By Jo Nova
Yet another reason EV’s are a lousy way to “save the world”
The point of all the subsidies, the charging sites, the $3,000 parking fines, the extra generation, interrupted journeys, pot-holes, road-wear, tyre pollution, collapsing parking lots and random fires is supposedly so that we make the weather nicer by burning less fossil fuels. But in Norway where the biggest experiment in EV’s has produced an “idyllic” mass uptake of EV’s, the fuel use has hardly changed.
Rystad Energy says that this shows we *must* electrify the buses, tractors and trucks too, but really this just shows what a waste of money all the past subsidies were.
If the “low hanging fruit” subsidies didn’t achieve much, the next round of subsidies will have to waste stupendous amounts of money. Remember this doesn’t include fuel used to power the electricity cars, nor the fuel used to mine the lithium and build the EV, or to fill in the potholes and rebuild the bridges. No one even knows if EV’s will reduce carbon dioxide. “There’s no such thing as a zero emissions vehicle”.
This is just “road fuel” we’re talking about and it’s not reducing it much:
Is Norway’s Love For EVs Enough To Put A Dent In Fuel Demand?
By Rystad Energy – Aug 28, 2023, 9:00 AM CDT, OilPrice.com
Although EVs make up about 90% of all new car sales in Norway, fuel demand has only seen a 10% fall from 2017 to 2023, remaining relatively stable.
Road fuel demand in Norway has remained relatively stable even with soaring electric vehicle (EV) adoption, raising questions about whether EVs really have a material impact on diesel and gasoline sales. Rystad Energy research and modeling has, however, uncovered the truth behind the persistent sales – electrifying heavy-duty vehicles, especially trucks, is essential to lowering overall fuel consumption.
EVs are often positioned as the key to decarbonizing transportation, but the latest data from the Norwegian government suggests otherwise. Electric cars have accounted for at least 80% of all passenger vehicle sales for the past three years. EVs – including plug-in hybrid (PHEV) and battery electric vehicles (BEV) – accounted for about 90% of all new car sales in 2023. More than 50% of passenger cars on the road in Oslo are electric, a threshold that BEVs alone will pass 50% in the next two years.
As far as experiments go, if anyone cared about CO2 emissions — the Norwegian EV program is a fail.
Drilling into the details, you might assume that Norwegians have used EV’s for the only bearable outcome they could find, which was short trips that didn’t use much fuel, which is why they didn’t make much difference. But Rystad Energy claims people drive the average BEV slightly further than the average diesel.
Since 2018, the average BEV in Norway has driven more miles than passenger cars of any other fuel type. In 2022, the average BEV drove 12,950 kilometers (km), surpassing for the first time the average distance of 12,000 km for diesel passenger vehicles. Overall, average passenger vehicle travel has steadily declined in Norway, from about 13,800 km in 2007 to 11,100 km in 2022.
They looked at official fuel sales, annual average mileage and car sales as reported by Statistics Norway and estimate that passenger car fuel demand is down 20%, which is “in line with the BEV market penetration”, which it might be, but it’s still a big nothing in terms of stopping storms, floods and fires. No jet streams were altered by this experiment.
Other factors confounding the experiment is that fuel demand from buses and trucks has grown from 30,000 barrels per day to 32,000. Plus the population grew, and people own slightly more cars per capita. (We all know EV’s are more likely to be the second car?) There are so many moving variables here — do governments that push EV’s onto the population also increase immigration thus undermining their own emissions reductions efforts? (Yes they do, and all the time). Are the populations that buy EV’s so wealthy they can afford the luxury of a second car? Does the increase in fuel prices (which was driven by green policies) mean more people catch buses and order online now, so instead of driving to the store, big diesel trucks now deliver their parcels?
Rystad Energy have a very long explanation of why really the fuel savings from EV’s are “just around the corner” — like everything else in Transition-World.
If politicians and activists actually cared about CO2, they wouldn’t be doing this.
Image by Nerijus jakimavičius and Vogler
A brilliant article. It is all malthusian subversion. Science and Ethics is replaced by group think and Double think. At a point in our history where people carry the computing power of dozens of Cray supercomputers clutched within their central visual field. A shocking contrast indeed. Do not look behind the green curtain- Toto get back here this instant. The next se7en years are going to be fantastic.
Meanwhile I am finding myself appreciating mother nature and savouring my “Leunig moments”. And prepping for apocalypse.
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What about the “carbon” (sic) emissions to produce EV batteries?
Mining and processing rock requires A LOT of energy. Reliable energy as well, from.fossil fuels.
Plus, most of the cobalt for the batteries comes from trafficked child and other slaves in the socialist paradise of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Even the far Left NPR admits this.
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Australia is 22x’s bigger than Norway with regards to land mass. Any wonder 90% of Norwegians have a useless EV as it suits the country’s size. I spend every 2nd to 3rd day travelling over 500km in a day and how do you think an EV distance capability is going to work out for me sitting on the side of a road spending 4 hours to recharge my car? My boss is not paying for me to sit around for 4 hours and if I want to keep my job, I will keep driving my carbon intensive, fascist loving commodore.
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Well, if you accept that Australia has a coastline of 35,821 km’s and Norge has 25,148 – not including islands, one might expect longer touring. Still, Norway is a long country and not very thick . Bit like the Brontosaurus(now Apatosaurus) which is thin at one end, much much thicker in the middle and thin at the other end. Ahem!
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They renamed the Gay dinosaur too….
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Norway has nowhere to drive, hence the ferries that take cars all up and down that coastline. Roading is difficult when nearly your whole country is fiords.
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Hmm! Why am I reminded of Slartibartfarst!!
Tony.
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I read somewhere that one of Norway’s ferry companies had prohibited BEV’s. It was a company that mostly serves commercial vehicles.
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Three houses burnt down on the news. A man died trying to put out a lithium battery fire.
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Slartibartfast is a Magrathean and a designer of planets. His favourite part of the job is creating coastlines, the most notable of which are the fjords found on the coast of Norway on planet Earth, for which he won an award.
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Yes. Didn’t he call them the crinkly bits around the edge.
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Norway is also mountainous and the coastline is continually broken up by fjords. They have many ferry services and short flight trips. The major roads basically run back from the coastlines and up the middle. Norway’s electricity is cheap hydro, which makes EV ‘s attractive. The country is making ship loads of money by exporting gas to Europe, Britain and they have just signed a contract with Canada.
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Coastline of Norway – Wikipedia
The coastline of Norway is formed along the Skagerrak, North Sea, Norwegian Sea, and Barents Sea. This considers only the mainland coastline and excludes Svalbard . A straight line along Norway’s sea borders (the coastal perimeter) is 2,650 kilometers (1,650 mi) long.
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Yes, but that coastline length is because of multiple deep fiords, quite different to Australia.
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How long are their roads?
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Google tells me:
– Australia: 810,000 km
– Norway: 94,000 km
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Decades ago I toured Norway on a motorcycle and started my trip along the coastline. I quickly learnt that you can’t go that far in a day due to the fjords where you might either have to travel inland a distance before coming back along the other side, or wait for one of the many ferries. But even then, I came across a new tunnel that removed a ferry journey, and they have probably done a lot more of that since. They have also built bridges to span some of the fjords. There was only one near motorway-standard road in my time there, and that was inland running between Trondheim and Oslo. There is one other factor to include in distances travelled – speed limits. The one that was most annoying was a 70kph limit outside towns and villages that went on for miles of open country before giving way to their national limit which I think may only have been 90kph.
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So EV’s continue to be the solution to a non existent problem…good to see it working out so well for the proponents of these useless things. I suppose it would be safe to assume if they have made such a miniscule change to fossil fuel use in Norway, the difference the EV Fleet has made here in Australia is a joke.
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Problem: How do you extract cash from the virtue signalling middle classes ?
Solution 1: EVs
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Following the logic behind this post, which is presumably paid for by the fossil fuel lobby (the misuse of stats, and false equivalence give that away), we should all buy ICE powered vehicles, and just give up?
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Peter,
Your baiting us again….. and you are a master baiter. You will catch more when your trolling.
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He also likes debating en-mass.
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Unlike you Peter, I can declare that I’m not paid to write by any energy company, nor political party. Rather than fund me, the fossil fuel giant Woodside banned me from speaking at a Christmas dinner of geologists and engineers…
If I’ve misused stats you are free to explain how instead of throwing baseless ad homs.
Seems you are still grumpy because I pointed out you won’t answer my questions about your funding?
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The Norwegians are such wonderful “ greens “. I think that to show solidarity with the WEF , the UN and the worldwide green movement the Norwegians SHOULD SHUTDOWN ALL THEIR OILFIELDS & gas fields. Not in 10 or twenty years time, do it now to prove their total commitments.
Let see how really committed the Norwegians are!! 😂😂
Of course it’ll never happen because, like all socialists & Fitzroys they’re all [snip]
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Nope.
No one here gets paid.
No one backs the pro-energy, pro-science advocates except ourselves.
I wish we did have the support of the billionaire Elites like the anti-energy, anti-science lobby do.
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Give up on what?
CO2 is worse then “orange man bad”?
PFFFT!
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“we should all buy ICE powered vehicles, and just give up?”
Actually not a bad idea Peter, since CO2 is not a problem.
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Give up on what ? Fighting the demon CO2 monster ? That trace gas that makes up 0.04% of the atmosphere, does not cause any temperature rise that has ever been proven and more of it is a good thing ? We could of course continue the absolute lie that EV’s are emission free and will save the planet from the non existent climate emergency.
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Look around you on the roads. If Australia is anything like Canada, most of the intercity traffic are large transport trucks. A lot of urban traffic is construction equipment and heavy load haulers.
Greenies abandoned road trips and now fly to their eco-vacations.
Maybe you regularly commute to your weekend off-the-grid eco-friendly hideaway in your subsidized EV?
Want to be carbon use friendly? Stay in town on weekends and enjoy the advantages a big city offers.
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Raving, maybe not quite the same as Canada. Believe it or not but cars and caravans became hot ticket holiday items again when our borders closed, though they were always around. With a hotter climate camping out is perhaps easier — though not too many tourists drive through the central desert in the hottest six months of the year.
Our neighbors tow their boat 1,200 km to Shark Bay most years, with diesel.
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Try Esperance on the south coast of WA. It’s full of touring traffic ff vehicles and caravans. People go through from the East Coast south to avoid the winters by travelling up the WA coast to everywhere north of Exmouth. Then they all come back for the southern summer. Then there’s the Qlders and people from all states travelling around the country for that end of work touring right around Australia. Then there’s little me with my X3 SUV running up and down the 720Kms four times a year. Don’t see an EV amongst any of us!
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Anyone who as ever driven a truck – Or more to the point paid to refuel one. Knows that passenger cars use bugger all fuel.
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Or just Build Back Worse. There, that should fix everything ‘Good and Proper’.
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Wonder where the EVs were made?
Every fifth new car was a Tesla Model Y.
Then came VW, Volvo,Toyota.
Add up all the “emissions” from all the metals, plastics, freight costs etc.
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This is the result of a generation of useless mainstream media which could have killed this stupidity 30 years ago by asking sensible questions of the “climate experts”. Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive.
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Far worse than useless for us unfortunately but vitally useful for TPTB in strictly framing the Overton Window.
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Don’t laugh. I guess the small dent in fuel use is because, despite EVs selling well in a single year, the vast majority of Norway’s ‘fleet’ of private and commercial vehicles weren’t bought this year and remain FF powered. I say “Don’t laugh.” because that fact will simply motivate our demented ruling class to step up their war on ICE vehicles, such as Sadiq Khan (mayor of London) implementing ULEZ schemes that fine people for using ‘polluting’ cars. Of course our own Labor government is already pushing the price of petrol up to the same end.
If they can’t persuade us to buy an expensive EV, they will simply drive up the cost of ICE ownership until we have no choice.
EV or walk, plebs!
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You’re absolutely right Steve, the missing piece of data here is the total size of Norway’s passenger car and SUV ownership. Here in Australia we hang on to our cars for 15 years on average. We aren’t told what the average replacement age of vehicles is in Norway.
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For overseas readers, note that Australia’s cars tend to last longer than in the cold parts of Europe and North America as we don’t salt the roads in winter and don’t need to as it doesn’t snow except in a small area of the aptly named Snowy Mountains; plus the generally warm to hot climate tends to ensure moisture dries out in car body cavities thus minimising corrosion.
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Cars rust much more slowly now than they used to. Corrosion protection has improved immensely in recent decades. Don’t see rust buckets on the road any longer.
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Old Holdens, particularly the HD, started rusting on the coast first year. I’m not giving falcons a free pass BTW.
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yep coast cars rusted away while inland cars did not.
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My EH holden lasted 18months garaged under a lean-to on a farm in the south WA.
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The most ‘climate friendly’ mode of transport is shanks pony.
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“The most ‘climate friendly’ mode of transport is shanks pony.”
All that CO2 exhaled, as you go up hill …
But of course shanks pony is not practical for most people beyond a mile [or two].
Which brings us back to the fabled ‘fifteen minute cities’ …
Anyhow, my plants like CO2 – they couldn’t live without it!
Auto
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I imagine a large percentage of any fuel reduction would be accounted for by the WUFLU lockdowns.
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The dominos are falling . You can ignore reality , but you can’t avoid the consequences of ignoring reality . If damaged they become a toxic inflammable mess . I wonder what sort of premium increase you would get if you have an EV in your garage ? . When virtue signaling becomes expensive and unreliable only the “influencers” will do it . Everyone else will be focused on survival .
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Shouldn’t EVs come with a mandatory warning label, prominently displayed, along the lines of:
….. “WARNING
Park at least 100 meters
….away from any
vehicle, building or garage
…..in case of
………Fire.”
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I can’t work out how there can be a used car market for a vehicle whose ‘engine’ depends on a power system that degrades substantially after 5 years and the battery system has to be replaced at huge expense to keep the vehicle on the road. All the time the vehicle itself is controlled by an ever aging computer.
I never can find much written on this debacle in the msm, whether by design of the protagonists for EVs (RACWA and the ‘West Australian’ car journos are both rabid supporters of EVs), or they simply have no answers so won’t face up to the elephant in the room. In many ways it’s the same story as the early death of wind turbines which are farcical costs for replacement work and skeleton disposal. Esperance has a small replacement ‘wind farm’ but the last time we were down, all the blades had been removed from the turbines. Were they considering driving them with little ff engines placed inside the huge pylons these things sit on? Maybe that would solve the EV problem as well; gear box might be impossible to fit however!
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And of course as Jo has shown in a previous article that according to VW that in most jurisdictions because much of the power to charge the E vehicle still comes from fossil fuels the total emissions ( over 200000km) are greater for the electric car.
The excess emissions in production of EVs don’t get countered in the reduced emissions in the use stage. In fact, the emissions created in China, based on its current energy mix continue to rise when being charged. From a climate change policy point of view EVs are a total fraud.
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Of course Norway is predominately Hydro in energy . A natural resource of a mountainous topography and abundant rain. Not to mention the Trolls.
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You can only use a green electron once [they know what they are]
If Norway uses hydro to power their EVs then Europe must find those electrons elsewhere.
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The hypocritical thing is that Norway’s BIGGEST export product is……fossil fuels.
“Export revenues from oil and gas have risen to over 40% of total exports and constitute almost 20% of the GDP.[164] Norway is the fifth-largest oil exporter and third-largest gas exporter in the world”
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway
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I watched Cadogan’s “EV’s are a climate action fraud” yesterday.
https://youtu.be/SiRzpKWshwU?si=n5V1WYzsAR8WQZKi
Can’t wait for the inevitable viewer feedack follow-up.
Should be hilarious.
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John is a bit of a CO2 believer but comes from an Engineering base. Its good to see his usual rationality coming through. As you say the fan boys will be triggered.
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I know he is but his engineering evaluations are spot on.
I would correct him but he’d read out my emails with his usual derogatory bogan voice reserved for commenters.😁
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AGAIN I think we should look at the DATA.
Here’s OWI Data’s Norway, Australia, UK, USA, OECD , NON OECD , China and World co2 emissions to 2021.
Note China’s co2 emissions in 2021 are about the same as the 38 countries that make up the OECD.
Don’t forget that Norway’s size is about 0.32 million sq klms and Australia is about 7.7 million sq klms, so it’s difficult to make a proper comparison. Then again India’s population of 1500+ million people live in a country less than half the size of Australia.
India is about 3.3 million sq klms and Australia about 7.7 million sq klms.
AGAIN the entire so called NET ZERO lunacy is a total fraud and con trick and mining and then processing 223 tons of rock to make an average EV battery is a TOXIC joke.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country?country=OWID_WRL~NOR~CHN~AUS~OECD+%28GCP%29~USA~GBR~Non-OECD+%28GCP%29
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Norway is also blessed with prodigious amounts of Hydro power. It really cant be compared with anywhere except maybe near Scandi neighbours and maybe some provinces of Canada. Easy to get away with EVs with plenty of power and an economy underpinned by North Sea oil and gas.
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What is the Norwegian strategy for recycling/disposal of EV batteries ?
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Norway had tax breaks for people buying EVs. Oslo also allowed EVs to use bus lanes on the roads. Both were big incentives for buying EVs.
IIRC people around Oslo bought EVs for local use (i.e. commuting) but retained their ICE cars for long distance travel. Maybe the average km traveled needs to be considered against people travelling to work every day.
Are these incentives still operating? Maybe someone from Norway can tell us.
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People don’t buy 90% EVs without BIG incentives, or disincentives for ICEs.
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When I visited Oslo in 2018 my host told me the subsidies were huge, and even parking in the city was free for EV’s.
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Absolutely right John. When they travel outside Norway, the EV stays at home.
Somebody at WUWT produced the subsidy details some time ago.
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Note that Norway produces 95% of its electricity with hydropower. It also exports some and imports it from time to time.
It has 1681 hydroelectric plants producing 33055MW.
Obviously they have geography suitable for hydroelectric plants and are unafraid to build dams. Neither of those apply to Australia.
With more EVs I imagine they might have to stop energy exports or “battery” services (pumped hydro) to Europe. It’s already a problem (but blamed on “climate change”, of course):
Refs:
https://energifaktanorge.no/en/norsk-energiforsyning/kraftproduksjon/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Norway?wprov=sfla1
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When Europe has a wind glut, they import to pump water back uphill.
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EV Fail: Car Dealers Turning Away From Electric Vehicles After Learning Harsh Economics Lesson
Car dealerships are telling auto manufacturing companies that they have more than enough electric vehicles in stock and don’t want more on their lots until the current inventory sells.
Nonetheless, those same manufacturing companies are producing more electric vehicles than ever before, according to Insider.
Manufacturers are “asking us to make a large investment,” Scott Kunes, the chief operating officer of Kunes Auto and RV Group, told Insider, “and we’re just wanting to see some return on that investment.”
Kunes’ company was founded in 1996 and sells foreign and domestic cars and recreational vehicles at “over 40” locations in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin, according to the company’s website.
“We have turned away EV inventory,” Kunes said. “We need to ensure that we have a good turn on it.”
An inventory “turn” is a measure of how quickly a retailer call sell product equal in value to everything in its stock; automotive digital marketing company Max Digital says the typical retailer is looking to turn his inventory 12 times annually.
Insider said that dealerships already had 54 days’ of inventory on hand a couple of months ago, but that EV inventory was more than twice that — almost four months’ worth.
Other dealers told Insider that they, too, were turning additional inventory away until they could sell what was already on their lots or that they planned to soon.
The pool of consumers wealthy enough to afford an EV and risk-tolerant enough to be willing to be an early adopter of EV technology has largely bought what it’s going to buy, Insider reported.
“It’s not just that these vehicles are expensive — which they are,” Sam Fiorani, the vice president of global vehicle forecasting at AutoForecast Solutions, told the outlet. “We’re talking about a much more nuanced lifestyle change.”
Fiorani explained that EV’s offer a significantly different “ownership experience,” because of the typically lower range a vehicle gets from a single charge and unavailability of charging locations relative to gas stations.
“It’s hard for the average customer to make that leap while spending an extra $10,000,” he said.
Demand, therefore, is falling even as automakers are increasing supply.
“The only Toyotas I have that aren’t presold are the electric ones, the bZ4X, and that’s a little bit of a challenge,” Adam Lee, the chairman of the board at Lee Auto Malls in Maine, told Insider.
According to the numbers, EV sales made up about 6 percent of auto sales in 2022 and were projected to be significantly higher than that in 2023, Insider said in an earlier report.
That rate of increase, however, was not considered sustainable.
“The spectacular growth we’ve seen over the last few years cannot be sustained. It’s just not possible,” Fiorini told Insider earlier this month. “The further up this growth curve we go, the harder it’s going to be to get to the next level.”
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The pool of consumers wealthy enough to afford an EV and risk-tolerant enough to be willing to be an early adopter of EV technology has largely bought what it’s going to buy, Insider reported.
I’ve been thinking that must happen.
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Driving a car and going places with it is mainly (for a majortity of people) a matter of habit and vanity. We have fallen in love with living and driving in our vehicles. Often more habit and lifestyle than necessity.
So what happens when many people have Evs? Does driving often to far away places have the same appeal?
Fads change. I am not predicting what will happen but it is risky to assume that we will continue doing what was always done.
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The big crunch for these “early adapters” or virtue signalers will come when they go to trade in their cars in a year or so. My guess is most are the sort of people who replace their car every 2-4 years. I think they might get a shock at the value offered for the trade in or if they try sell the car themselves as second hand car.
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Why do I smell a new government subsidy that will offset an EV owner’s loss on sale or trade-in of their 2nd-hand EV?
I’ll bet they will forgo stamp duty payable on the new EV?
This subsidy rot will not stop until the government feels some serious pressure.
I really cannot understand why EV tyres are not being let down like the activists are doing to big FF SUVs.
The voters need to be angry before governments act these days – ask Anna from Qld.
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For any motorsport fans there are some electric cars competing in this rally for an Opel Electric Cup. I don’t think they are going to excite the fans like a twin-cam turbo on full song…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-H5Hxmjob0
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99% of the ‘excitement’ centres around whose battery will hit 0% first.
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No, ?..well this might ..
https://youtu.be/khmjtIq_gbM?si=9yoZy7LSWTHTKBBa
Note the names of the drivers and the teams involved .
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>”Extreme E” might excite fans ?
Obscure ultra short match races attracting zero crowds. Doesn’t seem to be doing it.
This from a fan of Loeb’s tarmac skills.
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Its not intended to attract crowds,..it all about generatingTV footage for manufacturers and advertisers.
IE:.. its all about the $$$$s
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I have tried to watch ‘Formula E’ a few times, but always give up in boredom. There is an almost total lack of excitement, despite the OTT commentary. The circuits don’t help, many of them seem to be laid out in supermarket car parks or winding through some dreary CBD. And if that isn’t unexciting enough, the damn things are almost silent save for whining electric motors not unlike my 10yo son’s RC cars. Big Fat Nope.
I heard recently that the new(is) owners of Formula 1 are having to rethink a few things for similar reasons. F1 had gone rather woke over the past few years, banning the grid girls, spruiking their environmental credentials at every opportunity, almost totally removing the element of danger and of course banning sponsorship from companies not deemed sufficiently on-board the Green agenda. On top of those awful, droning and farting hybrid engines, they’re close to killing it and, despite claims that F1 is thriving, the reality is that people are switching off. As a surprise consequence, rumour has it that options for the re-introduction of ICE engines with a thin coat of greenwash applied will be brought back. I won’t hold my breath though.
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>‘Formula E’…”The circuits don’t help”
Not sure whether it’s the economics of hosting races or the need to avoid comparisons with ICE but I too tire of the dreary circuits and processions.
Maybe next gen will be better but circuits with long straights don’t suit FE because they rely on regen from lots of corners and slower speeds on short straights.
Also, this from a random discussion on Quora:
Battery changes take too long apparently. Just change the entire car.
MotoE (see downthread) solves this by having 2 very short 7 lap races.
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“Pit stops is different from Formula 1. In Formula E, they use two cars to race. Meaning, driver would drive the car to Garage and jump into another car to continue to race. No Tyre or fuel change in PIT stop, they change the car itself :-).”
Nah Richard, they moved on from that ages ago, it seems batteries have improved enough that they do the entire race in the one car,they’re onto at least Gen3 by now, and I hardly ever watch the boring things.
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>”they moved on from that ages ago”
I lost interest early on and didn’t check so maybe I’ll have a look at developments sometime (or not).
Whole thing just seems so contrived. The concept of all-out “racing” is a secondary thing IMO i.e. just to make a pass that could be done on skill alone might need to meet some technical conditions set by regulations like ATTACK MODE and FANBOOST. That impediment doesn’t do it for me.
I see there’s a 4 kWh 30 second ‘Attack Charge’ trial from 600kW booster in Gen 3 this year (I think). They are having to inject these contrived modes to get some race interest.
Might work as a pit stop equivalent but haven’t seen it in action.
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I forgot to add that those Formula E cars are easily the ugliest single seaters I have ever seen, to a “What were they thinking?” degree.
I don’t know who the ‘brains’ behind it all is but, given the crappy circuits and lack of screaming ICE engines, they really missed a trick by NOT at least making the cars beautiful and/or futuristic. Instead, they not only went for a single marque but beat the crap out of it with an ugly stick.
I suppose this is what happens what a motorsport category exists for some other reason than just SPORT.
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>”those Formula E cars are easily the ugliest single seaters I have ever seen”
Know what you mean. I think they were trying to emulate LMP cars initially.
Just looked at McLaren Gen 3. An improvement I think. Beginning to look like an IndyCar.
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Sorry, still looks like it was ‘styled’ by a 10yo origami enthusiast.
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>”origami” styling
Heh, does have that look about it.
No rear wing so I’m guessing the battery provides the downforce. Either that or it’s NASCAR type aerodynamics.
No rear brakes, just engine braking on rear.
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Moto GP fan here. The MotoE races are basically match races and very close racing. MotoE lap times are between Moto3 and the much quicker Moto2.
Problem is they only do 7 laps so they have to have 2 races to make it worthwhile.
Premier MotoGP also have 2 races now. First is a sprint which is half the length of the main race which is between 60 and 80 miles (100 to 130 kilometers) and lasts about 45 minutes. Also go as fast as an F1 car.
MotoE is fast, silent, and very short. Not boring, just short.
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I think they run E bikes at Isle of Man, they do ONE lap.
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>”I think they run E bikes at Isle of Man, they do ONE lap.”
One lap vs four:
“Until recently” means the major battery gains have already been made.
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I photograph a lot of motorcycle trials and that is one category where battery power works great, especially in Australia. A single charge plus top-up over the lunch break is usually enough to complete the event and the lack of noise makes it easier to find venues out in the near-city ‘bush’ infested with NIMBYs.
They are a bloody hazard for us photogs though, as they can suddenly appear without warning from behind a rock or tree (being more or less silent).
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Kids go wild on those electric trials bikes. I see them around here doing all sorts of stunts.
Re silence hazard. I’ve been training myself not to rely on hearing to avoid being run over by anything electric.
Developed eyes in the back of my head working around electric forklifts. Scary close ones with those really concentrates the mind.
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If EVs can’t make it in Norway then they are doomed, fuel prices are exorbitant, distances travelled are mostly tiny, and nearly all their power is ‘clean’, being hydro etc, almost the polar opposite of conditions in Australia.
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Excellent summary of the situation.
I’ve always supported the concept of electric vehicles for short trips … providing the battery module can be made safe and reliable, and affordable … those are the main technology problems we face right now.
In Australia, I would estimate that many trips are city people driving to work, or shopping, or taking the kids to and from school, visiting friends. That would be the majority of driving people do. However, you still have deliveries, long haul trucks, country people facing long distance drives and a vunch of other stuff that could never be pure electric.
We could go back to using a lot more rail of course … there was a time when most families didn’t own a car. Heck, at one stage they actually trusted kids to ride their bikes to school.
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Just wait , Chris Bowen will use the same data and make the announcement that EV’s in Norway have been a raging success. So, Australia will be next! If he uses the dud GENCOST CSIRO analysis to continually claim solar/wind are the cheapest then anything is possible with that bloke.
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For those uninformed, Chris Bowen is the Australian Federal Minister for Higher priced energy and Climate Change scam. I could try to describe him further , but my comment would be moderated. Let’s just say in another life he would have made a great vaudeville clown. He thinks EV’s are Australia’s transport future.
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California Dreamin’ where driving an automobile is king!
On the Trans Canada (4-lane) highway, most of the traffic seems to be transport trucks carrying frieght between cities and coasts. Cars dominate the urban traffic.
Another big consumer of fuel are construction projects. Bring on the battery powered cement trucks, dump trucks and flat bed haulers.
They cannot build construction projects fast enough here. Loads of new immigrants.
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The new progressive work week is being in the office 3-4 days and having an extended weekend. The rush to get out of town to escape to the cottage now begins on Thursday.
The new progressive way to work will do wonders for boosting carbon emission..
Rural living with commutes into the city condo/hotel for power 3-4 day work weeks..
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” Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin, ”
If I lived in any of those places, I would not buy an EV.
I spent some winters in Iowa. Lowest temperature was -33°F (-36°C). When I got an old car, I would get up at 2AM and drive it for 15 minutes so it would start in the morning when I needed it, with heat and defrosters.
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This situation is a little ironical given its taking place in the same country in which shipping company Havila Kystruten banned transportation of EVs earlier this year. If you wanted to take the scenic tour from Bergen to Kirkenes and drive your EV after docking- no can do. Also, given this trip is pretty much the length of Norway, some people making the trip by car may opt for a diesel or petrol powered vehicle rather than their EV
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As I understand it Norwegians mostly buy EVs as SECOND cars. They are bought as status symbols, giving bragging rights and ‘green’ credentials.
They are used for short trips such as shopping or visiting friends nearby. No chance of running out of battery!
This explains why there is such a small reduction in fuel demand.
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The headline is highly deceptive, I think, mentioning 90% and 10%, when this is the nut of the article:
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They looked at official fuel sales, annual average mileage and car sales as reported by Statistics Norway and estimate that passenger car fuel demand is down 20%, which is “in line with the BEV market penetration”, …
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20% market penetration in a rather short amount of time, I think, is nothing to sneeze at.
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The distinction between electric power and total power are, and I think deliberately, often blurred, so it is hard to find the truth. But I read that Norway gets 90% of its ‘power’, which could be 90% of its electric power, from Hydro. Thus their electricity is not dependent on the vagaries of the wind or the long dark winter nights. And a bonus is that they can sell their oil and bank the proceeds in their national Sovereign Wealth Find. Consequently with a more stable and quantifiable supply their government has long been able to encourage the use of EVs with generous tax incentives and subsidies for electric vehicles and the charging infrastructure. So the high numbers are a sign not of virtuous citizens ‘saving the planet’ but simply of people taking the cheapest option. Norway thus created a market and it worked. Unlike the threats and sanctions practised by most of the developed world. A carrot not a stick.
But as your article shows, you can provide as much ‘green’ electricity as you like but it serves only a fraction of the total power market. A modern country still needs basic grunt power for the ‘heavy lifting’ that is industry and bulk transport both on land and sea.
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Wow, that’s fascinating! The fact that 90% of new car sales in Norway are EV’s shows the incredible shift towards sustainable transportation. However, it is interesting to note that the fuel demand has only fallen 10%. This highlights the need for efficient and reliable tools like bladder pumps that can help manage fuel distribution and ensure smooth operations despite the changing landscape. Bladder pumps can play a crucial role in maintaining the infrastructure needed to support both EV’s and traditional fuel-powered vehicles. It is all about adapting and finding innovative solutions to meet the evolving demands of the automotive industry.
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Norway has a massive sovereign wealth fund that exists off North Sea petroleum and gas.
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