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France to Ban Petrol and Diesel Vehicles by 2040

posted by Fnord666 on Friday July 07 2017, @06:16PM   Printer-friendly
from the I-have-methane dept.

takyon writes:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-40518293

France is set to ban the sale of any car that uses petrol or diesel fuel by 2040, in what the ecology minister called a "revolution".

Nicolas Hulot announced the planned ban on fossil fuel vehicles as part of a renewed commitment to the Paris climate deal.

He said France planned to become carbon neutral by 2050.

Hybrid cars make up about 3.5% of the French market, with pure electric vehicles accounting for just 1.2%.

It is not yet clear what will happen to existing fossil fuel vehicles still in use in 2040.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday July 08 2017, @01:35PM (2 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday July 08 2017, @01:35PM (#536523) Journal
    On the maintenance issue, sure, electric vehicles have advantages in some areas and drawbacks in others. Lower range, battery life issues, and higher weight per axle will impact maintenance and operational complexity in the other direction.

    Also, this range obsession doesn't make much sense to me in places like France. If I'm taking a long trip there, I can't think of a reason not to take a train, and if cheaply hired cars can drop me off at the station and take me wherever I need to go at the other end, why would I want to go through the expense, hassle, and danger of driving myself all that way?

    Why do that hassle when you can just take a cheaply hired, self-driving car for the entire ride, start to finish? No need for waypoints or hopping transportation modes. As to safety, let us keep in mind the most dangerous parts of your outlined trip are the end points which you handled by car anyway. As I noted before, gasoline-powered vehicles also benefit from self-driving automation. It doesn't make sense to compare electric self-driving to gasoline non-self-driving, where most of the alleged virtue of the former comes from the self-driving aspect rather than the electric vehicle aspect.

    My view here is that most mass transit fails hard when it comes to the most common mode of transportation in the world - point to point. Most people want to go to specific places when they take a trip. Self-driving vehicles help fix that, but electric versus gasoline is almost an afterthought in comparison. I can see various subtle nuances that give advantages which might make one choice better than the other in certain circumstances (particularly, pollution control), but I think the supposed advantages of electric are exaggerated. It certainly doesn't make sense to pick winners and losers decades in advance in such a situation.

  • (Score: 2) by jcross on Saturday July 08 2017, @04:10PM (1 child)

    by jcross (4009) on Saturday July 08 2017, @04:10PM (#536556)

    As you say it's a complex set of tradeoffs. I guess we'll see!

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday July 08 2017, @10:26PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday July 08 2017, @10:26PM (#536665) Journal
      As an aside, you wrote:

      Maybe these are small things, but I think the market will speak for itself when the time comes.

      Here, the France government deciding to kill hydrocarbon vehicles in twenty years is not an example of the market speaking. Fortunately, there's more to the market than just France, but it's worth noting that it's kind of empty to talk of the market while governments have put their thumbs on the scale.