80 points giuliomagnifico 56 minutes ago 49 comments

oblio 44 minutes ago | parent

EV, epedelecs (+bike infra), heat pumps, anti plastic regulation, and Europe becomes fossil fuel resilient.

mrtesthah 37 minutes ago | parent

e-bikes in particular have reduced fossil fuel use by huge amounts compared to EVs. When you consider that most of a car’s energy is used simply to move the car itself, the aggregate inefficiencies are staggering.

delichon 43 minutes ago | parent

Is there anyone in the world who did more to make this happen than Donald Trump? Maybe Vladimir Putin?

JMKH42 43 minutes ago | parent

Its effective but death and suffering on a mass scale aren't the best ways to drive EV adoption overall.

whyage 33 minutes ago | parent

Low EV adoption will lead to much more death and suffering due to climate change. So, sure, it's not the ideal way to achieve this result, but it's better than the alternative.

usern20260720 20 minutes ago | parent

I wouldn't be so optimistic. At the current trend, we might be just walking corpses. Like newborn Japanese children from Nagasaki on the 2nd August 1945 (4 days before its sudden democratisation or vaporisation by the American democrazy). We are just seeing the apocalypse in slow motion.

According to some of the most optimistic doomsayers of the Interwebs, the warming levels we are enjoying as of today are due to the CO2 levels of 30 years ago.

debo_ 19 minutes ago | parent

Username checks out. Why age when you can sacrifice your life for climate preservation.

seydor 28 minutes ago | parent

One more reason to demand the Nobel peace prize next year

warkdarrior 25 minutes ago | parent

The bombings will continue until the Nobel peace prize is awarded.

WarmWash 25 minutes ago | parent

Please god give donald trump a nobel peace prize for killing oil. Please, please happen.

jandrese 18 minutes ago | parent

Yes, give him a Nobel prize but have him share it with Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran.

fifilura 13 minutes ago | parent

The ceremony :)

standeven 41 minutes ago | parent

It’s a shame that the US and Canada are lagging behind. I get that politicians want to protect the fossil fuel industry and slow-to-adapt domestic automakers, but consumers and the environment suffer instead.

nxm 22 minutes ago | parent

Maybe reasons like this make people not desire EVs:

But with winter right around the corner, owners are worried that the cold weather. The ID.4 Pro S AWD is rated for 263 miles of EPA range in ideal conditions. The 20% hit to the battery likely brings real-world range below 200 miles, and actual winter condition tests show that the ID.4 loses up 37% of its range in the cold—ouch. https://insideevs.com/news/812129/vw-id4-charge-limit-80/

rwmj 18 minutes ago | parent

200 miles is still further than I ever need or want to drive in a single journey.

bruce511 15 minutes ago | parent

The number of people driving 200 miles in one go in Europe is tiny.

Plus charging points are everywhere, so it's trivial to just top up for 30 mins or so.

I feel like the range question is becoming more FUD than reality.

karmakurtisaani 13 minutes ago | parent

Yes, me and all the others are worried that our daily 200km commute in -40 Degrees will not be feasible.

I mean, seriously, it's a small inconvenience once you realize you don't need a huge range in your daily life. I do wish my EV had a longer range, but I get over 300km on a charge and it's more than enough for everyday use.

standeven 13 minutes ago | parent

You should warn Norway, which is approaching 100% EVs for new vehicle sales.

bruce511 19 minutes ago | parent

It's interesting to see the way politics influences public opinion which in turn influences manufacturers, which in turn influence politics.

In Europe EV's have a positive political support, which means lots of sales, which means "all" European manufacturers have solid (and improving) offerings.

By contrast the biggest EV manufacturer is politically toxic to the very people likely to buy it. And oil companies lobby hard to keep anti-EV talking points alive. Which drives sales down, and manufacturers drop EVs from the range. Banning competition doesn't seem to help with making progress.

And yes, I get the "Europe short distances" argument, but how many Americans are really driving 300+ miles every day?

So, 20 years from now, will US manufacturers exist? Or will products from Asia and Europe be too far ahead?

shinjitsu 8 minutes ago | parent

>And yes, I get the "Europe short distances" argument, but how many Americans are really driving 300+ miles every day?

Everyday? probably not many, but 300+ in a single day several times a year, well I bet it is quite a few. Visiting relatives at Thanksgiving and other holidays, summer vacations, sure some people take airplanes, but most aren't that well off. And if you have children visiting aunts/uncles/cousins/grandparents, the only place I'd want to do a 40 minute charge for the next leg is maybe Buc-ees, which is in a pretty small part of the country.

Will this take me and my family where we need to go is a more important consideration than the daily commute for me, but perhaps that is not as common a sentiment.

standeven 2 minutes ago | parent

Charging, for me at least, is usually a 10-15 minute affair which is faster than my family can use a washroom and stretch our legs. Several road trips per year in an EV is painless.

Towing things long distances is one of the few EV weak points I can think of, but REV trucks should mostly fix that too.

anovikov 40 minutes ago | parent

Why are people still arguing and trying to dilute 2035 fossil fuel car production ban? Isn't it obvious that by 2035 these cars will be off market, ban or not, because no one will want to buy them?

layer8 14 minutes ago | parent

No one would care about ban or no ban if this were true. The European auto industry cares because they are less competitive in the EV sector.

thinkingtoilet 10 minutes ago | parent

No, it is not obvious, especially to anyone who lives in a rural area. There is a type of smooth-brained reactionary person who will buy the biggest gas-guzzling truck he can find just because you told him not to.

ngruhn 39 minutes ago | parent

A good outcome of this crisis. These god damn fossil fuels. Never even mind climate change. Being depend on them has turned out to be a huge national security risk. Picking a seller is picking your poison: Russia, the Golf states, and now the US.

happymellon 31 minutes ago | parent

> the Golf states

Scotland?

mousetree 28 minutes ago | parent

Florida

ceejayoz 26 minutes ago | parent

I think they're referring to the Persian Gulf.

tonyedgecombe 9 minutes ago | parent

[delayed]

pfannkuchen 6 minutes ago | parent

Cricket?

wlesieutre 7 minutes ago | parent

Certainly not the US, we only get the Golf R and GTI here and they're not particularly popular

For EVs, the e-Golf has been dead for years but they may bring the name back to electric as an id.Golf next time

ngruhn 5 minutes ago | parent

whoops :P

Guid_NewGuid 22 minutes ago | parent

I'm reminded of the cartoon that circulated some years back where a climate denier asks the speaker "what if we built a better world for nothing?", or something along those lines.

The way these past few years have shown the absolute precarity of fossil fuel systems just proves that, preserving a comfortably liveable climate aside, renewables just make more sense across pretty much every axis.

You still get people fear mongering about Chinese solar, as if we shouldn't make the most of the oversupply subsidised by a supposed geopolitical foe. Like, no, they're not going to turn it off, once you have the panel, the light hits it and the electrons jump the gap. Oil/gas can be turned off yet the speaker is somehow glossing over that.

bryanlarsen 37 minutes ago | parent

What's going on in Poland? Why is the EV market share there lower than in the US?

jadamczyk 31 minutes ago | parent

Probably lower buying power, poor on-the-go charging network and people not “trusting” the Evs as much yet

brainwad 29 minutes ago | parent

Also electric power generation is dirtier in Poland (still lots of coal), so the relative emissions benefit is lower.

somedude895 7 minutes ago | parent

If the power is generated by burning coal and after transmission efficiency losses etc, gasoline cars could actually be better for the environment.

oytis 6 minutes ago | parent

I mean, EVs are supposed to be cheaper than ICE vehicles. They probably would be if EU didn't let its automakers manufacture a high margin market again by blocking more affordable competitors

SpicyLemonZest 30 minutes ago | parent

They weren’t until recently rich enough to fund the required charger infrastructure. Most people don’t want an EV until it flips from “not too big of a deal if you plan ahead” to “of course I can always find a charger”.

johanvts 27 minutes ago | parent

EVs are still pretty expensive, besides I'm sure that PIS decided that EVs are somehow a communist plot and will let Tusk turn your kids atheist. EVs are only just around the tipping point where they are cheaper without political incentives. And you need some political good will for charging infrastructure etc.

izend 26 minutes ago | parent

Europe is going to have to build more electricity generation...

rwmj 14 minutes ago | parent

It's distribution rather than generation which is the problem. Offshore wind farms generate copious electricity and then because of lack of interconnects they end up being paid to switch off on the windiest days. This will all be solved as more infrastructure is built.

fifilura 14 minutes ago | parent

Or charge the EVS when the sun shines and the wind blows. Today you don't really need to charge your EV that often.

kalabrium 14 minutes ago | parent

I would love a world, where I while waiting at the traffic stop can breathe clean air. It’s sad to see that in the US the ev incentives are gone.

lotsofpulp 9 minutes ago | parent

The EV incentives are not gone, they just changed from being a non refundable federal income tax credit to higher fossil fuel prices.

1over137 9 minutes ago | parent

Tailpipe emissions are only half of it. The brake and tyre dust is the second half, and not solved by EVs.

lotsofpulp 7 minutes ago | parent

If driven smoothly, EVs solve most of the brake dust problem.

vablings 2 minutes ago | parent

They sadly also increase the tire problem significantly

einpoklum 5 minutes ago | parent

1. This is for "Battery EVs" (so probably not hybrid I guess)

2. I am somewhat suspicious of this statistic. A 70% jump in one month? I doubt it. Perhaps there was some change in regulation? Coordinated removal of models from the market? Or maybe a collapse in availability of some models or of car sales overall?