> Norwegians pay higher taxes on cars they purchase that pollute, and lower ones on low and zero-emission cars. The country also taxes bigger cars more than smaller ones. EV drivers often pay lower parking fees and can use bus lanes, too.
The first two sentences make sense! Not the last one though. After driving an EV for a few thousand miles, ive realized they are so superior to ICE for my use case. I hate driving ICE vehicles in the occasions I still do now.
In Oslo, the bus lanes on the highways are only accidentally available to EVs currently.
They were open for years as a means to foster EV adoption. But once sales took off, the local government tightened the screws — you needed an EV and also at least two people in the car to get access to the bus lane.
But! When they printed the new signs, somehow a double negative slipped through, and the text on the (many) signs said that you could only use the bus lane if you were driving alone in an EV. Obviously not the intent.
But currently, all the signs have the double negative condition crossed out, and all EVs continue to be able to use the bus lanes.
Ha, that’s funny! That’s similar where I am in the US too, early on there were EV exemptions to some carpool lanes, but that’s phasing out as EVs are normalized.
>After driving an EV for a few thousand miles, ive realized they are so superior to ICE for my use case
I vastly prefer my low-ish end EV (Hyundai Kona) to every ICE vehicle I've ever driven. Even if I wasn't saving ~$100/month in fuel costs, and even if I the environmental effects were a complete wash, I don't think I'd ever buy an ICE again.
I think the only reason I'd ever go to an ICE vehicle is if I needed something larger. Right now, if you need a "family transport" vehicle with space for adults, kids, luggage, etc, the EV world is pretty limited. I had high hopes for the VW Buzz, but it's total range is a bit borderline for me, although I still need to calculate out how it would compare for my typical long distance drive. The Kona has greater range, but a much slower max charge rate, and it might turn out that those balance each other out, and the Kona has been fine for the 10 hour road trips I've done so far.
Max charge rate is such a poor metric, as actual charge rate as a function of SOC varies so much between cars.
I'd like to see some standardized figure which is max average charge rate over 15 min, or perhaps minimum charge time for 30 kWh (~150 km range) or something along those lines.
My car has 120 kW peak IIRC, but I've never reached it. Once it's past 20% it has dropped to like 70 kW or something like that. And since I try my best to keep it above 20%, that 120 kW number doesn't mean much to me.
My sister has an ID.4 and it's the same story there. However I do know there are cars that are much better at this, able to sustain quite high charging rate up to or above 50% SOC.
On the on hand you are right, but when you go from a max charge rate of ~70 kW (which I have actually gotten on occasion), to a max charge rate of ~170 kW (the advertised rate of the Buzz), you are going to get a very noticeable and real change in charge time.
When peak rates are similar, I agree that they don't tell you that much. When one peak rate is triple another, then the specifics of the charge curve don't matter that much, it's going to charge a lot faster.
> When one peak rate is triple another, then the specifics of the charge curve don't matter that much
Sure, but in my experience, cars of similar size and price don't differ by 3x in their peak rate. After all when you buy a car you have a budget and you're looking for some specific features which usually dictate the size. I think it's rare that one considers both an Ford F150 and a Toyota Corolla, weighing their various pros and cons, unless the only metric is "as cheap as possible".
The sibling reply is a good example. The Ioniq 5 takes about 15 minutes to charge 50kWh from zero, peaking at ~230kW.
The ID.4 GTX has a peak charging rate of ~180kW, 78% of the Ioniq, so naively one could calculate it'll take 19 minutes to get to 50kWh from zero. But no, the measured value is 27 minutes, 40% longer!
We have standardized tests for consumption, I just wish they'd introduce something similar for charging so it's easier to compare.
Agreedish. In the US I don’t think I’d support higher taxes for non EVs because cars are unfortunately a necessity here and EVs are (mostly artificially through govt policy) expensive.
But yes to your point of ICE cars suck. They’re so much more impressive engineering than EVs but that complexity is also their downfall imo.
This is part of the reason why vehicles need to also be taxes based on pollution. But road-wear needs to be compensated too. It's worth mentioning that in the US, plenty of ICE vehicles weigh more than a typical EV. Honda Pilot, Toyota Sienna, etc.. etc...
The gas taxes haven’t kept pace with inflation, though: we already have to heavily subsidize road maintenance with general fund revenue and to be an effective pollution reduction mechanism we’d have to raise it considerably, which is politically infeasible in most of the country.
Almost all states with significant EV adoption have a special charge for EVs each year. What sucks is that it isn’t based on how much you drive, so if you aren’t using your EV to commute, you get charged just as much as someone using it all day for ride sharing.
Charging based on usage would require you to provide your mileage to the government, a tracker in your car, or some other privacy destroying method. I guess the government could just ask for your mileage and take your word for it, but that isn't reliable.
Car inspections that happen in most states do take count of your mileage fwiw I believe. However I also don't think charging based on "usage" makes sense here. Due to the jobs some people have, you may need to just drive a ton more and roads will need to be maintained either way however much you drive.
It’s coming eventually, once enough of the cars are EVs, flat fees aren’t going to be very viable if they don’t want people to game them. It’s not hard to read an odometer, it is hard to say where those miles were accumulated f you want to be really fare and get tax revenue to the state/place you were driving in.
In rural Ohio, the Amish use the roads for their buggies, but don’t pay tax. Wonder if they have registration fees for their buggies? I’ve never seen one with plates.
I mean, I don't live in the biggest city in Norway (Stavanger), but the places there are bus lanes tend not to be the places with the worst traffic problems. And there are roundabouts everywhere, with very few traffic lights, so traffic flows pretty well overall.
I just bought a 1 year old Nissan Leaf for $15,000 in San Diego California.
The aversion to EVs in the US is mostly just american idiocy.
In the US 2/3 of people live in single family homes. That means NEVER using a public charging station.
Most of those households also own more than one car. So it's easy to retain a ICE vehicle for when it's really needed.
Let's just face the facts, the Scandinavian governments, and the Scandinavian people are just smarter than americans...
p.s. I expect this car to pay for itself in ~5 years, due to savings on gas. How long before your ICE vehicle pays for itself? Like most long term investments, it requires a smarter population.
I think a lot of people are also radically overrating their likelihood of going on extended road trips. As the cost of even ICEs increases, I’ve known people to rent for a long drive rather than rack up the mileage on their personal vehicle (also if they can save on fuel economy) and I think more people are going to follow your lead in having a small EV for daily commuting to save money every trip, and maybe consider a rental if they actually decide to drive cross-country without stopping.
That's the unfortunate truth about PG&E rates, though that's only true because the terrible external costs of gasoline pollution are not taxed and compensated. For almost everywhere else charging at home is 1/3 the cost of gas. Superchargers are also pretty comparable to a hybrid. As home solar and batteries gets cheaper and cheaper, that's also a backstop to limit the price increases of PG&E. Sort of.
> Let's just face the facts, the Scandinavian governments, and the Scandinavian people are just smarter than americans...
Citation needed. Norway has a population of less than the Bay Area, a massive sovereign wealth fund due to oil exports and is about the size of the average state in the US. I drive an EV but the state of charging infrastructure outside of CA is pathetic. I get why Americans don’t want to drive cars they can’t fill up on a roadtrip unless it’s a Tesla.
The median new car price is around $50k and you can get new EVs well under that amount. If we weren’t in a trade war, BYD would sell you an EV for the same price as the cheapest ICE options.
Sure, but they’re hardly the only manufacturer for whom that’s true (e.g. Tesla) and from a consumer’s perspective they might care more about their personal budget. Moreover, if we’re going to avert trillions in annual GDP losses due to climate change subsidizing electrification seems like a good idea.
You know that $7,500 tax credit people got for buying their products? That’s the most obvious one but the bigger one is the carbon regulatory credits: governments require other car manufacturers to buy credits to offset their high-pollution vehicles, and since Tesla doesn’t make any of those they can sell something like half a billion dollars of them per quarter as pure profit. This has been most of their profitability in some quarters.
I think this is just about new car sales? Less well off can still by used ICE, which is what they would be anyway. Or even used Model 3 are in the low $20k USD here. Used Chevy Bolt are $10-20k, some leafs are cheaper.
Americans can get a used Nissan Leaf for $10-$20k and it would accommodate virtually any daily commute plus side trips without ever spending a dollar on gas. I continue to be baffled year after year as to why more Americans don't go that route. At least those with detached homes or otherwise easy access to charging.
If nothing else, the fact that most Americans don't by a cheap EV as a second car (assuming they have need of one) is particularly baffling.
From experience living in southern America you will get ridiculed, pummelled to the side of the road, and blinded by F350s and Silverados. And constantly told it's your fault for having a car they couldn't see over their 8 ft hood.
The Tesla dealer told me to get a paint kit when I picked up my car, a few years ago; he called it the Tesla Texas Tax. People (used to) go out of their way to ding my car.
That’s an extremely long commute, so it might not be effective for them but there’s a huge percentage of the population who don’t have that problem. Roughly 9% of Americans have a commute that long, and if we got even half of the rest to switch we’d save an enormous amount of pollution and money while building out the charging infrastructure which would help the rest.
There's a reason a used Nissan Leaf is so cheap. In EVs, once the battery is done, the car is done, as replacing the battery is expensive. The more the battery is used, like any battery, the less capacity it has, the faster it drains, the lower your mile range.
The batteries in most electric vehicles will now effectively last the lifetime of the vehicle itself [0]. Like modern solar panels, it's effectively not a consideration any more.
Granted, there's a big range in the age of used Nissan Leaf's (Leaves?)
Not Nissan Leaf batteries. The article explicitly says:
> The Nissan Leaf bears a lot of responsibility for the idea that EV batteries don't last. Nissan eschewed liquid cooling for the Leaf's pack, and the EV first went on sale in model year 2012, so there has been enough time for some early Leafs to lose up to 20 percent of their pack's storage capacity.
Maybe just read the link the other reply posted. It explicitly points out that the Nissan Leaf specifically loses far more battery capacity than the competition because of some design choices
1) new Evs are still more expensive than new gas cars
2) in some states, the registration fees are higher (+$225 in Washington State)
3) if it's your only car it may be a bit limiting, unless you are willing to rent a gas car on occasion.
Living in Las Vegas, a Leaf was the perfect daily driver. The whole valley isn't big enough to ever go beyond the range in a single day no matter how many errands or kid soccer games. Plus you could remotely turn on the A/C which is a game changer in the desert. We also had a Land Rover Discovery (LR3) for when we wanted to drive to LA or Utah or whatever else.
> There's a reason why SUVs are the most popular type of car in the US
Not practicality for sure! The trunks of at least mid-sized SUVs are small and the trunks of mid-sized estate wagons are quite large. SUVs have a raised vehicle floor, which is terrible for driving dynamics, removes interior space, and adds air resistance.
SUVs are staggeringly stupid vehicles, but fashionable. Personally, I like some fashions, and others I ignore and avoid as hard as I can - SUVs are firmly in the latter category.
One funny side effect of pickups and SUVs being sold for suburbanite egos is that some actual tradespeople and farmers have started importing tiny Japanese kei trucks because the cargo volumes are the same or higher than a modern American vehicle.
It is staggering. I live in the UK and we have been moving in that direction. We have lots of small city style cars. But they are never big enough to easily hold a newborn baby with its stroller (ironic when you consider how tiny babies are). So parents tend to get these small SUV's and it is seen as the natural upgrade. I guess this happens again when the family grows and you start doing more DIY.
We are all hoodwinked into believing that space in a car is unusual and needs a special kind of car. When actually a well designed small car or coupe can have plenty of space. And adding an extra couple of foot to the size of the boot probably has minimal effect on the manufacturing cost. But that would break the product skews that car companies want to push.
Most people in the US live in suburbs, which means it's more efficient to carry larger loads due to larger distances. For example, bigger grocery trips since the grocery store is farther away. Bigger home sizes in the suburbs also enable larger families.
I can easily carry a week's worth of groceries (21 meals plus snacks) for my family of five in my old sedan. Even if the trunk is half full of junk just throw grocery bags in the back seat.
I even managed to fit enough lumber for three 4' by 10' by 6" raised garden beds in there, trunk to sticking out the front window. That was a little hairy though.
By far the biggest issue is fitting 3 kids in back now that they are bigger, especially if one or more are grouchy. I always take the bigger car if more than 4 people are traveling.
And that worked fine for decades (well, as long as your definition of fine includes traffic jams) using regular cars which cost and polluted considerably less. SUVs are bulky but as anyone who’s ever packed one knows they don’t have more usable cargo space unless you’re stacking stuff up to the ceiling since most of the volume is directed vertically to make them look tougher.
I notice this whenever we go to IKEA or Costco where our sub-$30k Subaru is loaded faster and with less hassle than vehicles costing twice as much.
I thought we already understood that US large car sales was the result of the individualist culture and perceived improvements in safety from being in a heavier vehicle during a collision
It’s important to remember that Japanese car manufacturers weird absolutely slaughtering U.S. companies in the 80s and 90s by making cheaper, better quality, more efficient vehicles. Detroit has a lot of political weight, however, and when they started pushing far more profitable SUVs as the ideal daily driver, nobody in Congress was going to get in the way by suggesting policies intended to help tradespeople should be modified.
That campaign in the 90s made them popular enough to cancel out decades of fuel economy and safety improvements, and effectively started an arms race where people who never go off-road started to think that they needed to pay more for one, too, because otherwise they’d be at a fatal mismatch in a crash.
A while ago I read somewhere that it was because for a long time (American) trucks were technically nit cars. And manufacturers could save money on a bunch of safety things.
Social signaling is important. Whether you like the game or not.
To not: In Europe, social signaling works in favor of biking… but only among a certain type of people (let’s say vegetarians). But it’s a circle of friends really hard to maintain because they also veto you if you take any non-ecologic decision.
So, long story short, social status signaling cannot be cancelled by ecologist status signaling. Seems like we’d have to appease tensions on both sides…
In Norway, there are plenty of cycling enthusiasts (for around-town transit, commuting, and exercise / fun) with all sorts of dietary approaches. I don’t think there’s any meaningful vegetarian / cycling correlation there.
The government essentially makes it unreasonable to buy any other type of car. Also gotta love that sweet sweet North Sea oil. So what happens to all that oil? I am sure it only emits lollipops and unicorns when it is burned.
It is estimated that the North Sea may have 24 billion barrels remaining. So they can hand off the pesky problem to other countries and be smug that they are going electric. As if electricity just falls from sky.
Must be a country where most trips are relatively short. ( a few 100 KMs or less ). A longer trip of a few 1000 KMs would need to stop for recharging several times.
I'd love an EV, but no suitable vehicle yet exists in the market that can match the capability I have (and routinely use) now.
High clearance 4x4, 1200km range, ability to seat 4 reasonably comfortably, 700kg payload, 800mm fording depth, priced under $80k USD. Table stakes specs for a diesel 4WD but the electric market isn't there yet.
Norway has put like 30 years of efforts into building up impressive electric transmission and EV-charging infrastructure. Check out e.g. these articles:
Also note that the amount of habitable land in Norway is rather limited, so you don't get to drive hundreds of miles over flat highway-friendly terrain, like e.g. in the US Midwest.
> Since more than 82% of EV users in Norway charge their vehicles at home, housing associations can apply for grants that subsidize up to 50 percent of the cost of buying and installing communal chargers.
I'm familiar with parking in your own garage and charging, or parking on the street with no infrastructure, but I don't understand how far away these chargers would be and whether they're usable overnight.
Basically there's communal parking in the housing association's property, you can use the chargers there to charge. It's just a normal parking space, but with a charger.
Due to the recent shifts in the economy, last year was a bit of a downer in terms of new cars sold[1], about 127000. In comparison 2021-2022 had roughly the same number of new cars sold[2], about 175000. The number of used cars sold was roughly the same across 2021-2023.
In 2023 roughly 20% of cars sold were new cars. In 2021-2022 roughly 25% of cars sold were new cars.
Roughly 50% of new cars in 2020 were BEVs. In 2023 that number was 82%. So far[3] in 2024 it's almost 87%.
Who needs a garage for charging? I’ve got a 7kWh charger on my driveway but no garage. Over the road there are chargers on the street lamps. Where I live I’ve even seen charger cables run inside gullies under pavements for people with no driveways.
Does Norway allow Chinese car makers into the market? Skoda is popular but I wish the article also mentioned the median value of an EV in Norway.
At least in the US, the cost of acquiring an EV is the major deterrent from what I can see. If you live in a city and you want to just get a cheap EV for under $25k for your typical commute, there's just no option in the US!
Look at some of the research on the health costs of ICE emissions. Even before you try to assess the cost to the local and global environment you end up with annual death rates in the hundreds of thousands and many billions of dollars annually in medical expenses and quality of life reduction. A tax on pollution would be the best way to handle this since you could pour the money raised into healthcare and environmental remediation.
Even without taxes, I'm pretty sure that for most use cases, a good electric vehicle will cost a lot less in the long term when you factor in maintenance in addition to 'fuel' costs.
Not a Norwegian, but my perception is that electric vehicles might not alter the 'average' noise, but they do change the peak/annoying noise levels. An (approximately) continuous background sound of traffic is far more tolerable than revving ICE engines, backfiring etc.
The first two sentences make sense! Not the last one though. After driving an EV for a few thousand miles, ive realized they are so superior to ICE for my use case. I hate driving ICE vehicles in the occasions I still do now.