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Comment by adrianN | Hacker News Reader

This is a necessary step to becoming carbon neutral by 2050. Countries that don't make similar announcements soon are not serious about that goal.

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A lot of people might buy cheap used cars in 2029 that might be on the road till 2040-2050. If he is serious about it, which is rare when officials promise something 10 years into the future, he would suggest a plan to provide the needed infrastructure.

What's the alternative? Destroy all petrol and diesel cars in 2029? If they didn't allow a transition period then it wouldn't go well.

Mandate a switch to e-fuels. Start with "all fossil-based fuels need to add 1% of synthetic e-fuels next year" and increase it to 100% over time. You can still drive your ICE car, but it'll become expensive.

How do synthetic fuels solve the CO2 problem?

Didn't want to say it was a bad idea, just that EV have to become viable for the general population and that is currently not the case because of the higher price. Very high taxes on fuel would also incentivize people to buy EV.

I don't use a car much that is why I have a used one for ~2500$. I know a mechanic for cheap repairs, I need it occasionally to reach friends and family and public transport is not an option since time has become so valuable and it doesn't work for emergencies.

I would not want to spend 20,000$ on a car because it would just be parked most of the time. Especially among younger people I see this very often. It will be interesting to see EVs hit used markets. My company leases cars for 50,000$ without thinking twice and some people just love cars that much, but that isn't realistic for the vast majority of people.

Currently used EV can cost 25,000$. Not viable for the mass market.

The median age of cars on the road is 10 years or so. While it's true that there is a long tail of very old cars, it's unlikely that many of them will be around by 2050, especially if fuel infrastructure becomes sparser due to lack of demand.

If so, their second-hand price will increase accordingly. Until this aporoach becomes uneconomic for the majority.

In the meantime, any new carbon tax would also work against this approach.

Joke's on them, because nowadays cars are made with a focus on the first owner's experience - some parts have become more expensive and integrated, so keeping an ICE vehicle running in 2050 is going to cost a fortune.

You forget that currently road maintenance and other expenses are taken from the petrol tax when share of EV increases there will have to be a tax on charging so total cost of ownership over all the years of owning EV will start to go up.

I’m not sure about the economics of it, but I’d rather drive a car powered by synthetic gasoline made from pulling carbon dioxide out of the air. No new CO2 combined with no restrictions on range & quick refueling times sounds like a win. I still don’t know where people will plug in all of these electric cars.

The economics are such that it probably won't work out. EVs are >85% efficient from wind turbine to movement. Making synthetic fuel is at best 40% efficient from electricity->fuel and the ICE only translates <30% of that to movement. We probably don't have enough room for turbines and solar panels to produce the necessary power.

Ehh...we get a stupid huge amount of sunlight from the sun daily, and the benefit of synthetic fuel is that it's a lot easier to store long term then electrical energy in batteries.

I think the main issue is that it's a lot easier to convert diesel's to run on alternative fuel oils then it is to get gasoline vehicles to do the same.

If you can devise a way of synthesizing gasoline from CO2 in the atmosphere that doesn't require a huge amount of solar energy and/or a few million years, you'll be a very popular person.

It's a matter of fighting against the laws of thermodynamics.

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