The Netherlands is making moves to ban all non-electric vehicle sales by 2025 | Hacker News Reader

The Netherlands is making moves to ban all non-electric vehicle sales by 2025

sciencealert.com

115 pointsimartin2k70 comments

It's noteworthy that 90% of energy used in the Netherlands is fossil fuels[1] (as of 2013, anyway). This means electric cars will emit GHGs comparable to a 40-50mpg gasoline-powered car. Hopefully they do some major work to clean up their grid electricity.

Electric cars are a necessary step to reducing GHG emissions, but without a clean grid they are pretty pointless.

[1] https://www.iea.org/Textbase/npsum/netherlands2014SUM.pdf

Although those fossil fueled plants tend to still be more efficient than car engines. You might only save about 1/3 of the normal emissions in the worst case, but that's still some improvement, and it automatically improves further as the grid moves to more environmentally friendly production.

Remember, green looks far better for building new power plants vs. replacing existing power plants. 2025 is still a long way away, and those electric cars will still be electric in 2035 as would any gas cars bought.

PS: Their greenhouse gas emissions where down -5.2% from 2004-2009. So, with new demand the mix could change fairly rapidly.

I haven't read the linked report, but I'm guessing that's mostly industrial usage? From anecdotal evidence of the people I know (which is also biased), most consumer electricity is 'green' (wind, solar, and sometimes biomass). In general this is not more expensive than 'grey', so many people opt for it.

Here you go, Sankey diagram for the Netherlands (for 2013):

http://www.iea.org/sankey/#?c=Netherlands&s=Final consumption

0.5 MTOE geo/solar/tide/wind/bio/waste energy going to residential use

The Dutch cabinet has already decided to close 8 coal plants - there will only be 3 remaining [1]. Having said that - the power supply gap will now be fed from imports - and critics are claiming that those imports are more carbon intensive. A report has been commissioned...

[1] http://www.nltimes.nl/2016/04/11/dutch-cabinet-to-close-two-...

Tough to get more carbon-intensive than coal! Seriously, from a GHG perspective anything is better. So good for them.

German utilities have been complaining for years that excess german solar capacity is forcing them to run their dynamos below capacity, i.e. inefficiently. If the german plants gain that efficiency back by supplying dutch demand, sounds okay to me.

> Electric vehicles – including self-driving cars – are clearly the future

Partially off-topic, but it feels very weird when people put electric and self-driving cars into the same basket. Those are 2 different problems. There're electric cars which are not self driving. There're cars aiming to be self-driving, that are not electric.

One could argue that self-driving cars potentially consume less energy by driving more efficiently than humans.

We already have an energy-saving self-driving mechanism - cruise control (and obeying the speed limit.)

I drive a hybrid. Except for a few parts of my commute, cruise control and slow acceleration push me from 42 mpg to 50 mpg on my commute.

> We already have an energy-saving self-driving mechanism - ... (and obeying the speed limit.)

Obeying the speed limit is irrelevant; the actual speed is. A given car at a given speed consumes the same amount of fuel per unit distance regardless of what the speed limit is.

All the data indicating that "speeding wastes fuel" is basically just proving that fuel economy is a function of engine power output.

You're ignoring breaking. If you go significantly faster than the speed limit your far more likely to break at highway speeds.

Further, IC cars often get better fuel efficiency by mixing slow acceleration periods at optimum RPM and coasting. (Car engines get ~10-30 efficiency based on usage.) You can do this manually, but it's hard.

However, air resistance is going to be the dominate factor at high speeds.

> You're ignoring breaking. If you go significantly faster than the speed limit your far more likely to break at highway speeds.

I'm not ignoring braking. Aggressive driving wastes a lot of fuel, but aggressive driving happens regardless of the posted speed limit. In fact, that rapid acceleration-brake cycle is more likely to happen when the flow of traffic is below the speed limit.

> Further, IC cars often get better fuel efficiency by mixing slow acceleration periods at optimum RPM and coasting. (Car engines get ~10-30 efficiency based on usage.) You can do this manually, but it's hard.

I don't think it's hard. It just requires paying attention to the traffic around you.

Actually it's more to do with air resistance. It increases exponentially at higher speeds. You also don't burn less by driving really slow, since the engine burns some amount of fuel just by running at any speed. 40 mph is the sweet spot, supposedly.

Driving at the speed limit will definitely save you more fuel than speeding.

> Actually it's more to do with air resistance. It increases exponentially at higher speeds. You also don't burn less by driving really slow, since the engine burns some amount of fuel just by running at any speed. 40 mph is the sweet spot, supposedly.

Actually, the sweet spot is dependent on the design and condition of the car. I'm not sure where exactly it is, but I think you are right that it is usually around 40.

> Driving at the speed limit will definitely save you more fuel than speeding.

How does a number on a sign affect how much fuel I'm burning? If, as you indicated, the sweet spot for my car is 40 but the speed limit is 30, how am I saving fuel by going 30 instead of 40? What if the speed limit is 65? If they drop it to 60 am I suddenly using more fuel? If they increase it to 70 can I now go faster without using more? The speed limit is totally irrelevant to fuel consumption.

Of course it depends on the design of the car, but 40 is an average.

>How does a number on a sign affect how much fuel I'm burning?

I never claimed that it would. I said "Driving at the speed limit will definitely save you more fuel than speeding.", which is definitely true. If you speed you are going faster and using more fuel.

> I never claimed that it would. I said "Driving at the speed limit will definitely save you more fuel than speeding.", which is definitely true. If you speed you are going faster and using more fuel.

That statement has nothing to do with the speed limit, though. It may be trivially true, but adding the speed limit ties an irrelevant variable to it. Speed limit is a semi-arbitrary number that has nothing to do with how much fuel a car uses and how efficiently it uses it.

The implication is that driving over the speed limit is likely, on average, to be less fuel efficient than obeying it. Due to the laws of human nature, very few people drive significantly below the speed limit, and very few people prioritise their fuel economy over everything else so this translates to a reasonable guideline.

The implication is that driving over the speed limit is likely, on average, to be less fuel efficient than obeying it.

Not necessarily, because of gear changes. Not all cars can use 5th gear in a 50km/h zone, so they'll drive in 4th gear. It seems likely that doing 60km/h in 5th gear is more efficient than 50km/h in 4th gear.

> Of course it depends on the design of the car, but 40 is an average.

Funny, I had always heard 55 MPH was the "sweet spot".

Drag Coefficient will be dramatically different on all car models.

Driving slower can have as dramatic of an impact on MPG as driving too fast. Your engine has to work quite hard to keep the car moving in both cases. Once up to a cruising speed, your engine will have to work less hard (and burn less gas) to maintain momentum. This is why your foot is not on the accelerator pedal harder while cruising on the highway when compared to driving on the streets. This is also part of the reason overdrive gears work (<1:1 ratio).

From a dead-stop, you dump the most unburned hydrocarbons (as a bunch of fuel is dumped into the chamber suddenly). So, constant highway driving will be more efficient than a slower city-street driver.

> increases exponentially at higher speeds

Exponential with regards of the speed? That sounds odd. So I looked it up:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_equation

    F = (1/2) * \rho * u^2 * C * A

    F: drag force
    u: flow velocity relative to the object

So, quadratically.

I think you're being deliberately obtuse. For 99% of people, obeying the speed limit will result in slowing down, which is what your parent was alluding to.

Self driving cars will almost certainly use much more energy than regular cars. It will reduce the cost of shipping by a lot, increasing the amount of things which are shipped. It will reduce the price of taxis a lot, so people will drive more. And it will make long commutes and road trips much more convenient.

Maybe, but you're still limited by atoms not occupying the same physical space at the same time ("traffic", "congestion", etc).

There's limited road to use, so you'll still hit finite limits; if limits are reached, congestion charges will be used to bring demand inline with roadway supply.

ideally the throughput of highway would be increasing with self-driving vehicles: no need for start/stopping when they can drive at optimum total velocity.

Yes but the swinging hours pattern will melt since cars are now decoupled from humans cycle. Freeing a lot of pseudo-space.

I noticed that too. It's maybe because both are some pretty big advances that are happening somewhat simultaneously?

I seriously doubt this whole thing will actually happen. The plan was made by one of the governing parties but the other party in the coalition thinks the plan is idiotic and I'm not sure there's enough backing for it overall. I for one hope to be able to drive an electric vehicle in a few years (self-driving or not; but the Dutch road network probably really need this kind of solution to the congestion problems it has) but there are all kinds of smaller hurdles. It still takes a bit too long to charge mid-trip but I'm not entirely sure I could charge at home, not having a driveway (and probably be disallowed by regulation to just leaving a cable laying across the street where I park). Or at work, actually we don't really have any kind of parking provided by my employer (which is the government in this case). I dunno if I have to add 20 minutes a day to my commute to charge the batteries. Some also say our electric network cannot really handle the shift from fossil fuels to electricity in terms of bandwidth. Again, I hope to see this happen but we need a whole lot of people on the bandwagon or it's not going to happen in the time period the plan describes (but I do think it'll happen sooner or later).

Electric vehicles are many many times simpler than their gas-powered cousins. This simplicity is passed onto the self-driving computer as fewer variables.

Also, the primary downsides to electric vehicles -- longer refuel times, reduced range -- are mostly irrelevant when a computer is doing it by itself. Nobody cares if their self-driving taxi spends 10 minutes recharging itself between every pickup.

> Electric vehicles are many times simpler than their gas-powered cousins

What does engine complexity have to do with driving complexity? I imagine that a computer would drive a car using interfaces analogous to those we use; namely gas, brake, steer (and I guess a shifter to put it in drive).

Potentially, higher acceleration/deceleration would allow a computer to use simpler collision prevention algorithms. Also, there is no shifter there.

improved acceleration/deceleration aren't givens for electric vehicles. You shouldn't let the Teslas cloud your perception here - usually they are slower than their internal combustion peers. Also, no reason for a self driving algorithm to worry about shifting. In an automatic car do you worry about shifting?

Electric cars can react to changing inputs faster than gas powered cars. They can also have two, three or even four, independent motors driving the wheels. This makes it much easier for a computer to achieve high performance, though the difference may not be noticeable until you hit a gravel patch and attempt to recover at high speed.

> Electric vehicles are many many times simpler than their gas-powered cousins. This simplicity is passed onto the self-driving computer as fewer variables.

From the self-driving computer's perspective they are the same. Running the engine by computer is a solved problem.

They are the two advances people are excited by. Putting both in the first sentence is a way to lure people in to read the article.

In this case I think the approach taken by the US is better -- set aggressive fuel economy standards and let the market either

a.) figure out new technologies for much better fuel economy

b.) figure out electric vehicles are cheaper

My point here specifically is not that the numbers the US chose are correct (let that be for another debate), but that this method of effectively restricting/"banning" gasoline cars is better for everyone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Average_Fuel_Economy...

c.) lie and cheat their way around the standards

To be fair they've been caught and are facing enormous punitive fines.

To be fair the entire industry is cheating and will continue to cheat.

People want cheap and fast cars which directly conflicts with the regulations.

When all things are equal people will buy the faster car and the car that dose 0 to 60 quicker. And many people even prefer those stats when choosing a family car often over safety and pretty much all the time when it comes to how green the car is unless there is a harsh progressive tax based on car emissions.

The market in this case is dominated by both carbon and city pollution externalities. So they should also either price or mandate those. At that point it will be obvious to all that electric is better and we can stop tio-toeing around and roll out legislation to make the improvements happen faster and more smoothly.

Will they compel landlords to install chargers in all parking spots? What about street parking? Or are people who don't own garages simply screwed, as in the US?

I'm not sure about other cities, but if you own an electric car in Amsterdam, you're guaranteed to get a charging spot near your home. As long as nobody in your neighbourhood has a visitor with an electric car, this means a guaranteed parking spot, which is an enormously valuable perk in this city.

Interesting! So every time someone buys an electric car, the government builds a new charging spot? That sounds like a great way to incentivize EVs, even more than a straight cash refund like in the US.

It's not as radical as the headline suggests.

> There are moves within the country to ban all petrol and diesel vehicle sales by 2025.

You are right, I slightly changed the headline to avoid unnecessary confusion.

But it still is incorrect, the Dutch Labour Party is proposing the ban, they are not representative for the Dutch people. Which during the last elections was about 25% of the votes, now more like 10%. There is still a lot of resistance also within our government and political parties. With these proposals a lot of people are quite positive when they are proposed, but down the line they get voted down.

The case against the Dutch government from Urgenda [1] shows how hard it is to get change going.

[1] http://www.urgenda.nl/en/climate-case/

So people will just travel an extra 15 minutes to the next country to buy their dinosaur-powered vehicles instead.

This won't do anything but push sales tax money out of the country unless they also do something like ban new vehicle registrations as well as sales.

Or unless the neighboring countries follow suit.

Belgium maybe, but France and German have very strong industry relying on the production of petrol cars, so you'd expect them to offer strong resistance until they field more electric model than petrol ones. It is the same industry that victoriously lobbied against the liberalisation of the personal vehicle market.

Currently, there's a vehicle registration tax in the Netherlands when you first purchase a vehicle. Smaller vehicles and electric vehicles have a much lower tax to encourage cars that pollute less and put less strain on the roads.

When you go to another country to buy a vehicle, you still have to bring it back into the Netherlands and register it. So you'll just end up paying the tax anyways.

I would expect that if the Netherlands does end up going through with this proposal, Dutch residents would be unable to register imported vehicles unless they were electric vehicles.

Personally, I think just taxing fuel-burning vehicles with very high taxes would achieve a similar goal with less fuss. People would buy electric vehicles because they're cheaper rather than due to the cars just not being available. A small number of people who really want gasoline cars can still do so, but they're going to have to pay a lot for the privilege.

Austria by 2020.

http://autorevue.at/autowelt/oesterreich-2020-diesel-bezinau...

"There is no ban on the sale of 'fossil' cars such as the Labour Party originally wanted, but the Netherlands must "seek the mere selling of emission-free (new) cars in 2025""

source: http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2016/03/29/tweede-kamer-neemt-omstr...

It's about sales and it's very far from an implementation. One major issue is the EU, I heard on the radio (BNR) that it is not even legally possible for the Netherlands to banish sales of goods that are not banished in other parts of the EU. It's a nice discussion-starter though.

(Not EU resident here) How hard is it to cross an internal EU border, buy a car, and take it back home?

Not hard, but usually not worth it as far as I remember: You have to pay the VAT of your home country when you import it, which is often one of the biggest difference between car prices within the EU.

The difference is negligible. When you buy a car coming from another EU country, you pay the price without VAT(the dealership has to give you an ex-vat invoice). Then when you register it, you pay the VAT of the country where you register the vehicle. Most countries in EU have VAT between 20 to 23%, so in the worst case, you are paying 3% more, in the best case, you are saving 3%.

That's how car taxes work in the US. I bought my car off my parents in Ohio, and registered in (and paid taxes in) Pennsylvania. I'm not sure what Tesla does in pro-dealership states to get around the "not being able to sell cars or have dealerships here" problem, but the tax system would probably be the same.

It's not just VAT, many countries have additional taxes on cars. Extreme example: Denmark, where the tax on a car purchase is something like 180%. So basically, you have to import the car if you buy it in another country, which may mean quite a big cheque to your country's tax office. In the end, the system of taxes and various other obstacles is such that it's mostly not worth the trouble to buy a car in another country and import it home.

So what are people to do when there's no suitable electric vehicle that fills their need? I'm thinking mostly about businesses that need trucks and vans for shipping and distribution. It's going to be a long time before we have all electric Ranger & Transit lineup.

The Dutch market is far too small for any large company to justify moving towards this. So, unless the rest of Europe moves in lockstep with them, this measure will fail or will necessitate exemptions in order to keep business going.

Either that, or they go back to horses and mules.

You do what has always been done in the past -- you change the law once it proves untenable. Happens all the time actually.

The language in the article is ambiguous. There are a places where it uses "vehicle" and other places where it uses "car". The latter seems to indicate this is aimed at non-commercial passenger vehicles.

The article also says petrol fueled vehicles won't be forced off the road on 1 Jan 2025, so there may be a longer transition period for businesses that can maintain their fleets.

In any case, there are usually exceptions for commercial vehicles. Maybe they'll allow (some) commercial vehicles to be hybrids, or maybe they'll allow exemptions where it makes sense.

I agree with your comment and my downvote was a misplaced click. Sorry!

The focus will be on personal vehicles, not freight. It's unclear to me how they expect to handle cars with trailers, as I don't think current EVs can tow caravans or horse/boat trailers with adequate range.

However, as for freight, large cities have been working for a decade to get heavy trucks out of the inner city. Delft and Amsterdam have several distribution points on the outside of the city, and the last-mile delivery is done with electric vehicles like [1].

[1] http://www.stadslogistiek.info/home/wp-content/uploads/2015/... -- The site is Dutch-only, but this image shows some of the vehicles used

The Dutch market is big enough. There used to be a Dutch car brand once (DAF), and while they had trouble competing with the larger foreign car brands, an entire country that has to buy electric is plenty of incentive for any car brand to jump into that market. And the last type of car that DAF continued making was big trucks.

But I think if Netherland really were to go this route (I'm doubtful, actually), then I suspect other countries would follow. Or possibly even lead.

Is every part of the electric "sustainable" cars renewable? Is lithium or whatever they make these batteries out of "green"? Are we trading gas for some other limited resource?

A pretty major part is of course how the electricity is being generated. If it's coming from coal plants, electric is not going to be a big improvement (though still a slight one, because as dirty as coal plants are, they're still more efficient that your own personal internal combustion engine). But if it's part of a move towards all wind, solar and other clean energy production, then that's going to have a huge impact.

Lithium isn't so bad compared with the rare earths like neodymium, used in the permanent magnets in electric motors. I remember seeing a link on this site to a report on the lakes of toxic sludge in China that result from neodymium extraction.

Meanwhile London has the bold plan to make mandatory the Euro6 in the Ultra Low Emission Zones by 2020 - when those engines will be 10yrs old.

https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/ultra-low-emission-zone

I wonder if they thought about the extra stress on the electricity grid... it might need some mayor re hauling to satisfy the need to load all those cars.

don't sweat it, the great state of new jersey is hard at work on the opposite

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