[LinkLink]

In all except rural Europe which will likely hurt tremendously because of this, most people likely will not care too much. Unlike America a car is not a requirement in most of Europe due to public transportation being allowed to develop instead of it being neutered and made just good enough to exist.

[_hypx]

Millions of people in Europe don’t have garages or easy access to charging stations. This policy is basically impossible in the near-term. The bet is that somehow in 12 years all of this gets solved. There is a real chance that ends up being the next biodiesel mandate and fails.

[Kukumber]

ban on "new sales", not on "existing cars"

so people will still be able to use their current one, and replace them with Electric or Hydrogen when it's time to replace their car

they'll probably then ban petrol/diesel from big cities, so they encourage people to upgrade

[_hypx]

In that scenario people will just keep their old cars for far longer than what the planners are imagining. Like Cuba which still operates cars from 60 years ago. The danger is then you have a society dominated by very outdated cars and a greatly reduced industrial base.

[Kukumber]

Cuba has old cars because of US sanctions that killed their economy and couldn't import anything

Here it's different, purchasers have still access to cars, so when they need to change, they can change, and what's gonna be available is EVs, by the time they upgrade, infrastructure will be much different than what it is today

Doing it gradually is better, gives time to strengthen the grid network, gives enough time for innovations to come into the market, so people don't produce much tech junk and a recycling industry can emerge

[_hypx]

The infrastructure may never materialize. Not to mention that the amount of EVs may never materialize, as they are hugely dependent on raw materials and can be subjected to OPEC-like embargos. It could easy turn into a vast market of used cars and very few new ones.

[mattashii]

The infrastructure is already materializing. >50% of the 119k public charge points in NL were installed within the past 2 years, providing their services to 328k BEVs.

And if you don't ever want to wait for a charge, then you can often use public transit, or ride a bike.

[themitigating]

So we should stick with the cars that use raw materials that ARE dependent on OPEC embargos?

[raxxorraxor]

This is not quite correct. A car is very much a requirement for a lot of people. The structure of society is build around cars. This begins if people need to care about family members living 20-30km away. This become an immense logistical challenge without a car. People would need to reduce their working times and still would suffer an immense hit to their free time since any other transport option needs twice the time at least. People say public transport is widely spread in Europe, but that is just not true. The cities are decent, but otherwise using public transportation is a huge time sink.

Some dream to reduce individual traffic down to 10-20%, but I believe this is a naive pipe dream and will be a huge hit to life quality for the majority.

We also have no infrastructure for EV at all. Most people don't have a garage to even be able to get a dedicated charging station. Public infrastructure would cost billions and energy demand is also a problem...

If EVs cannot be produced in a large number for whatever reason, resources or infrastructure problems or whatever, car manufacturers will demand billions upon billions from the Union because it forced them to switch. This is again a bad policy. If EVs are an alternative and affordable, they will remove combustion cars from the streets without any ban.

[rootusrootus]

The only thing holding back public transportation in most of the US is lack of sufficient tax base. Recall that the UK is smaller than Oregon and has 15x the taxpayers. Even so, having visited areas of the UK outside London, there are plenty of spots with decidedly mediocre public transit availability.

[henriquez]

But the UK is no longer part of EU

Europe is pretty damn big and train rides are expensive.

[pjmlp]

In many European cities not everyone is priviledged to live near a bus stop or subway line, and even so, not all lines have a connection every 10 minutes.

[988747]

Actually, rural Europe is the place that will benefit from it: EU has been subsidizing photovoltaic installations on single family homes for like a decade now, and switching to EV makes most sense to people that can easily produce their own electricity. It's people in cities that will be forced to compete for limited charging stations that will suffer.