Many, many houses do not have anything other than on-street parking here. Since 2012 I've lived in 5 houses, and three of them had no driveway. I'm currently buying a house which has no drive way, with no way of fitting one. Apparently 1/3 houses have only on street parking. Unless they also provide huge, huge grants to rapidly implement dense onstreet charging, and fast, this is a pipedream and will end up getting pushed back.<p>Edit: To evaluate the scale of how difficult it is to implement on street parking - go and have a look out of your own window in a built up area and count the number of lamp posts and the corresponding number of cars. Right now (9:35am), in a pretty built up area, I can see three lamp posts on my own street, and eighteen cars parked on the road. One of those lamp posts is located where it's illegal to park because of double yellow lines. I currently live in a rented flat at the moment, and that has another 25 car parking spaces. To get charging points located there would require a number of disparately located and willing landlords to agree to wire up the car park for electric charging too.
This perfectly epitomises the uk (and the rest of the worlds) attitude to global warming:<p>* it's a non binding commitment to do something but not for at least a decade<p>* it's not enough even if it does happen<p>* it will be too late by then (it probably already is for anything but drastic action)<p>* it's totally at the whim of future governments who will be no more willing to spend the money/time/popularity than the current unwilling government<p>* people will eat it up with a spoon and act like this is a real thing and a sign of progress and a victory<p>This is the same as my committing to start my diet, by giving up one specific thing, but not for a decade, after my doctor told me I gave 6m to lose weight or die. And to celebrate I'll eat two pizzas and 4 litres of soda, for breakfast.
I really wonder about the charging infrastrucuture. I guess it is doable and a necessary transmission, but I am a bit afraid it may be the next thing some countries are sleeping on.<p>As a German, there are serious subsidies for home owners to install one right now. However, I just moved into a new rental apparment and visiteted quite a few places that were all built in 2020. All of them had very nice parking spaces allocaed to the flat, but zero wallboxes for the entire appartment. I also looked into buying a flat and often it would have been difficult, sometimes even impossible to install one on my own behalf wihtout checking with all other buyers (and these kinds of changes often lead to tedious legal fights, afaik). The place I'm moving to doesn't have one either, but the ladlord will install one, once needed. At the moment I still have a car with a diesel engine and no plans to change soon(I go almost everywhere by bike, even have a different one for rainly days and to carry groceries, and do 0-2 longer trips per month and ~1 very long trip for vacation per year, bike + diesel seems to fit that quite well) soon, but the next car will be electric i guess<p>To make things worse: The overall power comsumption should not be too much of a problem, but if almost vehicle was electric and charged where people live, the power infrastructure could be in serious trouble. If improving it in remote areas goes anywhere as well as FTTC/FTTH internet, we're headed for disaster. There are a lot of interesting ideas, e.g. decentralized batteries within people's homes and renewables. But if all the focus is on changing the cars on the road, I have little hope that other transitions will be quick enough
I'm so surprised to read so many people complaining on HN.<p>I live in Oslo where electric cars are normal and everything is fine. It changes a few habits and these cars are not cheap brand new yet but I really don't see a problem.<p>If it's going to be a challenge in 10 years, because they are still too expensive or it's too complex to install power plugs for example, it will simply be delayed. UK is very good at delaying things.
Discussion from 3 days ago: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25101766" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25101766</a>
This is a necessary step to becoming carbon neutral by 2050. Countries that don't make similar announcements soon are not serious about that goal.
This seems like a relatively cheap promise to make. The auto industry is already moving towards this model (or full EV), likely by 2030 the production of pure petrol cars will be very limited. Including hybrids in what is allowed makes this at best unambitious.<p>Where the UK is really moving is with windpower, they were a bit slow to get started, when you consider that the UK is probably one of the prime locations for windpower, but they are now catching up: <a href="https://www.power-technology.com/projects/hornsea-project-one-north-sea/" rel="nofollow">https://www.power-technology.com/projects/hornsea-project-on...</a>
Of course, they are not first movers, and while the UK could have been a pioneers in green technology, they are now relying on foreigner partners (Danish Orsted for construction and German Siemens for the Turbines).
I hope that with these bans, actually the government will take action on the high prices of electric vehicles and on the charging infrastructure.<p>A middle-size car can't cost € 40.000 (without batteries!), a lot of people can't afford them.
Isn't Britain the geological definition (<a href="https://www.britannica.com/story/whats-the-difference-between-great-britain-and-the-united-kingdom" rel="nofollow">https://www.britannica.com/story/whats-the-difference-betwee...</a>) and should the title not be "UK to ban..."?
Countries which are no longer major automotive manufacturers can afford to accelerate the transition. Basically, they can just import different cars. The countries where automotive lobby is still influential, will have to adjust the transition period to keep their ICE industry happy.<p>As for the charging infrastructure, I think it's easier to solve. It's not much more complicated than laying optical fiber everywhere. A massive undertaking, without doubt, but the revenue potential of the public charging is enormous. It's like building a network of gas stations, but without having to move fuel ever again.
My thoughts on this are a mixed bag.<p>First, naturally, is skepticism at far off dates. OOH, these things do really need time to work. OOH, the zero-emissions date is 2050, post-singularity<p>Second is coordination. If the plan is "<i>Once there are electric cars, we'll buy some.</i>" The industry's response will be "<i>once it's cheap enough, we'll make some.</i>" That days seems to be coming anyway, but that really makes this a weak policy.<p>My third thought is "industrial policy." That is, a policy that actually affects the availability and price performance of electric cars. If the policy is agreed, but doesn't meaningfully change what engineers are doing now, then it's not really affecting much.<p>An actual industrial policy probably needs to act across a bigger market than UK only in order to actually affect timelines.<p>All that said, I like it. A ban bootstrapped by cross subsidies is a far better way to go than carbon consumption taxes.
I have so many issues with this, as it is just greenwashing at its worst.<p>For a start - the latest EURO emissions regulations already make it practically impossible to sell a new ICE-only car. At this rate, ICE-only new cars will already be a rarity by 2030.<p>The "net zero emissions" is only if the electricity used to power those EVs is generated from renewable sources (and I'm not sure how much further installation potential the UK has for those sources). Unless we return to nuclear power (which brings its own debate), the overall lifecycle CO2 benefit of EVs and hybrids as they stand is minimal.<p>I also <i>really</i> dislike the blinkered focus on CO2 as the only variable to optimise. Sourcing the lithium and other minerals necessary for EVs is <i>extremely</i> problematic, and lithium battery recycling has yet to be proven at all viable. Some initial research also suggests that heavy demands are going to be placed on lithium reserves.<p>The net result of this is that manufacturers will make hybrids that just about meet the legislated "green" requirements, meaning all new cars will bring the worst of both worlds to the road. In the "green" new future of Britain's transport, everyone will be driving bloated hybrid SUVs.<p>Finally - for the "EVs are great because they only have one moving part!" crowd - how many cars have you sold or scrapped due to electronics faults, compared to ICE faults?<p>The only remotely sustainable form of motorised transport is an ebike (or maybe a bike with a tiny petrol engine), if you really take this whole argument at face value.<p><i>Edit:</i> Nearly forgot (which is odd, given the actual enormity of this point) - the UK grid in no way can handle any significant increase in pure EV usage. There would have to be significant investment, and new systems manufactured, for this to even be viable. As I said, I suspect that the solution that will actually be used is hybrid cars.
At least this is only banning new cars at the moment. But electric cars don't have a guaranteed real-world range of over 350 miles, the same as a tank of fuel, cost the same as petrol models, and charge as quickly as you can fill it with petrol. If the latter was solved petrol stations could be converted to charging points in cities, reducing the need for on-street charging points.<p>And the charging requirements for all those cars, requires a massive investment in the national grid, practically doubling capacity if we ever get all 25 million registered vehicles electric. Twice as many power stations than we currently have, twice as many wind turbines and so on.
Rather late to the party in Europe : <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_fossil_fuel_vehicles" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_fossil_fuel_veh...</a>
I am not sure if that is good idea. With carbon-free energy and carbon-capture you can have the efficiency and energy density carbon fuels and net zero emissions at the same time.
Personally I can live with electric car in UK but electric VANs will be much bigger trouble because they are heavy and can't hold that much cargo. There is a lot of restrictions in law and infrastructure that limits usage of vehicles to under 3.5t
This is utterly ridiculous. I live in the UK and have been renting for many years, I've lived at 15+ addresses and not at a single one could I have powered the car from home. Not one.<p>The UK is small, cars are squeezed onto tiny roads and most people do on-street parking, i.e. you park where you can. When I last had a car I could only park around the corner from my flat (which was set far back from the road).<p>Having off-street parking is a luxury here that only a small % of people have, and even then if you have a block of flats it still makes charging from home more or less practically impossible.<p>Unless the govt intend to install charging points at every car parking spot on every residential road in the entire country in 9 years (!) or whatever the full timeline they have in their minds for everybody to have electric then this is not feasible.<p>That's not to mention the fact that charging electric cars requires very significant current to do so in a reasonable timeframe. Electrical substations in the UK simply could not cope with anything close to full electric car deployment without the entire electrical network being upgraded.<p>And this is before we get on to practicality issues around cars breaking down, longer trips or how petrol stations might be used given charge time.<p>I think there is some kind of shared delusion that this is some easy way of reducing CO2 emissions. It's not easy, and there are very big questions and trade-offs that nobody appears able to address.<p>Before people suggest 'well people need to use public transport then' - while the UK has better public transport than e.g. much of the US (I went to Austin without a car once, that was tough) - outside of London public transport is extremely expensive, very very unreliable (our trains for example are the most expensive and least reliable in all of Europe), slow and entirely impractical for many areas.<p>I am not anti-electric car, in fact I wouldn't mind using one (that acceleration, consistent torque, so much more reliable) - it's just there are huge practical issues that the govt seem never to address.<p>I personally think the appropriate compromise is to move forward with very efficient hybrid vehicles.