No more petrol, diesel or hybrid cars from 2035

[Hairy-Joe]

Looks like the EU has decided on 2035 for the ban on petrol, diesel or hybrid cars and light commercial vehicles from 2035

https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2023/0214 ... ol-diesel/

Personally I think this is a stupid move. There's no hope of getting a 3.5tonne commercial vehicle to carry well over a tonne for 700 or 800 km in a day. It'll kill the motorhome market in Europe and that's well over 50000 vehicles a year. It's also putting ALL our eggs in one basket, the battery EV basket. There's a lot of sustainable fuel used in motorsport. The WRC use a sustainable fuel derived from plant waste. Porsche make a sustainable fuel by pulling the carbon from the air.

Sure EV has a place and they are getting better but let the market decide. When cars came along they replaced horses for personal transport but they were not banned.

[CelticRambler]

Agreed, especially with regards to all the eggs. Given that the electrical grid all across Europe was teetering on the edge of reliability over this winter, and given that the trans-Atlantic cousins have already shown how easy it is to fall over the edge, and all of that with a pretty insignificant fleet of EVs drawing charge, I cannot understand the logic of tying so much of our transport options into one, very vulnerable, effectively unstorable energy source.

At least we do still have the right to use horses. Maybe this is a good time to start buying up old carts and carriages.

[Setanta]

JCB have the hydrogen engine near perfected,and by all accounts alot more trouble free than the stage V diesel engine


Whether they would sell em to private market is a whole other story

[isha]

The more time goes on the more I wonder who TF are these people who think they are the bosses of everything and why TF their heads are not on pikes.
But maybe that will come too before all this authoritarian bullshyte has had its day.

[schmittel]

One of the most obvious as well as most damaging consequences of this nonsense is the certainty that the hitherto enormous financial and intellectual resources dedicated to improving fuel efficiency and emissions of ICE vehicles will now be abandoned.

The gains made in this area between now and 2035 could have been vast.

Instead we'll still have ICE vehicles way beyond 2035 as the EU will not yet be able to live without them, the difference between what will be and what might have been is vast. We're essentially guaranteeing zero improvement on todays figures of efficiency and emissions.

Madness.

[Hairy-Joe]

That's very true Schmittel. Development has frozen for most but some are driving on. Look at Mazda with the new CX-60 with the big 3.3L diesel.

[Setanta]

One of the most obvious as well as most damaging consequences of this nonsense is the certainty that the hitherto enormous financial and intellectual resources dedicated to improving fuel efficiency and emissions of ICE vehicles will now be abandoned.

The gains made in this area between now and 2035 could have been vast.

Instead we'll still have ICE vehicles way beyond 2035 as the EU will not yet be able to live without them, the difference between what will be and what might have been is vast. We're essentially guaranteeing zero improvement on todays figures of efficiency and emissions.

Madness.

TBF Toyota have long since stopped attempting to keep to diesel regulations,as the limitations required are too troublesome to keep,probably reached a limit in certain aspects of emission control

I think we reached limits in terms of efficiency,a stage V engine burns more diesel than a stage IV engine....otherwise it wouldn't produce enough smoke to be able to use adblue effectively to reduce emissions....though in theory adblue,if used enough of could reduce emissions to near zero




It is a very very good point about the adbandonment of technology and knowledge on emission improvement,not something I had considered

[knownunknown]

I bet the price of petrol cars sky rockets after the ban comes into effect.

[Hairy-Joe]

Looks like some common sense has broken out in Berlin

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new- ... 35-ice-ban

It makes sense. This way, development can still progress and novel innovative solutions can be found and put to the market for testing. Relying on the BEV on their own is a bad move

[knownunknown]

Looks like some common sense has broken out in Berlin

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new- ... 35-ice-ban

It makes sense. This way, development can still progress and novel innovative solutions can be found and put to the market for testing. Relying on the BEV on their own is a bad move

Solar fuels and such are quite interesting. E.g. set up loads of solar cells in the middle of the desert where you can make energy dense fuel easy for transport. Carbon free.

[Norman Breaks]

I think it is a great idea. 12 years is a long time in technology these days. If AI is used correctly it could advance energy harvesting and storage technology in leaps and bounds yet.
The more of these technologies that are kept open source the better. I feel a lot of the doubts people have about weening off fossil fuels are fabricated by the fossil industry. We coulda kicked our fossil fuel habit decades ago if the right incentives were put in place.

[nlgbbbblth]

I just noticed that you can't buy leaded petrol anymore.

[Hairy-Joe]

I think it is a great idea. 12 years is a long time in technology these days. If AI is used correctly it could advance energy harvesting and storage technology in leaps and bounds yet.
The more of these technologies that are kept open source the better. I feel a lot of the doubts people have about weening off fossil fuels are fabricated by the fossil industry. We coulda kicked our fossil fuel habit decades ago if the right incentives were put in place.

Don't forget that 12 years is nothing in car design. There's plenty of cars for sale that are using components or designs that are 12 years old. Sure the MQB chassis under most VAG cars goes back to cars launched 10 years ago and was designed well before that.

Oh yeah, BEV suits some people down to the ground but it's not for everyone. It's the forcing everyone to use a specific solution when there's other alternatives out there that's my issue

[Bishop_Brennan]

All of this because of a hysterical teenager that had a meltdown and the world seemed to have been guilted into caving into her and her cults demands.

[kadman]

Solar fuels and such are quite interesting. E.g. set up loads of solar cells in the middle of the desert where you can make energy dense fuel easy for transport. Carbon free.

It doesn't matter what fuel you end up using, turbine, solar, wave, fossil fuel.....you will still be getting fleeced and fined for existing ....end of.

[Norman Breaks]

All of this because of a hysterical teenager that had a meltdown and the world seemed to have been guilted into caving into her and her cults demands.

Yes, defo nothing to do with the majority of climate scientists with mountains of empirical data screaming on deaf* ears for the best part of half a century. It's the one little girl that somehow threatens your masculinity that has caused all this furor.


*bought and paid for by big oil

[quodec]

BMW still going for the hydrogen sector. Unfortunately it's really only going to be suitable for bigger vehicles, vans, trucks etc. But hey, it's all in a good cause, right?

[Bishop_Brennan]

Yes, defo nothing to do with the majority of climate scientists with mountains of empirical data screaming on deaf* ears for the best part of half a century. It's the one little girl that somehow threatens your masculinity that has caused all this furor.


*bought and paid for by big oil

Utter nonsense, the response to this is wrong, the cure is worse than the disease.
masculinity ? what are you talking about ???

[Cyclepath]

It's all bullshit lads. The micro particles generated by rubber tyres are now a far more significant polluter than the emissions from petrol cars.

https://earth.org/tyre-pollution/

Basically as the world population increases and more and more folk are able to afford personal transport, the overhead of pollutants will become unsustainable. I'm afraid the era of personal transportation is coming to an end for those that live in cities.

This will be achieved using greater and greater taxes and disincentives, along with infrastructural/road/parking restrictions to make driving in cities an unpleasant and unworthwhile experience. The problem in this particular country is that we don't have many viable public transport alternatives. My advice is to invest in an ebike and some all weather gear...

[CelticRambler]

I am visiting The Family in Dublin this week and, it being only three years since my last visit, I cannot believe how overwhelmingly car-dependent they and everyone around them has become - as bad as anything I ever saw in the US (albeit without the ubiquitous Drive-Thru version of just about every business).

My mother was telling me yesterday that there's "friction" in the Residents' Assocation over who should be allowed park where and for how long. There are turf-wars passively waged with the use of strategically placed wheelie bins, concrete blocks and traffic cones of dubious origin, and arguments over whether or not to get a single yellow line painted on one side of the road or the other, or both, to keep out the non-residents.

I've lost count of the number of times I've been offered a lift to take me from A to B, where B is less than 2km (30-minute walk/25-minute drive) from A; I've even had an offer to give me a lift to the bus-stop ... Next door to the Sister (1990s south Dublin estate, Celtic Tiger-sized front garden with just about enough room for two 1990s sized cars) the family has five cars, including two SUVs.

Now if all these cars, plus all those older models still running on fossil fuels, are converted to electric, where are they going to get their cheap overnight electricity from? Because there's no way the council will allow everyone have cables trailing across the pavements, or across the road. I saw an English YouTuber (pro EV) raise a similar question over how British towns and cities will cope, when they have a lot more terraced housing (and no front garden) than we do in Ireland.

[CelticRambler]

Addendum: the Father has a shiny almost-new hybrid. I saw that it's showing an average fuel consumption of just under 4l/100km. I remember my friend was getting the same in his diesel-powered car ten years ago. Not much progress there.

And when my father's car has run out of electricity, and is cruising at motorway speed, it's running at about 7-8l/100km ... compared to my 20-year-old Mégane's 5-6l/100km under similar conditions. That's a steep enough penalty to pay for using non-green electricity.

[Bishop_Brennan]

@celticrambler spot on

[isha]

The people we elect and pay too bloody much are supposed to put in place the alternatives before they start dictating how things will be. Excellent public transport systems, safe cycle routes, properly devised hybrid working arrangements that allow people to split time between home and office, a fully functional industrial flow that is capable of producing and maintaining heat pumps, etc. Then they can pull the carpet from under people, not before. Otherwise it's illogical and causes suffering eg freezing because fuel is too expensive, unable to afford going to work etc.

[Hairy-Joe]

I had a diesel car for years but I got rid of it. It was due about €2k in bills. What was worse, my usage pattern changed to mainly short journeys. That meant that it was slowly choking (slower to start, small bit smokey at times, more frequent DPF regenerations). So, before it got too expensive to fix, it went. I replaced it with a new petrol as a hybrid wouldn't work for me.

What's more worrying, when spotted in the carpark at work, most assumed it was a hybrid and I was looked at as if I was evil for getting a petrol.

6 months later, a few colleagues has their smirks removed when they found out I was getting better fuel economy from a 2.0 turbo petrol saloon when compared to their petrol hybrid SUV's......

[Beatty]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-26/ ... /103388902
It has been dubbed the "white gold" of the energy transition, but in the past year the price of lithium has dropped by more than 80 per cent.

Meanwhile, nickel is down more than 40 per cent.

The plummeting prices have pushed WA's major industry players to mothball their mines, workers to lose jobs and the government to all but panic.

Both minerals are key components of batteries used in electric vehicles (EVs).
It's not unusual for critical mineral markets to rapidly fluctuate.

Forecasts of huge demand lead to sudden price hikes that ultimately feed a surge in exploration and production.
Until there's a glut.

That has apparently been the case for lithium and nickel – the supply simply outgrew the rise in demand.

While the uptake of EVs is increasing, the pace has been slower than anticipated.