
Electric vehicles reached 2M cars in 2016 - doener
http://www.iea.org/newsroom/news/2017/june/electric-vehicles-have-another-record-year-reaching-2-million-cars-in-2016.html
======
awjr
Norway is planning to phase out petrol/diesel cars by 2025
[https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industry/norway-phase-
out...](https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industry/norway-phase-out-petrol-
and-diesel-cars-2025)

I suspect this is where we are headed.

However an EV car takes the same space up as an ICE car. EV cars do not solve
congestion and if you move from a policy of maximising traffic flow to
maximising road capacity you very quickly realise that the fundemental problem
is the private car. So the conclusion is to ban the car
[https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/dec/09/car-free-
city...](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/dec/09/car-free-city-oslo-
helsinki-copenhagen)

I believe Copenhagen now has only 9% of people commuting by private car and
62% by bicycle.

~~~
kilroy123
I agree. So we'll just sit in the same traffic in our electric car for an
hour, each way to work?

I could see traffic a being a lot better with fully autonomous cars. Still,
public transportation and more bike lanes seem like a much better investment
and way to go.

~~~
awjr
I'd be surprised if private autonomous cars will be allowed into cities,
whereas public ride share autonomous mini-buses with dynamic routing AI will
be the way forward.

~~~
edaemon
I think people like their privacy too much for that, as efficient as it may
be. It seems more likely to me that private (or public single-occupant)
autonomous cars will become smaller. Something like a Smart car size
autonomous EV -- small enough to minimize costs, large enough to be useful for
the single rider.

~~~
awjr
A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the
rich use public transport — paraphrased from Enrique Penalosa, former Mayor of
Bogotá, Colombia

[http://newyork.thecityatlas.org/lifestyle/developed-area-
ric...](http://newyork.thecityatlas.org/lifestyle/developed-area-rich-public-
transport-ways-city/)

I think privacy is something that is a function of cost benefit. When road
pricing becomes ubiquitous (as it will given the march towards EV), people
will begin shift to public transport.

------
guimarin
It's interesting to me that Norway is such a leader in deployed EVs simply
because of their Sovereign Wealth Fund getting so much of its revenues from
Oil interest. That would be like Saudi Arabia having 30% EVs, seems crazy.

The other fun number is that the US was only 160k out of the 2M vehicles. Much
more in line with the US population proportion to the world. A signal perhaps
of the US's waining global leadership. Perhaps in the next ten years America
will shrink back into a regional superpower.

~~~
pilom
I doubt it has to do with the US's waning global leadership and more to do
with the fact that Americans drive longer distances per year than people in
any other nation. There are HUGE parts of the US where you literally couldn't
get an electric car to without putting it on a flatbed or using standard 15
amp house outlets for days. I work from home and travel through rural parts of
the US all year long and there is no way people who live >100 miles from an
urban center would EVER think about buying an electric car because of range
anxiety even with the new 200+ mile ranges that aren't really available
outside a handful of cities.

The US is a large country with lots of empty space in it.

~~~
imgabe
Yeah, having driven across the US twice I don't think people realize how much
empty space there is. There's a whole lot of nothing out there.

Don't get me wrong, much of it is great and beautiful. It's also really,
really big. We probably have stretches of uninhabited land larger than some
countries.

~~~
kesselvon
plenty of places in the country where you can drive for 5 hours and not pass a
town with over 1k living there

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sparky_z
Headline seems almost meaningless, and doesn't do justice to the importance of
the story. It would be like saying "World population has another record year".
What sort of disaster would have to befall the industry for the number of
electric cars on the road to actually decrease from last year?

Hypothetically, I could envision growth declining or accelerating in any given
year, both of which would be news worth pointing out. (And in a mature market
like conventional gasoline cars with lots of near end-of-life "clunkers" out
there, I could see absolute number decreasing, which would be worth knowing).
But an increase in absolute number of EVs is so nearly certain as to just be
noise.

~~~
panzer_wyrm
It seems that EV are on the verge or climbing the hockey stick curve. That is
hugely important.

Exponential growth in renewables is the only real solution to climate change.

~~~
cakedoggie
More cars is not a solution in any way to climate change, no matter what they
are. It helps such a tiny amount, and will probably add more problems as
people switch over.

~~~
gcb0
how dare you criticize consumerism!

think of all the poor rich people trying to feel good about their imense
investment on a disposable toxic ton of battery. How insensitive.

------
martinald
I think electric buses are really interesting. They are often perfectly suited
to the task, really improved air quality (and noise) and also the ride
experience is vastly better without a 8L diesel engine banging away.

London has a few routes with them on now and I wish TfL would invest more in
it. The air quality on main streets is horrible here.

~~~
Brakenshire
It's going that way. The only problem is double decker buses have only just
been released as electric. TfL have trialled then as they've become available,
I think they're doing what they can.

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Animats
_" Still, electric vehicles only made up 0.2% of total passenger light-duty
vehicles in circulation in 2016."_

The breakthrough will come when Beijing goes electric-only. Already, it's much
easier to get a Beijing license for an electric car.

------
Vaskerville
I think bikes are going to be bigger than electric cars.

~~~
wongarsu
Especially e-bikes are gaining a lot of momentum. They take away the sweat
factor of regular bikes while still having massive health and congestion
advantages over car commutes (and within the city are often faster than cars
due to congested streets).

~~~
mattmanser
People hurt themselves on E-Bikes, I can see it being a fad when people
realise it's a relatively dangerous way of travelling.

~~~
Brakenshire
In the EU ebikes are quite limited. If you're going to hurt yourself at 17mph
on an ebike a normal bike isn't going to safe either, as soon as you go down a
hill. American ebikes seem to be crazy powerful.

------
_red
Digging up millions of tons of earth to get a few pounds of rare earth metals
to make batteries in order to charge those batteries using coal -- how
environmentally thoughtful.

~~~
mistercow
It's actually complicated, and how efficient it ends up being depends on how
power is produced where you live:

[http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/electric-cars-
green](http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/electric-cars-green)

~~~
rgbrenner
a us version of that map:
[http://www.ucsusa.org/publications/catalyst/winter16-electri...](http://www.ucsusa.org/publications/catalyst/winter16-electric-
vehicles-just-how-green-are-they)

