Norway Wants People to Park Their EVs and Ride the Bus

https://www.thedrive.com ^ | MAY 5, 2022 4:16 PM | HAZEL SOUTHWELL

[Red Badger]

The country known for EVs might do away with some incentives so people will stop driving as much.

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Norway has been incredibly successful at introducing electric vehicles. In 2021, nearly two-thirds of all new vehicle purchases there were EVs, and combustion sales there are set to end just three years from now in 2025. But there's a new problem for the Scandinavian nation: it needs people to stop driving their EVs so much and get on buses and trains.

Electric vehicles, as people who don't necessarily have purely environmental interests at heart are keen to point out, don't totally negate the downsides of, well, vehicles. An electric car is still a car that takes up space on roads, has manufacturing and maintenance costs, and requires energy to move it around, which has to come from somewhere. In Norway, the grid energy is pretty darned clean (92 percent comes from hydroelectric generation, the rest from a mix of wind and thermal renewables) but any car still creates emissions, like upcoming pollutant bombshell tire particulates.

So in a statement to Norway's public roads administration, Norwegian transport minister Jon-Ivar Nygard said, “Electric cars give us greener transport, but they also have a clear intermodal competition with public transport in urban areas. We must make it more attractive to travel by public transport, cycle, and walk.”

The way Norway's thinking of doing that is by removing or at least reducing some of the incentives toward buying and driving EVs. The current, very generous provision was set to run until at least the end of 2022 but with public transport usage having dropped during the coronavirus pandemic (as it has everywhere) there's now a need to try and get people out of their Teslas, particularly in urban areas.

In efficiency terms, for C02 and emissions in general, it is always going to be better to use mass transit than individual cars, no matter how green they are. Norway's problem is that it gave such great incentives to buy EVs, going way back, that now people are choosing to drive their cars, powered from the cheap electricity off Norway's clean grid, rather than get on a bus or train.

Norway has a lot of toll roads. If you ever drive there then you have to register your car and add a bank card; then it works out the total and charges you. If you drive a small diesel van, like I did when I went there for a World Rally Championship round in 2018, then you find the charges rack up pretty quickly. But if you're in an electric vehicle then the road tolls are substantially reduced. This may not be the case if the government decides to push public transit over personal transportation.

Now, it's not as if Norway wants everybody to sell the EVs they so kindly bought in place of gas cars. It's just that driving yourself when other options are available isn't the best way to cut down on emissions. That seems to be Norway's main goal—not boasting about battery-powered car sales—so time will tell what the country decides to do with its existing

[jimmygrace]

The public transportation bureaucracy does not want to fade away.

[Myrddin]

I rented a room in San Diego that was about 1 mile east of I-5 in the Clairemont neighborhood. I used an electrostatic air cleaner in my room. I eventually had to drop in into the trash can. The collector plates were covered in a thick, black goo that I could not clean. It was "dust" from thousands of cars passing everyday.

[seowulf]

The new story in the Pufet Sound is that tire chemical break-down product 6PPD-quinone is highly toxic to salmon.

Apparently, only 10% of salmon survive from rivers and streams to the open ocean and 6PPD-quinone is killing them.

It has nothing to do with the increasing population of seals that hang out at choke points and kill them...nothing at all.

[Organic Panic]

Just show videos from the mass transit on Oakland and New york to show how lovely it is.

[Red Badger]

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

It will never be enough.

Because the reason is never what they say it is.

The reason is always to control you.

[beef]

Yes, culling the herd is definitely in their long term game plan.

[Paul R.]

In the USA, taking the train or bus is getting riskier and riskier...

[Mr. Jeeves]

They can use those of us they do not kill outright as tourist attractions - the Rustic American Villages will be a big hit with visiting Asian and European oligarchs and their kids, who can ride the Community Goat and even take pictures with one of the few remaining Endangered White Men who work as farm hands. :)

[Myrddin]

It was more than just the plates. The rubber goo got into the housing and prevented being able to split the case and do a good cleanup. I'm not averse to tearing down gear to fix it. Some of my small "netbook" computers require a significant tear down to swap a hard disk. My full size electrostatic cleaners get a regular clean up in Idaho. Usually fine volcanic dust off the Snake River Plain. My house is west of I-15 and the traffic intensity is a small fraction of the segment of I-5 in San Diego. Not nearly as much rubber dust. Mostly dust raised by farming activity or big wind storms.