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Comment by klausjensen | Hacker News Reader

Also interesting fact: Roughly another third of cars sold in Norway in 2018 were hybrid, taking hybrid+electric to a combined two-thirds of all cars sold.

Only one third were pure fossil fuel. That is quite remarkable.

Source: https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/editorcharts/NORWAY-AU...

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Not really, if you tax cars at ~100% on registration (eg: $50k car has $50k of tax on it for a total price of $100k), like Norway does, then it is pretty easy to get adoption when you zero rate or reduce that tax for (PH)EVs.

It's effectively an enormous tax credit for EVs. I'm sure of the US govt increased the federal tax credit for EVs from $7.5k to $40-60k, you'd see similar adoption in the US too.

EV's are enormously subsidized in oil rich Norway, as they are in China. It is encouraging that such a cold country can run EV's though, it seems they generally perform much better in warmer climates

As an interesting side note to this, while we might (temporarily) lose some range on cold winter days, our car batteries have remarkable little degradation compared to EVs from warmer climates. Used EVs imported from i.e. southern France to Norway usually have significantly lower remaining battery capacity than a car that has spent it's entire life in Norway.

Seems heat really kills these things :)

I had never heard about this. Do you have a reference? How big is the difference?

I don't have any actual numbers, sorry. I just remember being warned to be careful about cars from hot climates (like southern europe, and some US locations) a few years ago when I was looking for a used Leaf. Demands for EVs were very high in Norway, and resellers had to import (and still do) used EVs from other countries.

I found a life expectation chart for 3 US cities at [0].

It's well know that high temperatures (while in use and while in storage) degrade li-ion batteries[1]. However, electric cars have thermal management systems to try to protect the batteries from this effect (extreme heat and cold). Tesla have active water cooling, while Nissan Leaf use a simpler air cooling.

They also use different battery chemistries that handle temperatures differently. If you have a look quick look at this talk[2] you'll hear that Nissan is using a chemistry that experience higher degradation under high temperatures than for example Tesla's choice.

[0]: https://images.hgmsites.net/lrg/hot-weather-bad-for-electric...

[1]: https://www.plugincars.com/lithium-ion-batteries-can’t-stand...

[2]: https://youtu.be/pxP0Cu00sZs?t=1516

> a few years ago when I was looking for a used Leaf

The Leaf was notorious for not actually cooling the battery so I can see how they would do better in Norway. Maybe the newest generations have improved on that. I'd be curious if that was the same for Tesla though, which supposedly keeps the battery temperate under much better control.

Some Leaf generations are more sensitive than others (chemistry was slightly different). Sustained heat will still degrade them more quickly than expected though. Tesla has active temperature management, but also has a different chemistry which should be more sensitive than the one used in the Leaf.

Better performance from batteries in hot climates but faster degradation due to heat soak. I believe this is also a significant issue with battery fire risk- the hotter the battery the more of an issue it is extinguishing compromised battery cells that are still powerful stores of energy after an accident. The recombustion issues after fires have been put out are more serious in hotter climates

I think the issue in cold climates is not the battery itself, it's heating the cabin.

With a combustion engine you use waste heat, but with a battery engine you use resistive heat and that comes right from your battery.

A/C also uses battery, but heat uses more energy.

A/C also uses battery, but heat uses more energy.

I can't speak for all cars, but mine uses a heat pump for heat. Should have similar efficiency to A/C as that is exactly what a heat pump is.

Their efficiency goes way down the colder it gets. They’ll work well at 5-10C, but frost up and require electrically-expensive defrost cycles when it’s colder than -2 or -3 C.

Heat pump with outside temperatures below zero has same or lower efficiency than resistive heating.

I suppose the cars heats resistively below zero, and with a heat pump above

A modern heat pump with a variable speed compressor can be more efficient than resistive heat down to about -25 degrees Celsius (-13F). See Mitsubishi's Mr. Slim series.

http://cdn.agilitycms.com/mesca/productdownloads/mem-201806-... (page 13)

And if you use a ground source heat pump (that has to be interred) it would be even more efficient. So? I don’t think that you can put either of them in a car...

The offerings from Mitsubishi and similar ones from other Asian manufacturers like LG and Fujitsu are air source heat pumps. I see no reason why the tech can't be scaled down to fit a car. It's certainly a reasonable goal for auto parts suppliers to aim at.

Some EVs produce heat more efficiently using a heat pump, which is basically an A/C running backwards.

this works at 3-4C, falling down the efficiency drops off rapidly.

House geothermic heating is very similar, except the collector is buried under the ground where the temperature doesn't really go negative C (until -30C and depends on the soil, etc). Overall for EV cars in cold winters producing heat is a non-trivial task.

IC engines drive all associated 'accessories' via belts where EV has to have dedicated battery draining motors for everything from windscreen wipers to hvac

That's not completely true. For fuel efficiency, most modern ICE cars drive all the accessories with electric motors, with only the AC and brake booster being powered by the ICE in some cases.

Alternator charges battery

Recommendation #1: heat the occupant, not the cabin

Recommendation #2: pre-heat the cabin

Recommendation #3: if/when driving in stop&go traffic, use the regen energy directly for heating to save some charge/discharge cycles.

Recommendation #4: along with #2, use some phase change materials to “charge” some thermal batteries.

#1&2 are a thing. Not sure about 3 and 4.

3 may require some predictive modelling to know if you’ll be driving in stop&go or not.

How is #1 done?

Heated seats and steering wheels.

With a seat heater. They were popular in the old times, when engines were not digitally controlled and took a long time to heat up enough to provide any warming effect inside the car.

Also heated thermal underwear [1]

[1] - https://www.amazon.com/J-Jinpei-Lightweight-Intelligent-Temp...

With clothing.

Dress properly for the weather.

Every car I've been in in Norway has had heaters in at least the front seats. The Tesla S has rear seat heaters as a configuration option when you buy the car as well as an option for a heated steering wheel. Quite a lot of the cars I rented in the US had heated seats, even in North Carolina.

Pretty much no vehicles currently do #3, despite many being capable of it with software-only changes.

I believe this is because most vehicles do a fixed amount of regen(which goes into the battery) when the foot is off the accelerator, but no additional electric braking when the brake pedal is used. I think that's because current regulations have pretty much stopped modifications to the braking system in cars, and prevent tweaking it to do electric braking when available to do cabin heating, and mechanical braking otherwise.

Heat pumps can be used to heat the cabin with far less energy than resistive heaters. It's tricky to design them to be cheap, light, and work all the way down to -30C and up to 60C that cars are expected to be able to work in.

There are cold parts to the country, but a lot of the population lives in the South near the sea where the winter night time temperature doesn’t go much below zero Celsius.

And your vehicle is exposed to more moderated temperatures if parked indoors (even the pad of an unheated garage retains heat).

Plenty of parts of the US and Canada deal with much colder temperatures for months at a time.

According to the graphs here, the most significant drop in range is cooling from the 10-20C bracket down to the 0-10C bracket

https://cleantechnica.com/2018/07/15/tesla-range-plotted-rel...

That makes sense (but wow the variability on their initial plots!).

It would be nice to see plots for ranges of temps below 0C or temperatures where AC is desired.

I think a lot of people think of Norway in winter like they think of N. Minnesota in winter.

Fossil fuel cars get a huge discount for causing pollution and health problems. If other countries subsidized the damage that fossil fuel cars do as much as the USA then I'm sure there would be similar adoption as in the USA too.

A brand new Ford Raptor will clean the air in most cities. You'd have to drive that 465HP fuel guzzling toy over 3,887 miles to equal the particulate output of 30 minutes of yard work with a 2 stroke engine.

So not as much of a discount as you might have thought.

It removes CO2? magic

He wrote 'particulate'.

Not CO2, but particulate matter [1]: basically tiny solid particles caused by exhaust, tires etc that stay suspended in the air. They are linked to a range of health issues in the concentrations found in many urban cities. When you hear about cities banning diesel cars or ICE cars or old cars, that's a measure to reduce suspended particulate matter, not CO2. But luckily unlike CO2, particulate matter can be caught by a HEPA air filter.

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particulates

It is true that many cars will clean the air of particulate matter these days. That is the only kind of pollution that a modern ICE car will remove, but it is not the only kind of pollution worth talking about....

CO2, NOx and others are just-as, if not more important and your air filter won't do jack diddly for those.

NOx exhaust aftertreatment systems are standard, so a compliant vehicle today will have considerably less NOx in exhaust as well. As for CO2, well, it's not a small chunk, but cars and light trucks account for less than half of transportation sector CO2 emissions; and the transport sector accounts for about 28% of overall CO2 emissions. It's not silly to reduce CO2 emissions in light trucks and cars, but at most reducing those sources would only cut about 15% of U.S. CO2.

"only 15%"? That's huge!

Keep in mind, this is in a country where light trucks and SUVs account for a huge proportion of personal vehicles, and where the average age of a car on the road is about twelve years. As the window of vehicle years shifts further, you can expect that proportion to shrink.

Citation for exhausts having significantly less NOx than city air?

> Citation for exhausts having significantly less NOx than city air?

I absolutely, unequivocally, did not say that.

It's LITERALLY killing the planet we all depend on, yet you can always depend on car fanatics to justify their pollution.

Seriously, sell your car and take the bus.

Cars in Norway have a CO2 tax. But EVs get breaks on things not related to CO2 in Norway. According to Tesla's website, you don't have to pay VAT.

https://www.tesla.com/no_NO/support/incentives?redirect=no

Edit: from an old reddit post, it seems like there's a VAT, weight, engine, CO2, N0x tax. In theory, in an 'even playing field', I'm guessing EVs should be paying VAT, weight, and engine taxes. Not completely sure which of these they pay (or if the list is even correct).

What kind of health problems? I was under the impression that the emission standards for the last 40 years or so have been quite stringent.

Air pollution, of which transportation is a huge contributor, kills tens of thousands per years in the US. There are many other effects like asthma which afflict millions. Transportation is certainly a lot cleaner than it was but there's still a lot of improvement that can be done. Below is a link to a basic overview, it can give you hints on where to dig if you are interested in specific studies.

https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/vehicles-air-pollution...

Brake pads are pretty bad, in addition to the auto emissions. Electric vehicles help a lot there too.

Are there brake pad emission standards? I don’t know.

I just looked up the brake pad emissions. Pretty scary stuff but it seems like it would be trivially solved by some form of containment around the brake and the disc that captures all of the dust. Probably needs laws to enforce it before car makers would add such a thing.

Regenerative braking sounds more useful than dust containment (not to say dust containment can’t be cost effective).

Fossil fuels are heavily taxed in Europe, it’s not even funny.

Externalities aren't paid by the perpetrator in America because they don't truly believe in personal responsibility.

No matter the reason, it's still just as remarkable, I'm not sure what you're implying.

I'm sure of the US govt increased the federal tax credit for EVs from $7.5k to $40-60k, you'd see similar adoption in the US too.

I get your point, but to be fair, the numbers in your comparison are a bit off, since a $40-60k tax credit would make many electric cars effectively free. That would be a much bigger incentive than what Norway has.

Its the same reason that diesel was so popular in Europe (with out the particlates though) also in some countries LPG.

Not really remarkable?

Even if it's just "legislative decisions", it's fucking incredible that a country did what it did to get there. Do you really think the US is 2 inches away from shutting out it's internal big-oil?

Even if tech isn't the solution, and it's just decisions, it can still be remarkable.

> Not really, if you tax cars at ~100% on registration

Your facts are correct, but that makes it no less interesting or incredible.

> I'm sure of the US govt increased the federal tax credit for EVs from $7.5k to $40-60k, you'd see similar adoption in the US too.

Okay. And if such an event happened, you'd not think it incredible?

Is there a market for second hand electric cars like there is for oil powered cars ? Usable cars starting as low as 2000€ ?

There is certainly a strong market for secondhand electric cars - I own one and it's the best car I've ever purchased. In terms of the "starting as low as 2000€", though, no. The battery alone in any usable electric car is likely worth more than that.

About the battery... Does that mean electric cars should have much better short/medium term depreciation and probably worse long term (as the batteries become too degraded for reuse)?

Demand is high for both new and used EVs in Norway.

EVs are free (or significantly cheaper) on most toll roads, parking, and pay at most 50% of regular fees for ferries.

Owning an old short range EV as a second car can easily save you 1800€ a year[1] in toll fees alone. Even an old electric wreck is easily worth 10000€ just in reduced toll fees if it's able to do 5 more years of just rolling past that toll station barrier. Even banged up and with a 50% degraded battery the car is still valuable, as long as it can get you to work and back home again.

There was a time some years ago when you could essentially cover the down payments for a Tesla Model S from saved ferry fees if your daily commute crossed Trondheimsfjorden (cost like 30 USD per way, this "bug" has since been fixed, you now have to pay 50% of the ticket).

[1]: https://www.nrk.no/rogaland/dette-vil-bomringen-koste-deg-1....

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