International Why Norway — the poster child for electric cars — is having second thoughts

[LeonardoBjj]

Why dealers say EV sales have slowed
PUBLISHED WED, NOV 1 20239:25 AM EDT

Robert Ferris


Consumers spent nearly $400 billion on electric cars worldwide in 2022, and the U.S. is expected to add 1 million new EVs to its roads this year. From 2023 to 2027, automotive companies have committed $616 billion in total investments in EVs, according to consulting firm AlixPartners.

And yet, electric vehicles are piling up at dealership lots.

EV and internal combustion engine (ICE) inventory started the year off at about 52 days’ supply, according to Cox Automotive. Days’ supply is a way of measuring how many vehicles a dealer has on the lot. In the case of a 52 days’ supply, if automakers were to stop producing cars today, dealers would be able to keep selling cars for about that number of days before running out. Since January, EV days’ supply has skyrocketed while ICE supplies have hovered between 52 and 58 days. EV supply at the start of October was 97 days, down from the peak inventory of around 111 days during early July.

In August 2023, it took about twice as long to sell an EV in the U.S. as it did the previous January. Meanwhile, gas-burning vehicles were still selling briskly. Slightly more than half of consumers do say that EVs are the future and will eventually replace combustion engines, but less than a third of dealers hold that view.

EV leader Tesla has slashed prices dramatically, sales at some electric vehicle startups, such as Lucid, have disappointed, and companies like Ford Motor have ramped up hybrid production as demand for their EVs has leveled off. Insiders cite a number of factors: high pricing, concerns over charging and restrictions on subsidies being high on the list.

“There’s concern about public-charging infrastructure, even though most of the charging you’ll be doing will be at home,” said Jeff Aiosa, who owns Mercedes-Benz of New London, Connecticut. “There’s still concern about those long trips.”

And many, including Aiosa, say the shift toward EVs is, over the long term, inexorable.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/01/why-dealers-say-ev-sales-have-slowed.html

@PEB

 

[Cid]

Yeah, the incentives are dumb. If anybody should get that shit, it's the people who don't own a car at all. Take all that rebate money, and put it into public transit, and let people who don't own a car ride for free. Don't know how feasible that all is, but if the plan was to lower the out carbon footprint, that's how you'd do it. Not just give money to people to drive an electric vehicle, that leaves their own footprint in different ways. Like, how are them batteries getting made and disposed of again? We don't talk about that...

Public transport in particular trains are the best way to reduce the carbon footprint. Nothing compares to trains because they pack people so densely.

Batteries are getting made the same way as most of our energy production. Mining/extracting resources of any kind isn't going to be "environmentally friendly" but it's not something that humanity is ever going to stop doing.

Disposal is going to be a non issue. They're already profitable to recycle and they have massive second life potential. They're retired after 10 years when their performance reaches 70% but they're the strongmen of batteries moving and stopping tonnes of weight so even at 70% they're still good for most other roles batteries are used for.

Obviously right now the % getting that second life rather than being recycled is low but it will increase over time.

 

[Andy Capp]

Walking and biking through Oslo helped me understand how it became so safe. The few motor vehicles I encountered within the city center moved carefully through streets thronged with pedestrians (some blocks are entirely car-free). Traffic typically moved at the speed of my e-bike; my one moment of anxiety came when a passing streetcar startled me as I gazed at Oslo’s picturesque harbor.

Many local leaders recognize that reducing car dependence will enhance urban life. “I am certain that when people imagine their ideal city, it would not be a dream of polluted air, cars jammed in endless traffic, or streets filled up with parked cars,” Hanne Marcussen, Oslo’s former vice mayor of urban development, told Fast Company in 2019.

But there are inherent conflicts between cities’ efforts to limit driving and the Norwegian government’s promotion of EVs. Oslo’s elimination of street parking and creation of pedestrian-only streets, for instance, nudge Norwegians away from driving, but they also diminish EVs’ usefulness.

“The way to get people to buy EVs is to make them easy and cheap to use,” said Eriksen. “But cities don’t want driving cars to be easy and cheap.” A recent study of EV subsidies in Bergen underscores those tensions, finding that promoting EV adoption hampers cities’ ability to build dense neighborhoods that shorten trips and strengthen transit.

The effect of EV adoption on public transportation has been a particular concern for Norway’s cities because boosting transit ridership has been a linchpin of local mobility strategies. Bergen, for instance, opened its first light rail line in 2010, and Trondheim overhauled its bus fleet in 2019. But because generous EV incentives make driving cheaper, they make public transportation relatively less cost-competitive.

Worse, EV promotions have shrunk the funding available to invest in transit improvements because Norwegian public transportation budgets are partly funded through the road tolls that the national government exempted EV owners from paying. As more Norwegians purchased EVs, transit revenue fell, threatening major investments like a new metro line in Oslo. “One of my primary concerns is that because we are subsidizing EVs through the cheaper toll roads, we don’t have the money to pay for big transit infrastructure projects,” said Eivind Trædal, an Oslo city councilmember who until a few weeks ago led the city’s council’s environment and transportation committee.

National officials, for their part, have stuck to pro-EV messaging and refrained from discouraging driving. Despite its generous incentives for electric cars, the Norwegian government provides no discounts for those buying e-bikes or e-cargo bikes (Oslo and Bergen offer limited programs for residents). The country’s current 12-year National Transport Plan includes initiatives to catalyze the adoption of zero-emissions vehicles, but none to reduce car trips.

Trædal said that politics led the Norwegian government to downplay reducing transportation emissions through transit, biking, and walking — all of which produce significantly fewer emissions than driving an EV. “Nobody’s mad about getting a cheaper new car, right?” he shrugged. “It’s politically easier to just give them car subsidies.”

When I asked Kroglund, the country’s transportation state secretary, if Norway’s government seeks to reduce total kilometers driven, she said it does not. “We don’t have a specific goal [to reduce driving],” she told me. “Of course, we would like to get more people on public transportation and bikes. But that is more something that cities work on.”

But national policy decisions inevitably affect local transportation efforts — and sometimes undermine them. Last October, the Norwegian Public Roads Administration opened E39, a four-lane highway into Bergen that the city had opposed due to concerns that it would increase driving. Those fears proved justified. Lars Ove Kvalbein, a Bergen city adviser on sustainable mobility, told me that before E39 opened, 30 percent of those traveling into the city from the south had used a car, but after the highway opened that share jumped to 40 percent.

“E39 was part of a national plan that smashed all the positive local plans to pieces,” he said.

Other countries can avoid repeating Norway’s mistakes

In the last few years, Norway has begun to confront the tensions within its push for car electrification. In 2017, the country began requiring EV owners to pay for parking, road tolls, and ferries, although they still receive a discount. As of this past January, only the first $45,000 of a new EV’s purchase price is tax-free. Buyers of the largest (and often priciest) EVs must also pay an additional fee that scales with vehicle weight.

“The argument is to make the tax system more fair,” said transportation state secretary Kroglund, “and not give benefits for things that are unnecessary for the transition to EVs.” As a result of the new policies, Norwegian sales of some high-end EVs, like the enormous Chinese Hongqi SUV, have collapsed.

Looking to the future, TØI’s Grimsrud hopes that Norway’s next 12-year National Transport Plan beginning in 2025 will include a goal of limiting total driving, which could restrain highway expansion plans and direct more investment toward transit. “If you start with a national goal for reducing transportation emissions, it will force you to focus more on public transportation and less on road construction,” he said.

For other countries, a clear Norwegian lesson is that a focus on reducing transportation emissions through electric car adoption can worsen inequality. Capping the price of eligible vehicles and limiting the number of EVs that a household can purchase tax-free are intuitive moves that Norway took only belatedly.

At the same time, Norway offers a warning about the dangers of promoting EVs at the expense of modes that are more beneficial to the environment as well as urban life. The national government’s decision to subsidize electric cars but not e-bikes makes no sense from a climate perspective, although the United States Congress made the same mistake when it passed the Inflation Reduction Act last year. At a minimum, countries should ensure that EV adoption does not deplete resources needed for public transportation investments, as has happened in Norway and could occur in the US, since EVs reduce gasoline tax revenues, a portion of which funds American transit.

With frequent bus and rail service, walkable city centers, and expanding networks of bike lanes (including, in Bergen, the longest purpose-built bike tunnel in the world), Norwegian cities are far ahead of American peers in providing viable alternatives to driving. Nevertheless, over the last decade, US cities have taken significant steps forward: Bike share programs are now a fixture, and new bus rapid transit lines have emerged in places like Madison, Richmond, and Washington, DC. New York City and San Francisco have even experimented with making major thoroughfares car-free. But if local initiatives aren’t matched with supportive federal policies, Norway’s experience suggests that an influx of electric vehicles can hinder efforts to escape the automobile’s urban stranglehold.

“The mistake is to think that EVs solve all your problems when it comes to transport,” said Ruohonen, the Oslo mayoral adviser. “They don’t.”

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23939076/norway-electric-vehicle-cars-evs-tesla-oslo

Amen to this. I have been saying the same for awhile. There just aren't the resources for everyone to switch to electric cars immediately but we can certainly put effort into trying to make public transportation ubiquitous, convenient, and cheap. It's definitely the best bang for the buck short term and long term both so it's a little saddening to see it mostly ignored as an option throughout North America.

 

[Siver!]

Electric cars are crucial, but not enough to solve climate change. We can’t let them crowd out car-free transit options.

By David Zipper

OSLO, Norway — With motor vehicles generating nearly a 10th of global CO2 emissions, governments and environmentalists around the world are scrambling to mitigate the damage. In wealthy countries, strategies often revolve around electrifying cars — and for good reason, many are looking to Norway for inspiration.

Over the last decade, Norway has emerged as the world’s undisputed leader in electric vehicle adoption. With generous government incentives available, 87 percent of the country’s new car sales are now fully electric, a share that dwarfs that of the European Union (13 percent) and the United States (7 percent). Norway’s muscular EV push has garnered headlines in outlets like the New York Times and the Guardian while drawing praise from the Environmental Defense Fund, the World Economic Forum, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. “I’d like to thank the people of Norway again for their incredible support of electric vehicles,” he tweeted last December. “Norway rocks!!”

I’ve been writing about transportation for the better part of a decade, so all that fawning international attention piqued my curiosity. Does Norway offer a climate strategy that other countries could copy chapter and verse? Or has the hype outpaced the reality?

So I flew across the Atlantic to see what the fuss was about. I discovered a Norwegian EV bonanza that has indeed reduced emissions — but at the expense of compromising vital societal goals. Eye-popping EV subsidies have flowed largely to the affluent, contributing to the gap between rich and poor in a country proud of its egalitarian social policies.

Worse, the EV boom has hobbled Norwegian cities’ efforts to untether themselves from the automobile and enable residents to instead travel by transit or bicycle, decisions that do more to reduce emissions, enhance road safety, and enliven urban life than swapping a gas-powered car for an electric one.

Despite the hosannas from abroad, Norway’s government has begun to unwind some of its electrification subsidies in order to mitigate the downsides of no-holds-barred EV promotion.

“Countries should introduce EV subsidies in a way that doesn’t widen inequality or stimulate car use at the expense of other transport modes,” Bjørne Grimsrud, director of the transportation research center TØI, told me over coffee in Oslo. “But that’s what ended up happening here in Norway.”

And it could happen in other countries, too, including in the United States, where transportation is the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. The federal government now offers tantalizing rebates to Americans in the market for an electric car, but nothing at all for more climate-friendly vehicles like e-bikes or golf carts (nor a financial lifeline for beleaguered public subway and bus systems).

Ending the sales of gas-powered cars, as Norway is close to doing, is an essential step toward addressing climate change. But a 2020 study found that even the most optimistic forecasts for global EV adoption would not prevent a potentially catastrophic 2 degree Celsius rise in global temperatures. Reducing driving — not just gas-powered driving — is crucial.

As the world’s EV trendsetter, Norway’s experience offers a bevy of lessons for other nations seeking to decarbonize transportation. But some of those lessons are cautionary.

How Norway fell in love with the electric car

At first glance, Norway’s EV embrace might seem odd. The country lacks a domestic auto industry and its dominant export is, of all things, fossil fuels. Nevertheless, Norway’s unique geography and identity helped put it at the vanguard of car electrification.

Historically, Norway has been mostly rural; as recently as 1960, half the nation’s population resided in the countryside. But as the postwar economy boomed, Norwegians migrated to cities, and especially to their fast-growing, sprawling suburbs (much as Americans did at the time). They also fell hard for the automobile.

“The car was this genius idea for Norwegians,” Ulrik Eriksen, author of the book A Country on Four Wheels, told me over dinner in Oslo, after stashing his cargo e-bike. “Because there is plenty of land, cars opened up urban space for people to live in, letting more of them get sizable single-family homes.”

Norway embarked on a road-building binge, constructing bridges over fjords and boring tunnels through mountains to connect downtowns with new neighborhoods on the urban fringe. As Norwegian cities expanded, public transit took a back seat. Bergen, for instance, shuttered its extensive tramway service in the 1960s, dumping some of the trams into the North Sea.

Those girls would have been way hotter if they were lego figures

 

[dog y]

- We have "bad" public transportation here in Florianópolis. Not many options of públic transports. You get stuck with expensive buses.

Even thought it's a insland, no públic boat service. So a lot of time sitting in a car, bike or bus on the time the bridges are congestioned.

Holy shit, um cara de Floripa, e de 2010!
Moro aqui também. Na ilha. Que surpresa.

 

[LeonardoBjj]

Holy shit, um cara de Floripa, e de 2010!
Moro aqui também. Na ilha. Que surpresa.

- Boa noite amigo. Vim para o Sherdog quando o orkut começou a morrer por volta dessa época. Acredito qure já vi o João Zeferino postando no fórum de grappling, ele morava em Florianópolis. Mas também nunca imaginei que fosse encontrar outro Manezinho da Ilha aqui!

 

[oldshadow]

I can’t really see public trans being mass adopted in America. I mean it works alright in cities maybe but most of our towns and suburbs are not laid out for it.

This and public transportation has a bad record as far as safety criminal wise in most big cities. That with being dirty. Now maybe it's improved since the last time I use them but I thought it was getting worse.

Rode in Chicago a very long time ago and NYC. Also Atlanta . Depending on which line and time of day it was OK to you better pay attention to what's going on and don't touch anything you don't have to.

 

[dog y]

- Boa noite amigo. Vim para o Sherdog quando o orkut começou a morrer por volta dessa época. Acredito qure já vi o João Zeferino postando no fórum de grappling, ele morava em Florianópolis. Mas também nunca imaginei que fosse encontrar outro Manezinho da Ilha aqui!

Opa! Na real, sou paulistano. Mudei pra Daniela em 2014 e tenho comércio aqui. Vc é manezinho, então? Mora aonde? Legal, qualquer hora assistimos umas lutas

 

[Sinister]

This and public transportation has a bad record as far as safety criminal wise in most big cities. That with being dirty. Now maybe it's improved since the last time I use them but I thought it was getting worse.

Rode in Chicago a very long time ago and NYC. Also Atlanta . Depending on which line and time of day it was OK to you better pay attention to what's going on and don't touch anything you don't have to.

US public transit is an absolute joke compared to European Countries.

 

[Snackbar]

@LeonardoBjj is really out doing himself with these threads, well done.

In this thread alone I learned some new things about electric cars, enjoyed some sick Lego set ups, and masturbated. 10/10 would read again.

 

[NoSmilez]

Public transportation is stressful in America because people act like shitheads in public. We can't even have proper trains connecting large cities. Flying is the worst.

 

[Fox by the Sea]

if the urban area has good planning and transportation, you don't even need a car.

 

[Bunk Moreland]

Holy shit, um cara de Floripa, e de 2010!
Moro aqui também. Na ilha. Que surpresa.

- Boa noite amigo. Vim para o Sherdog quando o orkut começou a morrer por volta dessa época. Acredito qure já vi o João Zeferino postando no fórum de grappling, ele morava em Florianópolis. Mas também nunca imaginei que fosse encontrar outro Manezinho da Ilha aqui!

Opa! Na real, sou paulistano. Mudei pra Daniela em 2014 e tenho comércio aqui. Vc é manezinho, então? Mora aonde? Legal, qualquer hora assistimos umas lutas

 

[Andy Capp]

US public transit is an absolute joke compared to European Countries.

Japan says hi.

 

[Andy Capp]

if the urban area has good planning and transportation, you don't even need a car.

I didn't even have a driver's license until I was about 30.

 

[LeonardoBjj]

Opa! Na real, sou paulistano. Mudei pra Daniela em 2014 e tenho comércio aqui. Vc é manezinho, então? Mora aonde? Legal, qualquer hora assistimos umas lutas

- Eu moro no centro de Floripa. Sim sou natural daqui. Marcamos qualquer coisa um dia.

 

[LeonardoBjj]

- The birth of a Bro-mance. I live in a small insland, and the probablility of find someone from here on a american site is small.

 

[Renard]

It's not an article that threatens the narrative in any way. EVs require massive amounts of cobalt, copper, platinum, neodymium, nickel and lithium. If you were to swap all vehicles for electric ones in the US alone you would need to use up the world's entire annual production of cobalt 14 times over, 5 times that of lithium and 7 years' worth of the entire annual production of neodymium. For one country. Even in an extremely optimistic scenario, the only possible outcome of an EV "transition" will be that the number of cars on the road will dramatically plummet and car ownership will no longer be within the grasp of the middle class. The few cars that will remain will be fully controllable, it's the nature of the technology and the whole point of the transition in the first place. If they don't want you going somewhere, the recharging station will just not accept to recharge your car outside of that perimeter. The goal is likely to eventually only allow self-driving cars (for "safety" reasons) and you won't even be able to control navigation. I don't think most of the useful idiots who have fallen for the narrative realize that's the future they're signing up for; they just tell themselves it's not going to happen. Of course they'll make more public transit. It won't be a choice to use it, the idea is that you'll have to.

 

[LeonardoBjj]

It's not an article that threatens the narrative in any way. EVs require massive amounts of cobalt, copper, platinum, neodymium, nickel and lithium. If you were to swap all vehicles for electric ones in the US alone you would need to use up the world's entire annual production of cobalt 14 times over, 5 times that of lithium and 7 years' worth of the entire annual production of neodymium. For one country. Even in an extremely optimistic scenario, the only possible outcome of an EV "transition" will be that the number of cars on the road will dramatically plummet and car ownership will no longer be within the grasp of the middle class. The few cars that will remain will be fully controllable, it's the nature of the technology and the whole point of the transition in the first place. If they don't want you going somewhere, the recharging station will just not accept to recharge your car outside of that perimeter. The goal is likely to eventually only allow self-driving cars (for "safety" reasons) and you won't even be able to control navigation. I don't think most of the useful idiots who have fallen for the narrative realize that's the future they're signing up for; they just tell themselves it's not going to happen. Of course they'll make more public transit. It won't be a choice to use it, the idea is that you'll have to.

- Mortal kombat wasteland:

 

[Andy Capp]

It's not an article that threatens the narrative in any way. EVs require massive amounts of cobalt, copper, platinum, neodymium, nickel and lithium. If you were to swap all vehicles for electric ones in the US alone you would need to use up the world's entire annual production of cobalt 14 times over, 5 times that of lithium and 7 years' worth of the entire annual production of neodymium. For one country. Even in an extremely optimistic scenario, the only possible outcome of an EV "transition" will be that the number of cars on the road will dramatically plummet and car ownership will no longer be within the grasp of the middle class. The few cars that will remain will be fully controllable, it's the nature of the technology and the whole point of the transition in the first place. If they don't want you going somewhere, the recharging station will just not accept to recharge your car outside of that perimeter. The goal is likely to eventually only allow self-driving cars (for "safety" reasons) and you won't even be able to control navigation. I don't think most of the useful idiots who have fallen for the narrative realize that's the future they're signing up for; they just tell themselves it's not going to happen. Of course they'll make more public transit. It won't be a choice to use it, the idea is that you'll have to.

So, they'll totally outlaw the use per personal solar cells and wind power generation?

That's nuts.