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BBC:
[The canal boat company] has converted six boats so far - it takes about three months to strip out the old diesel engine and install the electric engine and batteries. A typical 23m (75ft) tourist boat needs about 66 batteries, he says, making the conversion cost around 165,000 to 250,000 euros ($189,000 to $287,000; £145,000 to £220,000) per boat.
But the engines are quieter, cleaner and cheaper to run - boat companies should recoup their costs in about 12 years, according to the Paris Process on Mobility and Climate, a body supporting sustainable transport projects.
They can be recharged in about 10 hours and last about two days between charges, says Sigrid Hanekamp, an application engineer from Dutch battery company Lithium Werks, which supplied the batteries for Reederij Kooij's boats.
These batteries are not your typical lead-acid type traditionally used in cars, or even the type of lithium-ion ones becoming standard in electric vehicles, she explains. They're lithium-iron-phosphate, a chemistry Lithium Werks believes is more durable and environmentally friendly.
The boats have been converted to comply with Amsterdam's mandate that all canal boats be converted to electric by 2025, as a measure meant to preserve the environment and reduce noise.
Are measures like these heavy-handed, or necessary to move mankind past dependence on fossil fuels?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Tuesday October 09 2018, @03:45PM
>Unless the better thing is really that much better to be worth abandoning your investment.
True. However, that is *very* rarely the case. Even less so when most of the benefits are spread across society, while the costs are carried by the individual making the decision. Tragedy of the commons, and just as with avoiding degradation, encouraging improvement requires some form of coercion.
Also, none of the things you mention carry any significant investment inertia. Buying a mobile phone does not generally mean discarding a significant capital investment in land-lines - all that investment was made by the phone company, while you only paid the cost of a very cheap phone. Ditto airplanes - they compete somewhat with rail, but have very different strengths and weaknesses, and I don't believe rail companies were lining up to invest in airlines anyway. Cars? They were primarily toys for rich men for a long time, and even when the Model T finally changed that I'd bet you they didn't replace that many healthy horses - They may have undermined the market for new horses, but I seriously doubt the car adoption rate significantly exceeded the normal horse retirement rate.