
Scotland plans to make petrol and diesel cars obsolete by 2032 - prostoalex
https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/05/scotland-petrol-diesel-phase-out-ev/
======
djrogers
Obsolete is a pretty strong term, as is the date:

"Come 2032, not all cars will be ultra-low emission, but Scotland hopes that
the majority will either be powered purely by electricity or have a hybrid
option."

Good goal, bad headline.

~~~
cag_ii
Obsolete does not mean nonexistent.

If the goal as the article claims is to "phase out all petrol and diesel car
sales", then obsolete seems about right.

~~~
djrogers
Obsolete is defined as: "no longer produced or used; out of date."

No longer sold in Scotland does not equate to no longer produced or used, and
even at that they do not actually plan to forbid sales of ICE vehicles by
2032.

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therealidiot
Does any manufacturer make 'simple' EVs? I mean that as in fewer computers. My
current car is about 18 years old and besides the ECU there's not that much
going on. No touchscreen controls, no telemetry. I hope that one day I'd be
able to switch to an EV but I'm disappointed by most of them (and yes I
understand I'm a minority in disliking smart everything)

~~~
kagamine
You're not as alone as the media might lead you to think. There is a lot of
hype and marketing going on with EVs to get people to adopt this change in
technology that is consumer funded.

I agree with you, there are too many nice-to-have features in cars that add to
the [unnecessary] complexity of these vehicles. Late 90 cars started with
this, adding air-bag suspension and corner-leveling systems and it has since
grown into automatic windscreen wipers when it rains, automatic lights when it
gets dark (like you aren't sitting there looking out the big window), touch
screens and gadgets. Some things are useful, for example electric mirrors,
others not so much for example 5 different memory positions for the driver's
seat where before you just pulled the lever under the seat to move it forward
or back. IN case you think this is not a problem it can cause problems with
other critical electronic components: I had a dealership's workshop turn off
my electric seats in the BCU (BCU = body control unit, the PC of the car) and
this meant that because the ABS is linked through the seat, something to do
with collisions and the seat moving, the ABS warning light came on leading to
a MOT/EU-control fail. I had to buy a code-reader machine to turn it back on
myself. On models of this car without electric seats this is not a problem. So
many other things I could mention like this example. Simplicity, as I a m sure
HN coders and the like will agree, is best.

~~~
jlebar
I also don't want tons of screens and so on in my car. But automatic
headlights? Where I live, I see (or, well, don't) cars driving at night
without their lights _all the time_. Automatically turning them on when it
gets dark seems like a no-brainer. The worst thing that happens is the sensor
breaks and then they become manual headlights...

~~~
kagamine
I see the opposite problem where I live. Driving lights as they are referred
to in Norway must be on during the day as well as at night. These are on the
front of the car. On the back newer vehicles have the lights off by default
and come on when they sense darkness. This means I have followed many cars in
hard rain on dark/dusky days and you can't see them up ahead. The law is that
rear lights have to be on in conditions where they are necessary, but ignorant
drivers see light coming from the front of the car and don't think that people
behind them travelling at 110km/h need t see them up ahead. Automation didn't
solve any problem, cars used to have lights on front and back at all times,
day and night (lots of tunnels in Norway), automation _created_ a problem.

------
melling
The real push for electric cars is coming from China, the world’s largest.
They are requiring 8% of cars next year need to be electric or plugin hybrid.
They want to get that to 20% by 2025.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/29/renault-nissan-to-set-up-
new...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/29/renault-nissan-to-set-up-new-china-jv-
with-dongfeng-motor-for-electric-cars.html)

~~~
dmoy
Oh man that will be glorious, I can't wait for future trips to Beijing without
getting respiratory sickness. So far I'm like 7 for 7 on getting sick in
Beijing.

~~~
ams6110
So why do you keep going back? Family?

~~~
dmoy
Family, have to fly to Beijing then take the train, but typically spend a few
days in Beijing visiting friends who live there.

------
yCloser
All the "plans to do stuff by 2050" are completely useless. The one who did
the plan will not be in charge till that date, someone else will take over and
change/destroy the plan (or worse, add +20 years), and in politics this is
simply the way to go.

This is procastination at his finest and means "doing nothing now".

~~~
smcl
I see the point, but this doesn't necessarily mean its an empty gesture as
there is a precedent. Back in 2005 the Scottish government aimed for 18% of
electricity consumed to be generated by renewable sources by 2020 (later
adjusted to 50%). This was met and exceeded in 2015 (59%). Granted this is a
smaller timeline but there is real backing for renewables here, especially
since the collapse of oil prices hit the local oil industry

~~~
andygates
In the case of electric vehicles, the long timeline means they can ease
charging facilities in without having a massive spend - they just come in when
infrastructure gets renewed. Visible charging facilities are one of the things
that breaks the "chicken and egg" adoption problem.

------
ZeroGravitas
A pragmatic money saving decision.

The price of batteries is falling steadily. EV prices are falling as a result.
By 2022 a new EV will cost less to buy than an equivalent ICE car. It would be
foolish to get to that point and have people wanting to buy the cheaper option
but not feel able to do so due to lack of charging points etc.

Of course, if you take into account the lowered fuel costs and maintenance,
then the EV car becomes cheaper even earlier (though it depends on exactly how
far you drive and the relative costs of electricity and gasoline) but figures
like 2020 are mentioned for the TCO to be lower on a new EV.

Of course that figure doesn't take into account costs/benefits like reducing
pollution in cities, health impacts, higher imports of fuel, meeting carbon
obligations, balancing grid electricity and other externalities, which is why
governments are currently subsidizing EVs to make them cheaper than ICEs (and
should probably continue to do so, even after they are cheaper than equivalent
ICE cars pre-subsidy, though it probably makes more economic sense to further
raise gasoline prices and introduce a carbon tax).

------
pjc50
I'm very much in favour of this, but the article alludes to one of the
problems: the "long tail" of remote life.

The majority of the Scottish population lives in commuter range of Glasgow or
Edinburgh. Here in Edinburgh we already have some hybrid buses so I can see a
change to pure electric happening gradually as they become available. There's
also no shortage of renewable energy to power the things.

But there are also some people who live remarkably remote lives in the
Highlands and Islands. In the Highlands "range anxiety" is very real if your
nearest large shop is 100 miles away. Whereas the islands may have limited
generation capacity. I can see there being a range of exemptions for these
circumstances, although once petrol cars start to become unusual the petrol
pump prices will go up.

~~~
jacquesm
One immediate consequence of transportation revolutions of the past is that
some regions that were considered un-inhabitable before suddenly became viable
possibilities. It stands to reason that if in the future the 'energy budget'
per person gets reduced to the point where vehicles that can do 800 Km un-
interrupted are extremely expensive that such locations will only be
affordable to the rich with poorer folks condemned to living in or around the
cities.

~~~
pjc50
> 800 Km un-interrupted

That's half the length of the UK! More realistically the longest journey
required for a remote place to be habitable might be a round-trip from Durness
near Cape Wrath to Inverness, which might require a 400km range. Or half that
if you can rely on recharging. Much of that would be on the A9 which the
article mentions will have chargers added to it.

Already you have the dynamic that much of the really hard poverty is urban.
People already move to cities if possible to be where the support facilities
are or, if all else fails, to beg on the streets.

What I expect we might see a bit more of is modern self-sufficiency and
techno-crofting, where people's cash flow looks low but they grow their own
food and don't have to pay rent. Already renewables are making this easier on
islands. H&I also seems like a good place for medium-range air cargo drones;
rather than send a van on a 100km trip round the mountains, send a drone 25km
over them.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
I can think of some potential benefits of an EV if you lived somewhere remote
like that. Charging at home would be even more convenient if your nearest
petrol station was some distance away, possibly wasn't open 24 hours, and had
higher than usual prices due to the low traffic throughput. You'd also
probably drive more miles than average, meaning the lower fuel costs and
maintenance of an EV would add up faster. (I seem to recall a story about a
rural delivery driver in the US that realised his per-mile reimbursements for
fuel meant he could afford to buy and pay off a Tesla Model S with his fuel
savings)

An EV with a range extender for those emergency unexpected long trips could be
the best of both worlds, though a higher capacity EV may relatively soon be
cheap enough to make that a poor choice.

------
gozur88
That's a weird headline. Governments can ban technology, but they can't make
it obsolete.

~~~
iainmerrick
Sounds like you're assuming a ban on combustion engines is the only thing a
government can do, but they have plenty of other options. They could offer tax
incentives for EVs, for example, or fund research into EV technology.

------
StephenMelon
Great to see the Scottish Government leading on renewable energy again. I was
worried that adding over 30 million cars to the grid would cause problems but
having looked into it it looks like it would add less than half a percentage
point onto UK energy consumption at current utilisation rates.

I do wonder how it will affect the PCP market though as the future value of
petrol and diesel cars will presumably become more difficult to predict?

------
edh649
I've heard that these future 'bans' on ICEs are actually just bans on pure
ICEs and apparently vehicles with even just stop-start technology are classed
as 'Micro-Hybrids' which would be allowed after these 2032, 2040 dates.

------
nmeofthestate
Pedantry - the UK government isn't the "English" government as it's referred
to in the article. England isn't the same thing as the UK.

------
afsina
...by subsidizing with oil exports. Like Norway.

~~~
pjc50
The revenue from the oil fields goes to the UK government, not the Scottish
government, a subject of some controversy.

~~~
afsina
Thanks. No wonder they could not secede before.

~~~
pjc50
Secession or "UDI" as some people keep talking up _would_ give the Scottish
Government the oil revenue, as well as several billion other headaches and be
a disaster.

The only viable route to independence is the legal one. Unless we get the
"full collapse" Brexit.

------
merrua
Is that the same as the India deadline?

------
jkingsbery
The article didn't say what the source of the energy powering those charging
stations will be in 2032. Presumably much of it will still be carbon-based.

~~~
mikeyouse
Nah, less than 30% of their electricity is carbon based today. They won't have
any problem decarbonizing entirely over the next 15 years. They actually just
shuttered their last coal plant in 2016, so I'm curious what last year's
generation numbers looked like.

[http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Business/TrendE...](http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Business/TrendElectricity)

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environment...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/24/longannet-
power-station-closes-coal-power-scotland)

~~~
jkingsbery
Cool, I didn't realize. Learned something new today.

------
stretchwithme
I've decided to reduce the use of internal combustion engines by 90% worldwide
in the next 50 years.

That's right. I'm setting this goal.

But then it's easy to set goals in the distant future when there are
inevitable trends that will already make it happen.

~~~
prawn
A headline/goal is unlikely to come without practical, supporting actions
which nudge people towards that goal. The headline is something though that
spreads and is repeated frequently, getting more and more people thinking
about their actions - collectively these things will get people to that goal.

I don't think it's without value.

~~~
stretchwithme
The move away from ICEs is already well underway, in my opinion. Headlines
aren't going to slow it down or accelerate it. Companies like Tesla make it
happen.

------
trapperkeeper74
Banning all FFs sounds like a worthy objective overall but it seems like
bikeshedding to ban small ICEs yet trains, tractor trailers, farm and mining
equipment, jet aircraft and industrial sources receive little regulation.
Instead, the average person is taxed, penalized, inconvenienced and regulated
for the tiny amount of pollution they produce in comparison to greater
polluters.

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
> ...the tiny amount of pollution they produce in comparison to greater
> polluters

A quick google search found this article with numbers pulled from a 2012 US
Energy Information Administration (eia.gov) report:
[https://www.c2es.org/energy/source/oil](https://www.c2es.org/energy/source/oil)

Transportation is the main consumer of petroleum, accounting for 70% of usage,
of which 58% is light vehicles alone - so that's 40% of total - that's still
far higher than "industrial" use of 25%. Tack on medium/heavy trucks which I
assume includes F-150 trucks and giant off-road dump-trucks alike and it's
more than half of total petroleum consumption.

So no - eliminating fossil-fuels from personal transport alone, while leaving
industry alone, will still have a huge beneficial impact on greenhouse gas
production.

But you forget the halo and knock-on effects: as the market adapts to service
non-petrol consumers (e.g. fast EV chargers, battery-swap stations, etc) then
industries will adapt to take advantage of them too - it wouldn't surprise me
this meant the introduction of an EV John Deere tractor powered the same hot-
swappable EV battery pack that might power a hypothetical Ford truck.

~~~
djrogers
I think the problem is that you're eliminating the cleanest and most regulated
segment of the market, so even if it's 40% of the FF used, it's a much smaller
fraction of pollution produced.

~~~
mikeyouse
Which is mostly irrelevant if carbon is your concern since CO2 emissions are
fixed per unit of fuel.

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
> CO2 emissions are fixed per unit of fuel.

Is this true though? Does it matter on the grade of fuel, or petrol vs diesel?
I think I read that leaded fuel emits less CO2 than unleaded fuel, but I'd
definitely choose more CO2 than lead in the air, tyvm.

------
dsfyu404ed
If they have the desire to make this a priority and are willing to sink the
money to pull it off then power to them.

IIRC CA had a similar target about electric cars for 2000ish and we all know
how that worked out.

It's easy to dream big. That dirty thing called reality likes to get in the
way. Being an early adopter is expensive.

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
I recommend watching "Who Killed the Electric Car?" \- it explains most of the
history of EV cars in California. I disagree with its conclusion that battery
technology was not to blame - I feel that range-anxiety is a real concern and
the GM EV1's range of under 100 miles using bulk lead-acid or 140 miles using
NiMH batteries was, and remains, inadequate. Compare to today's Telsa's S and
X 250-300+ mile range.

That - and the program was open to easy sabotage.

~~~
cptskippy
100-140 miles is inadequate for a lot of people however it is more than enough
for others. Even if a multi-car family adopts 1 EV it makes a difference.

~~~
Teknoman117
100-140 miles is more than adequate for nearly all of the United States. While
there are people who drive farther, the vast majority of the citizens of this
country travel less than 40 miles for work, and I don't know anyone who would
drive that far for groceries. People tend to want to buy a car for the largest
trip they can imagine they'd take, even if that event may only happen a few
times in the vehicle's lifetime.

~~~
Zanni
You're assuming that you always start from a full charge (an assumption I used
to make before I got an EV). That's not always the case. I live in a
townhouse, so I'm in the process of getting a charging station installed (it's
been six months so far and we're still in the paperwork stage ...) In the
meantime, I charge where I can. That means I almost _never_ start my day with
a full charge. Worse, there are only a few places I _can_ charge, and my best
options add 20 miles of range in an hour. Say I start my day with 70 miles of
range, which should be more than adequate for my ~45 miles of round trip
commute. But an emergency comes up and I have to run an errand. It's just a
short 10-mile trip, but now I'm coasting in to home with just 5 miles of range
left ... if my meter is accurate (it's not), if traffic's not bad (it might
be), etc. Charging stations are few and far between, which means the nearest
one might be outside of my remaining range. Or, if I can get to one, it might
be occupied. At a gas station I can just wait five minutes. At a charging
station, I might have to wait _hours_ for someone who's trying to get a full
charge.

