Norway reportedly agrees on banning new sales of gas-powered cars by 2025

To anyone who is thinking:<p>1) Yeah, they are a small resource rich country, not practical for the rest of us.<p>America, Canada, UK, Saudi Arabia and Australia were resource rich and still are ( America is the largest producer of oil ) and had the opportunity to do what Norway did but <i>chose</i> not to do it.<p>UK had a huge surplus from north sea oil during the 1990s which is allowed private companies to profit off. Same with America, Australia and Canada.<p>It is really remarkable how Norway was able to and still is able to think so far ahead then the rest of us.

It&#x27;s not that petrol cars will be forbidden but buying a new non zero emission car in 2025 will be financially not beneficial, according to Norwegian press.<p>99% of the electricity in Norway comes from hydro power plants, it&#x27;s a huge exporter of gas and oil and it&#x27;s rich.<p>That makes it easier to make such a progressive decision but congrats for setting the first deadline.

Off topic: Anyone watch Okkupert (occupied in English)? The French-Norwegian made drama about how a modern European country would act if war were to happen there today (like it kind of has in Ukraine...).<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;title&#x2F;tt4192998&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;title&#x2F;tt4192998&#x2F;</a>

I&#x27;ll keep banging on this since I haven&#x27;t yet heard a satisfactory answer: what are you going to do about people who park on the street or in garages they do not own?<p>Overnight charging systems are for homeowners. Even with a (high end, optimistic) public charge station time of 30 minutes, if there are just 4 people ahead of you in line, that&#x27;s 2.5 hours out of your day.<p>Yes self driving may fix this eventually, but what if we are not there by 2025?

I get it that they want to use electricity as the primary energy source for vehicles, and make all sort of fossil fuels non-viable options, but still curious - does &quot;gas&quot; generally means just&#x2F;mostly gasoline, or applies to LPG as well? (Just that in my native tongue a word &quot;benzin&quot; is used for gasoline, and &quot;gas&quot; is always about propane&#x2F;butane mixes.)

There&#x27;s been a few stories like this, from a few different governments and many reactions suggest this is outlandish grandstanding, which puzzles me, as it seems eminently achievable from what I can gather. Simply good forward planning really (one of the comments suggest it&#x27;s a target, not a &quot;ban&quot; as such).

This is a very bold bet. It would not work in the US, at least without some kind of revolution in public transit. There are plenty of places where not owning a car means you basically cannot have a job or a social life, and many of these are far from any existing EV stations.<p>It will take a long time to replicate the network of petrol stations that covers basically all US roads. Also, modern EV cars are still an order of magnitude slower to recharge than gasoline cars are to refill. It&#x27;s not as easy to increase your range in an EV as it is to carry some extra petrol if you&#x27;re on a long trip into the brush.<p>Fortunately, I don&#x27;t see this even being seriously proposed in the US until long after these problems are solved.

Bans make for good press, but are an inefficient club to the economy. A more sensible way is to simply tax the carbon content of fuel, and raise the tax until it becomes economically worthwhile to switch most uses to alternatives.

<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;title&#x2F;tt4192998&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;title&#x2F;tt4192998&#x2F;</a>

Passing laws now about what SHOULD be in the future is a way for politicians to make it seem like they&#x27;re doing something when they have no real solutions. It will be technology and industry innovators and disruptors that make this possible, but I&#x27;m sure the intelligentsia and politicians will give &quot;forward thinking policy makers&quot; the credit.

Possibly good news of course, but I find something is a bit out of place given this is coming from a petro-state. They could surely have more impact on global warming etc by simply shutting down oil exports.

Norway&#x27;s population is less than half the size of L.A. County. (5.1-million rounded up) A very ambitious and commendable project but easily accomplished in a country with such a low population. Ford a alone makes almost 2.5-million cars a year.<p>&quot;...At the end of 2014, 2.5 million passenger cars were registered in Norway. This corresponded to 491 passenger cars per 1,000 inhabitants...&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ssb.no&#x2F;en&#x2F;transport-og-reiseliv&#x2F;statistikker&#x2F;bilreg&#x2F;aar&#x2F;2015-03-25" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ssb.no&#x2F;en&#x2F;transport-og-reiseliv&#x2F;statistikker&#x2F;bil...</a>

While I think it&#x27;s great that they&#x27;ve set a date, I think it&#x27;s perhaps a little premature.<p>Tesla has some nice options, Renault and other have to, they are all either in the high price range or to small for a family to use as the their only car. The number of alternatives on the marked seems a bit limited, and I don&#x27;t think nine years is enough to remedy that.<p>Also what are they going to do in respect to charges, will they mandate that all manufacturers use the same plug?

What I don&#x27;t get is that this is a pretty confident bet that batteries will dramatically improve. It&#x27;s not a very densely populated country. It&#x27;s not like you can have a charging station every 3km. Usually law follows technology. Here it seems to anticipate it massively.

what about trucks, heavy machinery and motorcycles? battery tech is not there for all of those. range&#x2F;power&#x2F;density work against batteries in those. current models all suck.

what are they going to do between then and now to get older vehicles out of service? are there emissions tests in Norway? Do they have a cut off date, as in the car is beyond a certain age it is not tested? Do they treat trucks and such the same?<p>I think its an interesting idea and it might work depending on how fast fuel cell and battery technology advances. I have never been a believer of the all battery solution as it imposes weight issues and as power levels increase charging issues arise. (damned if you do damned if you don&#x27;t scenario)

It&#x27;d be really something if they ban oil production, at least beyond what&#x27;s required domestically for manufacturing.

Thank god the US is so innovative because they would never be able to reach their goals.

Better late than never?

If they want to save the world they should stop extracting oil and selling it to people who will burn it.

Can you imagine this in the USA after the response by the right to limiting just incandescent lightbulbs?<p>Half the legislatures in the country passed laws to ban any ban on the old lightbulbs.<p>I think some politicians ran on it, remember Michelle Bachmann?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;U.S._Lighting_Energy_Policy#Light_Bulb_Freedom_of_Choice_Act" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;U.S._Lighting_Energy_Policy#Li...</a><p>If they limited gas powered cars the government would probably be overthrown by some of the same lightbulb people.<p>2025 does seem a bit soon but it would be nice to have a target to talk about, ie. no new gas cars made starting 2050 (people would horde them though)