<story><title>UK to ban sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030: FT</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-autos/uk-to-ban-sale-of-new-petrol-and-diesel-cars-from-2030-ft-idUSKBN27U0DG</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gambiting</author><text>I live in the UK and I&amp;#x27;m 100% for it in theory, but 100% against it in practice.&lt;p&gt;I currently have an electric vehicle - the only kind of usage scenario where it works and is absolutely brilliant is charging at home. That&amp;#x27;s about it. Public charging is a joke, vast majority of stations either don&amp;#x27;t work, are occupied most of the time, or cost so much money to use that it would literally be cheaper to drive a diesel car.&lt;p&gt;We visited our friends some time ago in London for a few days(before lockdown). They live in an apartment so no way I could run a cable to the parking space. No problem I thought - there&amp;#x27;s a Shell station nearby with a charging point, several ChargeYourCar points at car park not far away, and I could see on ZapMap that there were two charging points on the street - and worst case scenario there are rapid chargers along the way at few motorway stops.&lt;p&gt;We got there and basically - all ChargeYourCar points were out of order for 3 days we were there, the 2 charging points on the street were only for permit holders(something that ZapMap didn&amp;#x27;t mention), and the one single charging point at the Shell station nearby was occupied every single time I checked. So we stopped at the motorway services in the end, where they had 4 rapid charging points - all taken. We waited 30 minutes for someone to leave, once they left the car wouldn&amp;#x27;t connect - had to ring up the number on the charger, finally the customer service advisor restarted the point for me and it started charging. Only another 45 minutes of waiting and we had enough charge to get home. Oh and the charge was literally £0.49&amp;#x2F;kWh(I pay £0.05&amp;#x2F;kWh at home on a night tariff) - I had a Qashqai 1.6dCi few years ago that I could fill up for that much and drive down to london and back.&lt;p&gt;Again, the car itself is brilliant. It is the future. I have no idea how people still drive around in cars that burn anything to move - they are loud, having to have gears is stupid, having to keep buying fuel is stupid.&lt;p&gt;And yet.&lt;p&gt;I can&amp;#x27;t imagine that the UK government and the private sector will get their act together and somehow, in 9 years, the infrastructure will be amazing, and they will find answers to questions like how do you charge at an apartment or a house with no dedicated parking space. I&amp;#x27;m eagerly awaiting to hear about these solutions.</text></item><item><author>LeoPanthera</author><text>This may be a bit off-topic, but these comments are really eye-opening. I had no idea that anti-EV sentiment was so strongly held. Especially among HN users, who you would assume would be more likely to see the benefits of new technology.&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s disappointing is that all the talking points are the same-old tired fossil fuel propaganda from a decade ago. We have made progress, and we can make more progress if we all pull together.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s seems crazy that in the 21st century the best option we have for the storage and transfer of energy is &amp;quot;let&amp;#x27;s burn stuff&amp;quot;. We can do better than that.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>slg</author><text>&amp;gt;I can&amp;#x27;t imagine that the UK government and the private sector will get their act together and somehow, in 9 years, the infrastructure will be amazing, and they will find answers to questions like how do you charge at an apartment or a house with no dedicated parking space. I&amp;#x27;m eagerly awaiting to hear about these solutions.&lt;p&gt;They have much longer than 9 years to get the infrastructure right.&lt;p&gt;The average car age in the US is roughly 12 years old.  I imagine is is roughly the same in the UK.  That means even if they stop selling new ICE cars in 2030 the average car might still be an ICE into the 2040s.  Assuming no further restrictions it probably wouldn&amp;#x27;t be until the 2050s that it would become truly difficult to find a used ICE car.&lt;p&gt;Obviously the UK would need to improve in the meantime, but they would basically have 30 years to get their EV infrastructure into the position it works for every car owner.</text></comment>
<story><title>UK to ban sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030: FT</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-autos/uk-to-ban-sale-of-new-petrol-and-diesel-cars-from-2030-ft-idUSKBN27U0DG</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gambiting</author><text>I live in the UK and I&amp;#x27;m 100% for it in theory, but 100% against it in practice.&lt;p&gt;I currently have an electric vehicle - the only kind of usage scenario where it works and is absolutely brilliant is charging at home. That&amp;#x27;s about it. Public charging is a joke, vast majority of stations either don&amp;#x27;t work, are occupied most of the time, or cost so much money to use that it would literally be cheaper to drive a diesel car.&lt;p&gt;We visited our friends some time ago in London for a few days(before lockdown). They live in an apartment so no way I could run a cable to the parking space. No problem I thought - there&amp;#x27;s a Shell station nearby with a charging point, several ChargeYourCar points at car park not far away, and I could see on ZapMap that there were two charging points on the street - and worst case scenario there are rapid chargers along the way at few motorway stops.&lt;p&gt;We got there and basically - all ChargeYourCar points were out of order for 3 days we were there, the 2 charging points on the street were only for permit holders(something that ZapMap didn&amp;#x27;t mention), and the one single charging point at the Shell station nearby was occupied every single time I checked. So we stopped at the motorway services in the end, where they had 4 rapid charging points - all taken. We waited 30 minutes for someone to leave, once they left the car wouldn&amp;#x27;t connect - had to ring up the number on the charger, finally the customer service advisor restarted the point for me and it started charging. Only another 45 minutes of waiting and we had enough charge to get home. Oh and the charge was literally £0.49&amp;#x2F;kWh(I pay £0.05&amp;#x2F;kWh at home on a night tariff) - I had a Qashqai 1.6dCi few years ago that I could fill up for that much and drive down to london and back.&lt;p&gt;Again, the car itself is brilliant. It is the future. I have no idea how people still drive around in cars that burn anything to move - they are loud, having to have gears is stupid, having to keep buying fuel is stupid.&lt;p&gt;And yet.&lt;p&gt;I can&amp;#x27;t imagine that the UK government and the private sector will get their act together and somehow, in 9 years, the infrastructure will be amazing, and they will find answers to questions like how do you charge at an apartment or a house with no dedicated parking space. I&amp;#x27;m eagerly awaiting to hear about these solutions.</text></item><item><author>LeoPanthera</author><text>This may be a bit off-topic, but these comments are really eye-opening. I had no idea that anti-EV sentiment was so strongly held. Especially among HN users, who you would assume would be more likely to see the benefits of new technology.&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s disappointing is that all the talking points are the same-old tired fossil fuel propaganda from a decade ago. We have made progress, and we can make more progress if we all pull together.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s seems crazy that in the 21st century the best option we have for the storage and transfer of energy is &amp;quot;let&amp;#x27;s burn stuff&amp;quot;. We can do better than that.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>russli1993</author><text>Nio&amp;#x27;s car is capable of battery swapping. There is a swap station and a robotic arm take out the battery from your car a change a new one in 3 mins. What is interesting is that they have this program where when you buy a car, you don&amp;#x27;t buy the battery, you pay a price for the car, then a subscription fee for the battery. And then you can do unlimited free changes at these battery stations. The idea is that you use the entire battery like &amp;quot;fuel&amp;quot;. You don&amp;#x27;t care the ownership of a battery. They make sure the battery is always healthy and full of charge. It also allow you to upgrade to a bigger capacity battery on your car just buy changing a tier in the subscription. Back then nio cars were launched with 75kw battery. Now users can upgrade their car to a 100kw battery by changing a tier of the sub on their phone and pay more monthly fee. Oh you can also downgrade the tier too, say you don&amp;#x27;t need the single charge range of the 100kw, you can switch to the 75kw and have lower per month fee. China population mostly live in dense apartments, and many old apartments cannot be retrofited with car chargers. This is vastly different from the US where people live in houses. This system allow nio cars to be used like gas cars. And if your swap speed is fast, you don&amp;#x27;t need as many &amp;quot;energy refill&amp;quot; stations. The way I see it, it&amp;#x27;s really hard to get ev charging speed equal to gas refills. But it&amp;#x27;s not technically difficult to a build a robot that changes out battery fast. There was another car company that made a prototype battery change station that can swap battery in 1 mins. And you can always charge the battery as well. So fast charging, destination charging, at home charging for the capable. The combination is able to cover more scenarios and more flexibility. I think it will be interesting to see how this system gets developed in the future. See if it could work well. It will bring a new solution to this industry problem. So far, it seems to work well for both nio and consumers.</text></comment>