from Hacker News

EU approves effective ban on new combustion engine cars from 2035

by stonks on 10/28/22, 2:09 PM with 40 comments

  • by thecopy on 10/28/22, 3:15 PM

    Wonderful news. I live in a European city, so i dont have a need to own a car, but i use my bicyle to get around town (all year). The city i live in has great air quality, and i generally avoid big car streets, but as soon as i get close to a larger road, or i get passed by a car (often hurrying to get to a red light further down the road) you really start to feel the exhaust. Inhaling and tasting car exhausts is terrible, and i think many car drivers dont think about this, as they are protected in their air conditioned box.

  • by foxyv on 10/28/22, 3:51 PM

    I can see these kinds of bans working in the EU where car ownership isn't a necessity. However, in the US where cars are often the ONLY means of transportation, I imagine they will go down like a lead filled balloon. How many barely running gas cars are the only thing letting poorer Americans make it to work and school? I really wish the US would work much harder on making car ownership unnecessary.

    In the end though, I won't miss the stupid cars that go up and down my street farting at 120db for no freaking reason because the owner "Want car go vroom!"

  • by constantcrying on 10/28/22, 7:26 PM

    Germany currently has the highest energy prices in the world. It seems seriously insane to suggest banning IC cars before you have a concrete plan to have any kind of sufficient energy supply. How do you cope with tens of millions of EVs charging every night?

    Also, if there is no enormous breakthrough in the next decade in battery technology, car ownership will become a luxury for the rich.

    (I use public transport daily, by the way. And it is absolutely disgusting, overfilled and obnoxious. Absolutely hate it.)

  • by V__ on 10/28/22, 7:47 PM

    All major car manufacturers already set earlier dates to phase out their ICE production. This announcement has basically no impact.

    I also don't buy the argument that this is going to be a problem energy- or grid-wise. It's 12 years out and the grid has to change anyway. If it doesn't until then, then it will be the least of our problems.

  • by throwaway22032 on 10/28/22, 11:10 PM

    The question I haven't seen answered is how electric cars ever attain reasonable resale values.

    The car I have owned and driven for years now cost me less than $1000, minimal maintenance, it's done 30,000 miles.

    I don't think that a usable 100kWh lithium battery, alone, with no car attached, is ever going to depreciate to $1000 ($10 per kWh). As far as I know, the wholesale price of the metal itself is more than that.

    The idea seems to be that loads of people just get priced out of driving entirely. So what happens to them? Are they all supposed to move out of all of the suburbs into urban housing that doesn't even exist yet?

    It's not a matter of charging infrastructure, the viable replacement cars are going to cost 5x what they currently do as far as I can tell.

  • by LatteLazy on 10/28/22, 4:09 PM

    We've been a decade away from doing something for 40 years now...

  • by _aavaa_ on 10/28/22, 2:47 PM

    > There is also a non-binding proposal in the agreement to allow the manufacture of vehicles “running exclusively on CO2-neutral fuels” (also known as “e-fuels”) beyond 2035 if these vehicles fall “outside the scope of the fleet standards.” [...] “outside the scope of the fleet standards” suggests that only speciality vehicles, like ambulances and fire engines, will be able to take advantage of this carve-out.

  • by amai on 10/28/22, 5:49 PM

  • by bennysonething on 10/29/22, 8:46 AM

    I have a feeling that this won't happen. It feels like instead of doing the hard work of modelling how this can possibly work and what the effects will be, we've got virtue signalling from eu politicians.

  • by antiquark on 10/28/22, 9:56 PM

    Why not trucks?

    (Well, we know the answer....)

  • by Tanoc on 10/29/22, 5:00 AM

    As someone who was initially very excited about the switch to EVs, a lot of the incentives to push towards EV ownership were seen as good in my eyes. However, as a car enthusiast, the full swing towards banning anything but EVs is an overreaction and something I am very upset about. I know Europe is still wary after the diesel fallout, and they're reticent to try anything else. But this is repeating the same mistake of the diesel regulations in that they're putting all of their eggs in one basket.

    The manufacturing of batteries is going to be a problem if all vehicles are EV. That includes small personal transportation like motorcycles, large personal transportation like cars, and public transportation like buses. There are charging concerns as well. Currently Europe is struggling to generate enough power using non-fossil fuel sources to even keep running. If the electrical demands go up by 1.5x due to mass EV adoption as has been predicted, then Europe's going to have to turn to power rationing until they can build out the necessary infrastructure. And I don't think that's going to go over well with the population.

    There's also the research that indicates that internal combustion motive engines in personal transport like cars, boats, and motorcycles have a comparatively negligible impact on greenhouse gases and airborne toxins in the modern age. The numbers dropped dramatically throughout the 1980s and then again in the 2010s, driven by CAFE (Corporate Average Fleet Emissions) standards in the U.S. and Euro 1 through 6 in Europe. I used the word comparatively earlier, because industry is the main contributor. Industries such as steel manufacturing, power generation, air transport, and farming are the biggest contributors to greenhouse gasses, while industries such as plastics manufacturing, ocean transport, and underground resource extraction are the biggest contributors to airborne toxins. There's been a lot of regulatory movement to restrict motor vehicles, but very little for industrial level problems. Bunker fuel, which is almost entirely sulfurous tar fuel oil, has been the standard for large container ships since the 1940s. Only in 2020 was there a global agreement to reduce the sulfur content in bunker fuel used by ships. Meanwhile there has been absolutely no substantial progress on the four major types of aviation fuel that are used. High octane kerosene jet fuel, low octane kerosene jet fuel, unleaded aviation gasoline, and leaded aviation gasoline. Aviation fuel is the only type in the U.S. that's still allowed to contain tetraethyl lead. Airliners continue using high octane kerosene jet fuel, while the military, farmers, and even wildfire firefighting teams continue using leaded aviation gasoline. Regulators continue squeezing the collar ever tighter on cars while airplanes get away with poisoning their maintenance crews and the people they fly over.

    My personal conclusion has been that diversification and control of industrial emissions seems to be the solution, not concentration in EVs. Certain engines such as the Wankel and diesel will certainly have to die as the power/emissions ratio for them is atrocious. But Atkins cycle engines for example can work on hydrogen. For other engines pure E100 ethanol, while having about the same carbon dioxide output as and lower energy density than gasoline, is viable via compression ratio increases. Compression ratio increases also tend to create more drivetrain power output, so it's not really a mechanical loss. Ethanol's also renewable. The issues are that hydrogen is expensive to create and contain in pure enough form to be used as fuel, and ethanol requires large amounts of industrial farming that contribute to greenhouse gasses.

  • by ndlzk on 10/28/22, 4:17 PM

    does this affect motorcycles?

  • by TheLoafOfBread on 10/28/22, 5:07 PM

    This will get reversed because in 10 years we are still going to struggle with expensive BEVs with minimal market share and no usable aftermarket for them, which will cause raise in right wing populism and reverting all green policies years or decades back.