“Norway is the world leader when it comes to the take up of electric cars, which last year accounted for nine out of 10 new vehicles sold in the country.”
How are they doing on developing public transportation infrastructure, though? That is going to be far more impactful longterm, and is the only way to build a sustainable transportation network.
Trains in Nordic have been electric for a generation, starting from 60’s.
Busses have been mostly electric in my knowledge about 10 years, I think most of them are ran by electric motor, which is charged with diesel if batteries run out.
Trams and metros have been electric for last 100 years.
When I went to Oslo I only took public transport.
I even used to to take the bus to the forest. I walked into the bush for hours then slept. Decided I couldn’t be bothered walking back. Checked my paper map and walked into a one road town/suburb and took the bus back. That’s how much faith I had that some random place would have a regular bus going to the city centre.
Not surprising. Norway seems to be driving a lot of development away from excess energy use and oil. Not only in transportation, but also in real estate.
I know little of all projects there, but what I do know makes me want to go there and learn how to do better. When (not if) electric uptake nears 100%, like in Norway, things will start to happen in the market. Petrol stations, refineries etc. will see a very different demand, which will propel much needed change!
Can someone tell me how? EV’s perform terribly in extreme cold. If the car starts at all, the battery life absolutely tanks. We’ve had entire charging stations unable to function through the past couple weeks, as temperatures plummeted in many states.
Toyota had it right. We really need to be pushing for hydrogen cars. EV’s simply can’t perform in extreme cold, and the batteries explode or catch fire in extreme heat. That’s not the tech we should be investing in to carry us through the extreme temperature swings we’re experiencing during climate catastrophe.
EV’s simply can’t perform in extreme cold,
Given that we’ve moved almost all of Norway to EVs, that’s obviously untrue. So if you re-examine that assumption, what new conclusions do you come to?
So what’s the secret sauce? What profound technological steps forward have they made?
Or are they just heating up the battery, and eating further into the already severely impacted battery life?
Secret sauce is Norway gets money the same place Saudi Arabia does: gas and oil. They have really good resources to do whatever they want and unlike dumb countries like saudi arabia or russia they manage it better.
I’m not an engineer. I’m pointing out that the real world is proving that EVs can work just fine in the cold, so your assertion that they can’t doesn’t hold any water. This was a recent article of interest, though.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/01/cold-weather-range-hits-arent-as-bad-for-evs-with-heat-pumps/
If you’re using heat pumps, and not resistive heating for batteries, looks like the range loss can be as little as ~12%, which is pretty insignificant.
Read over what you just wrote, and think about it for a second. If they have to be heated up to function, it supports my assertion that they do not function in extreme cold.
That 12% is not insignificant, and that’s just for the piece to keep the battery at minimal operating temperature. The battery’s capacity and performance will also be severely impacted on top of that, even with it warmed up. These inefficiencies and workarounds add up to the point that they eclipse the inefficiencies in hydrogen production, as the hydrogen is not impacted by any such issues at the point of use.
The loss of efficiency in an ICE is roughly 15% in the cold as well.
There are enormous materials issues with storing and transporting hydrogen that don’t scale well
Why would they need to be scaled? Hydrogen is abundant in most corners of the globe. It can be farmed on site, as needed.
Read over what you just wrote, and think about it for a second. If they have to be heated up to function, it supports my assertion that they do not function in extreme cold.
They function at a 12% range loss. That is a far cry from ‘do not function’
That 12% is not insignificant, and that’s just for the piece to keep the battery at operating temperature.
No it’s not. It’s total range loss, not battery capacity reduction. The article even states that the majority of that range loss is due to heating the cabin, not the battery. Which ICE vehicles would have to do anyway. The car gets 12% less total range, that’s the final figure taking everything else into account. You seem to have made up your mind about what you wish to support and are dismissing anything else that does not support your PoV.
Then don’t heat up the battery, and see if it runs. Won’t work, because EV’s have to heat up the battery to get it working, because they don’t function in extreme cold.
And while we’re at it, what’s the workaround for the batteries catching fire and exploding in the extreme heat of summer? We need to implement some cooling pumps while we’re at it?
Or just skip all of the complexity, and use abundant & clean hydrogen.
You’re incredibly confident for being so blatantly incorrect.
We had negative 30 C last winter. I drove my EV to work every single day. When the batteries were cold I had reduced power available, which made no difference at all as it was -30 C and snow everywhere.
Using the battery also heats it up. Zero pre-heating of the batteries. I can literally watch my available power return while driving normally.If batteries wouldn’t work in the extreme cold, they would not be able to turn over the starter on your ICE car either, which it very clearly does….
You are literally arguing against something close to a million people do in Norway every single day between November and March. Open a map and look how far north we stretch. Oslo is as far north as Vancouver. People live and drive EV’s in Hammerfest.
So please, just stop. You are dead wrong about batteries/EV’s, but take this chance to learn something new.
Then don’t heat up the battery, and see if it runs. Won’t work, because EV’s have to heat up the battery to get it working, because they don’t function in extreme cold.
WTF is wrong with your logic process? Why would you remove a key component of the car? Lets take the starter out of ICE vehicles. Oh hey, they don’t function in any temperature at all!
The point is clear that ICE vehicles work just fine if properly engineered for cold climates.
And while we’re at it, what’s the workaround for the batteries catching fire and exploding in the extreme heat of summer? We need to implement some cooling pumps while we’re at it?
Would you like to bring sources to this discussion? Here’s mine.
1529.9 fires per 100k for ICE vehicles and just 25.1 fires per 100k sales for EVs.
Oh, were you just pointing to 1-in-a-million incidents as reasons to shelve an entire technology. Tsk.
abundant & clean hydrogen.
There’s nothing abundant and clean about them in the current car ecosystem. I’ll grant there’s a possibility of that, but that doesn’t mean much when the competition has already delivered.
I think the only logical conclusion would be EV actually work better in the cold than what you have been told. Maybe that’s the same for charging stations or maybe Norway builds to a standard that fits their climate and doesn’t cut corners.
A charger that doesn’t work when EV’s need them the most is a terrible bussiness idea when people pay per kW/h !
It’s not just what I’ve been told. I’ve personally experienced the issues, as have thousands of others dealing with EV extreme cold problems the past couple of weeks in the eastern US.
If anyone has any further info, I’d love to find out what Norway could possibly be doing to address a fundamental issue with the technology. All I’ve been able to find is some workarounds to keep the cars still running, and just accepting worse performance in extreme weather.
I don’t understand why anti-hydrogen prejudice is so prevalent that we’ll put up with EV limitations before considering alternatives. Smells like EV investor propaganda & sunk cost fallacy to me.
It could be as simple as the equivalent of a “block heater” that you would use on a ICE in a cold climate. These are not new technologies, many use these simple devices for cars in places where it gets cold, and I can’t imagine installing a correctly engineered device into the battery coolant system would pose much of a problem. Automatically turn on at a predetermined departure time or below a certain temperature while charging.
That doesn’t help much with the reduced range thanks to the cold, but it will get you going in the morning. We have a PHEV that won’t let you use the battery below 20°F, but the ICE warms the battery and it comes online about 5 minutes after start.
Yeah, most of what I’ve seen is just heating the battery. Which is also dramatically reducing the efficiency.
There’s no way around sacrificing range to heat the battery at this time. Only mitigating some of the loss with a preheat.
That’s what I thought. Not an issue with hydrogen.
If we’re going to be discussing battery vs hydrogen efficiency, we need to be honest about how it performs in real-life scenarios like this. Only discussing EV performance in ideal conditions is providing nowhere near the full picture.
I’m not trying to start any argument about either of them, I’m for getting off of fossil fuels, and more choices to better fit different needs is great. Hydrogen cars have their own issues, such as lower energy density and very high pressures for storing the hydrogen, along with high pressure vessels for transporting it. Energy dense storage is always going to have problems, but the electricity distribution system is already well established.
My own prejudice against hydrogen is around manufacturing.
Most of the world current hydrogen made isn’t green at all, and the message is “we’ll figure it out once demand is up”
And the companies pushing the most for hydrogen are petrol companies.
I’m not a chemist, but it doesn’t seem to add up to me.
I say that as an EV owner living in Canada. I need to use a fast charge station about 4 times a year due to cold related battery issues, and all of those time are because of extended road trips.
It’s not impossible to produce hydrogen in an environmentally friendly way. We just need to further increase efficiency, and move the energy source to renewables and nuclear to power the electrolysis. The EV charging stations have the same issue, often being powered fossil fuel plants.
But it is impossible to manufacture EV batteries in an environmentally friendly way. We’re just expected to accept it.
Plus the performance of EV’s vs hydrogen always uses data gathered in ideal conditions, but hydrogen is leaps and bounds more efficient in extreme weather. We need to be highlighting that, as climate change begins to make extreme conditions the norm and ideal conditions disappear.
It is literally physically impossible to increase the efficiency of electricity-> hydrogen -> electricity above 30%, and that’s if everything is perfect.
EVs are above 70% efficient in the real world btw.
Hydrogen will be useful to decarbonise some parts of heavy industry where electricity cannot be directly used, but that’s about it.
There is a reason why fossil fuel industries are pushing hydrogen, because it means that the car makers can keep selling combustion cars until hydrogen is ready, which it never will be.
And even if hydrogen cars were somewhat ready in 10 years, EVs and the charging stations would also be much better than they are now.
And hydrogen has such a low density that a tanker truck could only carry hydrogen for around 100 car refills, compared to 600-900 that a normal tanker truck does. So every gas station would have to be connected to a hydrogen pipeline, which will realistically never happen.
“EV’s are above 70% efficient in the real world btw.”
Meaning ‘in ideal conditions.’ As climate collapse progresses, the areas of the planet experiencing ideal conditions will narrow further and further. I guess fuck everyone living in those parts of the planet, huh?
What you’re not grasping is how clean and abundant hydrogen is. Illustrated by your emphasis on transportation. In most scenarios, it won’t be traveling far at all, if it’s not farmed on site. No transportation needed. Pair its abundance with lack of harmful emissions, and it’s absolutely worth any loss in efficiency.
And those inefficiencies are already being addressed. We have a number of projects already producing working proof of concepts that are ready to be scaled up for further testing and refinement. Advancements aren’t assumed in hydrogen- they’re already happening.
What about battery advancements? I keep hearing that we just need a leap forward in battery tech, and everything will be great, but no one’s been able to actually produce this promised technological leap. Seeing a lot of the same promises and red flags that come out of the ‘fusion is almost here’ crowd.
No, the 70% for EVs is in real world conditions. The 30% for hydrogen is in ideal conditions, it’s usually around 10% in real life conditions right now.
And the efficiency of EVs doesn’t decrease that much at temperature increases or decreases, especially not down to the efficiency that hydrogen has right now.
This video is sadly only in German, but the guy who made it is a researcher for hydrogen and batteries (he knows what he is talking about), he explains it very well, why hydrogen will never work for cars: https://youtu.be/ZXC33UjdtBU
Hydrogen might be clean if it is produced from renewable energies, but we don’t even have enough renewables to cover our current consumption, much less 3 times as much to cover everyone using hydrogen, and I don’t know what you mean by abundant, of course it is around everywhere bound in water, but we can’t use it before splitting it, which needs those insane amounts of energy.
There are also no projects that are able to go above those 30% because it’s just not possible, we can’t break the laws of physics.
We get new battery advancements every year, the current Trend is replacing everything with LiFePo4 batteries that are almost as good as LiNMnC batteries, because they need much less rare materials. Those batteries weren’t good enough a few years ago to be used in cars.
In the End electric cars are already good enough for almost all use cases and cost competitive, factoring in the running costs, while almost all car manufacturers have given up on hydrogen because they made losses even with their very expensive hydrogen cars.
I am seeing you being part of the “fusion is almost here” crowd, EVs don’t need to improve anymore to be competitive, but they most likely will, considering that the market for EVs is pretty big nowadays.
As far as I’m aware, the most impact around EV batteries is obtaining lithium and other componenets.
Components that can and are already being recycled from older EV batteries.
I’m curious to learn if there is other things I’m not aware of though!
I dont think making a parallel between ev charging and hydrogen manifacturing is valid though: my understanding is that electrolysis is an option, but that most of the current creation is a byproduct of fossil fuel refinement, like plastics (which explains why petrol campanies push it).
We can probably improve on electrolysis efficiency, but my hunch is that it simply won’t happen if petrol company can meet demand. Which I’m sure they will for just a bit cheaper than electrolysis costs to keep controlling the market.
If we can produce green electricity, as long as electrolysis efficiency is not as good as the average battery efficiency whatever efficiency of the hydrogen engine itself doesn’t matter: it’s still less efficient than a battery because of the extra manufacturing step. And then there’s transport and all on top of it.
electric vehicle (EV) drivers to wait in line for hours at charging stations last month; some even found themselves stranded when their battery died while they waited in the queues.
I’m sure “some” ICE cars have also ran out of fuel while queueing, seems like a bit of a nothing statement. More stations are needed and range does get lower in colder conditions that is known. Waiting until you have 30 miles left when you know electric cars lose 15% of range isn’t smart.
Norway does winter testing on their vehicles and I’m sure people ask other people about car performance.
https://www.naf.no/elbil/elbil-nytt/ev-range-and-charge-test
Hydrogen is largely useless. It’s an electric car with extra steps and low density fuel and difficult storage conditions.
Sure if you driving across the outback and need lightweight and fast charging there might be uses for it. But when you got 300 miles of range and live in a city why would hydrogen be better? You actually have to go to a station if nothing else rather than just charging where you park.
Hydrogen is ultimately more inefficient in time and energy and cost so it’s going to lose.
Well, one thing to keep in mind is that most people haven’t been buying cars.
My car is starting to get older, and my plan right now is to continue maintaining it because compared to the cost of replacing it the cost of keeping it is so much lower. And I’m not doing that bad. Most households are doing a lot worse than I am, and so they’re probably looking at the astronomical prices of vehicles post covid and making the completely reasonable decision not to get anything.
So it’s easy for 90% of the vehicles sold to be electric because most of the vehicles being sold are luxury items for the rich rather than things that individuals need to live day to day.
Norway got rich with petroleum products. Bunch of hypocrites.
“Got rich”
The profits are going in a fund that is kept for later on, it doesn’t affect people’s current finances. The only idiots here are all the countries that didn’t nationalize their natural resources to do the same.
Alberta’s oil reserve is massive compared to Norway, what they have to show for it is 18B while Norway has 1.75T saved.
“A FunD THaT iS KepT FoR LatEr On” aka they invest it in the stock market, making the climate crisis worst. And they are still profiting off oil exploitation.
Fuck norway
Calm down american, there are other ways to run the government and economy other than into the ground.
They vote against CEOs that aren’t working to prevent climate change. Not all stock market investments make the climate crisis worse.
Fuck your disinformation.
They own shares in Solvay (https://www.nbim.no/en/investments/all-investments/#/), who notoriously poisoned a whole italian village with Dioxine.
https://www.justice.gov/archive/atr/public/press_releases/2006/215056.htm https://www.icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/solvay-italy-new-jerey-chemical-plants-offshore/
They own shares of Coca Cola, who paid for dead squad in latin america to attack unionists
They own shares of Pfizer, who corrupted the european commissions president during COVID https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfizergate.
They have shares in Airways, automobile industries, gas companies, petrochemicals, real estate,… Do you understand how capitalism work? The minute there will be a conflict between their financial interest and sustainability, they will pick the former.
Fuck norway, and fuck you
They own shares in Solvay (https://www.nbim.no/en/investments/all-investments/#/), who notoriously poisoned a whole italian village with Dioxine.
https://www.justice.gov/archive/atr/public/press_releases/2006/215056.htm https://www.icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/solvay-italy-new-jerey-chemical-plants-offshore/
They own shares of Coca Cola, who paid for dead squad in latin america to attack unionists
They own shares of Pfizer, who corrupted the european commissions president during COVID https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfizergate.
They have shares in Airways, automobile industries, gas companies, petrochemicals, real estate,… Do you understand how capitalism work? The minute there will be a conflict between their financial interest and sustainability, they will pick the former.
Jesus I didn’t know it was that bad
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One have to be an idiot to imply the blind search for profit isn’t the ultimate cause of the climate crisis.
Fuck your greenwashing, idiot.
While I mostly agree with your argument, the personal attacks are both unecessary and against our site rules.
Maybe it should be against your site rules to simp for planet-destroying capitalists?
Maybe it’s time to realize insults won’t do anything to change someone’s opinion, while tanking the civility of a discussion.
Firmly with the mod on this one.
What are you thinking makes them hypocrites? Doesn’t seem like doing something bad for the planet, then improving things is hypocritcal unless they start claiming they’ve always been perfect. At any rate, veats doubling down on petroleum like the US are currently doing.
They have not stopped exporting fossile fuels and to my knowledge at least they also don’t plan to do so in the near future.
They didn’t get high on their own supply and got a massive national fund from it. A bit hypocritical but definitely nicely played. Better than most other countries who used that money for ego projects or imperialistic madness.
nah a lot of their stuff get subsidised by the EU too from what I’ve heard, I think the flip side of it is that they have long training and internship periods so almost everyone is in their 30s by the time they get anywhere. The irony is worrying about global warming when you live in a frozen hell.
Norway isn’t even an EU country though?
Wait so as an european living car free in a city I’m subsidizing the lifestyle of some rich fucks living in a fjord?
That’s it, i’m doing tax evasion.
As a rich fuck living in a fjord I thank you for your contribution
You’re welcome
The only reason Norway can afford electric cars is because of the wealth that comes from its oil and gas industry. This is why Norweigans who can afford to buy new cars can also afford electric cars.
So … yay?
Not really. They have a very simple tax device that ensures EVs are cheaper than thermal cars. China has put in place something similar. It is not a rich country thing. It is about being serious about its transition
I wonder whether they even buy EU car brands like Peugeot lol
We do. Lots of teslas and asian brands though. But we have seen more and more of the “normal” brands as well these last few years.
Which is just making all cars more expensive for everyone, meaning that Norweigans who can buy new cars are wealthy enough to buy expensive cars.
To my understanding, the taxes have been there all along. They didn’t add new taxes for ICE cars, they just issued some tax breaks for EVs. So the cars haven’t gotten any more expensive, since that’s what Norwegians would have been paying anyway (Whether taxes in general are excessively high in Norway is another issue entirely).
China has put in place something similar
So what. Nice red herring.
The cost of the EVs are in black and white listed on any dealers website in norway.
They are stil, on average, 3 times the price of an ICE vehicle.
They are not subsidised to parity, far far from it.
The tax has just trippled the cost of vehicles.
Do you haver a source for that?
I have read they reached parity, I would be happy to have a way to contradict that.
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Three times the price
So, you live in the early 2000s?
So, you make bullshit up. Read the comment in its entirety.
So, you are ether uninformed or a liar… Got it!
Edit: Here are some real numbers. If you are even interested…
That’s a load of bullshit, how is money going to a pension fund making the people richer when no money was withdrawn from it until 2016 even though it has existed since 1990?
They have a flat taxation rate of 22% with sales taxes at 25%. Compare that to the US with billionaires paying no taxes at all…
Money is taken from the sovreign wealth fund every year. However, it is not taken from the savings, but from interest. A maximum of 3% of the funds value can enter the budget, as decided by the budgetary rule.
Oil also makes people richer because it provides industry and jobs.
However, the reason people can afford electric vehicles is that they are excempt from value-added tax. VAT on new cars is quite high in Norway, so if this shaves $40 000 off the price of a new car it obviously makes them more lucrative by comparison.
It’s a political decision, it’s not that all Norwegians walk around with fuck you money and buy the most expensive cars on the market just for fun.
Interest they get from their investments in companies like Solvay, Coca-Cola and Pfizer.
Not sure what point you’re making, but it is indeed invested in a bunch of companies.
It’s all listed here. Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, Google/Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta are the biggest ones. Nestle, Exxon, Shell, UnitedHealth, and Tesla are some other good ones if you’re looking for evil companies.
Microsoft, apple, google, amazon and meta ARE evil companies though
some other good ones
The real reason is because they have taxed the shit out of ICE’s and EVs was exempt from a lot of taxes.
So for a lot of people, it really only makes sense to buy an EV because it is so much cheaper.
