Can we not pretend that electric cars don't pollute the planet?
To be clear, I am a big fan of electric cars. But this seems to have become another one of those things that has become so polarised you're not even allowed to express healthy skepticism.
ICE vehicles have very little headroom for "environmental growth" whereas electric seems to have very high levels of headroom. Batteries from more common elements, better recycling, more renewable energy to charge them. As much as I love big trucks, there is no "zero carbon diesel".
So it isn't pretending, they really are a lot better for the planet in the mid-term and forward.
Also, the fact that EVs produce almost zero local pollution makes them incredibly compelling. So much so that I'd still be in favour of them even if they produced the same amount of CO2 overall. Just to make it clear which "team" I am on.
I'm just pointing out that the EV debate seems to have become one of those things where people pick a side and then stop accepting any nuance.
The comment I originally replied to was making the typical glib lazy assertion that ICE cars are some terrible medieval technology and EVs are all sunshine and rainbows. It's more complicated than that.
there is also the environmental cost of replacing the worldwide fleet of vehicles with EVs, and replacing fuel based infrastructure with electric infrastructure. I would love to see a study done on the environmental impact of car ownership in a place like Cuba, where they fix and reuse 70 year old cars to this day due to sanctions. They've certainly avoided all the shipping pollution that the auto industry would have imposed at least.
I think our disposible lifestyle needs to be fixed. Replacing your perfectly good thing with shiny new x% better thing is not necessarily green when you consider the costs of manufacturing that thing, shipping it to you, and disposing with your old thing.
And it's insanely expensive and thus not ever going to be remotely economically feasible. The only reason it might falsely appear to be so now is because it is heavily subsidized (way more heavily subsidized than EVs are).
Economic feasibility is a different question, but we can say the same thing about EVs in Norway - they're not currently economically feasible there without significant incentives. That doesn't mean technology can't catch up.
Is anyone pretending that electric cars don't pollute? It seems like the pollution of EVs has been widely discussed in all kinds of media. Even extremely pro EV site like Electrek or CleanTechnica writes about it all the time.
The pitch has always been that they pollute less globally (and that how much depends on the electric energy mix, but will generally decrease over time) and way less locally. EVs is also the only solution to have a viable path to net zero lifetime CO2 impact. It'll take a zero-emission grid and zero-emission mining, but we need those anyway, and EV tech will help make mining zero-emission.
With Norway's ultra-clean gird four people commuting in a 40kWh EV have, after 130k km, a smaller carbon footprint than four cyclists doing the same.
EV pollute the planet, but so does everything else - including making the food that's turned into energy spent on cycling. It's not all that clear cut.
>Should we allow a free market to continue producing vehicles that contribute to the degradation of the planet?
That's not my argument. It would be a good thing if all governments outlawed ICE consumer vehicles. However, headlines like this are portraying Norway as some kind of progressive utopia where everyone just wants to drive EVs.
Obviously you can make people do whatever you want with aggressive enough tax policies. But the goal should be to get EVs to a fair market price point where they truly compete, not reliant on subsidies.
>Kia niro comes out the same price, electric sells the most.
That's my whole point. Of course more people will choose an EV when they are at price parity. The problem is that they are not. The Niro EV sells for a ~40% premium in the US over the ICE version, because the government subsidies are far less.
Yes, that is correct. But the argument is, «electric cheaper -> sells more». My argument is that the people of Norway wants electric, when priced the same. Electric is the new shiny that most people in Norway want.
They are priced the same, I’ve bought this car to this price. The MSRP includes no sale tax (mva) and no horse power tax. Are you thinking of some other incentives?
The retail price is the same, sure, but the effective price is much different because the incentives come from different tax and rebate schemes that aren't factored into the retail price. EVs have no VAT in Norway, no road tax, no toll or ferry fees [0] -- that's a major difference in the effective price!
Sorry, thought you meant “initial” total purchasing price, if that makes sense. Road tax is back, this year. No ferry fee is only on Europe roads. No toll fee still. Also service cost is probably cheaper, as electric has less failing motor parts, not sure about the battery though.
Many of these are regular business expense deductions like depletion and foreign tax credits. They’re not specific to carbon energy industries and aren’t subsidies per se.
Exactly right. A consequence of the US tax code being so complicated is that regular people (even very highly educated regular people) do not understand even elementary tax concepts.
That article was written by Drilling Info and reads like a lobbying piece. Here's some info on that company:
Drilling Info has more than 2,700 accounts globally with more than 20,000 users. Drilling Info members produce more than 90 percent of domestic oil and gas in the United States.
They're in the oil and gas business -- of course they want to "debunk" any info about the subsidies given to that industry.
I'll take one point from that article as an example of BS:
"Intangible Drilling Costs ($3.5 billion “subsidy” – low estimate is $780 million) - Intangible Drilling Costs are essentially the cost of drilling a new well that have no salvageable value. Currently, most exploration companies are allowed to deduct 100% of the costs in the year they are incurred with the majors able to deduct 70% of the costs immediately with the remaining 30% amortized over 5 years. In what world would money spent that may or may not be recovered be capitalized as an asset?"
Plenty of companies spend plenty of money on R&D every year that goes nowhere. For some reason, the oil & gas industry gets a refund on their exploration but other companies don't. I work in R&D in tech -- should the government fund my complete salary for projects that turn out to not be viable? Sounds great if you're an entrepreneur -- start all the companies you want and get refunded by the government for all of your misses.
LOL - They don't get a refund. They get to deduct those as business costs exactly like R&D expenditures. The argument from the *those are subsidies" camp is that they should have to capitalize them as a purchased asset (and depreciate them on the usual schedule) and not be able to deduct them in the year of expenditure, which would be like treating R&D the same as purchasing a building. As the article says, that doesn't make any sense at all. And allowing a deduction of intangible drilling costs much like all other business deductions is in no way a "subsidy."
The headline doesn't seem misleading. I would also argue that the government giving out incentives for electric cars makes Norway "some kind of progressive utopia" as it is a republic and I assume it is in someway what the people want.
