> The European Commission has pledged, however, to create a legal route for sales of new cars that only run on e-fuels to continue after 2035, after Germany demanded this exemption from the ban.
Sounds annoying, but I had to skim through looking for a definition of "e-fuel" since it was not a term I was accustomed to.
Found it:
E-fuels are produced by synthesising captured CO2 emissions and hydrogen produced using CO2-free electricity. They are considered carbon neutral because the CO2 released when the fuel is combusted is balanced by the CO2 removed from the atmosphere to produce the fuel.
And also learnt that they're also called "electrofuels" [1].
That makes it sound less horrible, except that such production doesn't exist yet at a sensible/interesting scale as far as I understand.
Nevertheless, e-fuel cars are still a step back compared to electric cars: electric cars don't pollute while they're running, but may still generate pollution depending on how the electricity they are charged with was produced, e-fuel cars produce both tailpipe pollution and potentially also electricity generation pollution. But I guess that due to how horrendously expensive e-fuels will be, these vehicles will be so rare that tailpipe pollution won't matter much...
e-fuel cars also generate noise, sound pollution. Sad that Germany prevented us from getting rid of that noisy redneck revving his expensive engine in the middle of the city.
Also Italy and Poland supported Germany on this. I suspect that the real motivation is that the automotive industry in these countries creates loads of jobs both directly and indirectly. Electric cars being simpler and needing less maintenance will kill positions in the 10s of thousands.
Not just that. For huge part of Polish population new EVs will be unaffordable. ICEs got more expensive in the recent year, but that still much lesser than EVs.
Nothing electric is ever simpler and requires less maintenance than the mechanic version. Idk where you get that from.
I made the mistake to buy an electric oven, super modern type.
The number of times it displayed an "E" for error in the display, I stopped counting.
Any electric component will not only last less longer but also be more error prone and will need to be repaired more often.
Electrical car are documented almost everywhere with lower maintenance cost than gas prices, mostly because there are fewer moving parts and fluids. You can hardly compare anecdotical issue related to electric oven with macro statistics on gas and electric cars.
Exactly, I live on a very active street and the daily noise is killing me softly.
Especially those "punks" with their motorbikes or pimped engines and exhausts.
Silence is a luxury I don't have. Only at night between 2-4AM.
I've recently started wearing a full ear headset to dampen some of the noise.
I wish I could just move out, but other flats cost double the price.
Which country? I'm in Japan, and the cult of noisy cars/motorbikes here is both disgusting and hopeless (given the planned disappearance of ICE vehicles), but very ingrained (among both middle-aged and young men). Moreover it's actually illegal (law limits engine noises to 80dB), but police seems to have given up.
Ideally I'd move to a country with more regard towards silence, calm and cardiovascular health of citizens.
Maybe at highway speed. At city speeds I am constantly taken by surprise by electric cars that come from behind while I'm cycling (in the Netherlands, for context, where I'd estimate that at least 25% of the cars are already electric, in the city in question).
> That makes it sound less horrible, except that such production doesn't exist yet at a sensible/interesting scale as far as I understand.
To me it sounds less horrible, because it sounds like fantasy technology that will not be economically feasible in the end so the end result is that this exception doesn't actually matter. Suffers the same problem as the whole carbon capture thought experiment.
I have written that before: They only talk about Efuels because that sounds fancy. What they really mean are probably biofuels, i.e biodiesel and ethanol (not that that would make it any better).
Is either that or Germany letting their automakers that have not been able to adapt to the new EV era just die... and nobody wants to see what is that impact of that over the whole European economy...
According to [1] Volkswagen was the third largest producer of EVs in 2022, only behind BYD and Tesla. And BMW and Mercedes Benz both are in the top 10. It's not like German automakers have been sitting on their hands or would just die. The problem is not so much the automakers themselves but their suppliers. Those employ far more people, and EVs just don't need a lot of those parts.
It's not the automakers. Those have long since started to transition to BEVs and do offer some attractive options which are produced at scale and can often be seen on the streets where I am (not near any of the OEM headquarters). They have also mostly stopped R&D on ICE technology
The issue is with the suppliers and suppliers of suppliers which are a backbone of German industry and some of which cannot transition away ICE technology.
Of course e-fuels are not going to safe them anyway but their lobbying caused this.
The automakers did put up initial resistance, some Japanese brands still are. But this particular political compromise is just a libertarian party needing a workaround to avoid to be seen banning something that everyone knows will be obsolete by that time anyway.
The EV transition is accelerating, this is just the minimum that could get cross EU support in law today. But individual countries already have their own phase outs.
They provide good alternatives, indeed, but Tesla is still the most sold brand in Europe, and anyone living in Central Europe cannot deny that Tesla is by far the most dominant EV brand. The reason behind it is that there is pretty much nothing in that price range that offers the same as a Model 3 or Y... However, Tesla has sold more vehicles than the ones they can provide support to, so all their service centers are collapsed due to their dealership policy...
The European brands need to be more competitive, and although they are on good track for it, I think they are a bit late to the game. Is either that or people noticing that the after sales support of Tesla is inexistent and they start to value the perks of the legacy automakers.
That's because European brands offer more models so your top graphs are fragmented. This is how market competition looks like - having a choice of models and brands not just a single Tesla 3.
On top 10, European brands together vastly outsold Tesla - VAG group for example outsold all Tesla models in EU last year.
We'll be needing any kWh of green electricity we can get, and wasting it on inefficient e-fuels is dumb and wasteful. But I guess everybody has the right to be dumb and wasteful, so here we are.
First huge part of the population should learn to use the right and middle lane.
I'm not often zooming on the highways, but how many times I overtake cars driving 130 kph in the right lane, where someone is driving in the middle lane 120 kph, and the next truck in the right lane is 1km away.
Also I'm not FDP voter, but I'm definitely pro no-limit. There is little no-limit patches anyway, traffic often doesn't allow driving faster than 160. Construction work all the time everywhere.
These are people specifically coming to the Northern Territory to legally drive at high speeds on unlimited road sections ... therefore directly relevant to the assertion that unlimited speed sections don't see additional road deaths.
A more thoughtful evaluation would need to consider the unique isolation of the NT roads, the nature of actual traffic (road trains, first time tourist drivers, etc) , the nature of the road (long slow deceptive curves, dips, washouts, etc), relatively low traffic (and then suddenly a cluster).
As I recall the NT was unlimited for "ever" (well, since cars first arrived in NT) outside of towns (as a Territory and not a state), then limited, then conditionally unlimited (and now perhaps limited again).
One consequence of having unlimited roads was an increase in people driving beyond their abilities on roads they were unfamilar with (eg: Japanese dentists with no long open road experience driving super cars).
If that area is unlimited „outside of towns“, it’s rather different from unlimited-in-proper-highways.
Unlimited on a regular road is stupid. Unlimited in an isolated highway with no crossings or same level intersections is nice.
Driving culture is important too. Somehow I wasn’t tailgated on German highways and supercars were happily waiting for me to get out of the way. Meanwhile back at home with 130km/h limit it’s common to do +10 and get tailgated with flashing left turn signal by those who want to do +20. But maybe they’d wait too if they knew they could speed more in an empty section down the road?
> Unlimited in an isolated highway with no crossings or same level intersections is nice.
In reality, in Australia, in NT and Pilbarra it causes needless death.
I grew up in these areas and I have no personal issue with others of similar background driving at whatever speed they feel comfortable - I've drafted a light aircraft at 70 m/s ( 252 km/hr ) at a 3m ground clearance along such highways for extended periods of time (geophysical survey | fun) .. but they are dangerous in ways that newcomers don't account for.
These are mostly single lane either direction highways .. if you over take a loooong three trailer road train (common on nor'west and NT highways) you might be surprised by an oncoming car that was initially invisible in a road dip ahead .. and at very high speeds next to a very long truck there are very few options.
I can add further examples of the many ways people screw up on country roads but see no real need to labour that point.
Suffice to say I agree that unlimited on open roads is nice .. but it's not always safe when you factor in other drivers, mixed traffic types, and most importantly mixed experience levels, tired drivers on 12+ hour hauls, etc.
I've worked St Johns volunteer ambulance in remote areas and I'm all for fewer deaths that could have been avoided by lower speeds and better driving practices (taking breaks, not drinking on road, taking bennies, using mobiles, etc).
> These are mostly single lane either direction highways ..
It does not sound lik a highway.
Around here, highways are opposite lanes separated (and usually multiple, with very very few exceptions), banned slow traffic, no single-level intersections, usually fenced off wildlife.
Like it or not it's a highway, an Australian highway - two lanes, one in each direction, unseperated, with soft shoulders that can wash out.
Some fences now and again, mostly unfenced, kangaroos abound, emus run across, cattle will wander (although they are usually with fenced areas (albeit ones that can fall)).
Wherever "around here" might be, unless it's the Siberian expanse or very few other places, it's unlike most of Australia (outside of the handful of Capital city metro+suburban areas) which is vast, empty, and unpopulated.
Western Australia is larger than 3x the size of Texas with a population of not much over two million of which nearly all live around the main city with most of the rest in the south west corner.
Out in the rest of the state and across into the NT the pop numbers are low and the distance between towns are high.
This information might cause you to rethink the unlimited speed proposal.
On the up side police presence is generally low to non existant, on the down side police and ambulance support can be hours away in the event of accidents .. or rogue outback murderers flagging down tourists.
Then Australian highway is an entirely different thing than highways in europe and our discussion is meaningless.
I stand corrected that German highways with unlimited speed are better driving experience than eastern european counterparts with a limit. Highways in european sense.
Well, your side may have been meaningless but I've had a clear and solid understanding of both the German Autobahn and an Australian highway from the outset .. I'm glad you've caught up.
To reiterate, the highways in the NT of Australia were completely unregulated for many years as an area with no state government and no federal road laws until relatively recently.
People frequently drove at high speeds legally for many years and staged legal high speed long distance races on its roads.
In recent decades roads there have been regulated with sections at times being unlimited.
The primary issue with unlimited zones, IMHO, is people driving beyond their ability - in the sense of beyond their ability to react, to see ahead, to understand the nature of the road (ie. dips, curves, what it takes to actively straddle a hard road and soft shoulder and maintain control), beyond what the mechanics of their car might be capable of.
Yes, but Germany compensates with good traffic rules and good driver education (one of the harder to get driving licenses around the world, with 18 hours of mandatory theoretical classes, practical classes, and theoretical and practical tests that cost you around €2000 overall). Going by [1] Germany has the 15th lowest per-capita traffic-related death rate, less than one third that of the USA.
Using SUVs costs more money, more resources, cars are heavier, tyres bigger, more are resistance, more fuel usage. And number of people buying bigger and bigger cars is growing. Number of people driving really fast is relatively low.
I would rather ban SUVs than anything else. It's upsetting to hear people complaining about climate change, pollution, voting for the Green party because of this, and then instead of a sedan or wagon they are going for a SUV which uses 3-4 liter of fuel.
What makes you believe it won't be a thing (or a rebranded version of it)?
Unless any of the European countries (even the larger ones) wants to be crushed by the economic weight of the US or China they better stick together.
Even most Euro-skeptics seems to get it by now.
The fact that Russia is removing itself from the game of economics and has voluntarily killed of European dependency on their gas is reducing inner EU conflict.
Not saying it necessarily will fall apart but there is a possibility. UK is already out. Hungary and Poland are very nasty EU members for lack of a better term. The tension is growing.
Personally I would much prefer EU to *reset* to bare free-trade, free-movement, no-borders ethos, removing entirety of central regulations and central governance.
> Whether EU itself will be still a thing in 12+ years to enforce this bullshit ban is another question.
You are correct, the EU is going to break up, definitely before 2035, and probably sooner rather than later. We are at the beginning of a serious financial crisis, this time it's a sovereign debt crisis, caused by going to negative interest rates in 2014 (among other reasons).
Sigh!