bwindels

So apart from subsidizing the purchase price which already happens widely, perhaps the government should provide cheap loans for people who don't have the initial capital to buy an EV.

Also, There are signs we've already hit the peak for conventional oil. This report [1] claims that by the 2030s Europe will see its access to oil reduced by 10-20%. So running an ICE car will only go up from here. There's good reasons to assume the costs of EVs will only go down.

Wrt to the grid, the french grid operator RTE published a study [2] saying that they estimate that by 2035 there will be 15.6 million EVs on the road, a bit half of the 38m total cars on french roads today. The study says this would represent 8-10% of today's electricity consumption and would pose no danger to the stability of the grid. About 2 million new cars are sold here every year, so after 2035 the percentage would go up by 1% every year to 20% or so. A challenge but definitely feasible.

1: https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/oil-what-are-the-risk... 2: https://www-rte--france-com.translate.goog/actualites/develo...

Comment · 3 years ago

I think they'd consider that out of scope, which for me is a feature rather than a bug.

The project is really about providing the runtime, rather than batteries-included application framework as many mobile platforms provide. Perhaps they are targeting web/rust developers more than native mobile developers?

All the things you would like to see in an example have well-established ways of doing in a web application. Camera access is a good example, where the javascript way of doing is through navigator.getUserMedia(). I imagine it would be supported by Tauri where the underlying browser engine supports it. Tauri provides filesystem access as well, as you don't have that in a web page.

Comment · 3 years ago

> I looked at the weight of some of these EVs and yikes 2,900 lbs for just the battery pack? 1.5 TONS? WeW.

That's the weight of the Hummer battery pack though. I think around 500kg is the more the norm, with a total curb weight of around 1500kg.

Comment · 3 years ago

Isn't (battery) weight a proxy for what we really care about, energy consumption per covered distance? Seems like if you'd tax the latter, manufacturers would have more options to innovate around efficiency rather than just battery weight and provide lower-taxed vehicles. Battery weight will of course still be important to get consumption down, but perhaps there are other ways as well to make cars more efficient.

One example: a thing often overlooked is the efficiency of the onboard charger, which can incur a loss of up to 32% on for example the Renault Zoe [1].

1: https://www.lachaineev.fr/ ( french )

Comment · 4 years ago

So if you're stuck behind a tractor, do you also expect it to stop by the side of the road and let all traffic pass? I'm sure many farmers would disagree with you there and tell you they've got work to do. I've never seen any tractor do that in fact.

Same goes for bicycles, they've got places to be. It's a means of transportation just like a car. If there is no bike lane, that's though luck for the cyclist (as it's a lot less comfortable) and for the motorists behind them, and a good reason for cyclists and motorists alike to argue for more bike lanes. Why should they alone bear the cost of shitty infrastructure (in time lost stopping by the side of the road every time a car is stuck behind them for +20s)?

Comment · 4 years ago

For almost all cases, this is far from true. For a typical ICE car, the manufacturing emissions tends to be around 10%-20% of the lifetime emissions the vehicle. You can see the exact breakdown for a variety of cars, and comparison to EVs at https://climobil.connecting-project.lu

bwindels

Recent submissions

Peak-oil in the EU, crude oil supply reduced by 12% by 2030 (2021) t theshiftproject.org

Peak-oil in the EU, crude oil supply reduced by 12% by 2030 (2021) theshiftproject.org