One would think that the savings in pollution (not only for the car itself, but the transport of the fuel, pollution from refineries, etc.) would offset any lost revenue from gas taxes.
What makes this really nonsensical is that many states still have electric vehicle rebates. They give you a rebate of a few thousand dollars to reward you for buying an electric vehicle but then charge you a few hundred dollars to punish you for buying an electric vehicle.
There are already taxes on tires, but they seem pretty nominal. I think you could hike them substantially (eg to $10 or $20 per tire) without upsetting too many people if you scrapped or reduced some other fee or abolished the necessity for a piece of paperwork.
Edit: as some pointe dout the real wear comes from trucks an dother big commercial vehicles. Tires are already taxed by vehicle weight class, but I'm proposing increasing the fees for that in order to simplify bureaucracy elsewhere.
It's CERTAINLY a lot less than you'd be paying in gas tax if you used your car an average amount.
Taxes aren't punishment, anyway. Especially "road use taxes", which are, in this case, used to repair the roads you're driving on.
It does, in social impact sense (gas taxes in the US are universally way too low to cover the impacts).
OTOH, diffuse social benefit doesn't pay for road maintenance, and states have legal and practical requirements for short-run operating budget balance. The right solution would probably be increase general taxation, in a way that misses the low end (e.g., bump income taxes, but not the lowest brackets), to cover the costs.
Most of the wear and tear on our roads come from trucks, not passenger cars.
I have a Tesla in CA and am only familiar with the electric vehicle credit (not sure what it is, I haven't looked into it) and the "you get to use carpool lanes" rule for EVs.
Otherwise, I'm not familiar with extra taxes :(
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/16/wrong-tu...
[1]: https://theconversation.com/australias-car-industry-ignored-...
[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/09/scott...
For example, recently there's been quite high electricity prices here (as in most of Europe) due to lack of rain. However this only affected the southern half of Norway[1], as the northern part had a fair bit of rain but limited distribution lines to the south.
There's been quite a bit of talk in the news about how much we need to spend to upgrade our grid for the future. It's not gonna be cheap...
[1] https://www.nordpoolgroup.com/Market-data1/Dayahead/Area-Pri... (compare Oslo with Tromsø for late September)
https://www.statnett.no/for-aktorer-i-kraftbransjen/tall-og-...
In addition to generation there is local distribution. Power lines, transformers, etc. Is there any information on that part of it? I wonder if they needed to upgrade their grid.
I bought a used sub-$20k electrical car a few months ago; it can be done. The market needs pressure to create cars in that price range; right now EVs are mostly luxury cars. Tesla is not the car we should be aiming for; what we need are things in the class of the E-Golf, Kia Niro, FFE, Fiat 500E etc. that are the size of a Corolla and cost 20k CAD or less.
Until that's common on the market, the value proposition is flawed and nobody is buying an electric car to save money except for people who buy used cars that someone else has eaten the depreciation on (like me), or people who drive a LOT. Everyone else is basically buying these things as luxury items, and the cost doesn't matter, especially when you can get near-0% financing over 5+ years.....
As it is the EV subsidies are really just helping homeowners buy luxury cars which seems a little backwards
Out of curiosity, what make and model? I'm trying to find an EV and like everyone is saying, it's all luxury vehicles.
Currently C8s are appreciating their first year, which is really weird.
The Model S is really chonky at almost 5000 lbs, which is the same as a 4Runner.
https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/programs/consult...
One could argue that the government would not be able to offer subsidies on EVs without that option.
0: https://www.norges-bank.no/en/topics/liquidity-and-markets/F...
You're talking about a tax difference, not a price difference. We have the same taxes here in Denmark and our EV sales aren't anywhere near Norway's level. Probably because the actual prices end up being roughly equal, but the EV usually has lower range and takes longer to fill up compared to the equally-priced gasoline car.
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/norway-gm-electric-cars-mo...
Not just the numbers, but also the geography and climate. Make a car that can be used for a long trip any time of the year here, and you're set for most markets.
There's a reason why car makers come to Norway and Sweden to test their new cars before launch.
This is also because they are a small, very rich country and cannot be used as a comparison to others.
He was an oil expert who met a Norwegian au-pair in London, they got together, married, had a sick kid so they decided to move to Norway, and because he had the whole day before he could take the train from Oslo to her hometown, he decided to visit the Ministry of Industry to get leads on oil jobs...
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Nor...
[1]: https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2015/july/1435672800/ric...
There may still be some infrastructure for special use cases like long haul trucking or industrial vehicles, but it might become untenable for the average consumer to own an ICE vehicle, just like it was painfully difficult to own an EV before charging stations became widespread.
When that happens, it could further accelerate the decommissioning of old vehicles.
Fuel stations make most of their profits from non-fuel items (in my country, fuel stations sell some of the best coffee), and people will still need those when commuting or travelling. In Norway some fuel stations have started to convert pumps to EV chargers [0], however there isn't really much cost needed to keep a couple of fuel pumps around. Petrol can last a few months in tanks, and diesel can last up to a year.
People are still going to be using petrol for motorbikes and gardening equipment for a long time, and diesel is going to be used by trucks and construction machinery for even longer.
[0] https://insideevs.com/news/532464/fuel-stations-norway-fast-...
Simply swapping pumps for EV chargers may not sustain a good-enough business. EV charging needs about 30-60 minutes. Current 5-minute shops that sell cigs and energy drinks aren't an attractive destination.
I think it's more likely that malls and supermarkets will add EV charging and take over both sides of gas stations' business.
(This is based on first-hand experience. My nearest fast charger is at a gas station.)
All of these events make more and more people recognize the relative weakness and fragility of an oil based civilization compared to an electric one.
> before charging stations became widespread.
They still aren't and there are no solutions for infrastructure and growth is still severely lacking and disappointingly slow. There is also no solution for people without a dedicated parking spot, which is especially common in cities.
To be precise, it's 14%, down from 26% in 2008.[0]
[0] https://e24.no/norsk-oekonomi/i/dOXzd1/norge-er-mindre-oljea...
Be like Norway and use the time you have left selling a natural resource wisely, because bans and cross border tariffs are coming, and you’ll be left with what you could build during your transition when the revenue dries up. Hopefully as a country, you don’t end up empty handed.
(Norway also supplies the UK with a large amount of clean hydro power, roughly 690MW continuous, through a newly commissioned underwater HVDC transmission line, so it’s not all dirty fossil exports)
Hypocritical facile criticism is hypocritically facile.
What's notable about Norway is that back in 1968, as the country was first becoming aware of its oil wealth through the newly-realised North Sea deposits (shared with the UK), the country had the foresight to tap the advice of an Iraqi ex-pat who advised the country to invest its oil funds for national growth, infrasturcture, and sustainability, and not squander it in corruption and gratuitous expenditures as so many other countries had and would.
That story is now in the HN queue:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2878010
The consequence is that we can now face the ironic but heartening fact that, yes, an oil-producing and exporting country is now positioned as amongst the more prepared for a post-fossil-fuel economy and civilisation.
If you find yourself in a lifeboat with limited supplies and rations, it's not unwise to make use of those rations. It is unwise to squander those rations for purposes other than reaching safety. And it's extraordinarily unwise to criticise those who are using those rations to achieve a safer state.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28780108
The final "8" got truncated above, leading to a random 10 year old comment...
We also need oil for road building. I don't see that changing anytime either. After all, asphalt production produces far fewer greenhouse gasses than cement. Concrete roads have their place but the vast majority of road miles will be made with asphalt for the near future.
90% of everything in your direct line of sight probably contain petrol derivatives. From wall paint to shampoo, your t-shirt, phone, chewing gums, toothpaste, rugs, shoes... We just can't sustain our modern lifestyle without it
Maybe I'm being reductive, but isn't this essentially because we haven't electrified mine carts et al yet? Or are you referring to steel smelting?
And wood energy was used to jumpstart the fossil fuel energy age. There was a transition period before fossil fuel energy became the dominant way to extract more fossil fuels. Now wood for energy is economically negligible in advanced economies.
Many large oil exporting countries know the good times won't last, and are planning for it.
That's not much - $25K per person over 10 years, and with an average income of $70K per person, and something like half of their economy is energy (most if not all social programs are funded from energy production).
If oil were to stop tomorrow, they'd have around 10 years before the money runs out. (Maybe a bit longer since kids don't earn money.) And if they have to replace all the social funding, they'd have even less time.
Norway is relying on slow reduction in demand, and time to transition their economy. Will they have it? It's far from certain. I feel like Norwegians rely too much on this fund to save themselves, rather than transitioning away from oil now.
That's basically a text book example of the "strategy tax", which isn't about stopping profit from existing products, but to let new concepts cannibalise legacy products.
In which way do you see Norway hitting the brakes on new technology and future trends to protect the oil business ?
They got a "live" counter here[1], so yeah around 1.3 trillion USD give or take. Estimates for corona spending is around 80 billion USD[2].
[2]: https://www.nettavisen.no/okonomi/regjeringen-advarer-oljefo...
Of course second order effects might dwarf that, like the fact that increasing prices would incentivize oil extraction in currently unprofitable locations. That extraction may or may not be more carbon-intensive than Norway's (though probably more if it's currently unprofitable).
It sounds punchy to say "Norway should stop extracting oil" as much as it does to say "It doesn't matter whether they do or not since someone else will", but the reality is much more complex than either of those simplistic zeroth-order approximations.
The only real change from such a policy is how quickly wells will run dry, but I hope we can abandon oil long before running out is a serious concern.
Sure, other wells will produce more. But at a higher price. Higher prices encourage use of greener alternatives.
It bootstraps companies like Tesla, and VW's electric cars. That will lead to more CO2 reductions happening sooner.
The alternative would be "dogfooding", eat what you make.
Recently I went on a road trip my partner (who really wanted to go), the whole time I couldn't stop thinking about how stupid of an activity it was given what we know about our future if we stay on the current trajectory. While driving I was looking around at hundreds of thousands of other people doing the same thing and just got me down.
The idea of hundreds of millions of machines driving around emitting carbon dioxide and other pollutants is just so stupid it's hard to imagine we collectively accepted the idea in the first place.
It's really hard to believe that none of the externalitiez are factored into the absolutely insane cost of climate change.
However, I guess what I really wanted to say by writing this comment is, at least there is some hope :)
https://www.acea.auto/press-release/electric-cars-10-eu-coun...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_electric_vehicles_in_N... has extensive details, but they've got a set of incentives that exceedingly favor BEVs.
This is essentially performative environmentalism from them. Still, it will help other countries by throwing up unforeseen problems in all-electric ground transportation, and some solutions.
Who would've thunk, economic incentives help!? Sadly in many other places the deciding economic incentives are the ones the politicians get from the oil and ICE car industry.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/norways-sovereign-wealth-fund-b...
Given their relatively contribution to the total global production and OPEC's supply management to control prices, it is unclear if a halt in Norwegian oil sales would raise prices significantly enough to matter. There is an argument to be made that is is better for Norway to capture those profit and invest them into the research we need to reduce oil dependence and sequester CO2.
I don't think that the electric car adoption is purely driven by environmentalism. Norway has extremely cheap energy that makes electric cars much more economically attractive.
On an individual level basically no one in Norway buys an electric car due to environmentalism. It's 100% an economic decision. Buying a new gasoline powered car today in Norway simply doesn't make financial sense no matter how you look at it.
They do have huge crude oil reserves, but do they have any refining capability?
Only two[1], but one of them is somewhat big[2], producing 4x the domestic consumption of gasoline.
[1]: https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oljeraffineri#Oljeraffinerier_...
[2]: https://www.equinor.com/en/what-we-do/terminals-and-refineri...
It is however much more spread out. Driving from the northernmost to southern most town of New Mexico is ~700 km. Driving from the southern most to northern most town of Norway is over 2300 km, or about the same has from the southernmost town of New Mexico to the Canadian border.
Edit: The reason why this is the important measure is because what people care about is how often their trips require N charging stops not the maximum number of charging stops they might have to make.
I think they have just become the first country to unlock this tech IRL Civ.
So by 'electric', they mean what are commonly referred to as 'electrified' vehicles, and by ICE, they are actually referring to pure gas/diesel cars. I have news for you - hybrids still burn gas!
> seven out of every eight cars bought and sold in Norway a used car. The NAF’s numbers show that of the 357,176 ownership registration changes so far in 2021, electric vehicles only accounted for 12 per cent.
And their definition of electric cars includes hybrids (whereas I think most people interpret it to mean fully electric). So they're obviously doing great but the vast majority of the vehicles in Norway are still ICE only.
I ask because the lifespan of current batteries seems to be around 8 years (going by manufacturers' warranties), and the battery pack amounts to approximately 30% of the price of the car. So people buying an used electric car will likely face a large maintenance cost after a while.
800 cycles is about what a typical mobile phone sees in two years, after which most are seeing some moderate degradation (70% of new condition is fairly typical) but are still quite usable. And in fact a car spends much more of its time being recharged well before reaching full discharge (where consumer electronics runs dead a lot), so it would be expected to do somewhat better.
It's not really a problem, basically.
[1] Though we're seeing an increasing number of vehicles delivered with LiFePO4 cells. This chemistry has somewhat lower energy density and higher internal resistance, but has the advantage of an estimaged hundreds of thousands of cycles lifetime. Those will never wear out until long after the mechanical parts are dust.
An EV battery loses capacity faster in the beginning, slower later on. The falloff is perfectly predictable and easily estimated. You can check the health of a battery pack with a free app and a $10 OBD2 reader when buying one.
Yes, the maximum range will be lower than it was new, but it's up to the buyer if that is something that bothers them.
Compare this to the process of buying an old car. There's no way to know what kind of crap oil the previous owner has put in. You can't tell what shape the engine is in without actually opening it. The gearbox might just decide to break one day, the clutch might be on its last legs and the pistons might just come up for air some sunny summer day to enjoy the weather.
The only way to check for faults is relying on educated guesses (bring a friend who knows the specific type of car or take it to a shop for evaluation).
The difference between an ICE and EV is that ICE needs money frequently (oil changes, belts and chains and whatever wear down), an EV has That One Big Repair coming up at some point. And the price of batteries is steadily going down.
For example you can get a 3rd party battery for a Nissan Leaf _today_ that's 30% larger than the one that was in it originally. Just think what we can do in 2030.
That happened to a friend of mine, who was quoted around 50k NOK (~6k USD) of a car he bought used for twice that. Fortunately for him, it turned out there was one week left of the 5-year "new car" warranty so he didn't have to pay after all, but that was sheer luck.
https://insideevs.com/news/405885/tesla-model-s-battery-afte...
https://electrek.co/2020/06/06/tesla-battery-degradation-rep...
https://www.findmyelectric.com/blog/how-long-does-a-tesla-ba...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJpLm0uuVgA
"When will we have 100% EV adoption ? Norway was NOT fast, compared to what is coming." BestInTESLA
Comparing anything they do with your own country is a mistake.
Refer: https://www.ft.com/content/8574bd97-86e2-4665-9192-93dfde877...
