Japan Joins the EV Push
All new vehicles in Japan must be hybrids or fully electric starting in mid-2030s and this has Toyota howling.
Japan said it planned to stop the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by the mid-2030s, bucking criticism by Toyota Motor Corp.’s chief that a rapid shift to electric vehicles could cripple the car industry.
Earlier this month, Toyota President Akio Toyoda said that if Japan banned gasoline-powered cars and moved to electric vehicles too hastily, “the current business model of the car industry is going to collapse.”
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga pointed to a different portion of Mr. Toyoda’s comments in which the Toyota chief said he backed the government’s goal of making Japan carbon-neutral by 2050. Reducing carbon emissions “should be tackled as a strategy for growth, not as a limitation on growth,” Mr. Suga said.
Japan’s move, combined with those in China, Europe and California, adds pressure on global auto makers to shift more quickly to electric vehicles, although for now many are getting their profits from U.S. consumers hungry for gasoline-powered trucks and sport-utility vehicles.
California to Ban Sales of New Gas-Powered Cars Starting in 2035
On September 23, California announced it would Ban Sales of New Gas-Powered Cars Starting in 2035
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an order Wednesday that aims to end the sale of new gasoline and diesel-powered passenger cars in the state by 2035.
It is an ambitious attempt to bolster electric vehicles in the largest car market in the U.S., as well as a bid to tackle emissions that most scientists say contribute to climate change. Transportation is responsible for more than half of carbon pollution in California, the governor said.
More than 11% of all light vehicles in the U.S. last year were registered in California, according to IHS Markit.
California is the first state in the nation to commit to such a goal, but could serve as a spark for other left-leaning states to follow, given its size and historic leadership on regulatory issues. Seventeen countries including France, the U.K. and Germany have adopted goals to phase out internal combustion passenger cars, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation, a nonprofit that supports decarbonizing fuels.
Biden’s Climate Change Plan
President-elect Joe Biden want 500,000 new public charging outlets in a decade as part of his plan to combat climate change.
The 500,000-unit pledge was part of Biden’s platform when he was running for the job but largely overlooked in a grinding campaign dominated by the pandemic. Now, the industry hopes he’ll stick with it. But it is a wildly ambitious strategy to overcome one of the biggest hurdles facing EVs: Would-be drivers fear they won’t have enough places to charge up. The infrastructure milestone would cover 57% of the charging that U.S. vehicles will need by 2030 and could spark the sale of some 25 million electric cars and trucks, according to forecasts by Bloomberg.
Right now, there are about 90,000 public charging plugs at 28,000 U.S. stations, according to the latest Energy Department tally. However, one in five of those is exclusive to Tesla; of the remainder, only one in 10 tops a car up quickly enough to be useful on a road trip. Most public charging options are still relatively slow—useful for drivers idling at work, for example, or grinding through a long grocery hunt.
Two big questions remain, however: How will the policy be structured, and will Biden’s administration be able to persuade Congress to pay for the plan?
Stumbling Block
Unless McConnell is willing to go along Biden’s plan is dead.
Assuming there is a deal, what would McConnell ask in return, or will McConnell suddenly turn green?
McConnell aside, does Biden’s plan make any sense?
Mish
Meanwhile Tesla is breaking records in electric vehicles
Gotta love this one, we already don’t have enough electric in some states. CA Does blackouts all the time just to save electric, this should be a hoot. Our grid is 80 years old and crumbling but lets go all out for the electric car. LMAO Liberals are a comedy show, a real bad one.
“Unless McConnell is willing to go along Biden’s plan is dead.”
Mish, so you have already decided the runoff election in Georgia is going to the GOP?
There is a lot to speculate about with a Biden presidency, energy policy is just one area we could discuss, but whether or not any of them can get done depends upon both Warnock and Ossoff winning.
For example, healthcare policy, if the GOP fold in GA and we end up with Harris breaking all ties in the senate then cigarettes/tobacco will be banned for the poor and middle class.
No they will not tell you this because they know that very damned few smokers would vote for them if they so much as breathed the idea, but, they have done this very thing in Australia and are working on the same in the EU, a few years ago Australia passed a law setting confiscatory taxes on tobacco and a schedule that has the rises rise by 12.5% per year every year till there are no more smokers in the country.
Right now the price for a 4 pack (25 to the pack) carton of Marlboro red is AUS$186 so $372 for 200 cigarettes, equal to one US carton. Put it this way, that is $3.72 per cigarette. So a pack per day (20 cigs) smoker like me would have to pay close to $13,500 per year for smokes, going on $75 per DAY!
And nearly all is tax that goes to pay for their healthcare system. It is very popular with non smokers it goes without saying, but do you really want government having that level of power in your life?
They could charge several times as much and the wealthy would still be able to pay it, but it effectively bans it for most of the people based upon income alone. And I assure you this does a lot of corrosion and harm in social tranquility. Many people are so hooked they just keep buying smokes and live on the street.
Back to banning gasoline. This proposal is going to kill car sales because even though the goal date is still far off who is going to spend up to $100,000 on a vehicle that will be sculpture before it’s usable live is up?
My BMW is older now and starting to have random issues that are extremely expensive, I bought a house and really need a truck so I thought trade the BMW in for a pickup. But the cheapest most basic utility pickups now are 27-38 thousand and they go very rapidly up from there. Need a back seat? Crew cabs start at $45k, how about 4 wheel drive? KaCHING! You are at about $55k now, I have been pricing trucks, unless you go totally stripped utility truck you are looking at 60-70 thousand and have seen several that are over $100,000.
But electrics will be close to double that. Their stripped down utility trucks start at that price point.
A lot will change and maybe most for the good, or at least for survival, but that doesn’t mean we have to like it.
I botched the smoke price, it is $186 per hundred so $1.86 per cigarette, and would work out to $1,116 per month, more than my mortgage payment.
For once, just for once Herkie, I kind of agree with you….
They cannot ban wars; a big wastrel of natural resources, and source of pollution. That would be unnatural.
They cannot ban breading like rabbits, sorry mandate responsible family planning; That would be racist, and a stock western politician would rather sell his/her mother to slavery than be labelled racist.
The only option left is to come up with phantom, virtue signaling plans, of which not to many are capable to figure out the result of.
Extra terrestrial life wins again.
So buy a used truck, say 3-4 years old. And stop smoking. I did 9 years ago after 43 years of it. Such an awful stinky habit!
….smoking habits, incredible innit , I stopped 14 years ago… afterwards, also thanks to the general smoking ban in bars and restaurants, you do realize it stinks…. but we all stank at the time….so nobody stank…
Sure, everyone who smoked stank, it was just that noses of those who smoked were deadened. I never realized how much smoking stinks until I stopped for good. All the gum smokers chew to hide the stank is worthless because the smoke permeates everything – your clothes, your hair, your skin. I can smell the residual stale smoke that a smoker leaves in the air after they have walked by, even 30 minutes later. And if you smoke inside, the yellow tar gets on everything – the walls, the furniture, the computer, the windows, etc., etc.
I came out of the womb addicted to nicotine as my mother was a smoker and then was forced to breath 2nd hand smoke since birth. No wonder I turned into a smoker myself. It was unfair and IMO, even criminal.
I have mild emphysema but don’t let that stop me from exercising. I wish I didn’t have compromised breathing. I can only imagine how good it must feel to be able to take full deep breaths of wonderful sweet air!
Let the free market work it out.
I agree with goals of reducing fossil fuel burning and reducing pollution, and have been in favor since long before the global warming issue came to the surface. However, I think that market incentives/disincentives to speed a transition are usually more beneficial than mandates like Californias. To free market idealogues who cry “the government should not be picking winners and losers, let the market do it,” I say: great, lets load the full cost of downwind impacts onto the pollution emitters, e.g. health care costs, lower life expectancy, property damage, degraded quality of life, etc.; then let the free market decide. As a moderate conservative who voted against the demagogue in the white house I do hope that Biden embraces largely market based incentives to speed his desired green transition.
Hey Realist, you never did tell us if you and this guy are one and the same person?
Realist Comments
8,171 Comments • 296,500 Words
Simply ban CO2. Problem solved!
I know several sales guys who drive Tesla’s because of the large fuel cost savings here in LA.
Electricity is very expensive in CA.
Yeah, if you live in areas with cheap hydroelectric power it must be dirt cheap to operate. My friends tell me although I find it hard to believe they are saving 80% of their fuel costs here in LA. I’m gonna find out more details. I know ICE’s are godawfully inefficient but it sounds like an optimistic estimate.
Gasoline in LA is expensive too. $2.69 for regular unleaded at the lowest cost stations…..of which about 82 cents is various taxes.
Here in Texas, electricity is cheap….about 12 cents a kWh…..and gas is $1.59 (just under fifty cents tax).
So I save almost a third by not paying tax…off the top….and the amount of electricity the car charger adds to my residential electric bill is so low as to be completely negligible.
Not only should the u.s. announce an ambitious goal it can do a great deal to make that achievable such as requiring gasoline stations to also support electric charge stations, make modernizing the electric grid a priority , raise epa gas mileage standards or consider a new gas tax. we’re going electric. sure we can cling to the past like horse carriage makers did but this just puts out domestic industry at a disadvantage. creative destruction will make u.s. industry stronger. schumpeter was right.
Nat gas conversions are a cheaper way to lower emissions
Ban or severely penalizing the burning of #3 , #4 & #6 heating oil fuel and only permit #2
Ban or severely penalizing coal fired furnaces would also be on my list if we stick with your theme
Mandates are a stupid way to get where you are going precisely because some bureaucrat (or lobbyist) has to decide what the future is. Incentivizing individual solutions is just as bad, for the exact same reason. For example, someone decided corn ethanol should be the future, and we keep pouring money into this dead end.
Meanwhile, there is a much more sure way to get to an efficient solution. Follow the rule “Tax what you want less of”, and then stay out of the way, and let the free market sort out the best of the alternatives.
“Tax what you want less of” works great…as long as they don’t tax what YOU want more of, right? And if it goes all electric — powered by coal plants? — how are you going to deal with the increased “carbon tax” because they can no longer tax gasoline? TPTB want less people on earth, how do you tax that?
You give a perfect example of why you tax, and don’t do incentives. If you do a tax, there will be tax on the petroleum, and tax on the coal and natural gas plants. The consumers will sort out what they like, based on prices. The market finds the most efficient solution.
As for what I personally want? What should that matter? What I personally want will adjust based on prices. Will it be an SUV? An econobox? A hybrid? An all electric? A CNG or LNG vehicle? A hydrogen fuel cell? It all depends on the price, then, doesn’t it?
So how does California make up for all the lost revenue from motor fuel taxes?
Mileage fee
“8 billion self-centered selfish people really won’t give a damn.” Yes, we need the really smart, caring people to tell all the awful people their choices are no good. Imagine what we could accomplish if the right people could make all the right decisions for the rest of us!
This discussion is a fine example of “crabs in a barrel” in action.
WTF difference does it make to you if Japan is tryng to push things in a different direction?
How does the propulsion system of your “go fast” machine make a difference to you?
Is plugging in your vehicle an onerous over-ride of your abiiity to decide your fate?
Is the fte of Exxon that important?
A few bullet points.
Electric vehicles won’t completely eliminate emissions. However, most estimates show that eliminating gasoline can lower the overall climate impact of driving by something like 40%, which is a worthwhile goal.
The biggest fossil fuel input for electric cars is the amount of electricity it takes to produce the lithium batteries they all currently run on. However, it’s good to remember that’s not the only one. It takes 7 gallons of oil to make a single tire for a car.
People are already driving less than they used to…and that’s a trend that will probably continue. It makes better sense for people to live close to work and not commute 50 or 100 miles a day for work….and there is no real reason that can’t happen. Solutions like public transit infrastructure and working from home could potentially matter just as much as electric cars, as far as reducing carbon.
But it’s hard to herd people into a new way of living. Taxing gas more is probably one stick TBTB can use..and that works.
About 10% of carbon emissions comes from agriculture. I doubt we see that all go away. anytime soon….
In general, I see a lot of poorly thought through initiatives being incentivized because they will benefit some insiders and elites….by driving new industries and technology. It remains to be seen how much real difference these government mandates will make.
But so far we’re on track to push the planet past certain tipping points that will definitely result (at some point) in runaway warming that can’t be reversed…..and in fact we might have passed some of them already. Climate experts agree certain such tipping points exist….but the truth is that we don’t have a precise understanding of how far along we are.
“It takes 7 gallons of oil to make a single tire for a car.”
Which is why we need to switch over to anti-gravity and do away with tires.
“About 10% of carbon emissions comes from agriculture. I doubt we see that all go away. anytime soon….”
A lot is happening in this area to bring agriculture indoors. A couple of links:
This robot-tended vertical farm will grow 1,000 metric tons of greens per year
By Luke Dormehl
December 16, 2020
It’s an area that I’ve been interested in for a long time, and I know people who design buildings for indoor growing. In fact I once took a course from David South, the guy who founded Monolithic Domes….I do think this is in our future, sooner or later.
The Dutch are apparently way ahead of everybody on this one. They raise some large percentage of their food indoors now.
Just to take the other side, the plants and me would like a little warmer world with a little more CO2.
Aren’t you warm enough from the fires–over 700,000 acres burned in CO this year.
“Be careful what you wish for” springs to mind.
ONE question remaining : what are the charging stations gonna be charged with? Eco wind and solar is pure eco hypocrisy , there s NOTHING eco about it, batteries are awfully dirty and unreliable, socialist eco fools think (or want the plebs to think) that something like a free eco lunch, on a 8 bln human destructive predators planet, really exists…. eco DELUSION at its best !
+1
These mandates are another example of governments thinking they can outsmart the market. Pretty soon EV’s attributes will outweigh ICE attributes and the change to EV’s will commence at a more rapid pace. Exactly why do we need another “daddy” to protect us from our own decisions?
I’ve said it before and I will repeat it – the future is hydrogen fuel cell.
Hydrogen Is a Trillion Dollar Bet on the Future
By David Fickling
December 1, 2020
A three-part series on hydrogen energy
The world is on the brink of what may turn out to be its most important energy experiment.
If proposals to build a new industry producing so-called green hydrogen succeed, we may have the final piece of the puzzle to prevent devastating climate change. If they fail, we may be about to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on a white elephant.
That’s why there’s both excitement and trepidation around the run of dramatic hydrogen announcements from Europe, Australia and Chile in recent months. The European Union alone envisages spending as much as 470 billion euros ($558 billion) on green hydrogen by 2050. To shift the whole world in the same direction would cost at least twice as much.
…
Has anyone solved the platinum issue with fuel cells yet?
This make sense for Japan and many nations that cannot produce their own oil. By going EV, you are not dependent upon the whims of the oil producing vompanies
Japan’s population is too dense to rely on only solar power. People will have to import energy or see a decline in living standards.
“Japan’s population is too dense to rely on only solar power.”
Cite.
Government can promote electric vehicles by pushing for charging stations. Maybe mandate gas stations offer both. If charging stations are readily available it’s a game changer
Also government mandate is required for common charging plug standard otherwise each ev company will have their own and no commonality in first gen ev vehicles
Charging stations will be required for sure…but I doubt the California electrical system is capable of supplying the power….Remember the brownouts on green energy when there was not enough gas fired generation to back up the solar and wind?
It will transform the economy, spur purchases and investment accelerating R&D. Electric cars are not an if but a when. Japan is being bold
While places clamor for “growth”, nation-states like California, Europe and Japan will be better off with sustainable growth. Almost 8B is enough. The one lesson humans aren’t going to learn from Covid is that the planet is saying it has had enough. There has been zero research done on it but what if Covid only kills because the planet got a little warmer ? That has been my theory. Covid won’t be the last pandemic. I truly think we are entering the age where the planet will bend the population growth if we won’t do it ourselves.
Sun spot activity causes most long term weather trends. Since sun spot activity has been on the decline the last 3-4 decade long cycles, the Earth is actually entering a mini-ice-age. Glaciers on the polar caps will start to grow again. The Earth has been storing this thermal energy, so the Earth’s temperature lags sun spot activity; much the same way annual temperature extremes occur about 6 weeks after summer and winter solstice.
Mini-ice-age?
What do you think globsl temperatures would have been without minimal sun-spot activity? Seems to me the heating that has occurred would have been much greater than what it has been.
The excess heat has been stores in the oceans–is it your contention that there is a reservoir of cold stored somewhere that will burst upon the eath, plunging us int a cold decade or so? Global ice has been in decline for decades.
What complete fucking idiocy. Where do these morons think the electricity to power their government mandated electric cars of the future will come from?!? Wanna bet it’s oil?
Dream on buddy. I’ll believe it when it actually happens. The key word being ‘actually’. I’m still waiting for all those self-driving heavy trucks to hit the highways. Where are they?
Tedr: CRICKETS
I wonder what we will do with the excess Gasoline once we all change over to Electric Vehicles.
Charles High Smith had an excellent article on this a couple weeks back. Half of each barrel is only good for gasoline (can’t be used for anything else). So will we just burn it off uselessly like we do when we flare natural gas after fracking? That would essentially mean zero carbon savings.
If consumption by the transportation sector decreases suddenly and substantially, I could see gasoline shift to being used for electricity generation or heating in some manner. It’s liquid and a pretty substantial volume so not as easy to dispose of as gases flared off at shale sites across the U.S. (and elsewhere)-
If the demand situation is stable enough to spend the capital, carbon chains can be combined or split to make whatever you like. See Fischer-Tropsch or catalytic crackers respectively.
I am not an oil composition expert, but I do know that Saudi oil is very different from Venezuelan oil. How do the ratios of refined products differ?
Any significant carry-through on the idea of “public” charging stations is a negative indicator for the prospect of electric vehicles.
“Japan Announces it Will Phase Out Gasoline, What About the US?”
Haven’t you heard? The U.S. is phasing out the middle class. It just hasn’t been announced. Not the us peasantry that is.