Chris White Tech Reporter
December 30, 2019 11:49 AM ET
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Ireland is fast-tracking legislation that will effectively ban all gas-powered vehicles within a decade, leaving customers who are buying cars in January confused about what to do next, local reports show.
The country’s Climate Action Minister Richard Bruton plans to publish the Climate Action (Amendment) Bill 2019 enforcing such a ban, the Independent.ie reported Monday. The ban was officially announced in June, according to the report. One of Ireland’s political parties is pushing back.
“Fianna Fáil is mindful that families and businesses remain extremely reliant on petrol/diesel cars and that any phase out must be combined with greater investment in EV charging, public transport and cycling infrastructure,” Fianna Fáil climate spokesman Jack Chambers told the Independent.
Chambers noted that any phase out of fossil fuel-powered vehicle required an immediate transition to electric vehicles. The country’s automotive industry also suggested fast-tracking such a proposal, which was designed to eliminate carbon emissions, could create a lot of confusion.
“This only adds to the confusion, at a time when people are buying new cars. January is the biggest selling month for new cars,” Brian Cooke, director general of Society of the Irish Motor Industry, told reporters.
He added: “There are around 35,000 new cars sold in January, so it’s the key month for us.” (RELATED: Schumer Announces Plan To Nix Virtually Every Gas Powered Vehicle In The Country)
Ireland’s push is similar to one that U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York proposed in October.
“That’s why I am announcing a new proposal designed to rapidly phase out gas-powered vehicles and replace them with zero-emission, or ‘clean,’ vehicles like electric cars,” Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, wrote in an editorial that month after suggesting scientists agree that climate change represents an imminent threat to the U.S.
He added: “The goal of the plan, which also aims to spur a transformation in American manufacturing, is that by 2040 all vehicles on the road should be clean.” The plan would remove more than 63 million gas-powered cars from the road by 2030, Schumer estimates.
The senator’s office expects the proposal to cost roughly $392 billion over a decade. The Washington Post referred to the idea as “essentially ‘Cash for Clunkers’ on steroids,” referring to a policy from the Obama-era encouraging Americans to trade their old vehicles for fuel-efficient cars.
Cash for Clunkers was the mechanism allowing the federal government to offer incentives of between $2,500 and $4,500 to citizens who traded in their older vehicles for newer ones. Critics called the idea, which received generous media fanfare, a failure even if it was designed with the best of intentions.
Schumer has not responded to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
My understanding is that electrical power generation is roughly 35% efficient including transmission losses. This would mean that one unit of natural gas burned in a vehicle (assuming a NG fueled vehicle) would require roughly three times that amount of natural gas burned at the power plant to provide the electricity for the automobile. Isn’t that increasing the total CO2 output into the atmosphere by a factor of 3? Also, isn’t that increasing the cost of the fuel in the car also by a factor of 3? Of course the combustion of CO2 in an automobile is not 100% efficient, so this thought process is just a scribble on the back of a napkin. Can someone ‘splain to this dumb engineer where my thought process has gone astray?
Multiply by zero. Voila, zero emissions.
Divide by zero. Voila, undefined climate change control operation.
Are you sure you’re an engineer?
Converting chemical energy into directional linear or rotational motion is inefficient. The internal combustion engine suffers from the same basic physical limitation. Centralised generation is should be more efficient because you can potentially use the waste heat instead of dumping it but then you need to account for distribution charging/discharging and conversion losses and it comes out about the same. The detail depends on who you listen to and which thumb they have on the scales.
In the case of the Rep. of Ireland, this is madness. They have zero nuclear power, and AFAIK, not undersea cables to import current from UK or France, so one wonders where the hell they think they are going get the massively increased electrical power production. Maybe they are going to destroy their crucial tourist industry by plastering their magnificent atlantic coast with 120m wind turbines ….
Or far more likely no one has even bothered working out how this all works yet.
Presumably the next step will be to ban diesel fuel for tractors and they can kick the only remaining leg from under their economy.
Bulls eye.
Even the purest form of green BS does not have “zero emissions”.
There is no combustion of CO2 , it is already oxidised, it is a combustion product. You really aren’t an engineer at all, are you. Or maybe you had a ‘big night’ last night and the neurons are not yet fully connected again.
You are thinking logically. The cult of CAGW ignore logic and reason… and engineering facts.
The cult of CAGW assumes that electricity can be produced that is carbon neutral using wind and sun gathering schemes.
Their schemes will never produce carbon neutral electricity.
At the point where batteries are required the wind and sun gathering schemes will make electricity so expensive, the economy will collapse and /or there will be a change in government.
Of course changing to EV would require a massive increase in electrical generation and grid upgrades to handle the extra power.
The phoney CO2 savings calculations ignores the energy required to create the sun and wind gathering equipment, to install new power lines and power line right away, and the reduction in grid efficiency.
As EV cars will never off the ease of travel that gasoline or diesel offers, the goal is to force people to travel much less. It would take so long to get anywhere, they expect people to be forced to trains, of which there are not that many. They also want to minimize air travel.
Batteries will never have the energy density and ease of use of gasoline. We could go with super capacitors, but an accident with a fully-charged capacitor would be like a high yield non-nuclear bomb going off. No jaws of life needed when the entire car is vaporized.
And just imagine all those vehicles parked in garages under apartment buildings charging their super capacitors. What could go wrong. Even charging normal batteries is a high risk.
I’ve lost track of it, but there has been some laboratory success in making batteries with much higher capacity and power density, and low internal resistance. It had to do with forming an nanostructure similar to a honeycomb on the each battery plate. One plate would have the lithium component deposited into the honey comb and the other plate carbon, I believe.
The much larger thickness of the layers could hold many more electrons since the layer is 10-20times thicker but the nominal cell size would only be fractions of a millimeter thicker.
This is Ireland. What sun? One month, I think June, when I lived there back in the 70s, there were a total 30 hours without cloud cover, at least in the west. And that included night time.
I lived in Waterford in the late 70’s early 80’s and I recall there was not much sunshine days at any point in a year. What I do recall is about 3 months of fine drizzle for most of the winter months. An open, coal/wood (Wood was “free” where I lived, I just had to go cut it down), fire was mandatory in the home for drying out pretty much everything, but mostly clothes and shoes, as well as providing hot water.
My wife spent time in Donegal in the ’70’s on a rocky headland (not unlike th e Oregon coast she was taling to a farmer, wind light rain and fog. “nice day” he said.
He wasn’t kidding…
I spent a couple of months between Cork and the west coast of Ireland once, it seemed to be bistable climate flipping between intense rain and clear blues skies at roughly 20min intervals.
Mind you that was the summer !.
“Greg January 1, 2020 at 12:21 pm”
I have been to Cork, where my Nan was from and Bantry Bay. Drizzle all the way from Waterford and back. Thank you Gulf stream.
I spoke to someone who lives in County Meath who says she’s busy planning to move inland because her town is threatened by rising sea levels. What a crock of bull. She was adamant that CC is real and got particularity nasty about it. And as to expect, myself and another sceptic got banned from the site. I give up trying to convince these fools they’re falling for a scam.
Old joke:
Irish mother writing to her son: “It only rained twice last week – once for four days and once for three!”
So you are saying that it constitutes another “Modest Proposal” for Ireland.
That’s coming Swift-ly
Thank you!
Burning natural gas to provide power for a vehicle isn’t 100% efficient. However it is more efficient that burning that gas in a power plant and then transmitting that power to a car.
Are petroleum or natural gas more efficient means to transport power to a car than through a battery storage device, whether located on the vehicle or at a charging station?
EV is more efficient when compared to regular ICE engine. I believe best nat gas plants get around 60% efficiency and the lithium ion battery is about 99% efficient. So assuming that power line transmission loss is negligible you are looking at close to 60% efficiency for an EV. Regular ICE engine we are looking at 30% efficiency. But new ICE engines are suppose to be a able to go above 50% efficiency, so from CO2 perspective EV won’t save much in terms of CO2, if the power plant is nat gas and comparing to these new ICE engines. Now if power plant is nuclear then no CO2 is produced.
Power transmission losses are not negligible. As I recall it is proportional to the square of the amperage Nd to the resistance (which depends on the length of the transmission lines. I^2 R losses.
“An example is the comparison between an electric vehicle (EV) and a fossil fuel powered car. The EV has an overall efficiency of about 60% while the fuel powered car is about 20% (or less) efficient. When one considers the total path from primary energy, the efficiency of the electric car is 60% x 40% (grid efficiency) for a total of 24% while the fuel powered car has an efficiency of about 20%. When the bigger picture is considered, the two forms of transportation are not all that different.”
https://www.energycentral.com/c/ec/grid-efficiency-opportunity-reduce-emissions
Doesn’t sound like much of a difference, at least from a fossil-fuel conversion to vehicle miles travelled point of view.
Again, modern ICEs are 40+% efficient. Some are now so efficient that they need electric heaters because there’s not enough waste heat to warm the cabin.
Maybe not in stop-start driving, but certainly on the highway.
” So assuming that power line transmission loss is negligible”
really?
why do you assume somthing that is wuite well known?
but amho, ev will seem to be a key solution to reduce emissions…because people will not be able to afford them and transportation will be more costly making people poorer…
Steve K,
you have omitted so many losses between generation and powering the E.V..
Yes the best combined cycle generating plant is about 60% efficient, but consider that they are not running at their best due to the balancing duties they carry out. Then there are transmission losses, (much more than just resistive losses) including transformers to step up and step doen the high voltage grid voltage levels, distribution losses which are higher than transmission as they are much lower voltage, rectification to D.C., inversion to A.C. for the power electronics that control the motor, losses in the controller itself, They all add up.
How many times will it achieve 99% over a full charge/discharge cycle ? That really sounds like sale brochure claims.
Plus you are generating at industrial voltage levels, transmitting power at UHV levels, with inherent losses, transforming back down to household 240V then transforming down and converting to battery DC charging voltage, then chopping the current you are feeding in a controlled way to the electric motor. If you want to believe that is close to 100% efficient you probably studies humanities not science or engineering.
Power line losses are more like 10 to 15%.
Lithium ion is only 99% efficient if you are trickle charging it. Charge it fast enough that it will be ready by morning, and the efficiency goes down.
You also forgot to include the losses encountered during the discharge cycle.
Then you forgot to include the inefficiencies of the charging and discharging circuits.
EV’s come no where close to 60%.
Ice engines are now beyond that, the Clinton administration look at the EV MPG in the 90sand came up with they work out to be about 19 MPG, quite frankly as much as I detest the Clinton Administration and all the damage they did that number was the most honest answer they every came up with. Of course it was promptly throw unto the ash heap of history since it so inconvenient to the greens.
How efficient are they are -30 C for that mater -0 C, in the real world I live in I have to operate in those temperatures even though I now live in Arizona of course I now have to operate in a plus 45 C world also. You know the ideal world is not where we live and work.
A battery does not generate power…it stores power that was generated by separate means and releases said power on demand…with a loss. Forcing people to switch to expensive batteries (which wear out) is a punishment, not a solution.
Jimb you are forgetting about the XC and XL losses, unless you have a DC power line those are very apparent, and yes high voltage DC power line do exist, I dove under on quite regularly in North Dakota until I moved to Arizona. I have no idea what the conversion looser are there but it is more efficient that AC transmission, and they have been able to do it since the seventies due to high power semi conductors. AC power Transformer are only 98 percent efficient so each time you step up and step down AC power there is a price to pay, losses are not just resistance of wire . I will add you simple have not done the math to figure how much loss per mile there resistance really is not even calculating the XC and XL losses. Oh if you have no idea what XL and XC stand for on is capacitance losses and the other is induction losses both play a part in AC power transmission.
I had the argument by a tech in the eighties somehow no one think of the losses due to AC power Resistance and XL an XC losses since they never had to do the math to figure what they are in a circuit. Something I got in a good tech school in the early seventies, good help us if they are not teaching that in engineering school in the last forty years.
Yep. Stop using LPG to make electricity when you can just burn it in my V8 directly. Time to start making stupid Irish jokes again.
‘Time to start making stupid Irish jokes again.’
I’m Irish living in Ireland and should, by rights, feel offended by that. But I’m not. This place has gone completely and utterly nuts over the last 5-10 years. Politicians and the media have completely lost all contact with reality. I used to be a political party member for 20+ years but left and have no party to vote for now and feel utterly disenfranchised. Recently, a friend of mine with similar views told me he has considered leaving Ireland as the place is so unwelcoming of viewpoint diversity and common sense.
I’m beginning to think the phrase ‘The stupid Irish’ was deserved.
With the internet nowadays idiocy knows no race colour or creed as the lunacy goes viral with these doomsters and Gretaheads. It is the very firmament of Blair’s Law-
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Blair%27s%20Law
At least one wise Irishman remains while you live there.
I’m not casting stones from my glass house in the US where I believe our arrogant left will take credit for your country’s malfeasance. If you get out of Ireland you won’t escape the stupidity, but you can find some distance from it.
Don’t forget The Stupid Swedish ! But the good side is more and more are wakening (Sobering ?) up after more than 50 years of ‘schooling’.
Been to visit Ireland. Lovely place, people and like most places, weather is weather! Which brings the point – what about visiting? Are visitors expected to have electric vehicles. If not, will there be any refuelling stations? The mind is boggling….
funny..the return of the Irish Joke..was the first thing I thought of as I read the header;-))
All right, just the punchline:
A six pack and a potato.
It is all theoretical, speculation as we are not going to get to carbon neutral regardless of how much we spend and humans are responsible for less than 5% of the CO2 rise.
Parking the above…
An EV if powered from a coal fired electrical grid emits the same amount of CO2 as a car that gets 29 miles per gallon. (Assuming the below quoted study is correct.)
The assumption of course is that new power plants were not required to provide the incremental power.
If everyone was forced to drive EVs there would be a requirement to build new power plants, there would be CO2 emitted to construct the new power plants.
Carbon neutral is not possible using the sun and wind gathering schemes.
The CO2 savings calculations ignore the massive amount of energy required to create the cars batteries.
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/electric-cars-co2-emissions-global-warming/
…. The report — authored by Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle — notes that an electric car recharged by a coal-fired plant produces as much CO2 as a gasoline-powered car that gets 29 miles per gallon.
(For context, the average mpg of all the cars, SUVs, vans and light trucks sold in the U.S. over the past year is 25.2 mpg.)
A plug-in recharged by a natural gas-powered plant is like driving a car that gets 58 miles per gallon.
A separate study from the Union of Concerned Scientists found that, depending on the type of plug-in being built, manufacturing a battery-powered car generates anywhere from 15% to 68% more CO2 emissions than a conventional gas-powered car. The reason is that producing the batteries is incredibly energy intensive.
Over the lifetime of a car, then, a plug-in could, depending on where one lives, contribute more to global warming than those nasty gasoline powered cars.
Whatever the case, it’s clear that labeling electric cars as “zero emission” is one of the biggest consumer scams going.
My NASTY diesel car makes 45 miles per Gallon.
Good one, my “deadly” 10 year old Tiguan is doing only 43 miles per gallon.
But only about 30% (at best) of the energy obtained in a vehicle by burning natural gas is utilised. So from that point of view there is not much to pick and choose between them.
Mazda will apparently have a new ICE engine that is 56% efficient.
https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/car-technology/a15912314/mazda-skyactiv-3-gas-clean-as-ev/
https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2009/09/hybrid-all-electric-vehicles/
That article was 10 years ago.
OK it’s by your mate Zeke.
Has nothing changed since then?
Zeke says: The electricity reaching that house must then be stored in the electric car’s lithium ion battery (where another 14 percent (pdf) of the electricity is lost).
sounds more credible that stevek’s 99%.
Everyone is quoting this cleantech article
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/10/29/worlds-10-biggest-automakers-their-ev-plans/
Forced electrification of cars within a decade or so obviously means the forced bankruptcy of 4/5 of the car industry within the same decade.
Have they considered the political consequences of this? This means that in parallel with replacing fossil fuel with electricity, they have equally short term plans for replacing democracy with e-dictatorship.
They don’t care. The science hasn’t caught up yet but they are going to force this one way or another. The church of climatology will not be trifled with.
Well spotted. That is the reason for removing our access to autonomous dependable individual transport. It’s hard to revolt if you rely on public transport and electric cars which they can deactivate at the flick of a switch.
Well, if I was paranoid, which in today’s environment just makes good sense, I would note that I already read an article about hacking some vehicle. Which is not unique to any particular model or even make, since all vehicles have been “electronic ignition” for >20 years now, which means all ignition is controlled by a computer. I would venture to say that any vehicle “… they can deactivate at the flick of a switch…”
Keep in mind, just because a Car has a Computer integrated ignition system doesn’t necessarily mean that computer is “Plugged In” to any type of network without an associated On Star type communications system in place. If Your PC at home isn’t logged into a network (LAN, WIFI) it can’t be hacked from outside.
A “rule of thumb” sometimes used in automobile design has been that 1/3 of the energy burned is rejected as heat. Another third is lost due to mechanical inefficiencies in the powertrain, and 1/3 is left over to propel the vehicle. That puts it at roughly the same efficiency as in your analysis. Missing, though is the infrastructure required in high volume to deliver and store natural gas in vehicles . That alone would take the better part of the decade allowed by the politics to transition to EVs. Neither is economically possible.
Terrible rule of thumb, the thermal efficiency of a gasoline powered spark ignition engine is less than 30%, that’s before you take into account mechanical efficiency. Two thirds of the energy burned is rejected as heat.
Phil are you still living in the dark ages of ICE powered cars?
Perfectly describes my 1960 Morris Major. It must be rejecting 2/3rds as heat because precious little seems to go to forward motion.
What most do not know is the Irish are the wealthiest people that have ever lived on the planet and can easily afford the dramatic cost of living increases for transportation and can well afford to install gazillion windmills to power them as well as provide heat for their homes, power for their agriculture and lighting for the caves they’ll be living in. Who knows, maybe Greta will migrate to Eire?
”What most do not know is the Irish are the wealthiest people that have ever lived on the planet…”
It’s for good reason ”most don’t know” I’m guessing you just pulled that one out of the air. Maybe check out the huge social issues we have with our Health care, education and housing. The only ones enjoying the obscene wealth of our times are the politicians and their cronies.
Happy New year to everyone.
Eamon.
Eamon, he was being sarcastic.
David. One mans scarcasm is another mans or nations truth. The narrative here is that we in Ireland are in the top tier of super wealthy nations. Of more relevance to this topic is how the wholly climate catastrophising Irish media are oblivious the issue of eventual grid blackouts in the four winter months once a) all european power stations are fossil free b) once all internal combustion engined vehicles are banned from the road in 2040. The method of the Irish government outlawing such combustion engines will be to disallow owners of such cars to acquire annual safety certificates for their vehicles in twenty years. Meanwhile, the total number of fast charging points in the state is a mere eighty and the government recently announced to great fanfare that is providing a puny $20million for additional fast charging points but at $100,000 per fast charger this is a fiasco in the making. Classic case of emperors new clothes.
Well in general larger = More efficient. If you check the auto will be far below 100% eff. Pretty much all the loss comes out as heat.
“Pretty much all the loss comes out as heat.”
It’s not all lost in the winter.
I remember driving when -43C. About 0C inside the car. Very little heat wasted 🙂
35% is a very good thermal efficiency.
Your gas powered car motor has a much lower thermal efficiency. Some 20%.
May be, only a diesel motor has an efficiency comparable to 30%.
Further, half of electricity is already generated from renewables.
Half from renewables? What planet are you on?
In Germany.
50% of electricity is already from renewables.
Still, even with this energy mix, EVs emit more CO2 than diesel motors.
But less than gas motors.
Yep. And how’s that lignite burning going?
Alex, is there anything you know that is actually true?
Even if renewables were acheiving 100% up time, even in Germany they wouldn’t be doing anywhere close to 50%.
And ICE engines broke through 35% efficiency decades ago.
In March. One month.
Alex,
“Further, half of electricity is already generated from renewables.”
It is not that simple, by increasing the load on the grid, which forcing people to E.V.s will do means that the dispatchable power plants will provide that extra demand. (Dispatchable are power sources that can react to load, i.e. fossil fuel plants) Renewables and nuclear cannot as they are run at full available power all the time (Generally speaking). You cannot say that the grid has x amount of renewable generation and use that figure.
Realistically these governments pushing E.V.s are putting the cart before the horse. They should make the grid carbon free first then push the ban on new ice vehicles. However that is not going to happen, now or decades to come. It’s all a big smokescreen.
Half of electricity is generated from unreliables where? Ireland has 30% of its electricity from unreliables, 69% from gas, coal & peat. 1% from “Others”
“Germany’s electrical grid is part of the Synchronous grid of Continental Europe. In 2018, Germany produced 540 TWh of electricity of which 40% was from renewable energy sources, 38% from coal, and 8% from natural gas.[6]”
If 40% is considered half in Germany, then I can understand their worsening economy.
How to lie without lying:
“In July 2019, figures published by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE) report that renewable energy is for the first time providing more electricity than coal and nuclear power combined in Germany. Solar, wind, biomass and hydroelectric power generates nearly half of the country’s output.” Wikipedia.
Notice that they included hydroelectric as a nenewable, which is only done to make the numbers look better. But most importantly, they did not bother to include natural gas, comparing only coal and nuclear power to that oroduced by renewbles.
It’s worse than we thought! Because that renewables number is probably the sum of all renewables produced in Germany. But some portion of that (I don’t know the number but it could be as high as 40%?) is produced at a time when Germany can’t use it and is exported to customers elsewhere, leaving the actual renewable proportion of electricity that is used in the country as low as 24%, if still keeping the hydro in there. And when you take out the hydro, which I suspect is a significant part of that production, that percentage goes even lower. Why do I remember 11%? This was discussed already here on WUWT, which is why/where I think I remember a number, but I can’t remember when.
We have just done 2019.
46% of electricity in Germany was produced by renewables. This is very close to 50%.
However, only 35% of electricity consumption came from the renewables.
Internal combustion engines are less efficient users of chemical energy than power plants. Only 25-30% of the chemical energy in the the fuel tank gets converted to mechanical energy at the driving wheels. And the gas in the tank does not account for the additional losses in the exploration, production, transport of crude oil to the refinery, then further losses in the refinery, and further losses for transport to the gas station.
Electrical power plants using high temperature dry steam rankine cycle plants are vastly more efficient at converting chemical energy to electricity – about 50-60% efficiency. Electrical losses in very high voltage transmission lines is minimal.
Electrical losses in electric vehicle systems are nil – efficiency in terms of electrical energy out vs. charging energy in is typically 99% or more, and electric motors typically are 95+% efficient in converting electrical energy input to mechanical power output at the drive wheels.
I have bridge for sale if you are interested.
prove it. I don’t buy assertions by random commenters on the internet. Already you neatly avoided counting the efficiency of the charger charging the miraculous “99%” batteries.
In winter, that waste heat from combustion engines is not all wasted, and creating that needed heat in EVs greatly reduces their range per charge.
Combustion efficiency of a gasoline engine is about 25%.
In 1950.
Your understanding is limited.
Hydro electricity – 95%.
Nuclear and coal – 35-37%. Supercritical coal a bit more.
Gas OCGT – 37%
Gas CCGT – 65%
Intermittent renewables? depends on how you define ‘efficiency’
Eire is not a big place Most journeys are achievable with a fully charged electric.
Eire has really only old CCGT gas generation. And some intermittent windmills, plus imports from the UK.
It’s president is woofter and a clown. Likes to take EU climate policy up the jacksie
My guess is that all this climate rubbish will get rolled back and if Ireland pursues it, it will become a substation of the UK grid
It’s just virtue signalling.
Or a deliberate attempt to wreck ireland’s economy.
The internal combustion engine is about 25% efficient. From well to wheel it is about 17% efficient. The electric car is about 65% efficient from the composite mix of power sources. Therefore, the electric vehicle is about three to four times more efficient than the ICE vehicle. Consider a Chevrolet Bolt. It can travel about 4 miles on one kWh of energy. Gasoline contains about 30 kWh of energy per US gallon. That means a Bolt can go 120 miles on the energy contained in a gallon of gasoline. That’s four times as far as an ICE can travel.
This has to be the most stupidest idea since they made greta the climate saviour 😐 Who is going to pay for all of these cars?? What about people who drive classic cars worth hundreds of thousands? Car dealers etc etc. How do these vile cockroaches stay in power 😐
What about trucking of goods? Planes? Trains, Do these people not use their brains at all
scientists agree that climate change represents an imminent threat to the U.S.
I’m still looking for the names of these so called scientists 😐
..Ireland doesn’t emit enough CO2 to even be a piss in a bucket
and thanks to China….the USA doesn’t either
these virtue signaling cr00ks have to know that…how long until people wake up and confront them with it?
and thanks to China….the USA doesn’t either
The weakest link in our energy independence, not limited to the American market, but also in Europe, India, etc.
Latitude
Thanks to Past President Obama for U.S.-China Joint Announcement on Climate Change
Key part referring to China in the Joint Announcement:
“China intends to achieve the peaking of CO2 emissions around 2030 and to make best efforts to peak early and intends to increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 20% by 2030. Both sides intend to continue to work to increase ambition over time.”
No point complaining about China !
..are you putting me on?
Since the IPCC was formed to lower emissions…China has increased it’s emissions 5X more
China emits over twice as much CO2 as we do…..only some moron would fall for that crap
China doesn’t think global warming is dangerous at all….and we are the fools falling for it
Just pointing out what the U.S. willingly accepted Chinese proposal in 2014. Ground reality is that China will prosper at the cost of EU/U.S.
Wake up U.S. !
India’s CO2 emissions are also low at about 1.8T per capita and so expect India to continue to increase CO2 emissions in a big way !
Stop falling for the per capita $c@m….
…all we would have to do to lower our emissions is let more illegals in….increase our population
anything really toxic…you don’t get to increase it because you have more people
Ashok, you obviously have no experience in writing binding contracts or agreements
The only way China will “Peak” early would be to artificially inflate their current CO2 output to reach their projected 2030 levels earlier. To accomplish this China would need to build vast uninhabited Ghost Cities that have facilities which unnecessary use Megawatts of electricity to accomplish nothing more than to artificially inflate their CO2 output to reach their projected peak levels early.
The Chinese have a far simpler solution. Adjust the historic statistics. They’ve already done that for previous COPs. You may wonder where they learned that trick.
And if you believe what China says, I have a bridge in the Sahara desert for sale. Cheap.
I’m a scientist. The only imminent threat I see is from globalist politicians.
I hope Ireland has a plan to increase its base load power generation. If they don’t plan now, in 10 years the country will have massive blackouts particularly if they plan to replace any coal-fired power stations with solar and wind and if that is the plan they won’t have any EV’ on the road.
Nah, every home will have a gas powered generator to charge the EV. No problems.
Love it
Small coal/peat burners?
that actually makes more sense than anyone gives credit for. the tragedy is that many homes now have a gas[oline] powered generator sitting in the driveway, i.e. hybrid vehicle. what is being missed here is the extent to which these plans are meant to further addict citizens to the government controlled grid-regardless of what kind of energy goes into it the grid is an IV for government stuck right into your wallet.
Almost every automaker has announced that their fleet will go all electric within the next 5 years or so. This legislation is actually pretty dumb.
They can make their fleets all electric but you can’t make people buy them. Most people don’t want them.
Remember the Volt? Production has stopped on that vehicle, the one Obama said would be in every garage.
Major manufacturers can build them but you are correct Mathew, people may or may not purchase them. For me it makes no sense, low sunlight in the winter, freezing cold, rural environment where everything is a good travel and I frequently pull a trailer. I am not going to sit in my freezing car while it recharges, if there were any near me.
Here in Canada, there are about 10 people per sq mile. Travelling more than 200 miles on a weekend is common. As well, other than 3 cities, most people travel by car to work. And most years in most cities, there is usually a snow storm where traffic grinds to a halt, and it will take 4 hrs to get home. Technology is a long way from keeping the heater on during stop and go traffic.
i.e. EVs are a 2nd vehicle, and must be left at work during a snow storm or left at home during the weekend trips.
Problem with the Volt is that it was a compromise, ie, it was a traditional built car with ICE in mind then with a few changes, adapted to electric power. To do that for a new car is futile. You have to follow Tesla for that, from the ground up, designed for electric power.
Converting classic cars, like the Mini’s, Morris Minor’s and old Range Rovers, to electric power is doable but expensive. Last I saw a classic Mk1 Mini restored and converted cost GBP80,000 IIRC. Demonstrates EV’s, new or otherwise, are for rich people.
Charging stations?
Electrical generation?
Emergency response?
2.5 million cars in Ireland.
There are 8M+ cars in LA county, alone.
There will be a glut of right hand drive second hand cars in ten years time if this goes ahead. Or the government in Ireland could find that the population emigrate, followed up in Northern Ireland, or simply revolt against volts.
Followed should read fill. I hate tablets deciding to replace what you type.
Invest in second-hand ICE cars. Prices will soar once you can’t buy a new one.
ColMosby
The only people who buy ev’s are taxi drivers, they love the toyota prius.
will the car companies be building super chargers as well on every other street? Are they paying for a complete upgrade in the infrastructure in every city/town so the towns and cities can cope with such a massive load on the system?
Who is paying for all of this green crap? Will it be greta as ive read she is worth almost 25 million pounds
Are petrol stations going to convert to charging stations?
Actually, they are. Petro Canada recently announced that every one of its stations along the Trans Canadahighway will be equipped with charging capabilities.
It’s amazing how many times one person can repeat the same lie.
“Almost every automaker has announced that their fleet will go all electric within the next 5 years or so.”
Yeah, right. I’ll believe that when I see it.
What I believe they’ve actually announced is that they’ll have electric versions of the cars for those who want them. Which won’t be many, unless the cost comes down and the convenience goes up.
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/10/29/worlds-10-biggest-automakers-their-ev-plans/
Steven,
Thanks for providing the link to the story about EV plans. It apparently agrees with MarkG:
“It seems unlikely that Toyota will all of a sudden produce electric cars that are compelling enough to reach 1 million sales a year in the next few years, and even if it does, it doesn’t seem that it would have the battery supply to reach 1 million sales a year. ”
“The report also stated that Hyundai/Kia planned to be second to only Toyota in green car sales by 2020 — but, again, we don’t have a clue what percentage of sales are expected to be plug-in cars, let alone fully electric cars”
“That said, its Chevy Bolt EV and Chevy Volt PHEV have seen sales tank this year.”
“GM has a plan to be producing 10 electric vehicle models by 2020 … in China. Furthermore, it intends to launch another 10 models between 2021 and 2023 … in China.”
“The problems that make that less exciting than it sounds are: 1) again, some (or many) of those models are just for China, and 2) “electrified” includes conventional, out-of-date, non-plug-in hybrids. Of the 40, only 16 will actually be electric models.”
“Given that Ford’s EV sales totally suck, it’s hard to expect much from the company by 2025, let alone 2023.”
“Actually, outside of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance and Tesla, it seems there are no other auto companies with clear or at least public electrified, plug-in, or fully electric car sales targets. Perhaps it is hard to estimate how many cars you will sell when you don’t know much about the models you’ll be offering or where you’ll get the batteries.”
“Unless Honda plans to go out of business, I don’t think we’ll have to wait till 2030 for some notable electric vehicles from the automaker. The problem is, I don’t see much on the horizon.”
“Fiat Chrysler announced (earlier this year) that it would put $9 billion into “building cars that have electric motors,” as Steve Hanley put it. “It says it will have 30 models with some degree of electrification on the road by 2022, although the suspicion is the majority of those will be conventional hybrids, with a few plug-in hybrids and one or two battery electric cars thrown in to burnish the company’s image.”
“While the Renault Zoe has long been a top seller, there has been disappointment that the French company hasn’t rolled out more competitive EVs in recent years. Of course, there’s also the Kangoo Van ZE, but what about passenger electric cars? And what about new mobility options? What’s around the corner?”
“There’s also an EZ-GO thingie … that may go somewhere.”
“How competitive will all of these models be? Does PSA have batteries lined up at a large scale? Does it intend to sell as many as possible or the bare minimum to meet EU regulations? Given that the plans were seemingly thrown together at the 11th hour (an EV unit was formed at the beginning of April) and based on comments like these and these, I can’t say I’m optimistic, but I’ll hold out some hope — what else can we do?”
This article doesn’t sound very optimistic about the future of EV production outside of Tesla.
The important word in that link is “plans”. Makers do have plans to make EV’s however, it takes a very long time to tool up for a dedicated EV line. Currently, lines of ICE vehicles are so large in terms of numbers makers will not drop ICE vehicles for EV’s any year soon. One policy to make, or force, that change is banning ICE in favour of EV’s. That is Govn’t meddling in the market. How successful has that been?
The US electric car tax credit has ended for Tesla, and will end soon for other manufacturers. That’s why Tesla must move manufacturing to China, ie to compensate for loss of tax credits.
In the end, if the price of EV’s isn’t competitive, only wealthy virtue-signaling Californians will buy them.
“ It says it will have 30 models with some degree of electrification on the road by 2022, although the suspicion is the majority of those will be conventional hybrids, with a few plug-in hybrids and one or two battery electric cars thrown in to
burnish the company’s imagevirtue signal.”There. Fixed it for ‘em.
And the grid with unreliables too whilst replacing the batteries every 12-15 years along the way Mosher?
https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/the-physical-impossibility-of-renewable-energy-meeting-the-paris-accord-goals/
Some Irish philosophy for you- I wouldn’t want to start from here.
I hope you are not implying electric car batteries will last ten to fifteen years?
My local garage had an electric car owner raging that his less than three year old vehicle was now doing only 14 miles after a full recharge before coming to a stop. The cost of replacing the battery made it cheaper to buy a ICE.
Pretty much the experience reported from Germany with electric buses which over the last few years have been enthusiastically purchased by green/left leaning city authorities and now are confined to flat inner city short runs if they are not stuck uselessly in the depots. An inter-city service has been notable for serial failures and annoyed and stranded passengers .
MCoEA,
Some people will believe anything Musk tells them.
IIRC the Edsel was one of those?
And where are going to get the rare earth metals needed for the batteries? I will give you a hint: they ain’t falling from the sky.
Why is it that “green” energy always, ALWAYS, get a pass for the damage it does to the environment? Lithium and neodymium mines are murder on the environment. I know the answer; I am being facetious to make a point.
ColMosby, EV sales are poor and many models lose money. GM for example loses $9000 on each Bolt sale. Toyota, the world’s largest auto manufacturer, doesn’t sell any all EV model at the moment and its hybrid Prius sells only a fraction of that of its Camry. What you say is simply not true.
The following article, though a year old, gives a more accurate description of major automakers plans.
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/10/29/worlds-10-biggest-automakers-their-ev-plans/
Your claim is actually pretty dumb, ColMosby.
Almost every automaker has announced a number of all-electric additions to their fleet within the next 5 years or so.
As an example, Volvo says 1 new electric model every year and a 2025 global sales of 50% all-electric.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/16/20915841/volvo-xc40-recharge-electric-suv-specs-miles-range-reveal
Even better, here’s a whole list of 10 of the largest…https://cleantechnica.com/2018/10/29/worlds-10-biggest-automakers-their-ev-plans/
NONE have plans to be “all electric within the next 5 years or so.”
Just how much are you being paid to promote that deception? As pointed out to you numerous times in the past, some manufacturers have announced that they will have a full line of EVs IN ADDITION to their fossil-fuel offerings. And future plans have a tendency to depend on future demand and costs.
“Almost every automaker has announced that their fleet will go all electric within the next 5 years or so.”
What they’ve actually said is different: All of our fleet will be electrified in five years. IOW, most of it will be mild hybrids.
It would make sense to reserve as much oil fur such petrochemical needs as cannot be taken care of from other sources, and not use it for vehicle fuel, except for this: Electric vehicles need batteries which require materials mined at a massive cost in toxic pollution, child labour, third world exploitation, slavery, non-existent labour laws – any of which make it too high of a moral price to pay.
Richard,
Have you personally seen such mines? Or are you merely parroting the words of other alarmists?
This ex-miner is disgusted by ignorant attacks on a fine industry, one that you could not survive without.
Geoff S
The Chinese method of rare earth mining by pumping acid underground is not a “Fine Industry”
Matthew
Can you provide a citation for your claim? Acid leaching is common in the treatment of many ores. However, in situ leaching is problematic because of the limited permeability of the source rocks and an inability to direct the acid to the target mineral(s). Even so, I would expect that the acid will be neutralized after a time. So, just what is your complaint with the alleged actions of the Chinese? Is it “Rock Acidification?”
Rock acidification is even worse than Chicken Little of the Sea… If we dissolved all of the rocks, we would actually destroy the planet. (Do I need to add a /Sarc tag?)
David
I don’t need a ‘sarc’ tag. However, I can’t speak for Matthew, who hasn’t seen fit to defend his claim.
Er…it then pumps it back up again. That’s the point.
Been done for decades for uranium mining.
Phoenix44
In sandstones? The common ore for REs is bastnäsite/parasite. It is usually found in crystalline rocks with low permeability such as carbonatites, and granitic pegmatites. While the flotation product from crushed ore is leached with hydrochloric acid, not all of the REs are soluble. Thus, in situ leaching would be inefficient, leaving much of the target elements behind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastn%C3%A4site
Here you go Geoff.
https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/wind/big-winds-dirty-little-secret-rare-earth-minerals/
I was an environmental engineer for a mining company thru 2009. There is a very good reason we don’t mine rare earths in the US. I wish California with its renewable mandate would open up the Mountain Pass mine again and source their own RE’s. They would take one look at an RE mine and that would be the end of it.
Jim and others,
You might find this video to be interesting:
https://capitolmediabooks.com/blogs/investigations/desert-stormtroopers-a-documentary
Only toy turbines use rare earth magnets.
Grid scale wind turbines are resource hungry but rare earth metals are not on the list.
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy17osti/66861.pdf
Rick your link did not mention anything about rare earths.
This is from the Vestas website:
“In Vestas, rare earth elements are used in the magnets found in the towers of all new models of Vestas turbines, whereas rare earth elements used in permanent-magnet generators are used in the older GridStreamer™ turbine models (i.e. the V112-3.0 MW and the 2.0 MW “
The Vestas article goes on:
https://www.vestas.com/~/media/vestas/about/sustainability/pdfs/190207%20sustainability%20report%202018.pdf
The reason rare earths are not mentioned in the link I provided is that rare earth usage in grid scale wind turbines is negligible.
The myriad of tiny electric motors used in all the remote functions in a typical ICE vehicle is a greater use of rare earths than wind turbines:
https://e2e.ti.com/blogs_/b/behind_the_wheel/archive/2018/03/29/how-many-electric-motors-are-in-your-car
Geoff shrrrington
Look up the 2019 unisef report on Congolese calbolt mines and the 40 + thousand plus slave underage children working in them. The greens should send their own children if they want a ev or batteries for their solar panels 😐
This is from the guardian newpaper
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/dec/16/apple-and-google-named-in-us-lawsuit-over-congolese-child-cobalt-mining-deaths
More than 60% of cobalt originates in DRC, one of the poorest and most unstable countries in the world. … By May 2019, Congo DongFang International Mining (a subsidiary of chinese company Huayou Cobalt) have built a mining site, with a walled perimeter and processing buildings.
Geoff,
Haven’t personally seen any, because most of them are in countries which care not for human rights or the environment (*cough* China). Here is a video of a neodymium mine in China required for wind turbine magnets.
Cobalt in the Congo is mined with child labor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcJ8me22NVs
and Lithium mining in South America is water intensive and destroying local farming.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7bKoAaHXqw
Ain’t Western mining – it is Third world exploitation and survival
And as Matthew notes, the Chinese control most of the rare earth ore.
Yes, actually. Not here in North America, but in Africa, while working there. So I would never ever buy, or even rent, a Tesla. Or any other electric car.
I am in no way slandering miners for the work (incredibly hard and incredibly necessary) that they do.
“Fianna Fáil is mindful that families and businesses remain extremely reliant on petrol/diesel cars and that any phase out must be combined with greater investment in EV charging, public transport and cycling infrastructure,”
And not a word about extra power generating capacity.
They are going to be in for a rude surprise. I suppose somebody has to be first.
The plan is for more wind farms, and increasing the links to the UK and possibly France. The problem is that they will see surplus wind exported to the UK at negative prices if it is not curtailed, and they will have to pay top whack for imports when it isn’t windy. A 400MW CCGT plant for Belfast seems to be stuck in a political quagmire. Whether the all Ireland grid expansion will go ahead may be another interesting question. It was to provide enough capacity to try to make the North entirely dependent on the South when the wind doesn’t blow.
Electric cars aren’t particularly clean, let alone “zero emission”.
hmm sales of electric cars in Ireland went from 1% of new cars in 2018 to 3% of new cars in 2019.
well good luck.
W O W
That’s a whopping 200% additional sales. Oh the Briskness
The US term “gas” for petrol gets confusing in this context.
We use “gas” for fuels that are gaseous at room temperature which is logical.
Natural gas vehicles are still encouraged I believe because of their low emissions,
jeff
The word “gas” is commonly used as a contraction of gasoline (i.e. petrol). It is indeed unfortunate that it is used imprecisely and can be confused with ‘natural gas.’ Perhaps those of us commenting here can try to be a little more precise in our word usage.
It would have helped if the article title was clearer. Especially since gasoline is not called gas in Ireland which the article is supposed to be reporting on.
Greg
Note that the article and title were quoted verbatim from the Daily Caller, and while the author is characterized as a “tech reporter,” no information is provided on his technical background. However, I believe that the Daily Caller is aimed at an American readership. If I were to go to Ireland, I’d be expected to know what a “boot” on a car is, and what a “torch” is.
CNG is a horrible fuel for vehicles for many reasons, including being significantly more dangerous in useful volumes because making it a liquid requires cryogenics. Therefore, to store enough it is under a lot of pressure. Fuel mixtures are also significantly different – about 5:1 vs about 12:1, so you need to use a lot more for the same power.
LPG (propane 60+%, butane rest) is much better and is pretty much refinery waste anyway – it is liquid at room temp and pressures around 2-3MPa or so, so you can store a lot more energy a lot more safely, it’s trivially simple to make a dual-fuel (LPG/gasoline) setup even on older cars, there is already a lot of infrastructure in place for it, etc etc.
With the new liquid injection systems for LPG, there is NO performance hit – the volume of air dispaced by the LPG is made up for by the liquid to gas phase transition sucking heat out of the intake charge, so more goes in – in some cases, you can gain power fitting these!
My 300 HP 5.7 Chev V8 costs less to run on LPG than the 200 HP 3.5 Mitsubishi V6 on gasoline it replaced – by about 20% or so on my typical commute (about 30 miles each way, about half freeway / half suburban streets). Where I am, gasoline (petrol) is $AU1.50 per litre, LPG is $AU0.75 per litre, the V8 uses about 50% more fuel, plus lose a slight amount because I have vapour injection not liquid injection.
How much of the savings is due to not paying the taxes that are placed on liquid fuels that are supposed to be used for vehicle infrastructure?
Isn’t LNG (liquified natural gas) less dangerous and less compressed than CNG (compressed natural gas)?
LNG is about -158C.
It is not compressed, just a . . . very . . . cold liquid at atmospheric pressure.
-158C is pretty cold (about 115K), and causes brittle cracking in ship steel [if accidentally dropped in more-than-droplet quantities on to the deck/hull].
Hence considerable insulation on board.
It still has boil-off – about 0.1 to 0.15% per day in big, big, ships tanks [say 30,000 cubic metres]. I guess the boil-off would be proportionally more in smaller [car] tanks.
Auto
LPG is typically under 5% of refinery yield, and certainly rarely over 10%, even if you keep back the butane that is added as a blending component in gasoline. It is not going to replace the large volumes of gasoline sold. Moreover, it offers rather lower mpg – you need a third more.
LPG also comes from fractionation of wet natural gas. Commonly, LPG and ethane fractionated out gets used as petchem feedstock. It’s nowhere near enough to replace gasoline, let alone if you start adding in diesel.
It’s unconscionable that the IPCC’s scientific deception has been allowed to progress to the point where gullible politicians like Shumer would propose something like this and think that the otherwise unjustifiable hardship is justified by the deception he’s too blinded by partisan politics to see.
I can tell ole Shumer right now that Americans are not going to give up their internal combustion engine cars. Please keep suggesting things like that Chuck and show everyone how out of touch you are.
Democrats have gone insane.
From MIT’s “Technology Review” a month or so ago —
“If you follow some of these other projections, you basically end up with the cost of batteries being less than the ingredients required to make it,” says Randall Field, executive director of the Mobility of the Future group at MIT. “We see that as a flaw.”
“Currently, US carbon emissions per mile for a battery electric vehicle are on average only about 45% less than those from a gas-fueled vehicle of comparable size. That’s because fossil fuels still generate the dominant share of electricity in most markets, and the manufacturing process for EVs generates considerably higher emissions, mainly related to the battery production.
EVs in some US regions, notably including coal states like West Virginia, could generate nearly the same level of emissions as standard vehicles over their lives. In parts of India and China with particularly dirty electricity systems, EVs may even generate more emissions than gas-fueled vehicles, says Emre Gencer, a research scientist who worked on the study.”
I don’t know how applicable it is to Ireland, as I have no idea as to what their power generation mix is now, much less what it will be in the future, but… Still seems very pie-in-the-sky.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614728/why-the-electric-car-revolution-may-take-a-lot-longer-than-expected/
Ireland volunteers to be the EV crash test dummy.
UK and Australia already volunteered to be the renewable grid crash test dummies.
And then we have California….
Ireland is tip-to-tip about 300 miles. Electric cars model 2020 are probably viable.
Have you driven on Irish roads? Apart from a few, most are a typical two lane road, with slow lanes either side of the main carriage way for slow vehicles like farm machinery etc as well as livestock. There is a small motorway network around Dublin and major highways have improved around major cities, but that is it. There is no major “motorway” (Motorway in the sense of what a motorway is in the UK M3, M4, M25 etc) link between say Dublin to Wexford or Waterford or Cork etc.
Most industry in Ireland centres around Dublin. Waterford Crystal is no longer made in Waterford, the factory I used to walk past on the way to school is long since razed. So I have no idea what industry is going to power this green EV revolution in Ireland.
I think you mean : with a slow lane either side of the white line !
Where ever you are going in Ireland , you don’t want to be in a hurry.
It was a long time ago in Waterford, and mostly along farming areas. Road signs are misleading too. Driving out of Rosslare heading towards Waterford, you come up to a roundabout with, as it turned out, two signs for Waterford. If you take the road following the first sign/exit, you end up back where you started. You have to take the second sign/exit to Waterford you end up in Waterford.
Rud: …. +1 The trick will be to get honest reports on cost, implementation, progress, and results. So far the results have been less than satisfying to those that understand the trade offs.
Yup. Different countries, states, cities, regions will all experiment with various approaches. Opportunities to cash in abound
Yup. Except you misread Cash In (your try) for Crash Test Dummy. Not the same.
First one back to the stone age wins??????
James Bull
The “arc of history” is obviously a circle if the Greenies are allowed complete control.
Does this apply to road going agricultural vehicles, police, council, ect ,?
No problem. My favorite kind of heavy equipment is powered by a giant extension cord. link
Impressive
I’ve always wanted to try nitromethane….
Well, that was fun.
It’s one thing to watch a video of it. It’s another thing to be there and smell, hear, and most amazingly FEEL the sheer power of those machines course through ones bones and flesh.
I am primarily a fan of Sprint cars on the dirt. But Indianapolis Raceway Park (Now O’Reilly Raceway Park but it will always be IRP to me) is only 35 miles away and so I have been to several different races on the asphalt there and had to go watch the NHRA Nationals at least once. Every ticket is a pit pass. Watching the best crews under pressure of time is also something to see. A kind of frenetic choreography. Yea, I know that last sentence probably won’t make sense to anyone that hasn’t seen it.
@u.k.(us) – I’d recommend nitromethane if you need to go a quarter of a mile in 3+ seconds. That comes in handy if you want to get home before the ice cream melts.
The only thing that surprises me is that more people don’t use nitromethane, considering how many people like ice cream.
Full disclosure: Stop signs are problematic.
So are the number of engines that you get through.
Chuck Schumer is just pandering for the 2020 election. All politicians pander. They can’t help themselves. It’s the nature of a politician. It’s like Darth Vader using the Death Star to blow up Aldaran. He can’t help himself. It’s what Darth Vader does.
But it’s not going to happen in America. Travel distances are simply too vast. But then Chuck Schumer is from New York and we all know that a lot of New Yorkers think that America ends west of the Hudson River.
Any European country that handicaps itself by going all electric is going to be hurting itself economically. The world is a pretty competitive place. If Ireland has high energy costs on top of it’s high labor costs then business will simply move out of Ireland. But don’t worry. Even if they wreck their economy and they go back to eating potatoes three meals a day the good folks at the next COP meeting will probably give them a bright and shiny participation trophy. Made in China of course.
Enver Hoxa would be proud that the Irish politicians are following his lead. If this plan goes through the Irish will be using donkey carts made for automotive axles and wheels, as was done in Albania. The Irish could be invited to mass migrate to the USA as was done during the potato famine. This time it would be due to the political intelligence famine.
The only thing virtue-signaling idiocy like this will get Ireland is a right-leaning, populist government. The sooner, the better.
At some point, at least in this country, someone hopefully says
“Hey, wait a minute – I usually drive 3-500 miles a day twice a week for my job, going to different locations where I’m needed. How am I supposed to work if the car can only go 200 miles between “fill-ups” that take hours?”
– or –
“I visit my aging parents one weekend every month, driving 400 miles each way. How’s that gonna work with 200 mile range?”
– or –
“My family works in the tourist industry. What happens when people can only drive 200-250 miles per day?”
– or –
“I’m an semi-truck owner-operator and I haul 30 to 40 ton trailers all day long. How’s that supposed to work having to haul tons of batteries also, and spending hours recharging the battery every couple of hundred miles?”
The answer will be “Oh we’ll have better batteries!” and the reply should be “Fine, get back to me when you have them. And the charging stations are built on the freeways. And the massive power transmission lines installed to the charging stations. And the power sources to feed the charging stations. And the technology for the quick charging exists too. Until then, go away”
Not to mention the 100s of thousands of cars that visit Ireland each year via ferry’s.
Let me repeat: at least 350 miles range before refueling, and 100% refueled in less than 10 minutes. I will not go backwards.
BTW, this 200 mile range they claim they have now, at what speed? How much does that range vary with speed? If I’m in Texas on that toll road with an 85 mph speed limit (and I always go ~9 mph over the speed limit) or in Montana or is it Wyoming where they don’t have speed limit, how far can I get before my speed starts to drop? How far before I’m sitting on the side of the road with my thumb out? Come on, guys, I will not accept regressing!!!
Cash for Clunkers was a terrible program. The idea was to get old gas guzzlers off the street, replacing them with shiny new cars. The dealers were required to trash the cars, pour sand into the running engine or similar. This took the clunkers off the market; hooray for the big auto makers. Think of the increase in average mpg. Then think of the huge total waste of embodied energy in an extant vehicle.
The result was a vast shortage of used cars, and pricing being at the margin, a big leap in used car prices which really shafted the folks who couldn’t afford new car prices, which of course went up since they didn’t have to compete with used cars for buyers. IQ off the charts, that O’bama guy.
When the media proclaimed Obama’s IQ to be “off the charts”, they neglected to specify which WAY off of the chart!
Leftists have always defined intelligence as the ability to regurgitate the left wing agenda.
Anyone who agrees with me is smart.
Anyone who disagrees with me is evil and needs to be jailed.
Yes, very intelligent. Just take a look at his newest house…
Intelligence =/= moral.
It’ll be hard going, when the post-brexit UK cuts off exports of electricity to the EU outpost of Ireland.
(The UK will have to cut them off, because the UK won’t have enough themselves).
Well spotted 🙂
“Climate Action Minister”! Gawd help us! Once they are a government ministry they will be there forever doing their nefarious deeds.
“Climate Action”. Beyond Orwellian.
Once upon a time in the U.S., the government banned alcohol. When that went badly, they unbanned it.
No problem.
When you live on a smallish island like Ireland, EVs can make sense for most people. But I have no doubt the very rich will be able to buy fossil fuel indulgences to drive their FF powered Supercars.
Ireland is 52,000 sq miles. The U.S. is 6,110,564 sq miles. You can get across Ireland in a few hours. Ireland can play with toys.
That would mean approximately 20,800 vehicles a month to replace the 2.5 million vehicles -cars, trucks, tractors and motorcycles. This will be an easy stat to track every month. Let’s see how that goes. Tic tic tic…
The ban is on new sales
so do they also plan to ban resale of older cars? or just ban re registering them in a new owners name?
Id be buying up some spares about now.
wreckers will do a roraring trade
until the EV wrecks come in anyway, with kackered batteries
of course if its a self immolating Tesla ?- no wreckers required and no parts
who is going to provide the landfill for all those batteries they cant recycle too?
The goal is to eliminate all gas vehicles in ten years according to the article. I haven’t read the proposal, only this article. I read that to mean I would need to replace my gas powered car w electric even if I only buy used cars. Even if that is not true pick a number for the end game. Still easy to track progress
Ireland doesn’t get as cold in the winter as Wyoming or Vermont — or the Windy City, for that matter. So, they might actually be able to get by with their virtue signaling.
Is stupidity a virtue now?
No, but the perception of intelligence and goodness are. Case in point: empathetic appeals.
Will Ireland en d up like Cuba with a lot of old petrol driven cars as the owners don” want to give them up.
Of course the Irish, that is those outside the progressive types, mainly in the cities, will vote these idiots out of office.
MJE VK5ELL
By what logic would a politician, be he from NYS or Ireland, propose to hogtie his own constituents (and his economy) in a daft proposal to reduce CO2 locally while India and China’s additional emissions will dwarf any reductions from these proposals when measured on a global scale.
A rational proposal would be to say “Call me in 2030, and if the “undeveloped” countries who are eating our lunch decide to have a complete ban on ICEs, we will consider it also.”
Ironically, aren’t both politicians firmly against frac’ing (Marcellus shale in NYS)? What are they gonna power these EVs with; they ‘re not going to build another Niagara Falls in New York!
Anything to pander to the rabid base.
This video gives an entertaining and insightful story on why EVs, of current technology, will not be a choice for private transport in Australia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Afb0W8GJd1A
It provides a perfect example of range anxiety and the contributing factors. It is also noteworthy for the weather conditions in late autumn in the sunburnt country after 70 years of global warming. This is the same land that was burning up in late spring of last year.
Enlightening and important lesson. EV range is extended, along with battery charge, when it’s being towed.
Sitting on the side of the highway with no heat in winter, relying on misleading by omission manufacturer’s marketing materials. Then a towing bill. And a long wait to charge after that. Easy to fix all of these problems. Just say no to travel. Or go with the cheaper internal combustion engine already available. I’m not just guessing that most politicians will go with “Just say no to travel.”
It’ going to take something life threatening like 0 F to get me interested in stopping for an EV sitting on the side of the road. Let them enjoy the full measure of their meaningless virtue.
Reality/physics always wins. Just look at Venezuela, they have energy, resources, but incompetence now have people eating their pets, and dumpster diving for food. Reality and physics won out. The only question will be how long will it take for it to collapse. Just ask the French about trying to make farmers low carbon…..
The Irish politicians are treading on a staple of Irish tradition: The social consumption of fermented, carbonated, and distilled beverages ‘doon tae the pub’! The social life of Ireland is founded on CO2 yielding fermentation to produce alcohol. When the fomented Irish publicans and their customers become fully aware of the direction and eventual impact of stupid CO2 laws on beer and distilled amber liquids, I predict a heady reaction!
I really am amazed at how progressive politically/socially the Irish and the Scotts have become. Used to think of them as fighters. Warrior races. Ancient lands with big men with big stones and fiery women folk. Claymores and the pipes. Now?
Agree totally
Complete transparency – I’m Irish! And the Irish PM and his green cohort effectively give us a bad name. I have to say that the Irish Premier is a thick Paddy!!!! The countryside is a patchwork of small towns and villages with many small farmers, so are these folk suppose to relocate into Dublin, at a great cost as it’s one hell of an expensive city? And to do what I ask? The Premier has clearly stopped taking his medication.. poor fella!!! Happy New Year!!!
Interesting, in the light of the fact that Ireland is one of the few developed nations that doesn’t stipulate certified engines (oxygen sensor not required) in industrial equipment.
This will not end well.
Morons. Sorry, nothing else to say about this.
So it’s back to draft and carriage horses, then? Well, fine! The only gas emissions they’ll have will be flatulence on the part of equines.
But then there’s that problem of disposing of the deceased transport horses, once they’ve dropped dead in their tracks, kind of like those photos form New York before the gas/diesel-powered cargo carriers came into existence.
I’m sure it will make the Teamsters very happy.
Me thinks this is costly insanity!
I was in Ireland last year (I can say that now).
“Interesting” place. More Polish speakers than Gallic. Blame the English for EVERYTHING despite about 100 years of home rule and try to justify every part of their history as ‘blame the English’.
(They unironically describe the mercenary soldiers who fought for the French over the centuries as being motivated by a desire to continue fighting the English, and not say, as a thing that thousands of poor men with no future at their place of birth had been doing since the dawn of violence.)
Despite being proud of their independence from the English, they in real terms hide behind the UK for defence and will fight to the death for the right to be oppressed by the EU. I actually had conversations with people claiming that if Brexit happened the entire peace process would be invalid and they would be forced to start killing people again. Some of these people even seemed excited by the idea.
Ireland, I am afraid to say, is Woke and gets away with being Woke because other nations do all their heavy lifting.
Apart from that it is a wonderful place 😀
My Nan remembers the British Black and Tans in the 1920’s. Yes, Ireland now is “Woke”, has to be to get all the Euro subsidies it has been receiving since the early/mid-80’s.
“Fianna Fáil”
Was the political party who supported the IRA during the terrorist bombings in the UK in the 70’s and 80’s.
No the U.S. isn’t next to ban IC vehicles. Despite the remarkable number of climate-obsessed imbeciles in Congress, they are still in the minority and likely always will be. It takes a majority of both Houses of Congress and a Presidential signature to pass any legislation. For future reference, anyone who takes seriously what Chuck Schumer says is a few fries short of a Happy Meal, like Chuck.
One is street parking in cities. When I lived in Philadelphia I had no garage or no parking space. I would park my car on the street at the closest space that I could find to where I lived. How is that suppose to work for charging ? Would cities put charges in each parking spot. Many cities are like this and the suburbs close to the cities.
The objective is to not only to ban vehicles, however they are powered, it is to ban personal transport and freedom of movement.
Nailed it.
It’s almost like the Communist Manifesto wanted centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
“Welcome to Mondello Park and the Fiesta Endurance race. If you have just joined us, Team CarbZero is in the lead, but is about to make a twenty minute pit stop for a partial recharge, so it’s still anyone’s race to win.”
Nah, I just can’t see it. There’s just too many situations where you need to gas up and go as quickly as possible. (gas=gasoline)
OTOH, watching an uncontrollable lithium-fueled fire after a car crash could be fun to watch.
Next move will be to have all charging stations run via a stationary bike. Then to network all local stationary bikes to fee the grid.
A recent article in the Telegraph made the situation regarding electric cars perfectly clear. And this is written as someone who would love to see the ICE, whether diesel or gas, eliminated from our cities in the interests of clean air and quality of life.
This is the conclusion in October of 2019:
Prices start at £16,250 for the base-model Active 75PS petrol with a five-speed manual gearbox, to £23,350 for the GT Line 136PS petrol with an eight-speed automatic. Battery electric prices include a £3,500 plug-in grant and start at £25,050 for the Active trim, rising to £29,650 for the GT trim.
Basically the electric version is twice the price, has a limited range, and takes hours rather than minutes to fill.
This is not going to work. It is simply not possible to replace conventional vehicles with electric at these prices and at this functionality.
Even if you could, it would not solve the problem. The problem in cities is not simply air pollution from ICE vehicles, though that is huge. The problem is also that streets through which cars and trucks move at speed are not pleasant places to be. The problem is not that we need to keep all the cars and trucks but power them differently.
The problem is that we need to take back the streets and the cities from them, and make them into more pleasant places for ordinary human users and uses.
Right now we are treating city streets as places to drive through on the way to someplace else. This is what we need to change. Just replacing the engines on the vehicles driving through them will not make them much better places for the people trying to use them, as opposed to pass through them.
There’s a simple answer to this harebrained proposal: It just won’t work. Period. Irish politicians, like almost all other politicians worldwide actually, refuse to accept the physical limitations of EVs, as well as their exorbitantly high costs per unit, and their drawbacks on daily use, if compared to ICE-driven cars. Yet once people will have noticed all this, and will have voted the respective political proponents out of power, the EV-hype will be over again, and folks will ask themselves how it was possible to have come this far at all. But that’s simple: We are governed by clueless Lemmings, who have no idea anymore what they are deciding about, and only want to go with the flow, so as not to be responsible for their decisions. EVs are a fashion, nothing else. And like any other fashion, EVs will go out of fashion again soon, too.
Idiots and morons, when did the Irish lose their tiny minds?
Everyone is quoting this cleantech article
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/10/29/worlds-10-biggest-automakers-their-ev-plans/
Forced electrification of cars within a decade or so obviously means the forced bankruptcy of 4/5 of the car industry within the same decade.
Have they considered the political consequences of this? This means that in parallel with replacing fossil fuel with electricity for road transport, they have equally short term plans for replacing democracy with e-dictatorship.
I would not trust a site calling itself cleantechnica, the whole raison d’etre of the site is it is obviously factually challenged and based on the idea that CO2 is “dirty”. Don’t even bother reading their twisted attempts to talk up EV market.
This is my take on EV’s.
An EV (like the Volkswagen Golf E) will have a battery sized at around 65kWh. A full charge is equivalent to about 100 miles driving range, when the battery is new.
A battery storing large quantities of energy will have a “turnaround loss” of about 25%. Or if you like, “turnaround efficiency” of 75% . This is the unavoidable consequences of the physics and chemistry which results in energy loss. (There are tricks to make some types of battery storage look more efficient, but the tricks tend to consume ancillary energy -such as high temperatures – so they don’t change the overall picture.)
When an auto manufacturer says a battery stores 65kWh, I cannot tell if it mean 65kWh useful energy back out of the battery. So I have to adopt the assumption that 65kWh is the useful energy coming back out of the battery. Given the turnaround efficiency, this means it will need about 87kWh to be purchased “at the plug” to get a full charge. This is when the battery is new.
All batteries degrade with use, but getting information on degradation performance of EV batteries is not easy. The most important effects of degradation are:
* loss of peak power (the car will not be so nippy as it ages);
* loss of charging capacity (65kWh reduces and the initial 100 miles driving range will fall); and
* loss of turnaround efficiency (it will take more power at the plug to charge the battery).
As I can’t get information on these things, I’ll need to make some assumptions. I’ll go for a reasonably cautious position of a gradual process of degradation and there will be a 5% drop in performance on all measures after a few years. Let’s say 50kmiles.
A couple of points to note here.
Manufacturers provide a warranty with their EVs, but degradation is factored into the warranty conditions. I haven’t seen a warranty to check the design parameters for degradation.
If degradation is an issue, it may be possible to change the battery – but the batteries are installed as small cells spread around the body of the EV. It will not be an easy or cheap to replace: I find it hard to imagine that Volkswagen would change a battery for anything less than £6k ($8k). That’s just an assumption, but when I asked my local dealership, they politely dodged the question. If you don’t want to incur this cost, you can always trade-in your EV for a new one, but the same cost will be factored into the trade-in value so there is no escaping it.
Another hunch I have is that fast-charging (waiting 1/2 hr for a charge instead of a few hrs) will be convenient but bad for battery degradation. I also suspect operating at peak power (full acceleration) will tend to be bad for battery degradation. Once again, this is only a hunch, but it is generally the way of these things. So all of the above points on degradation (including the terms of warranty), will be linked to motorist behaviour and how the EV is used.
Finally the economics. The following assumes no additional infrastructure costs for supply of electricity to the plug, although I doubt this will be the case and the consumer will end up paying more than the rates mentioned below.
At the moment I can fill up my IC engine car for about £65 ($85) and get around 350 miles for mixed driving (£0.18/mile or $0.24/mile). This is an “at the pump” cost and includes all UK duties and taxes.
At the moment, the UK unit price of electricity is around £0.19/kWh (including 5% VAT which is a form of purchase tax). That’s around $0.25/kWh. For a new battery at the 65kWh capacity mentioned above (87kWh at the plug) a full charge will cost £16.50 ($21.50) including tax. This will get me about 100 miles as I mentioned, so a new EV will cost £0.16/mile ($0.25/mile) and it looks like I’d be better off at this point.
If I go with 5% battery efficiency degradation after a number of years (turnaround efficiency drops from 75% to 70%), charging the battery to get a useful 65kWh out will then take 93kWh. A 65kWh charge will then cost £17.50 ($23) and the mileage rate will have risen to £0.17/mile ($0.23/mile). For the uncertainties and assumptions I have used, I’ll suggest this is roughly same cost as my present car but I have the inconvenience of loss of range from around 350 miles per visit to the pump, to 100 miles per visit to the charging point. That’s not such a good deal in terms of cost and utility.
Maintenance costs will be different for the two technologies, and I suspect EVs will be much cheaper to service compared to IC engines. I’ll make an assumption that an EV will be about £1k ($1.3k) lower cost to service over the first 50kmiles.
But the degrading battery cannot be ignored. To make a like-for-like comparison, I’ll assume a battery which has provided 50kmiles will have performance degradation (capacity, power and efficiency) to the point that the EV is not attractive to own. I assumed £6k for the battery replacement, but a maintenance cost saving of £1k compared to the IC engine. This is a net £5k ($6.5k) additional cost over 50kmiles, equating to £0.1/mile or $0.13/mile net battery over maintenance costs.
On the economic question, the energy costs of an EV appear to be initially positive, but reducing with use to something that would be aligned with the IC engine. The loss of utility should be noted for frequent EV charging stops versus less frequent filling stops for the IC.
The net maintenance cost could be the penalty for owning an EV, when the cost of battery replacement (or reduction in trade-in value) is taken into account.
That’s my take on it. I’d be happy to hear other views and experiences as I find this an interesting topic and would like to check my assumptions.
Remember, Ireland held a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in 2008, which in effect was to hand power over Ireland to the EU, and it was rejected. The referendum was held again in 2009 because the EU didn’t like the 2008 result. The result in 2009 was the result the EU was wanting and they got it. Now there is an ever shrinking native Irish born population.
They also forget we will still need to pump, mine, frac, or some how bring these fossil fuels or raw materials to the market.
You cannot build any of their unicorn and rainbow utopian world with out these resources. Going to a plant base economy will increase the industrialized footprint and land usage.
article: Ireland’s push is similar to one that U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York proposed in October.
It is not often that a political party openly promote the destruction of the economy. And pretend to save us.
Not often?
I have an acquaintance who is an executive in information technology for a large international commercial institution who personally supports trashing the ICE market in just 5 years (here in the U.S.), making fuel and all combustion vehicles unaffordable. He calls it the Big Math. For “progress”.
Seems like there’s an admission of inferiority (technological and personal) hidden deep below the BS.
The country’s automotive industry..does not even exist in Ireland
The company I work for here in Belgium recently stopped all new orders for company cars. In this country a high percentage of company employees – and of the population – drive company lease cars (taxes are high but are less in lease cars than salary). Fortunately I had recently ordered my own car and the leases run for 4 years. The reason given by management was that in 2020, rules and prices for leasing will change in a big way in favour of electric cars. They will need a “pause” to re-adjust.
Countries like Belgium will find it easier to change what cars people drive when a large fraction of vehicles are company lease cars. But I see serious problems with this attempt at overnight forced change to electric. The infrastructure for charging is not there. And electric cars will not be a viable business for the lease companies whose business model will be destroyed. Most of their profits are in car resale at the end of lease. The rapid fall in value of electric cars and especially their batteries, will wipe this out. Only huge, permanent and unaffordable government subsidy will keep the majority of cars electric. Some painful lessons are about to be learned by the more green-ly ideological governments.
At least in Belgium, you have access to the EU’s largest lit road network, so driving at night is safer.
A UK announcement on the same day,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-50957470
We lose as soon as we participate in the discussion about the pros and cons of electric cars to reduce emissions. The response to the topic should be “Why the hell do we want to reduce emissions of CO2 when our emissions are doing so much good!”
The upside of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere is far, far greater than the downside. If we were not emitting CO2 ‘accidentally’, we would eventually have to burn fossil fuels just to return some of the CO2 to the atmosphere from which it came, in order to save all life on Earth.
It is not easy to find analogies of this level of stupidity in all of human history. The practice of bloodletting may be the closest, but even that was not as stupid as proclaiming the ‘gas of life’ a problem that must be eliminated!
A handful of master manipulators have sold the world on an alternate reality where small quantities of atmospheric CO2 pose an existential threat. This is the exact opposite of reality, where our CO2 emissions are literally strengthening the biosphere and staving off the very real threat of a massive CO2 starvation extinction at some point in the future.
Many of the discussions here at WUWT, like this one, take place in the alternate reality; passively accepting the false premise. It is like having arguments about the most efficient way to practice bloodletting on people with cancer!
Exactly. From all things that humans done on Earth, viewed from the ‘Gaia’ point, releasing CO2 was the only one that helped.
It did increase significantly the biosphere.
There was a study discussed here at WUWT that compared the biosphere during the ice age with the biosphere in Holocene and found about 1/3 increase due mostly to CO2.
Another similar increase was between the LIA and current period, actually easy to understand if one compares what plants do with 280 ppm CO2 and with 400 ppm CO2.
If the increase since LIA to now was only 15% at 7 billion people that would make food for 1 billion.
Senator Schumer, electric cars failed in popularity at the end of the 19th century for the same reason they will fail today, RANGE! As has been said by an expert on electric cars, “it’s the battery stupid.”
The difficulty with selling electric cars is that gasoline cars are so cheap and reliable. Here in Canada you can probably buy a safety-inspected gas car for $3000. There is no way new electric cars can compete with that price. Teslas are cutting into the market shares of Cadillac, Porsche, Mercedes and BMW. Those are niche markets to begin with, so Teslas are niche of a niche.
Every article I have seen predicting the coming market triumph of electric cars contains the phrase, “when battery costs come down.” which of course presumes that battery costs will come down. And of course, a vast outlay will be necessary to build and install charging stations. All this to replace an existing system that benefits millions of people who would be shut out of the new system because they couldn’t afford to buy into it. Electric cars must fail, unless government coercion that will severely harm must voters in enacted into law.
There is always the Isle of Man…..
The usual results from not thinking actions through and a raft of unintended consequences will follow.
Just happy we arent the crash test dummies for this one, although somebody will probably bleat the “we are falling behind” It always seems to be a race for some reason.
Ireland used to be such a nice place
Talking about EV’s and costs, here in Australia a Nissan LEAF owner had to get the battery replaced. The car was out of warranty IIRC and was quoted AU$32,000 for a new replacement battery, fitting and GST for a car that was worth not more than AU$10,000. The owner had the vehicle from new. That version of the LEAF didn’t have an active cooling system for the battery, unlike a Tesla, so was unable to control the battery temperature properly. This was vaguely documented in the owners manual, but you had to go search for it in what would be considered the “fine print”. That is shockingly bad customer care by Nissan. No point trying to claim this failure on warranty because as soon as you drive off the lot, the car is used, and unless you can prove a manufacturing fault, the warranty is worthless.
Maybe the legislation could require all government ministers and their support staff to use EVs exclusively for the five years up to the final changeover. You might find there would be intense pressure to get the project details sorted
They’d have to take away our fossil fuel powered rifles first…
In my opinion after 30+ years in the industry, No automotive warranty has ever been worth F-all.
It used to be AP were world famous for this in Leamington spa.
If a clutch was faulty, you could NEVER get them to admit liability, it would always be faulty fitting or some other lame excuse.
I recall just ONE trader, managing to collar an AP manager, and force them to watch fitment then of course almost immediate replacement of one of their brand new faulty clutches,- even that was a struggle, but when you p..ss people off that badly it will end badly.
So, sadly AP went under as a result of their incompetency, – couldn’t happen to nicer people!
AE was the same,I remember one occasion, they churned out 65000 faultily machined pistons and refused to admit any liability-same reasons until eventually they were taken to the cleaners by some competent German engineers and lawyers who proved the “kolbenfresser” part 100% had this fault.
The result, they paid off 1 third party and continued to sell the rest of the stocks regardless.
This attitude really p..ss..s me off, because usually the customer has to make up the slack, and the trade has to do the work for free.
Ireland, they don’t even make cars, never mind have the cash to decide anything, so if they want what industry they have left to leave, they are going the right way, – just migrate it all across the border to Northern Ireland.
In fact you can imagine with such a law, people will just register all new ICE in the North and carry on as before….
Another one:-
If you see what happened with the Apple I-phone, where they deliberately degraded older models as they got older, so they ate their batteries, you have a nice taste of what is to come with any EV.
The technology is the same, the barons of industry, like the weed smoking Musk, are even more cynical than our good old – once mighty British car industry, and is as heavily tax subsidised as good old bankrupt British Leyland ever was…
Thatcher took them to task, but Blair deliberately destroyed the good bits of whatever was left, selling out huge slices of good British industry to the lowest bidders.
Socialism dies hard, but the smoke and mirrors, PR, marketing, the mass media – BBC and all the other in the trough feeding make sure the ploys are even more powerful than ever before.
Thank goodness Britain dodged the next bullet with that loony Corbyn, who wanted to nationalise everything again.
history teaches us that history teaches us….. sweet ZILCH.
They can just export young people like they always do when things don’t work out.
A lot of pointing out the unintended consequences in comments to this article and like topics. Just remember the consequences are not intended. They are what it’s all about and always have been.
Do they mean ALL gas powered vehicles? The Irish are mad about their motorcycle roadracing. Some events have been held nearly every year for over a hundred years. I don’t think everyone’s going to be in complete agreement with getting rid of these events.
https://www.newsletter.co.uk/sport/motorcycling/updated-all-the-irish-road-racing-dates-for-2020-enniskillen-absent-from-calendar-1-9129805
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/12/31/ireland-fast-tracks-law-effectively-banning-gas-vehicles-within-a-decade-is-the-us-next/