Internal combustion bans

Domenick

Domenick

Well-Known Member
A number of places are announcing plans to ban internal combustion engine- powered personal vehicles at future dates.

Norway had said 2025
France is looking at 2040.
India is super ambitious, talking up 2030
Netherlands is considering 2025
Germany is down for 2030.
UK is looking at 2040.
California will consider 2040
China is also considering without a date.
Denmark to ban gas and diesel cars, including hybrids, by 2030.

I know everyone has a different opinion about how much government should meddle in these sorts of affairs, so let's avoid getting mired down in discussion of political philosophies and just focus on the ambition, the dates, and how that may be achieved.

I'm hesitant to embrace bans, personally, because of backlash -- no one likes to be told what to do. I do like to see target dates, though, with governments discussing how to get there with legislation and/or incentives.

Best case scenario, of course, is an organic explosive growth similar to that of mobile phones, and then smart phones. It seems a bit of a staggering change, but if the appeal of electrics continues to grow, and autonomous sharing platforms happen the way many predict, it is not outside the realm of possibility that we can be pretty much done with internal combustion by 2040.
 
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The announcement of these bans seems positive for changing the perception of electric cars and getting buy-in for a petrol-free future. But realistically I think that we'll either reach a point where the ban doesn't actually achieve much (because electric cars have taken over independently of the ban) or where they're delayed by a few years (because electric cars haven't taken off).

Looking at the UK ban, 2040 is so far away as to be a bit meaningless - we're going to have a lot of changes of Government before then!

I wonder whether it will be cities instead of countries where we see bans which actually make a big difference. Even if the UK isn't ready to go entirely electric until 2040, what's to stop a radical and forward thinking Mayor of London pass a ban on driving petrol/diesel cars once electric has reached around 50% penetration in the country as a whole? Or introducing a hefty excess charge on driving petrol/diesel cars into London once electric has reached around 20% penetration?
 
With UK and France the 2040 deadline is more virtue signaling than anything real.
Norwegian 2025 is a different story, as the political situation there is likely not to change too much in 8 years, so the ban is likely to actually happen.
The most important declaration by far is from China (being the biggest car market in the world) with its 9% of cars sold in 2019, 10% in 2020 etc.
 
Grayson said:
...what's to stop a radical and forward thinking Mayor of London [from] introducing a hefty excess charge on driving petrol/diesel cars into London once electric has reached around 20% penetration?
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Looks to me like there has already been a big step in that direction, regarding London's ultra low emission zone (ULEZ):

From 8 April 2019, the most polluting cars, vans and motorbikes will have to pay £12.50 to drive through central London, while buses, coaches and HGVs will pay £100...

The charge will apply to petrol cars that do not meet Euro 4 standards and diesel vehicles that do not meet Euro 6 standards.

According to City Hall, approximately this will mean petrol cars more than 13 years old in 2019, and diesel cars over four years old in 2019, will be charged.

...Will not apply to residents living in the zone until April 2022
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If non-residents have to pay the fee every time, that's quite a deterrent! And three years later, even resident will have to pay the fee. Of course, you can argue that this applies only to old gasmobiles... but also to not-so-old diesel cars! For gasmobiles it's at least a foot-in-the-door restriction, and this should certainly accelerate the rate at which diesel car sales fall off. At least, I hope so!

Full article: "Date announced for London ultra low emission zone"

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-39488291
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Pushmi-Pullyu said:
Looks to me like there has already been a big step in that direction, regarding London's ultra low emission zone (ULEZ)
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Very true, but the Central London zone is very small (I know plenty of people who drive a lot in London and who never have any need to go through it) so it's a relatively small step so far. It definitely shows which direction things are going in, though!
 
Adrian said:
To me it's futile to say we will enforce a ban ... in 2040. A lot could happen until then. Who knows, maybe we'll run out of fossil fuels by then :)
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^^ this.

As I see it, any "ban" that far in the future is just politicians pretending to do something, while not actually doing anything; more of a hope than an actual policy. Any mandate that far in the future is almost certainly going to change before the date specified.

Governments can mandate incentives, or impose fees. Norway has even imposed very stiff taxes on gasmobiles, up to 100% of retail cost! That's a powerful dis-incentive to buy gasmobiles.

But what no government can do is mandate that its people buy something as expensive as a PEV when they have no desire for such a thing. Governments can gently push people toward buying them, but PEVs will never make the gasmobile obsolete until people genuinely see them as being preferable to gasmobiles. Even China, with its authoritative government, has had to back down on its aggressive mandate that... what was it? At least 7% of new car sales have to be alternative-energy vehicles, starting in a year or two.

Push the auto makers too hard toward switching to making PEVs instead of gasmobiles, and they will balk; they'll simply stop selling cars in the regions with those mandates. Even regions with very large market potential, like China. No business is going to try to sell a product where it does not think it can make a profit, no matter how large the market is.
 
@ Dominick,
Being a dutchy a small addition to your input.
In the Netherlands the average lifespan of a passengercar is 10.2 year (2015 figure) and this is rising.
So in practical terms this implies that, seen from a technical point of view, non zero-emission passengercars will be extinct in 2041.
From a legislative point of view it will probably be a different story as more and more cities in our country are already restricting access to their 'innercities'
for diesel- & petrol passengercars & juggernauts which do not comply to emission standards like e.g. the Euronorm 4.
This is done by means of fully automated ANPR systems on the access road to the restricted area's and designated ANPR equiped passengcars which patrol the restricted area's.
 
First, for those following the thread, ANPR is Automatic number-plate recognition.

Yeah, even with the ban on new internal combustion cars, it will take some time to change over the existing ones. It will be interesting to see how these changes affect the price and availability of gas, thereby slowing or increasing adoption.

For instance, if a lot of people are buying electric cars, gas station operators will have fewer customers, and may need to raise prices to make up for the shortfall, since their business runs on very slim margins and depend on selling volumes of gas and snacks. This may increase the speed of the fleet turnover to electric considerably. Each time a gas station needs to raise the price, they encourage even more to go electric.

One could also imagine that lower demand might mean greater supply, thus lower prices. For a number of reasons, this scenario seems less likely, because there is only so low you can go, and it would only slow, not stop the changeover.
 
Domenick said:
...if a lot of people are buying electric cars, gas station operators will have fewer customers, and may need to raise prices to make up for the shortfall... Each time a gas station needs to raise the price, they encourage even more to go electric.

One could also imagine that lower demand might mean greater supply, thus lower prices.
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Actually I imagine both will happen. If we look at what happened to whale oil prices near the end of the whale oil era, there were strong swings in prices, up and down. Lower demand means some of the sources quit making the product, which leads to shorter supply and higher prices, which leads to more people switching to the new product, which leads to a glut on the market and lower prices...

Rinse and repeat.

Based on that history, it looks like a declining market for a fuel is an unstable market.

whale2.bmp
 
Domenick said:
For instance, if a lot of people are buying electric cars, gas station operators will have fewer customers, and may need to raise prices to make up for the shortfall, since their business runs on very slim margins and depend on selling volumes of gas and snacks.
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They'll all have electricity chargers on their forecourts to sell stuff to EV drivers who will be captive for perhaps 30 minutes or more.
 
30kWh_Leaf said:
They'll all have electricity chargers on their forecourts to sell stuff to EV drivers who will be captive for perhaps 30 minutes or more.
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It will be interesting to see whether this can stand as a business model for them. Now, gas stations makes their money on chips and soda. How many more bags of chips can be sold in 30 minutes as opposed to 5 minutes?

Need to make revenue from electricity sales? Jacking the price up much over what customers pay at home incentives those with the ability to charge at home to mostly charge at home. Customer base will then be mostly those who have to park on street...until curbside electricity is deployed.
 
Domenick said:
Now, gas stations makes their money on chips and soda. How many more bags of chips can be sold in 30 minutes as opposed to 5 minutes?

Need to make revenue from electricity sales? Jacking the price up much over what customers pay at home incentives those with the ability to charge at home to mostly charge at home. Customer base will then be mostly those who have to park on street...until curbside electricity is deployed.
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But, with clean toilet facilities, they'll be able to sell more coffee/drinks and sandwiches/stickies. I admit that many people (me) will mainly charge at home but I suspect that there will be enough customers who travel a lot to keep the best establishments open.
 
Domenick said:
Maybe France will ban the sale of new gas cars by 2040, but Paris wants to make a move much sooner, and ban all combustion cars, not just new ones.
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I believe @tonyseba when he says that if autonomous vehicles are authorised by 2021, all new vehicles will be autonomous electric ones by 2030. Battery EV costs are already in front of the curve shown on his 2014 graphs to make this likely.
 
30kWh_Leaf said:
But, with clean toilet facilities, they'll be able to sell more coffee/drinks and sandwiches/stickies. I admit that many people (me) will mainly charge at home but I suspect that there will be enough customers who travel a lot to keep the best establishments open.
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As EV numbers increase, so will this specific customer base. I think customers need to be accommodated differently for these longer refueling periods than traditional convenience store users. There is a great opportunity for a new type of business here, and I'm not sure the traditional gas station is flexible enough to take advantage.

Many don't have the space needed to have a number of vehicles parked there for a hour, and they don't have the goods and services that align will these customer's wants or needs. Certainly they will try, as Shell is, but these is a great opportunity for new entities to arise and take advantage of this new opportunity.
 
Domenick said:
There is a great opportunity for a new type of business here, and I'm not sure the traditional gas station is flexible enough to take advantage.
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Those that can't adapt will go under. As battery sizes increase, so will the charge rate. Porsche is installing 350kW chargers in some of its premises and there is research going into 350-400 kW charging. 60kWh battery at 360kW is only 10 minutes from absolutely flat to almost fully charged. And, there is hope that batteries will be able to charge even faster in the not too distant future. Interesting times ahead. I'll be looking to buy the 60kWh Leaf or perhaps longer distance Tesla Model 3 when my lease on this Leaf runs out in June 2019.
 
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