
China plans to ban sales of fossil fuel cars entirely - rising-sky
https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/10/china-plans-to-ban-sales-of-fossil-fuel-cars-entirely/
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dang
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=china%20fossil%20fuel%20points...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=china%20fossil%20fuel%20points%3E10&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

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majewsky

      points>10
    

Oooh, that's nice.

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throwaway613834
How much cleaner is electricity that comes from fossil fuels compared to
direct burning of fossil fuels?

EDIT 1: Thanks for all the enthusiastic replies telling me that power
generation is better optimized. Yes, I already understand power plants are
much more likely to be better optimized than car engines. That's why I asked
"how much" instead of "whether". I'm wondering if the difference ends up being
something like 10% (by whatever the suitable metric is) or 30% or 60%. Numbers
and/or references from actual data would be appreciated.

EDIT 2: Note that we also need to consider the energy loss in transferring the
electric power and charging up the battery; it's not just about power
generation efficiency. I don't know if this is significant or not.

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kseistrup
At least the pollution is more centralized and can be dealt with more
efficiently.

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EGreg
Yes, the CO2 exhaust can be captured before it escapes!

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aylmao
This is an interesting move not only from the environmental perspective, but
also the industrial. Depending on how they do this, they could be creating a
captive market that pushes demand for EVs to the point Chineese automakers get
a real head start on affordable electric car design and manufacturing.

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_ph_
I am pretty sure that electric cars are going to take over the car market.
Tesla has shown that electric cars can be more desirable than combustion
engined ones. They are also the best way to reduce the environmental impact of
cars. Currently, the market share is limited by the higher price and more so
even by the small number of different electrical models offered. The price
does not matter if you cannot get the car model you want in the first place.

So any threats of fossil car sales is about accelerating the switch and push
car makers into quickly offering a wider variety of electric cars. As soon as
electric cars cross 50% market share, combustion engine cars probably will
become less desirable and difficult to sell. So a total ban should not matter
too much then, the trick is getting to 50%.

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danenania
As much as I would like this to happen soon, I see the 30 minute charge as
main ux impediment that needs to be overcome before they can really go
mainstream. People simply aren't going to want to wait that long. It needs to
be comparable to getting gas or it's a dealbreaker imo.

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_ph_
The key to that is to have the car charge, when it parks. Then even modest
charge speeds are sufficient to keep your car charged all the time. You would
only have to wait for a recharge when going long distance>300 miles in one
drive. There electric cars would be slower than combustion engined ones -
unless you take breaks anyway, which would make the charge time mostly vanish.
But yes, electric cars have tradeoffs too. As a plus you never have to refuel
in day-to-day driving and there are all the other benefits of electric
propulsion (comfort and environmental impact).

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danenania
That's a good point--requires quite a big infrastructure push though to get
there. Seems like a bit of a chicken and egg problem, as it will be hard to
justify the spending required to make charge-while-parking sufficiently
ubiquitous until electric cars have a big market share, but I'm not sure they
can get that market share without a good charging story like the one you
describe. Tough problem.

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_ph_
It is happening. Here in Germany, you often will find at least one or two
charging spots at malls, and a lot of supermarkets have set up charging spots
too - as soon as they are regularly occupied, more can be added easily. Also,
about 50% of all car owners could addd electricity to their garage or parking
lot without a large investment. Some cities are experimenting with adding
plugs to street lights.

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donatj
Hopefully the battery tech arrives to support all these bans.

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jl6
We could do it with current tech if we expanded lithium mining and the
charging networks.

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ekianjo
Natural resources are limited and an increased demand is going to make prices
rise especially if the demand goes faster than the supply expansion.

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llukas
Ever heard about peak oil?

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ekianjo
Peak oil was never reached, technically speaking. Lithium may be a very
different story.

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llukas
Why? Lithium is more common than oil?

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njarboe
Is there any other rational explanation of why China was granted "Most Favored
Nation" status and entrance into the WTO other than short sightedness and the
willing to sell out the western workers for a quick buck? No company can
manufacture in China without transferring their technology and know-how to a
local company. I can understand why China does this. Seems to be working well.
Why does the west support this undemocratic, closed system, internet firewall,
rising economy; soon to be superpower? Cheap iphones?

The west had quite a bit of leverage over China at one point. No longer.

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imron
If you've ever visited or lived in a Chinese city they need to do this to cut
down on pollution, which is awful.

They're also ramping up nuclear power for similar reasons ([http://www.world-
nuclear.org/information-library/country-pro...](http://www.world-
nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/china-nuclear-
power.aspx))

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em3rgent0rdr
The government should rather use high taxes on fossil-fuels so the market can
efficiently work, instead of trying to micromanage with all these subsidies,
special rules, outright bans, and other "incentive programs".

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paublyrne
Wouldn't applying high taxes also be 'micromanaging'? And why do you think the
market, guided by tax changes or not, should decide on how long we keep
building combustion engine cars?

If the market wanted to keep them around for a hundred years, until the oil
runs out, would that be ok, given what we know about how damaging the
emissions from cars are?

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ekianjo
High taxes still leave some space for innovation compared to a straight ban.

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em3rgent0rdr
That answers the first question, "Wouldn't applying high taxes also be
'micromanaging'?"

For the second question "And why do you think the market, guided by tax
changes or not, should decide on how long we keep building combustion engine
cars?" I would say because the market under a fossil-fuel tax will do a better
job at optimizing for what ought to be the desired ultimate goal of fewer
fossil-fuel emissions overall instead of simply meeting what is an unnecessary
side-goal of no fossil-fuel-burning cars.

For the third question, "If the market wanted to keep them around for a
hundred years, until the oil runs out, would that be ok, given what we know
about how damaging the emissions from cars are?", I would say a large-enough
fossil-fuel tax would cause humans to not use up the remaining oil as fast as
these other schemes.

