"Come 2032, not all cars will be ultra-low emission, but Scotland hopes that the majority will either be powered purely by electricity or have a hybrid option."
Obsolete is defined as: "no longer produced or used; out of date."
No longer sold in Scotland does not equate to no longer produced or used, and even at that they do not actually plan to forbid sales of ICE vehicles by 2032.
Does any manufacturer make 'simple' EVs? I mean that as in fewer computers. My current car is about 18 years old and besides the ECU there's not that much going on. No touchscreen controls, no telemetry. I hope that one day I'd be able to switch to an EV but I'm disappointed by most of them (and yes I understand I'm a minority in disliking smart everything)
You're not as alone as the media might lead you to think. There is a lot of hype and marketing going on with EVs to get people to adopt this change in technology that is consumer funded.
I agree with you, there are too many nice-to-have features in cars that add to the [unnecessary] complexity of these vehicles. Late 90 cars started with this, adding air-bag suspension and corner-leveling systems and it has since grown into automatic windscreen wipers when it rains, automatic lights when it gets dark (like you aren't sitting there looking out the big window), touch screens and gadgets. Some things are useful, for example electric mirrors, others not so much for example 5 different memory positions for the driver's seat where before you just pulled the lever under the seat to move it forward or back. IN case you think this is not a problem it can cause problems with other critical electronic components: I had a dealership's workshop turn off my electric seats in the BCU (BCU = body control unit, the PC of the car) and this meant that because the ABS is linked through the seat, something to do with collisions and the seat moving, the ABS warning light came on leading to a MOT/EU-control fail. I had to buy a code-reader machine to turn it back on myself. On models of this car without electric seats this is not a problem. So many other things I could mention like this example. Simplicity, as I a m sure HN coders and the like will agree, is best.
I also don't want tons of screens and so on in my car. But automatic headlights? Where I live, I see (or, well, don't) cars driving at night without their lights all the time. Automatically turning them on when it gets dark seems like a no-brainer. The worst thing that happens is the sensor breaks and then they become manual headlights...
I see the opposite problem where I live. Driving lights as they are referred to in Norway must be on during the day as well as at night. These are on the front of the car. On the back newer vehicles have the lights off by default and come on when they sense darkness. This means I have followed many cars in hard rain on dark/dusky days and you can't see them up ahead. The law is that rear lights have to be on in conditions where they are necessary, but ignorant drivers see light coming from the front of the car and don't think that people behind them travelling at 110km/h need t see them up ahead. Automation didn't solve any problem, cars used to have lights on front and back at all times, day and night (lots of tunnels in Norway), automation created a problem.
> The worst thing that happens is the sensor breaks and then they become manual headlights...
Don't be too quick to disregard automation dependency. I agree that a headlight switch is probably quite low-risk, but every action you automate carries the risk of overloading the operator if it fails at the wrong time.
I just remembered a perfect example of over-engineering stupidity. A family member has an Audi A6 AWD and his routine service light came on. So being a man in his early 70s he went to check the oil and filters etc himself. He couldn't find the dipstick, so he googled it and found it to ... not exist. Instead of a dipstick there is an electronic sensor in the engine sump and a handy read-out on the built in display on the dash. Good luck fixing that when either the display fails, the sensor fails, the wiring fails... I mean, the dipstick worked for over a hundred years, but wasn't tech enough for an oil check in a 2015 model.
This is one of the reasons why my vehicles are 20 years old. Unfortunately they do have computers and are fuel injected (otherwise no way to pass emissions testing) but for the most part the mechanics are relatively simple.
Same goes for the fuel tanks. It's considered good airmanship to do a quick visual check of the fuel level and compare it to what the gauges tell you. And to drain some fuel from the lowest part of the tank to check it for water or other impurities.
I've never had electric windows fail (and I've been driving for 30 years) but I have had a rental car where one of the hand cranked windows failed - it didn't fail to close, that worked fine but it did fail to stay closed. A gentle push downwards on the glass would make the window lower into the door with the handle spinning round.
Buy a Land Rover or Range Rover, your premium product will have you ripping out the door skins the day after the warranty ends. It's a 3-6 hour job at least and impossible to put the door back as factory because the waterproofing seals aren't available (use gaffer tape). The winding mechanism costs a bundle too.
I was going to say that if I did need a proper 4x4 (which I don't) I'd probably get something Japanese. Then I remembered that my wife had a Toyota SUV that had all manner of electrical problems eventually traced to a faulty sunroof...
The real push for electric cars is coming from China, the world’s largest. They are requiring 8% of cars next year need to be electric or plugin hybrid. They want to get that to 20% by 2025.
Oh man that will be glorious, I can't wait for future trips to Beijing without getting respiratory sickness. So far I'm like 7 for 7 on getting sick in Beijing.
All the "plans to do stuff by 2050" are completely useless. The one who did the plan will not be in charge till that date, someone else will take over and change/destroy the plan (or worse, add +20 years), and in politics this is simply the way to go.
This is procastination at his finest and means "doing nothing now".
I see the point, but this doesn't necessarily mean its an empty gesture as there is a precedent. Back in 2005 the Scottish government aimed for 18% of electricity consumed to be generated by renewable sources by 2020 (later adjusted to 50%). This was met and exceeded in 2015 (59%). Granted this is a smaller timeline but there is real backing for renewables here, especially since the collapse of oil prices hit the local oil industry
In the case of electric vehicles, the long timeline means they can ease charging facilities in without having a massive spend - they just come in when infrastructure gets renewed. Visible charging facilities are one of the things that breaks the "chicken and egg" adoption problem.
If you introduce a ban on petrol vehicles that starts immediately (or within the life of one parliament) people will bitch that that you've destroyed the value of the car they expected to drive for years, the world doesn't have enough EV production capacity, that the mechanics aren't set up for it, that there aren't enough charge stations, that there isn't enough electricity production capacity, etc etc.
I agree it's politically difficult to do this slowly - but it's even harder to do it quickly :)
The price of batteries is falling steadily. EV prices are falling as a result. By 2022 a new EV will cost less to buy than an equivalent ICE car. It would be foolish to get to that point and have people wanting to buy the cheaper option but not feel able to do so due to lack of charging points etc.
Of course, if you take into account the lowered fuel costs and maintenance, then the EV car becomes cheaper even earlier (though it depends on exactly how far you drive and the relative costs of electricity and gasoline) but figures like 2020 are mentioned for the TCO to be lower on a new EV.
Of course that figure doesn't take into account costs/benefits like reducing pollution in cities, health impacts, higher imports of fuel, meeting carbon obligations, balancing grid electricity and other externalities, which is why governments are currently subsidizing EVs to make them cheaper than ICEs (and should probably continue to do so, even after they are cheaper than equivalent ICE cars pre-subsidy, though it probably makes more economic sense to further raise gasoline prices and introduce a carbon tax).
I'm very much in favour of this, but the article alludes to one of the problems: the "long tail" of remote life.
The majority of the Scottish population lives in commuter range of Glasgow or Edinburgh. Here in Edinburgh we already have some hybrid buses so I can see a change to pure electric happening gradually as they become available. There's also no shortage of renewable energy to power the things.
But there are also some people who live remarkably remote lives in the Highlands and Islands. In the Highlands "range anxiety" is very real if your nearest large shop is 100 miles away. Whereas the islands may have limited generation capacity. I can see there being a range of exemptions for these circumstances, although once petrol cars start to become unusual the petrol pump prices will go up.
Islands are generally good for EVs, precisely because you can't drive that far. Orkney in particular has so much renewable energy that they're encouraging people to get EVs to soak up the excess because they have limited connectivity to export the excess back to the mainland:
One immediate consequence of transportation revolutions of the past is that some regions that were considered un-inhabitable before suddenly became viable possibilities. It stands to reason that if in the future the 'energy budget' per person gets reduced to the point where vehicles that can do 800 Km un-interrupted are extremely expensive that such locations will only be affordable to the rich with poorer folks condemned to living in or around the cities.
That's half the length of the UK! More realistically the longest journey required for a remote place to be habitable might be a round-trip from Durness near Cape Wrath to Inverness, which might require a 400km range. Or half that if you can rely on recharging. Much of that would be on the A9 which the article mentions will have chargers added to it.
Already you have the dynamic that much of the really hard poverty is urban. People already move to cities if possible to be where the support facilities are or, if all else fails, to beg on the streets.
What I expect we might see a bit more of is modern self-sufficiency and techno-crofting, where people's cash flow looks low but they grow their own food and don't have to pay rent. Already renewables are making this easier on islands. H&I also seems like a good place for medium-range air cargo drones; rather than send a van on a 100km trip round the mountains, send a drone 25km over them.
I can think of some potential benefits of an EV if you lived somewhere remote like that. Charging at home would be even more convenient if your nearest petrol station was some distance away, possibly wasn't open 24 hours, and had higher than usual prices due to the low traffic throughput. You'd also probably drive more miles than average, meaning the lower fuel costs and maintenance of an EV would add up faster. (I seem to recall a story about a rural delivery driver in the US that realised his per-mile reimbursements for fuel meant he could afford to buy and pay off a Tesla Model S with his fuel savings)
An EV with a range extender for those emergency unexpected long trips could be the best of both worlds, though a higher capacity EV may relatively soon be cheap enough to make that a poor choice.
Bus lines to isolated communities of few people 100 Km away from major cities are typically not feasible. In NL those have all but disappeared when in the past they were a mainstay of public transport. And this country is about as densely populated as it gets.
I wonder if the new pumped storage schemes announced for the Highlands (e.g. Coire Glas above Loch Lochy) will eventually be rendered obsolete by everyone charging their electric car overnight?
Sounds like you're assuming a ban on combustion engines is the only thing a government can do, but they have plenty of other options. They could offer tax incentives for EVs, for example, or fund research into EV technology.
Great to see the Scottish Government leading on renewable energy again. I was worried that adding over 30 million cars to the grid would cause problems but having looked into it it looks like it would add less than half a percentage point onto UK energy consumption at current utilisation rates.
I do wonder how it will affect the PCP market though as the future value of petrol and diesel cars will presumably become more difficult to predict?
I've heard that these future 'bans' on ICEs are actually just bans on pure ICEs and apparently vehicles with even just stop-start technology are classed as 'Micro-Hybrids' which would be allowed after these 2032, 2040 dates.
Secession or "UDI" as some people keep talking up would give the Scottish Government the oil revenue, as well as several billion other headaches and be a disaster.
The only viable route to independence is the legal one. Unless we get the "full collapse" Brexit.
The article didn't say what the source of the energy powering those charging stations will be in 2032. Presumably much of it will still be carbon-based.
Nah, less than 30% of their electricity is carbon based today. They won't have any problem decarbonizing entirely over the next 15 years. They actually just shuttered their last coal plant in 2016, so I'm curious what last year's generation numbers looked like.
Scotland is something of a leader in renewable technologies. Mostly wind, although there have been various attempts to extract power from the tides and waves that have not yet been competitive.
Quite a bit of the scenery is itself an artificial environment of grouse moors. Or previous bits of energy generation like the "byngs" (mining spoil heaps) or the now-demolished Cockenzie power station that was visible from basically anywhere on the firth of Forth. And let's not forget the world-leading aesthetic beauty of Torness' modernist coastal cube.
A headline/goal is unlikely to come without practical, supporting actions which nudge people towards that goal. The headline is something though that spreads and is repeated frequently, getting more and more people thinking about their actions - collectively these things will get people to that goal.
The move away from ICEs is already well underway, in my opinion. Headlines aren't going to slow it down or accelerate it. Companies like Tesla make it happen.
Banning all FFs sounds like a worthy objective overall but it seems like bikeshedding to ban small ICEs yet trains, tractor trailers, farm and mining equipment, jet aircraft and industrial sources receive little regulation. Instead, the average person is taxed, penalized, inconvenienced and regulated for the tiny amount of pollution they produce in comparison to greater polluters.
> ...the tiny amount of pollution they produce in comparison to greater polluters
A quick google search found this article with numbers pulled from a 2012 US Energy Information Administration (eia.gov) report: https://www.c2es.org/energy/source/oil
Transportation is the main consumer of petroleum, accounting for 70% of usage, of which 58% is light vehicles alone - so that's 40% of total - that's still far higher than "industrial" use of 25%. Tack on medium/heavy trucks which I assume includes F-150 trucks and giant off-road dump-trucks alike and it's more than half of total petroleum consumption.
So no - eliminating fossil-fuels from personal transport alone, while leaving industry alone, will still have a huge beneficial impact on greenhouse gas production.
But you forget the halo and knock-on effects: as the market adapts to service non-petrol consumers (e.g. fast EV chargers, battery-swap stations, etc) then industries will adapt to take advantage of them too - it wouldn't surprise me this meant the introduction of an EV John Deere tractor powered the same hot-swappable EV battery pack that might power a hypothetical Ford truck.
F-150 through F-350 are all considered light vehicles. The 450-650 are Medium Duty. The 750 other trucks are considered Heavy Duty. (For GM vehicles append another 0 eg, 1500, 2500, 3500)
Calling 250s and 350s Heavy Duty is mostly marketing, although, the current 3/4 and 1 Ton trucks are more capable than ever, so the marketing inflation does have some basis.
I think the problem is that you're eliminating the cleanest and most regulated segment of the market, so even if it's 40% of the FF used, it's a much smaller fraction of pollution produced.
Is this true though? Does it matter on the grade of fuel, or petrol vs diesel? I think I read that leaded fuel emits less CO2 than unleaded fuel, but I'd definitely choose more CO2 than lead in the air, tyvm.
They produce a lot Air pollution of a very specific type because their fuel includes a lot of sulfur. In terms of total pollution ships are actually a small fraction.
Further, releasing sulfur over the ocean does not impact human or animal heath significantly.
> One giant container ship can emit almost the same amount of cancer and asthma-causing chemicals as 50m cars, study finds
> Confidential data from maritime industry insiders based on engine size and the quality of fuel typically used by ships and cars shows that just 15 of the world's biggest ships may now emit as much pollution as all the world's 760m cars.
It's imprecise in that it refers to pollution that is harmful to human health as if it is the only type of pollution. It says right at the bottom of the article that shipping as a whole is responsible for only 3.5 to 4 percent of climate change emissions.
The shipping industry needs to get its act together too but it isn't _that_ significant when it comes to climate change. In terms of sulphur based pollutants it's pretty horrifying, though.
> The shipping industry ... isn't _that_ significant when it comes to climate change. In terms of sulphur based pollutants it's pretty horrifying, though.
Worth also noting that it would be trivial for the ships to burn fuel with less sulphur in it. The big issue in getting international agreement to enforce the change. There's no technical hurdle or complicated logistical challenge such as is being overcome to swap all ICE passenger cars for EVs.
Particulates/sulfur emissions from bunker fuel (burned by cargo ships) are not the same as CO2 emissions. It's disingenuous to use "pollution" ambiguously to push a narrative.
We can electrify land mobility while also moving ocean going vessels to ultra low sulfur diesel or compressed natural gas. All of the above are cost effective today.
> It's disingenuous to use "pollution" ambiguously to push a narrative.
That's something that should be taken up with the dozens of reputable newspapers from whom I have drawn that information (e.g. the Guardian, quoted above).
That pollution happens over the ocean, where it has little effect on humans' health. As of 2016, heavily polluting ships are not allowed within 200 miles of the US.
Each passebger jet flight you take likely puts out more pollution than you will do in your car in years, as will a campfire. The hippies are a bit backward these days.
This is definitely true, but it's also a little disingenuous to compare in pollution-per-passenger-mile because commercial flight makes traveling further so much easier.
With the ability to travel from JFK to LAX in 6 hours, significantly more people are traveling far distances that they wouldn't have bothered to travel if the only option was train/cars.
Speaking as someone who likes to fly to remote places, planes may be more efficient per mile, but people travel significantly further in them and likely end up contributing quite a bit more to global warming than people who don't fly and just drive to a lake a few hours away instead.
Your figures are so absurdly wrong that they could only come from willfully ignorance or intent to deceive. Coarse insults would be less offensive than your input.
We're talking about carbon emissions, and the science is clear on that and yet we still have a constant volcano of misinformation from contributions like yours.
Banning is easy. Right now the ban is irrational, the EV tech is in it's infancy and nowhere near ready for mass adoption, it needs to be on pair or better than the current solution otherwise it makes no sense to enforce it.
I recommend watching "Who Killed the Electric Car?" - it explains most of the history of EV cars in California. I disagree with its conclusion that battery technology was not to blame - I feel that range-anxiety is a real concern and the GM EV1's range of under 100 miles using bulk lead-acid or 140 miles using NiMH batteries was, and remains, inadequate. Compare to today's Telsa's S and X 250-300+ mile range.
100-140 miles is inadequate for a lot of people however it is more than enough for others. Even if a multi-car family adopts 1 EV it makes a difference.
100-140 miles is more than adequate for nearly all of the United States. While there are people who drive farther, the vast majority of the citizens of this country travel less than 40 miles for work, and I don't know anyone who would drive that far for groceries. People tend to want to buy a car for the largest trip they can imagine they'd take, even if that event may only happen a few times in the vehicle's lifetime.
You're assuming that you always start from a full charge (an assumption I used to make before I got an EV). That's not always the case. I live in a townhouse, so I'm in the process of getting a charging station installed (it's been six months so far and we're still in the paperwork stage ...) In the meantime, I charge where I can. That means I almost never start my day with a full charge. Worse, there are only a few places I can charge, and my best options add 20 miles of range in an hour. Say I start my day with 70 miles of range, which should be more than adequate for my ~45 miles of round trip commute. But an emergency comes up and I have to run an errand. It's just a short 10-mile trip, but now I'm coasting in to home with just 5 miles of range left ... if my meter is accurate (it's not), if traffic's not bad (it might be), etc. Charging stations are few and far between, which means the nearest one might be outside of my remaining range. Or, if I can get to one, it might be occupied. At a gas station I can just wait five minutes. At a charging station, I might have to wait hours for someone who's trying to get a full charge.
Well I drive beyond the range of any electric car several times a month. Granted that's probably somewhere beyond "normal" use but it means an electric car remains infeasible for me. I'm not going to deal with the hassle of renting a car that often.
> 100-140 miles is more than adequate for nearly all of the United States.
Keep in mind that an EV rated at 100 miles probably won't go for 100 miles for a number of factors just like most ICE vehicles won't go their maximum range. The difference is that most ICE vehicles have far greater ranges so it's never an issue.
My old Honda was rated at 26 MPG city and had a 17 gallon tank so in theory I could go 442 miles. In practice I never felt comfortable going above 330 miles on a tank. The low fuel light came on around 280 miles and at 300 miles the fuel gauge was on empty. That's only 67% of the range it could go. Of course when I filled up it was only 12-14 gallons so there was probably another 100 miles in the tank. The car still cautioned you not to go the full range of the tank.
EVs caution you in the same way as ICE vehicles. When the battery gets too low in an EV it can be damaging, just like running an ICE dry can damage the fuel pump. Most EVs will warning you at around 20% capacity and at a certain point will kick into Turtle mode to prevent you from drawing too much current and damaging the battery. If manufacturers hid that 20% capacity the way an ICE vehicle fuel gauge hide their true capacity then suddenly that 100 miles EV is an 80 mile EV. Maybe that's what they should do but they don't.
My EV is rated at 84 miles and my commute is 25.4 miles. So when I get to work in the mornings I should be at ~58 miles of range. Yesterday I arrived with 60, one time I arrived with 44. That's a big range and a number of factors come into play. High winds or rain introduce drag which sucks range. If you're heavy on the pedal then you're going to get a reduced range. Oddly I get better mileage in heavy stop and go traffic and reduced range on wide open freeways.
Now you might say everything looks good and 100 miles should be plenty but what if I have to take my kid to an appointment after work that's 12-20 miles from home? I have two such appointments each week, one is 24 miles round trip and then other is 40 miles. Suddenly a 100 mile EV becomes a nail biting situation. The reality is that people do more than just commute to and from work, they have lives that demand traveling on occasion.
But I can charge up! Maybe... but not always.
LV1 charging takes 18-20 hours to charge my car from 20% to 100%, it would take longer with a 100 mile EV.
But what about LV2 or DC Fast Charging? It's not always an option for people. I have to pay $4000 to have my breaker panel upgraded and a 240v line run to my garage for LV2. Some people live in apartments and condos and might not even have the option to install LV2. I can pay for LV2 charging and there's a DC Fast charger along the way to one of my appointments so I can make my EV work with my schedule but that can't be said for everyone.
If people were to drive calm, cool and collected all the time, and they had access to LV2 or DC Fast Chargers in most places then a 100-140 mile EV would be just fine. But that's not realistic right now. Perhaps in 20 years when robots drive us around and the infrastructure is there, but not today.
I haven't seen it, so I can't comment on the movie, but it's worth noting that in the early 90s there was no such thing as high-capacity lithium ion batteries. The capacity of 100 miles with bulk lead-acid was pretty incredible for the time.
The term "range anxiety" seems crafted to make people not take it seriously. The implication is pretty clearly that range is actually fine and it's your feelings about it that are the problem.
It's both. My commute is 30 miles a day (15 miles each way) and about once or twice a week I'll drive further - perhaps 60 miles in a day - by that logic I would be happy with the Ford Focus Electric as in practice that car gets 70 miles per charge.
But this assessment completely disregards the times, often at unpredictable occurrences, when I need to drive 100-200 miles (or more) at short notice and when there is not a time allotment to spend 4-8 hours to have the car recharge sufficiently. I would need to rent a car at very short notice in that case - which can be impossible. Things like a family emergency, a server crash at a data-center, a friend urgently needs a ride from Seattle to Portland and back, etc...
Remember, even if an ICE car and an EV have the same range, if both have zero fuel/energy left, the ICE car can be refilled from a hand-portable gas-tank or AAA truck enough to get to the next fuelling station - and you're free to carry additional fuel in your storage space, an EV car does not have that option: there's the prospective of expensive towing and hours waiting for it to recharge. I'd be less concerned if Tesla made some kind of "towable" extended battery or drop-in for the frunk or trunk, or even a portable Honda generator - but it doesn't.
I think it's naive to expect that while the majority of American car owners have no need to travel more than 100 miles per day - that they also have no expectation of travelling that distance - and you only need to travel that distance a few days in a whole year to make the purchase of an ICE vehicle worthwhile so long as EVs take longer to recharge without any kind of fast battery-swap feature.
I'm in the market for an EV myself - I wish I had gotten on to the Model 3 waiting list sooner - but it would have to be a Model 3 because the range of the Chevy Bolt, Volt, Leaf and the Focus Electric is not sufficient for those occasional long-distance journeys, and I imagine that a plurality (if not the majority) of the car-owning public feel the same way I do.
"Come 2032, not all cars will be ultra-low emission, but Scotland hopes that the majority will either be powered purely by electricity or have a hybrid option."
Good goal, bad headline.