
Norway reportedly agrees on banning new sales of gas-powered cars by 2025 - moonfern
http://electrek.co/2016/06/03/norway-gasoline-powered-car-ban-2025/
======
wrong_variable
To anyone who is thinking:

1) Yeah, they are a small resource rich country, not practical for the rest of
us.

America, Canada, UK, Saudi Arabia and Australia were resource rich and still
are ( America is the largest producer of oil ) and had the opportunity to do
what Norway did but _chose_ not to do it.

UK had a huge surplus from north sea oil during the 1990s which is allowed
private companies to profit off. Same with America, Australia and Canada.

It is really remarkable how Norway was able to and still is able to think so
far ahead then the rest of us.

~~~
oldmanjay
Norway is culturally optimized for safe equilibrium. America is culturally
optimized for risky advancement. It's pretty starkly different and makes
direct single-variable comparisons into shallow exercises in meaninglessness

~~~
larsiusprime
Norway is also tiny and SOVEREIGN. Any similarly inclined USA state must
answer to the other 49.

~~~
rpgmaker
How so? What stops any state in the US from doing similar things? Genuine
question. California for example routinely establishes new and stricter
(compared to other US states) environmental rules governing emissions and
whatnot. Legalizing pot is similarly fairly out of the mainstream and it is
being done independently by several states.

~~~
orik
If you ban sale of gas cars in say, California, everyone will just hop over to
Oregon/Nevada/Arizona to purchase vehicles.

~~~
toomuchtodo
If you ban gas stations instead in California, where will they fill up? The
federal government has limited control over state land use regulation.

~~~
orik
banning gas stations isn't a ban on new gas vehicles, it's a ban on all gas
vehicles. very different, and the people will never vote for it until we are
in a very different place than we are today.

------
moonfern
It's not that petrol cars will be forbidden but buying a new non zero emission
car in 2025 will be financially not beneficial, according to Norwegian press.

99% of the electricity in Norway comes from hydro power plants, it's a huge
exporter of gas and oil and it's rich.

That makes it easier to make such a progressive decision but congrats for
setting the first deadline.

~~~
digi_owl
Their problem is that once more they can't think beyond the capitol. There
already are all kinds of silly taxes and such to try to get people to drive
less etc.

But outside of the biggest cities public transport only runs during office
hours. End result is that owning and using a car i vital to continued
survival.

So expect this to turn petrol cars into something of a Giffen good, if not an
outright Veblen good.

~~~
tyfon
You can still own a car just not a polluting one. Personally I have a petrol
car that I use to drive to and from an island called Hidra (south in Norway,
about 400 km from here), but there is absolutely no need for a petrol car to
do this. The only reason I didn't buy a tesla is because the build quality of
that car felt really bad when I did a test drive, however in 2025 I suspect
there to be long distance electric cars made by proper car companies like
mercedes or audi.

And even on that island with only ferry connection and 600 residents there is
an hourly bus going the whole day to the local mainland town.

How far into the woods do you live? ;)

~~~
digi_owl
Not far geographically, but the buss stop going at 17.

------
hkjgkjy
Off topic: Anyone watch Okkupert (occupied in English)? The French-Norwegian
made drama about how a modern European country would act if war were to happen
there today (like it kind of has in Ukraine...).

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4192998/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4192998/)

~~~
larsiusprime
(Norwegian here). Great show, but it's so hilariously and transparently self-
flattering to the Norwegian sense of self.

Norway boldly goes zero-emission and turns off the fossil fuel tap.

The European Union essentially hires Russia to swoop in and invade in response
to turn the tap back on. When the shocked Norwegian prime minister demands to
talk to the person in charge, the EU chief's head pops up and scolds them
saying they had this coming. Norwegian pm demands to talk to a european head
of state.... and SWEDEN pops up. SWEDEN!

Seriously, I love this show, but the American equivalent would be if France
and China teamed up as an evil strikeforce to invade America because they were
printing too many Bibles or something.

EDIT: also if norway turned off the tap, isn't that GOOD for Russian gas
exports & thus controlling europe? But exciting fiction nonetheless :P

~~~
hkjgkjy
> Seriously, I love this show, but the American equivalent would be if France
> and China teamed up as an evil strikeforce to invade America because they
> were printing too many Bibles or something.

I'd love to watch that one, haha!

Although I have to say, being scandinavian (🇸🇪) as well, the show had me
thinking better about the life in Ukraine 2014, Iraq 2003 or Afghanistan 2001.
Let's all refuse violence, and end war.

------
superuser2
I'll keep banging on this since I haven't yet heard a satisfactory answer:
what are you going to do about people who park on the street or in garages
they do not own?

Overnight charging systems are for homeowners. Even with a (high end,
optimistic) public charge station time of 30 minutes, if there are just 4
people ahead of you in line, that's 2.5 hours out of your day.

Yes self driving may fix this eventually, but what if we are not there by
2025?

~~~
alkonaut
Charging posts on the streets and in public parkings is becoming more and more
common. Also, electricity is 230V so charging at home is quicker than with
110.

Perhaps most importantly, since Scandinavia is at 60deg north, we use engine
heaters in winter. That means that a lot of parking spaces, such as those
outside multi-tenant buildings have a charger post with at least 230V/10A
(because at -25C if you don't plug in at night you aren't going to get to work
tomorrow).

So "plugging in your car" is something we have done for a long time, even with
gasoline cars, and even if you don't live in a detached house.

~~~
superuser2
Thanks, that explains why this isn't crazy for Norway.

Still interested in how we are going to make the electrical infrastructure
buildout happen in the US. Commercial parking facility owners will respond to
market incentives, sure, but I'm not sure that city governments and entrenched
landlords will.

------
drdaeman
I get it that they want to use electricity as the primary energy source for
vehicles, and make all sort of fossil fuels non-viable options, but still
curious - does "gas" generally means just/mostly gasoline, or applies to LPG
as well? (Just that in my native tongue a word "benzin" is used for gasoline,
and "gas" is always about propane/butane mixes.)

~~~
astrodust
In American/Canadian parlance "gas" as discussing flammable fuel almost always
means "gasoline" with exceptions like "gas main" or "gas canister" where it
refers to "natural gas" (methane) or in the case of the canister, possibly
propane, but usually people say "propane canister" or "propane tank" to be
specific.

------
ZeroGravitas
There's been a few stories like this, from a few different governments and
many reactions suggest this is outlandish grandstanding, which puzzles me, as
it seems eminently achievable from what I can gather. Simply good forward
planning really (one of the comments suggest it's a target, not a "ban" as
such).

------
aftbit
This is a very bold bet. It would not work in the US, at least without some
kind of revolution in public transit. There are plenty of places where not
owning a car means you basically cannot have a job or a social life, and many
of these are far from any existing EV stations.

It will take a long time to replicate the network of petrol stations that
covers basically all US roads. Also, modern EV cars are still an order of
magnitude slower to recharge than gasoline cars are to refill. It's not as
easy to increase your range in an EV as it is to carry some extra petrol if
you're on a long trip into the brush.

Fortunately, I don't see this even being seriously proposed in the US until
long after these problems are solved.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> It will take a long time to replicate the network of petrol stations that
> covers basically all US roads.

Every home is a slow charger. Tesla has Superchargers covering most of the
first world.

> Also, modern EV cars are still an order of magnitude slower to recharge than
> gasoline cars are to refill.

Vehicles sit idle ~95% of the time. Average US round trip commute is ~45
miles/day. Plenty of charge time.

> Fortunately, I don't see this even being seriously proposed in the US until
> long after these problems are solved.

Tesla is making an announcement about their autonomous vehicle program near
the end of the year.

Change is going to happen slowly, and then all of a sudden.

~~~
CalRobert
"Every home is a slow charger. Tesla has Superchargers covering most of the
first world."

I agree with your post, BUT remember that we apartment-dwellers are often
forgotten. Few landlords are cool with snaking an extension cable to your car.
My own apartment has no parking at all (a good thing, in my view, since
parking encourages auto reliance), so I've parked on the street since I moved
here. Incidentally, I sold my car earlier this afternoon, and am moving to a
city where living car-free is practical.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Make it mandatory property managers support EV charging stations, as
California has done.

[http://www.propertymanager.com/2015/08/electric-vehicle-
char...](http://www.propertymanager.com/2015/08/electric-vehicle-charging-
stations-for-california-landlords/)

For apartments with no parking, I agree there is little solution to that other
than not owning a vehicle.

~~~
aftbit
"For residential leases signed, renewed or extended on or after July 1, 2015,
landlords are required to approve a tenant’s written request to install an
electric vehicle charging station at the tenant’s parking space if the tenant
enters into a written agreement which includes requirements regarding the
installation, use, maintenance and removal of the charging station, requires
the tenant pay for all modifications, and requires the tenant to maintain a
$1,000,000 general liability insurance policy."

Seems only applicable to people who intend to rent for many many years. If you
move, you might need to pay to tear out your EV charging station.

~~~
CalRobert
A good way to address this would be to unbundle housing from parking. I'd
prefer to rent a spot in a neighborhood parking garage, separate from my
apartment, where I could charge a vehicle. That would be a huge shift in US
building policy, though.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Fingers crossed electric self-driving cars negate any need for this sort of
complexity in the future.

------
WalterBright
Bans make for good press, but are an inefficient club to the economy. A more
sensible way is to simply tax the carbon content of fuel, and raise the tax
until it becomes economically worthwhile to switch most uses to alternatives.

------
michahell
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4192998/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4192998/)

------
andrewclunn
Passing laws now about what SHOULD be in the future is a way for politicians
to make it seem like they're doing something when they have no real solutions.
It will be technology and industry innovators and disruptors that make this
possible, but I'm sure the intelligentsia and politicians will give "forward
thinking policy makers" the credit.

~~~
thesimon
So instead of helping EV companies ("industry innovators and disruptors") by
making their products more attractive, they should just do nothing and hope
some "disruptors" come around?

~~~
astrodust
How many hundreds of millions more in tax breaks and subsidies does Tesla
need?

They're getting a lot of help.

~~~
Skinney
Forget Tesla. Stuff like this makes it interesting for other companies to join
the competition. And competition is good.

------
jacknews
Possibly good news of course, but I find something is a bit out of place given
this is coming from a petro-state. They could surely have more impact on
global warming etc by simply shutting down oil exports.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Not really, oil is fungible so they'd just encourage other countries to
produce more. There will need to be global cooperation to keep oil in the
ground, otherwise one country could defect and make a fortune.

------
SCAQTony
Norway's population is less than half the size of L.A. County. (5.1-million
rounded up) A very ambitious and commendable project but easily accomplished
in a country with such a low population. Ford a alone makes almost 2.5-million
cars a year.

"...At the end of 2014, 2.5 million passenger cars were registered in Norway.
This corresponded to 491 passenger cars per 1,000 inhabitants..."

[https://www.ssb.no/en/transport-og-
reiseliv/statistikker/bil...](https://www.ssb.no/en/transport-og-
reiseliv/statistikker/bilreg/aar/2015-03-25)

------
mrweasel
While I think it's great that they've set a date, I think it's perhaps a
little premature.

Tesla has some nice options, Renault and other have to, they are all either in
the high price range or to small for a family to use as the their only car.
The number of alternatives on the marked seems a bit limited, and I don't
think nine years is enough to remedy that.

Also what are they going to do in respect to charges, will they mandate that
all manufacturers use the same plug?

~~~
Skinney
There are alternatives to fossil fuels besides EV.

Also, fossil fuel based cars will not be banned. The goal only applies to new
cars. In Norway, people on average keep their cars for 15 years or so, due to
the high cost of owning a car (cars are taxed heavily here).

------
cm2187
What I don't get is that this is a pretty confident bet that batteries will
dramatically improve. It's not a very densely populated country. It's not like
you can have a charging station every 3km. Usually law follows technology.
Here it seems to anticipate it massively.

~~~
mtgx
It's not as outlandish as you may think.

Tesla has already said that it expects batteries to cost $100/KWh by 2020.
Although that may be a little optimistic, I don't think it's off by more than
2, maybe 3 years. By 2020 batteries could cost around $70/KWh, after which Li-
Ion batteries at least, will probably stagnate, as it's close to raw material
cost, but I expect some new type of batteries to emerge by then with potential
for higher density/$.

But let's say batteries will only be $100/KWh by 2025. There was a recent
report [1] saying that at $150/KWh, and considering charging and maintenance
costs, which are about 1/3 that of a normal car, EVs should be competitive. So
you may pay a little more for an EV upfront, but overall it should be very
competitive.

I expect by 2025 we'll see 15,000 euro cars with 200+ mile ranges as well,
possibly even from Tesla, but even more likely from Renault, Nissan, Hyundai,
etc.

But beyond all of this, I suspect one of the reasons why Norway set up this
deadline is because just like Denmark, it actually wants fewer cars on the
road. So such a law is very compatible with that goal as well, although in a
more indirect way. If you _must_ have a (new) car after 2025, then it better
be an EV. I think it makes a lot of sense, and I think we'll see a few more
countries establish such goals by 2025, or 2030, as well.

[1] - [http://www.techinsider.io/electric-vehicle-battery-cost-
decr...](http://www.techinsider.io/electric-vehicle-battery-cost-
decreases-2016-3)

~~~
arkad
+1 And there is another smart kid in the class, ie. Toyota with its Mirai

------
pinaceae
what about trucks, heavy machinery and motorcycles? battery tech is not there
for all of those. range/power/density work against batteries in those. current
models all suck.

~~~
astrodust
There was a time when it was laughable that the "automobile" would ever
replace the horse. It broke down constantly, it had such anemic engine power
that it could barely get up a hill, and the manufacturers of these vehicles
were just a bunch of people in a ramshackle garage.

Yet somehow we made it work.

~~~
dredmorbius
Large reserves of liquid petroleum were first proven viable in 1869. Even
then, supplies were uncertain in the US until 1930, at which point the largest
onshore find in the lower-48 states to that time _and the present_ was
discovered, the East Texas Oil Field.

Initially used for lamps (Standard Oil was founded as an _illumination_
company), _motive_ power wasn't practical (aside from as an alternative to
coal or wood for steam engines* until Nikolaus Otto perfected the four-stroke
engine in 1876. Daimler started his own company in 1880, but didn't perfect a
transport-capable engine until 1885.

Within 25 years, Henry Ford was selling Tin Lizzies to anyone who could come
up with $260 in cash. Numbers of automobiles and companies exploded.

And yet total patents filed not only _plateaued_ by 1925, but _fell_
afterward. Not _all_ the hard problems had been solved, but many were, and
there's been comparatively little qualitative improvement in automobiles in
the subsequent 90 years, particularly as compared with the 50 preceding.

From first inception to mass consumer product was the blink of an eye
_considering all of historical innovation in transport previously_. We saw
6,000 years of transport expertise obsoleted within a generation.

------
Shivetya
what are they going to do between then and now to get older vehicles out of
service? are there emissions tests in Norway? Do they have a cut off date, as
in the car is beyond a certain age it is not tested? Do they treat trucks and
such the same?

I think its an interesting idea and it might work depending on how fast fuel
cell and battery technology advances. I have never been a believer of the all
battery solution as it imposes weight issues and as power levels increase
charging issues arise. (damned if you do damned if you don't scenario)

~~~
DasIch
There is no need for the government to set up a system to make sure older
vehicles are taken out of service. You just use a combination of taxes and
subsidies. You tax gas, vehicles based on their emissions or both to make old
cars unaffordable, so people will take them out of service. On the other hand
you make electric cars more affordable and usable through subsidies on
electric cars and infrastructure for them.

If you want to push the industry further, you could also make money available
for research into electric cars, batteries and related technology. You want do
to the latter probably anyway because you need energy storage in order to make
renewable energy work.

Modern cars are all tested for emissions by the manufacturers because of US
and EU requirements. I'm sure Norway has regulation for that as well. Cars
that are so old that they're untested, you could just assume as having the
worst possible grade in tests. That's probably not far from the truth.

Much of that is already happening. In the EU gas is taxed quite heavily for
example. Germany has environmental zones to combat air pollution that certain
cars aren't allowed to enter due to their emissions. Germany has also plans on
subsidizing electric car sales.

~~~
CuriousSkeptic
They should probably skip subsidies though.

Taxing emissions makes sense because emissions are a direct externality. But
when you subsidies replacements you are essentially betting on the most
efficient solution, not at all certain it would be the best, you also
introduce new externalities for people to profit on unfairly.

I'm guessing it would be much more effective to tax emissions, do so
aggressively, and then just pass back the money directly as a public dividend.
This way the market has full freedom to pick a way forward, any way.

~~~
Skinney
We tax emissions. This way, a plug-in hybrid is cheaper than a diesel-car, and
a pure EV is cheaper than a plug-in hybrid.

We also have some special privileges for EV cars. Like free parking on
state/county-owned parking places and the option of driving in the public
transport lane. Special privileges are supposed to go away in a couple of
years though, due to the increase in EV owners.

We've had some problems with this after the "emission-test-cheating" scandal
though.

~~~
CuriousSkeptic
Point being that EVs might be the wrong thing to promote. Perhaps that market
would decide to get rid of commuting altogether, or improve other means of
transportation like trains. Perhaps an infrastructure for EVs turns out to be
worse in other areas, but now a new dependence on its existance instead of
oil, again crests a situation very expensive to get out of?

That was what I meant with betting, the reason we have free markets in the
first place (as opposed to central planning) is because we simply can't plan
such things without them, it's to complex.

~~~
Skinney
Assuming that there is a totally free market in the first place. Norway is a
socialist country. All public transportation (and infrastructure) is owned by
state or county. That will change somewhat soon, as private companies will be
allowed to compete with the national train company. However, the state will
still own the train cars and the tracks.

Public transportation is promoted way more than EV. And special EV privileges
will disappear over the next couple of years. EV, hydrogen and hybrids will
still be cheaper due to us taxing emissions, however.

Not to indicate that Norway doesn't have a free market, it mostly does.
Exceptions are alcohol and public transit (state secured monopolies).

------
buckbova
It'd be really something if they ban oil production, at least beyond what's
required domestically for manufacturing.

------
boona
Thank god the US is so innovative because they would never be able to reach
their goals.

~~~
Throwawaaaay
You mean the company run by a South African?

------
pmyjavec
Better late than never?

------
johansch
If they want to save the world they should stop extracting oil and selling it
to people who will burn it.

------
ck2
Can you imagine this in the USA after the response by the right to limiting
just incandescent lightbulbs?

Half the legislatures in the country passed laws to ban any ban on the old
lightbulbs.

I think some politicians ran on it, remember Michelle Bachmann?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Lighting_Energy_Policy#Li...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Lighting_Energy_Policy#Light_Bulb_Freedom_of_Choice_Act)

If they limited gas powered cars the government would probably be overthrown
by some of the same lightbulb people.

2025 does seem a bit soon but it would be nice to have a target to talk about,
ie. no new gas cars made starting 2050 (people would horde them though)

