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Norway, which already boasts the world's highest number of electric cars per capita, said Monday that electric or hybrid cars represented half of new registrations in the country so far this year.
"This is a milestone on Norway's road to an electric car fleet," Climate and Environment Minister Vidar Helgesen told AFP.
"And it serves to showcase that green transport policies work," he said in an email.
Sales of electric cars accounted for 17.6 percent of new vehicle registrations in January and hybrid cars accounted for 33.8 percent, for a combined 51.4 percent, according to figures from the Road Traffic Information Council (OVF).
In February, those proportions fell slightly but remained high at 15.8 percent and 32 percent, respectively.
Joke's on them. Electric cars can't work in places that are cold or have mountains.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Tuesday March 07 2017, @04:05PM (3 children)
Actually the advantage of electric in the mountains is that since they don't need air they don't lose power as the air gets thinner at higher altitudes.
Turbo engines (of which almost all small cars EU cars are nowadays) don't have this issue, they normalise the input air so no power is lost. In fact the original purpose of turbos was to normalise the inlet manifold pressure at high altitudes in aircraft engines. Non turbo engines compensate for the lower air pressure by putting in less fuel, so they don't really lose much efficiency. You compensate by applying more throttle, and the engine comes up to existing power levels at a higher throttle position.
You might have slightly increased energy loss due to increased friction due to higher RPM and lose volumetric efficiency. This is fine if you have a powerful engine and have some overhead (i.e. you can increase the throttle to compensate for power loss). if you have a tiny engine and you were near wide open throttle on the uphill at the start, your engine will lose power and you won't be able to do anything about it.
Hence, big overspecced engines are alright, and small engines have turbo's to assist in such situations.
By the way, I was in northern Finland some years ago and even the parked petrol cars are plugged into an electric socket there in winter: they have an electric heater that keeps the engine from freezing. So extreme cold is a problem for petrol cars as well.
That is a problem with a) initial ignition (which is hard in very cold air), and b) the actual metal getting too cold and possibly developing fractures, or moving parts freezing against one another. Once started the engine will be fine.
a) won't be a problem for electric cars (but loss of battery efficiency/charge will be, even when already running), and b) could well be a problem as well (electric cars still use aluminium/steel/etc... in their motive components, and have moving parts that can seize in the cold). So they may need motor/battery heaters anyway.
Cold makes the batteries less efficient, but I'm not aware of any problem with mountains. In fact, I've heard an electric car driver tell that you can end up with more charge in the battery after descending a mountain than you had at the top, due to regenerative breaking.
I don't get this. If you have 60 units of energy, and you use 30 units of energy to climb a mountain (minus losses), how can going down the mountain result in more than 30 units of energy being returned? If that was true you could charge your car to full by doing nothing more than repeatedly climbing and going down a mountain, which is a violation of the basic physics of energy.
What is more likely? that a) perpetual motion has been licked by electric car manufacturers, or b) the battery charge/capacity thingy is lying to the driver (or being "overwhelmingly optimistic", if you like your euphemisms).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 07 2017, @05:45PM (1 child)
Or the base of the mountain on one side has a higher altitude than the other.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 07 2017, @09:34PM
If you start on a plateau, climb a mountain, and descend to an elevation BELOW your starting elevation before you climbed the mountain, then yes, you can gain net battery energy. You of course would lose it if you repeated the trip in the reverse direction.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Tuesday March 07 2017, @08:51PM
I don't get this. If you have 60 units of energy, and you use 30 units of energy to climb a mountain (minus losses), how can going down the mountain result in more than 30 units of energy being returned? If that was true you could charge your car to full by doing nothing more than repeatedly climbing and going down a mountain, which is a violation of the basic physics of energy.
You don't understand. The GP only ever goes downhill. There he goes [charliemccarron.com].