China plans to ban sales of fossil fuel cars entirely

https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/10/china-plans-to-ban-sales-of-fossil-fuel-cars-entirely/

by rising-sky • 9 years ago

62 49 9 years ago

techcrunch.com

donatj• 9 years ago

Hopefully the battery tech arrives to support all these bans.

jl6• 9 years ago

We could do it with current tech if we expanded lithium mining and the charging networks.

ekianjo4• 9 years ago

Natural resources are limited and an increased demand is going to make prices rise especially if the demand goes faster than the supply expansion.

kowdermeister• 9 years ago

Maybe that's a great incentive for the battery industry.

em3rgent0rdr3• 9 years ago

The government should rather use high taxes on fossil-fuels so the market can efficiently work, instead of trying to micromanage with all these subsidies, special rules, outright bans, and other "incentive programs".

paublyrne• 9 years ago

Wouldn't applying high taxes also be 'micromanaging'? And why do you think the market, guided by tax changes or not, should decide on how long we keep building combustion engine cars?

If the market wanted to keep them around for a hundred years, until the oil runs out, would that be ok, given what we know about how damaging the emissions from cars are?

ekianjo4• 9 years ago

High taxes still leave some space for innovation compared to a straight ban.

loonattic• 9 years ago

That's a good way to screw over poor people who have to commute..

em3rgent0rdr3• 9 years ago

Don't necessarily have to punish poor people in net. The revenue from such a fossil-fuel tax could be either redistributed directly to everyone (the so-called "revenue-neutral" carbon tax) or the revenue could be used by the government to provide services to the poor.

The more important question you comment skips over is: should people (poor or not) be commuting significant distances using fossil fuels in the first place? Such a tax on fossil-fuels will naturally cause employees & employers to be physically closer.

throwaway6138344• 9 years ago

How much cleaner is electricity that comes from fossil fuels compared to direct burning of fossil fuels?

EDIT 1: Thanks for all the enthusiastic replies telling me that power generation is better optimized. Yes, I already understand power plants are much more likely to be better optimized than car engines. That's why I asked "how much" instead of "whether". I'm wondering if the difference ends up being something like 10% (by whatever the suitable metric is) or 30% or 60%. Numbers and/or references from actual data would be appreciated.

EDIT 2: Note that we also need to consider the energy loss in transferring the electric power and charging up the battery; it's not just about power generation efficiency. I don't know if this is significant or not.

kseistrup• 9 years ago

At least the pollution is more centralized and can be dealt with more efficiently.

EGreg2• 9 years ago

Yes, the CO2 exhaust can be captured before it escapes!

n17r4m• 9 years ago

IIRC, a car engine runs at about 25% efficiency and a power plant usually exceeds 40%.

throwaway6138344• 9 years ago

Great! This is the kind of number I was hoping for; thanks!

The remaining part is how much efficiency is lost in between (charging, transformers, etc.)... hopefully it's not a significant fraction of the difference?

goodcanadian• 9 years ago

It is my understanding that once efficiencies are factored in, electric cars powered by fossil fuel power plants are still cleaner than gasoline for the simple reason that internal combustion engines are rarely running at peak efficiency (efficiency is 0% when idling to use the extreme case), and even peak efficiency is lower than you can get from the power plant. That said, China is also investing heavily in alternative energy, so the situation would only improve over time.

jeffwass• 9 years ago

Not to mention that EV's powered by fossils fuel power plants provide cleaner air where people are.

Further, a few large plants can better filter particulates and other exhaust more efficiently than millions of smaller engines in every car.

_ph_5• 9 years ago

It is cleaner, as the power plants always run at peak efficiency while combustion engines in cars only achieve about 50% of that. So even in the worst case, the electric car is not bad. Of course, an electric car does not have any noxious exhausts inside the cities, nor does it make as much noise as a combustion engine.

But few grids are 100% fossil, and most importantly, most if not all grids are going to get significantly cleaner during the lifetime of the electric car. So electric cars are picking up any enhancements to the electricity production.

azernik• 9 years ago

Not only are car engines run at sometimes-inefficient RPMs - they also have to optimize for weight, volume, and convenient torques/speeds for a car transmission, all of which come at the expense of efficiency.

grzm• 9 years ago

If we're comparing with ICE vehicles, an easy way to think about this is how driving style alone can affect mileage. A power plant can be designed and run most efficiently to produce power all the time.

That aside, the fuels used in power plants aren't generally the same as those used in vehicles, are they?

ygra• 9 years ago

Except with gas turbine plants, I guess. But those are more for peak demands than base supply.

jsemrau• 9 years ago

In addition can pollution (Co2, NOX, noise, etc) be effectively de-urbanized.

sundvor• 9 years ago

This seems relevant; China are investing heavily in renewable energy:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/05/china-inves...

imron4• 9 years ago

China is also investing heavily in nuclear: http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pro...

eponeponepon2• 9 years ago

The power for electric cars need not, of course, come from fossil fuels at all. Nuclear, solar, geothermic - the car doesn't care. As ever, naturally, workable fusion fixes much...

ekianjo4• 9 years ago

thats not what happens in reality. US and China still use tons of coal to generate electricity.

llukas3• 9 years ago

You don't get PM2.5, PM10 and NOX from the tailpipe so less carcinogens in the city.

EGreg2• 9 years ago

Well, one of the benefits of centralization is economies of scale to do R&D. And thus the power generation can move to wind, solar, geothermal, nuclear and so forth.

And it can be supplemented by solar panels which is decentralized.

imron4• 9 years ago

This article about Tesla and Musk has all the information you need to know and more:

https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/06/how-tesla-will-change-your-li...

Here's the money quote:

"2) Energy production is more efficient in a power plant than it is in a car engine. To use an example with an identical source fuel, burning natural gas in a power plant is about 60% efficient, meaning 40% of the energy of the fuel is lost in the energy production process. In a car, burning gas is less than 25% efficient, with the vast majority of the energy lost to heat. The larger more complex system at a power plant will always be far better at capturing waste heat than a tiny car engine. The increased efficiency means that even a car running purely on coal-generated electricity will emit carbon at the same rate as a gas car that gets 30 miles per gallon—which would be a significantly cleaner-than-average gas car."

throwaway6138344• 9 years ago

Thanks! Yeah, this is the kind of number I was looking for. The remaining part is how much efficiency is lost in the transfer of energy from the power plant to your car (transmission, charging, etc.).

aylmao• 9 years ago

This is an interesting move not only from the environmental perspective, but also the industrial. Depending on how they do this, they could be creating a captive market that pushes demand for EVs to the point Chineese automakers get a real head start on affordable electric car design and manufacturing.

_ph_5• 9 years ago

I am pretty sure that electric cars are going to take over the car market. Tesla has shown that electric cars can be more desirable than combustion engined ones. They are also the best way to reduce the environmental impact of cars. Currently, the market share is limited by the higher price and more so even by the small number of different electrical models offered. The price does not matter if you cannot get the car model you want in the first place.

So any threats of fossil car sales is about accelerating the switch and push car makers into quickly offering a wider variety of electric cars. As soon as electric cars cross 50% market share, combustion engine cars probably will become less desirable and difficult to sell. So a total ban should not matter too much then, the trick is getting to 50%.

danenania2• 9 years ago

As much as I would like this to happen soon, I see the 30 minute charge as main ux impediment that needs to be overcome before they can really go mainstream. People simply aren't going to want to wait that long. It needs to be comparable to getting gas or it's a dealbreaker imo.

_ph_5• 9 years ago

The key to that is to have the car charge, when it parks. Then even modest charge speeds are sufficient to keep your car charged all the time. You would only have to wait for a recharge when going long distance>300 miles in one drive. There electric cars would be slower than combustion engined ones - unless you take breaks anyway, which would make the charge time mostly vanish. But yes, electric cars have tradeoffs too. As a plus you never have to refuel in day-to-day driving and there are all the other benefits of electric propulsion (comfort and environmental impact).

majewsky2• 9 years ago

They are also the best way to reduce the environmental impact of cars.

From an individual perspective, maybe. From a city-planner perspective, the best way to reduce the environmental impact of cars is to deploy public transit. (And the Chinese know that: https://twitter.com/yicaichina/status/867494851511672832 )

_ph_5• 9 years ago

I stand to my sentence: they are the best way to reduce the environmental impact of cars, as you have cars. If you get rid of cars, that is of course even less environmental impact. I am a big supporter of public transit - personally I always use public transit to go to downtown (Munich, Germany), as it is much more convenient and even cheaper.

dang• 9 years ago

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=china%20fossil%20fuel%20points...

majewsky2• 9 years ago

  points>10

Oooh, that's nice.

imron4• 9 years ago

If you've ever visited or lived in a Chinese city they need to do this to cut down on pollution, which is awful.

They're also ramping up nuclear power for similar reasons (http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pro...)

njarboe• 9 years ago

Is there any other rational explanation of why China was granted "Most Favored Nation" status and entrance into the WTO other than short sightedness and the willing to sell out the western workers for a quick buck? No company can manufacture in China without transferring their technology and know-how to a local company. I can understand why China does this. Seems to be working well. Why does the west support this undemocratic, closed system, internet firewall, rising economy; soon to be superpower? Cheap iphones?

The west had quite a bit of leverage over China at one point. No longer.

China plans to ban sales of fossil fuel cars entirely

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