Rumour Mill: Netherlands looks to ban all non-electric cars by 2025

[MWF]

And for narf's next trick, a perpetual motion machine made from dried lasagne sheets, three cardboard toilet roll tubes and a squirrel.

Hell, why not stuff renewables, put a pair of rollers in every business parking space connected to dynamos and we can leave our ICE cars running all day while we work to power the country. That's essentially what you appear to be suggesting.

 

[Matt2000]

There's no way I'd buy in to an infrastructure that constantly draws power from and recharges my cars battery, the lifetime of which is already a concern for me.

Going from current battery tech then it's theoretically possible, using that system, that the battery in a car that is barely driven but is always plugged in could have a shorter lifespan than a car that is driven several times every day to a low charge state.

I wonder how this would affect cars like the Ampera. That's a system I would currently be happy to support.

 

[MWF]

I suppose there is one crumb of comfort. The more electric vehicles the lower the demand for oil derived fuels which should keep the cost of filling up down for us true petrolheads.

 

[chaos386]

Let us not forget the riots that will take place when homeowners find that their electricity bills shoot up 5-10 fold because of the miracle that is the electric car.

The one guy I know who drives an electric car also has solar panels on his roof, so he only pays a few bucks per month on his electric bill. This is in PA, too, not Arizona or California.

 

[Spectre]

This just came across my desk... since they are likely doing this to Save! The! Earth!, with what renewable energy source do they propose to power this electric car fleet? Wind? Oh, wait, what's this.. their wind projects are a huge failure and likely to be demolished?

Hundreds Of European Wind Turbines Are Operating At A Loss

Hundreds of wind turbines in the Netherlands are operating at a loss and could soon be demolished, according to an article published Thursday by the Dutch financial newspaper Financieele Dagblad.

Subsidies for generating wind energy aren?t cost effective anymore, according to the paper?s analysis. Most of Europe?s modern wind turbines are struggling to be profitable due to the inefficient subsidy structure.

Financieele Dagblad is extremely worried about the failure of the Dutch wind industry, because the Netherlands is already behind its green energy targets.

Dutch financial issues with wind power aren?t unique to the Netherlands. Globally, the wind power industry is slowing down and will continue to slow, according to a 2015 report by the International Energy Agency. The wind industry is growing the slowest rate in years due to changes in the structure of subsidies, issues with reliability, and consistently high prices.

Investment in wind power is falling worldwide, especially in developing countries like China, which stopped building new turbines last month because most of the energy was being wasted. Wind power capacity is growing slowly because large numbers of people simply cannot get much of their electricity from wind.

Globally, only 30 percent of total wind power capacity is actually utilized due to its intermittent and irregular nature. Wind power still isn?t capable of providing electricity at predictable times and the output of any given turbine is quite variable over time. Additionally, the times when wind power generates the most electricity don?t coincide with the times when power is most needed.

Wind power produced a mere 4.4 percent of all electricity generated in the U.S. during 2014 according to U.S. Energy Information Administration.

*Many* citation links in original article, linked above.

So, let's see... The Dutch tidal power experiment is uneconomical, the windmill generation idea doesn't seem to have worked, they don't have a significant nuclear power infrastructure... so I guess that means that this is exactly what's going to be happening in the Netherlands.

 

[MWF]

That post was very insightful.

 

[Spectre]

-groan-

 

[prizrak]

Netherlands looks to ban all non-electric cars by 2025

BEV is simply nowhere near being good enough to replace ICE, not now not in 10 or even 20 years. There is plain no technology at the moment that could be used and if something new would come out today it would still take a better part of a decade to hit production. And that's just for batterie themselves not new cars that could utilize them.

Cars are insanely complex, look at how long platforms stay around for. S197 was built for 10 years before being replaced and there was no radically new technology required to develop the successor.

 

[JimCorrigan]

The one guy I know who drives an electric car also has solar panels on his roof, so he only pays a few bucks per month on his electric bill. This is in PA, too, not Arizona or California.

Good for him. Not feasible for many others (i.e. the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, or the Pacific Northwest of your country).

 

[Spectre]

Also not going to help in parking garages that don't have charging stands (i.e., almost all of them), underground parking, under parking awnings or other protected parking spots that people who give a crap about the exterior condition of their cars would normally go if given the option.

 

[narf]

And for narf's next trick, a perpetual motion machine made from dried lasagne sheets, three cardboard toilet roll tubes and a squirrel.

Hell, why not stuff renewables, put a pair of rollers in every business parking space connected to dynamos and we can leave our ICE cars running all day while we work to power the country. That's essentially what you appear to be suggesting.

Right.

When you take an average eurobox it might do 15000km a year at maybe 200Wh/km from the plug. That's 3000kWh a year, roughly a small household... Currently households are only a fraction of the total grid, and assuming 1:1 that would be less than double the capacity, far from omg levels of impossible.
Spectre's 120 houses per supercharger could be buffered by other cars, so could renewable sources. Most cars can spare 10-20% of their capacity most of the time, and given smart billing you'd make money every time the grid uses your car, or you'd cheaply lease your battery from the power company.

 

[Spectre]

And how do you propose to compensate the owners of the cars being drained for the charge-discharge cycles you're stealing from them?

For that matter, say you start draining the cars in an area to charge a newcomer. Then someone comes out to go somewhere, notices his car is down, and goes to top up... Now you have double the charging demand, repeated as often as someone comes out to go someplace and decides he or she should charge to have the max available range.

On top of that, you *still* have to recharge the cars you stole charge from. You still have to get that power from somewhere, a power Ponzi scheme doesn't work without outside input.

 

[eizbaer]

1. You're not stealing the charge from anybody and you're not stealing their charge cycles either. The people are being paid for the service they provide to the grid. If you don't trust the technology or the algorithms that are being developed for applications like this all over the place now, you have the choice to opt out, I'm sure. You will not benefit from the dynamic pricing that is bound to emerge (i.e. charge for cheap or even free when there's too much renewable generation - feed back at high prices and low renewable generation / high consumption) and will end up paying more for your power on average than other people. And no, you do not get to cry "unfair" here... it was your choice to make use of a possible value added service your EV provides to you and the grid, and you chose not to take advantage of it.
2. The "dumb" use case will die out. It will simply not be the case that you surprisingly find your car only 80% charged... you will know. That's what ICT is for - knowing when you need the car charged 100% and acting accordingly. Things like this can be predicted with very good accuracy already.
3. The power ponzi scheme as you call it, does not rely on power being generated from nothing. Why is this so hard for you to understand? MWF also spoke of a magical machine driven by fairy dust... you're trying to ridicule ideas perfectly commonplace in the right circles. Ask anyone working in electricity distribution or something related - buffering huge amounts of renewable energy into storage is exactly what you're doing here! That's where the bloody energy comes from... You're simply using the flexibility people have in their driving and charging needs to redistribute this energy accordingly.

 

[Spectre]

1. Legal terms aside, yes, you *are* stealing charge from other batteries in the area. It's a parasitic drain by definition. This is the same thing that happens when you charge your motorcycle battery off your car battery to get it to start - it's stealing charge from one to feed the other, despite the fact that you own everything involved. I also suspect that (as Matt2000 pointed out) charge/discharge cycles will be greatly shortening the lifespans of batteries so connected and that the cost of replacement will not be less than the amount you are getting paid to allow a parasitic draw on your car. Suggested further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Battery_life

2. 'Dumb' or 'smart' use case doesn't matter. Knowing your car is only 80% charged ahead of time isn't going to be significantly different from coming out and noticing your car is at 80%. If you have to go anywhere other than just around the corner or down the block, you're going to want to charge up to 100% pretty quickly - the more so in cold or hot weather. Air conditioning can cut 30% or more off of your range on an electric vehicle and heating can cut it down even worse. Knowing this, if you want to drive a significant distance, your first stop is going to be to the local SuperCharging station... where you're going to put a nice fat load on the grid. This is already being demonstrated in California with the EV population out there.

3. You *still* have to put power back in the 'distributed storage units' called cars - if not immediately, then in short order. The point MWF and I are making is that this idea is a 'rob Peter to pay Paul' scheme that's still going to require large generation capability and grid upgrades to ensure that a majority of your users have sufficiently usable charge levels should they want to go somewhere. Is the Netherlands going to invest in the rough doubling or quadrupling of the generation capacity in their country? Are they going to invest in the massive overhaul of their grid that these vehicles are going to require? (If you read the links I posted above, you'll note that neighborhoods with higher EV subscription in California are requiring *massive* grid reconstruction already even at their relatively low take rate.) That's the point we're making - without a new grid and new generation (which it doesn't look like the Dutchies are interested in building) such a scheme isn't going to work.

Also, since the Netherlands appear to be about to scrap their wind project due to the economic failure of the system, what renewables are you proposing they use to feed into this system? Something powered by Skittles and unicorn farts?

 

[calvinhobbes]

Can I please have a hydrogen fuel cell car that I fill up with hydrogen generated by using e.g. the "wind power" that is currently going to waste? That might even reduce the need for load-balancing through pumped-storage hydroelectricity.

 

[Spectre]

Can I please have a hydrogen fuel cell car that I fill up with hydrogen generated by using e.g. the "wind power" that is currently going to waste? That might even reduce the need for load-balancing through pumped-storage hydroelectricity.

That's the conclusion that the Japanese car companies have come to as well - Toyota, Mitsu, Honda and Nissan all have apparently concluded that BEVs are not going anywhere and are now concentrating on FCEVs. Hyundai as well - in fact, Hyundai's FCEV is being mass produced and is available in certain areas of the US now - in one of the hottest segments:



https://www.hyundaiusa.com/tucsonfuelcell/index.aspx

The C/D review is worth reading too. http://www.caranddriver.com/hyundai/tucson-fuel-cell#

Hydrogen can be accumulated in a number of ways, but the simplest method is electrolysis. If the electricity that splits the hydrogen from oxygen comes from a renewable source, and the hydrogen is piped to the fueling station, an FCV has half the greenhouse-gas impact of a BEV charged on California?s power grid, where electricity sources are varied.

 

[prizrak]

1. You're not stealing the charge from anybody and you're not stealing their charge cycles either. The people are being paid for the service they provide to the grid. If you don't trust the technology or the algorithms that are being developed for applications like this all over the place now, you have the choice to opt out, I'm sure. You will not benefit from the dynamic pricing that is bound to emerge (i.e. charge for cheap or even free when there's too much renewable generation - feed back at high prices and low renewable generation / high consumption) and will end up paying more for your power on average than other people. And no, you do not get to cry "unfair" here... it was your choice to make use of a possible value added service your EV provides to you and the grid, and you chose not to take advantage of it.
2. The "dumb" use case will die out. It will simply not be the case that you surprisingly find your car only 80% charged... you will know. That's what ICT is for - knowing when you need the car charged 100% and acting accordingly. Things like this can be predicted with very good accuracy already.
3. The power ponzi scheme as you call it, does not rely on power being generated from nothing. Why is this so hard for you to understand? MWF also spoke of a magical machine driven by fairy dust... you're trying to ridicule ideas perfectly commonplace in the right circles. Ask anyone working in electricity distribution or something related - buffering huge amounts of renewable energy into storage is exactly what you're doing here! That's where the bloody energy comes from... You're simply using the flexibility people have in their driving and charging needs to redistribute this energy accordingly.

You are making the assumption that every single car is plugged in at all times it is not driving.
Here is a typical NYC street

How do you propose all of these cars get plugged in? That's a ton of infrastructure to create and maintain. Add to it that living in apartments is becoming more popular as millennials are all moving into more urban areas and this will be more common in more cities. This is all before we even get into the fact that people are lazy and likely won't plug in if they aren't expecting to go anywhere far. As an example if I had something with a range of a Model S I'd likely not bother plugging it in more than once every 2 weeks or so because I just don't travel that far by car normally.

BEV *can* work for certain people even if it's not an only car but mandating a type of propulsion is beyond moronic. Want me to use specific technology? Make it so that it is better for me. And no I will not "adjust a little" to something that is by all accounts worse.

 

[GRtak]

@ Prizrak:

People adapt. It is how we have survived as a species. Either adapt or learn how to make your own gasoline(which would also be a case of adapting).

That's the conclusion that the Japanese car companies have come to as well - Toyota, Mitsu, Honda and Nissan all have apparently concluded that BEVs are not going anywhere and are now concentrating on FCEVs. Hyundai as well - in fact, Hyundai's FCEV is being mass produced and is available in certain areas of the US now - in one of the hottest segments:

http://i.imgur.com/Oj1ISED.png

https://www.hyundaiusa.com/tucsonfuelcell/index.aspx

The C/D review is worth reading too. http://www.caranddriver.com/hyundai/tucson-fuel-cell#

So where does all the extra power come from to make all the hydrogen that will power these? Hydrogen power is just another way to store energy, but it is somewhat less efficient at doing it. Not to mention all the other little problems of availability and infrastructure.

 

[eizbaer]

Want me to use specific technology? Make it so that it is better for me. And no I will not "adjust a little" to something that is by all accounts worse.

Yes, make it so! And please, do you honestly believe that BEVs are "by all accounts worse"? There is exaggeration and everything... but that claim is simply embarassing.

@ Prizrak:

People adapt. It is how we have survived as a species. Either adapt or learn how to make your own gasoline(which would also be a case of adapting).




So where does all the extra power come from to make all the hydrogen that will power these? Hydrogen power is just another way to store energy, but it is somewhat less efficient at doing it. Not to mention all the other little problems of availability and infrastructure.

Amen to all of that. The conversion losses with hydrogen are massive and the storage of hydrogen is by no means an easy feat. Look at the damn Toyota Miraj, that barely has 400km of range and then only if you drive it like a grandma (similar story for EVs, range does suffer massively under hard driving - much more than it would for ICEs (yes, I could go into why that is, but I won't bother because nobody's interested anyway)). Plus, it basically costs the same as a Tesla Model S while being nowhere near the car the Tesla is (less utility value, less power, less everything really).

disclaimer: I just realized I ignored spectre's whole post about the hyundai whatever the hell fuel cell thing. Sorry about that. Might be much more reasonably priced than the Miraj.

I find it fascinating how much "from my cold dead hands" is going on in regards to certain issues...

 

[Cowboy]

I find it fascinating how much "from my cold dead hands" is going on in regards to certain issues...

It's called protecting ones rights, freedom and independence, I realise none of those mean much to the average leftie European since you people prefer cowering behind rules and regulations, trusting government enforcement for 'the common good' instead of thinking for yourselves, but they mean a great deal to some of us.