A total shift to electric vehicles in less than 20 years sounds quite optimistic if I'm being honest. Not signing something you know you can't meet sounds like a fair choice.
I'm pretty sure it's phasing it out on new cars not completely replacing old ICEs.
If anything I think 20 years is too long. Specially since these drafts always get diluted and things like hybrid motors are probably also going to be deemed 'electric'.
Yeah, 20 years is way too long. If the last ICE is sold in 2040, that car is likely still on the road in Germany in 2055 and is then sold to some poorer country where it will drive on for another ten years. How are we supposed to reach net-zero in 2045 like that?
This isn't about banning ICE cars altogether, but about banning the sale of new ICE cars. Which should hopefully basically be achieved by 2030 or so, or we are screwed. And I think it is realistic. In the last month, about 17% of all new cars in Germany were electric. Sure that has been helped by low production due to chip shortages, but I really hope that the majority of all new cars will be electric in 5 years from now.
Honestly I think it's doable. If the cost per kWh and the energy density of batteries follow the trend we currently have it will be much more convenient to own an EV. Some countries already banned the sale of ICE vehicles in less than 10y [1] if these conditions are met.
The problem will be recharging in cities. In the suburbs/countryside it is very likely you can plug your car at night in your garage or similar. This is not true in cities since owning a parking spot with access to electricity is expensive. So, if cities will start putting plugs in "normal" parking spots I don't see any major issue in shifting completely to EV.
Total shift? No. It's possible for urban areas in developed countries, assuming we solve the current energy distribution issues. Nuclear is slowly getting back on the agenda, and renewables are slowly taking market share from fossil fuels, so that might actually happen if combined with massive upgrades to local and regional public transport systems.
Even in places like the Nordic countries and Western Europe, massive infrastructure upgrades needs to be put in place to allow people in the rural areas to get rid of ICE's. And that's personal use. Getting forestry and agriculture to switch to electric will take many decades.
We need synthetic fuels produced with renewable/nuclear energy, and we need them fast. Yes, EV's are nice and they will cover a lot of the use-cases, but they're not a silver bullet to end all worries.
Absolutely, especially given the state of European electrical power production and grid, most of all Germany's. France at least has got the memo and is trying to do something about it, while Germany seems totally paralysed in this regard, which I doubt will improve with the coming administration.
Nothing like a good winter of blackouts to... energize political momentum.
Even this winter, clearly still pre-EV dominance, is going to be interesting - if it's cold in europe for long, and if Russia decides to use their current position of power for a nasty short-term shock, that could really shift people's willingness to accept a few sacrifices in the coming years.
I wouldn't count them out just because they've got issues; those things might change quite quickly - some of the needed infrastructure can be built in just a few years, once the political will is there, which currently is lacking. Sure, it's a problem, but on this topic: what else is new.
What do you mean? I cannot remember the last time we actually had a power outage here. It is also not like we aren't working on making the grid ready for increased loads. A more known example for that is Suedlink that is meant to connect the wind farms in northern Germany to the south of it by moving 4GW of power (that's 5-10% of total power generation in Germany alone) over hundreds of kilometers.
The german car lobby tries something different: Why not using the combustion engine with clean sources of energy?
I think its a rather clever choice to be against the end of the combustion engine when you can fuel them with something like: hydrogen, e-fuels or methanol. In Ingolstadt (Audi HQ is there) a former Audi engineer invented a car with 800 kilometres (500 miles). So there are alternatives to electric-only.
The efficiency numbers for e-fuels are simple too bad. Fuel cells might maybe be made to work, but there is no Hydrogen infrastructure available.
Any e-fuel that can use normal petrol infrastructure and is burnt in an ICE has absolutely atrocious efficiency. Not only do you lose a large fraction of the energy going from electricity to fuel, but then you burn it in an engine that has 40% efficiency is a lab and 15% efficiency in city traffic. It just makes no sense outside of niche applications.
There is also no comprehensive infrastructure for charging your e-car everyhwere, at least in Germany. Also if all cars would be replaced into e-cars we simply do not have enough juice. So there has to be a infrastructure development no matter what way you choose.
You also have charging losses which electric cars, they are just not that high as with e-fuels. E-fuels have the advantage of being easily transportable and refuel is done in 1-3 minutes. So why not create them in countries that have much sun (free and endless energy) and convert this into something useful.
> So why not create them in countries that have much sun (free and endless energy) and convert this into something useful.
Because that's not economical. It's cheaper to ship in the electricity directly, or if you don't want to build the HVDC lines (there are good reasons for that), turn it into Hydrogen, ship that and turn it back into electricity. Electrolysis is reasonably efficient (>70%), and the round trip to electricity can be done at 40% efficiency or so. Charge an EV with that elecricity and you're still much better off than first turning the electricity to Diesel (<30% efficienct) and then burning the Diesel (<<40%).
And that's not even taking into account all the health benefits of not burning stuff where people want to breathe.
If you just argue economical we should continue to burn fossile energy, because its pretty cheap. In smaller countries the amount of space for solar panels and sufficient amount of wind is not given. Not if you also want to produce food in your country. So there you need an alternative and hydrogen that comes from country with nearly unlimited energy and much space is inevitable.
Fossil fuels are not cheap if you properly price in the externality of causing global warming (and other pollution).
You don't need a lot of space for wind and solar. Take Germany for example. Using just the area currently used for "energy crops" (around 2.4 million hectares) for PV you could cover most of the primary(!) energy demand of the country. Wind is even more space efficient in Germany.
In my opinion, we need stop burning things. When we have the technology to heat, cook, or move without burning stuff we need to use it and kill the old technologies.
In theory, hydrogen fuel cell is perfectly fine. But then we reach the other problem: there won't be any infrastructure. Hydrogen, e-fuels, etc. It is just too expensive. Maybe fine for a few rich people driving on a track.
As far as I can see, this is a nice prototype but not a practical concept. This car is using a methanol fuel cell. They seem to be quite rare yet and not ready for mass production. And there is no mass production of green methanol yet. It would of course be much more storeable than hydrogen.
My old Peugeot Partner (2003), can easily go 650 km with plenty of petrol left in the tank. I don't think 800 km would be out of the question.
Edit: according to the specs, it should have a range of 960 km (597 miles) under optimal conditions. It sounds more than I would expect, but then the car is almost 20 years old. Still, the low fuel consumption is one of the reasons I keep it -- it uses less fuel than modern hybrids do.
If anything I think 20 years is too long. Specially since these drafts always get diluted and things like hybrid motors are probably also going to be deemed 'electric'.