2040, shouldn't that parliament decide on laws?
Conversely, if future parliaments will decide anyway by altering, we're back
to cheap, empty gestures.

OTOH, maybe this is a way of de-politicizing.. focusing attention away from
the short term, horse trading, and vocal interest groups.

Any thoughts on highly delayed legislation like this?

~~~
majewsky
You could use that line of thinking to argue for all laws to be abolished when
the next parliament is elected. Laws are almost always designed to be in
effect until repealed so that parliament can focus on what needs changing
(rather than what needs sustaining). It also makes society more stable and
increases legal certainty.

If you want to argue against a law that goes into effect 20 years from today,
I'd rather base the argument on our utter inability of predicting things.

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jlebrech
planning a ban is stupid, they should just gradually increase the tax on it
till cars disappear off the roads and fund public transport with that money.

~~~
the8472
it worked for incandescent bulbs.

~~~
pjc50
Weirdly, incandescent bulbs are one of the things that keep coming up on the
list of alleged reasons for voting for Brexit. I think it's a bit like the
Imperial-metric transition; there are holdouts with strongly felt views.

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mysterydip
This smells like a "pass something to make it look like I'm doing something so
I get re-elected, but take effect far enough away that it either gets repealed
or becomes irrelevant so I keep my donors"

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Aoyagi
Well, first UK would have to get rid of fossil fuel power plants, make
renewable more reliable and green, supported by nuclear, batteries themselves
have to get notably more efficient, make manufacturing of the cars and
batteries more green, recharging in under 5 minutes, massive recharge station
network, EVs need to rapidly drop in price... yeah. It's a nice PR stunt
though.

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sumedh
Can a new govt come in and cancel the ban in the future?

~~~
AndrewDucker
Yup.

One of the basic principles of democratic government is that you cannot bind
the hands of a future government.

(Although signing treaties has some of that effect. And there will be
publicity around changes which can put politicians off.)

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iDemonix
As long as I can keep riding one of my early 90s VFR400s and keep putting fuel
in my classic mini or BMW E30, I don't mind.

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libeclipse
This news made me genuinely happy and hopeful for the future.

Hopefully, future governments won't turn back on this.

~~~
zapperdapper
I don't think future governments will back down on this. They see the writing
on the wall all too clearly.

I think people just won't want to buy ICE cars long before 2040 - they are
simply more expensive to run than EVs. I also think if ride hailing, ZipCar
alternatives and so on increase in availability, fewer people will actually
want to own a car anyway.

Personally, I can't wait to _not_ own a car, it's been one of my life
ambitions for a few years now. I am very much looking forward to that day!

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wooptoo
LOL.

