[HN Gopher] Volvo to cease production of diesel cars in a few mo...
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Volvo to cease production of diesel cars in a few months
Author : e-brake
Score : 64 points
Date : 2023-09-21 20:24 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| zolbrek wrote:
| >Sales of diesel models have declined rapidly in Europe since
| Volkswagen's emission-cheating scandal and carmakers have been
| gradually reducing the number of diesel models available in their
| model lineups.
|
| That's about the time the EU effectively mandated the use of
| AdBlue for diesels. AdBlue is a massive pain in the ass and I'm
| glad not to have to deal with it.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| I have a Sharan which needs 10 liters of AdBlue every 18 months
| or so
|
| Less of a pain in the ass than wiper fluid and blades.
|
| But it will be the last combustion car I own. The Zoe is out
| preferred car for most trips.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| AdBlue is water with ammonia, cheaper than fuel if you know
| where to buy, and you need like 1% as much of it as fuel. Read
| about wood gas generators if you want to know about a real pain
| in the ass to run a car.
| ueucbdnai wrote:
| > AdBlue is a massive pain in the ass and I'm glad not to have
| to deal with it.
|
| What are you talking about? I have a diesel and you really only
| need to top off DEF about as often as you change oil. Your
| service people will top it off for you, and just about any
| place that sells diesel in America sells DEF too.
| rlf_dev wrote:
| I buy a 10L jug every 4500Km for my car, last time I bought one
| it was 15EUR, don't see what is the pain to deal with it.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > "In a few months from now, the last diesel-powered Volvo car
| will have been built, making Volvo Cars one of the first legacy
| car makers to take this step," the Swedish company said in a
| statement.
|
| > In August 33% of Volvo's sales were fully-electric or hybrid
| models. The company did not break out how many of the remaining
| 67% combustion-engine models were diesel and how many ran on
| petrol.
|
| > Diesel vehicles comprised more than 50% of Europe's new car
| sales in 2015, but accounted for just over 14% of sales in July.
|
| Delightfully, we are _almost_ at the combustion- >EV tipping
| point.
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| It's gonna be hilarious when all the new EV buyers find out
| about the broken chargers and start fighting over the few that
| work (chargers are backed up against a wall so "waiting in
| line" doesn't work). My prediction is we'll see massive drops
| in car trips due to range anxiety. Will be interesting to see
| the second and third order effects. Maybe public transit will
| make a comeback, and automakers will stay afloat with more
| government handouts trying to juice an EV revolution.
|
| Cities are gonna be littered with aging cars in a few years
| since there are virtually no chargers in cities with street
| parking. Conversely, no mechanics in the country know how to
| work on EVs. EVs only work in the suburbs.
| verisimi wrote:
| > EVs only work in the suburbs.
|
| Exactly. As long as you don't drive, and have lots of
| disposable income, EVs are great.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| It's funny how waiting times and availability of charging
| infrastructure are often give as a reason EVs will somehow
| fail, yet in the regional Australian town where I live, the
| constant long lines and very high cost for fuel at our very
| small local fuel station were a driver for me to get an EV.
|
| It's far easier to build an EV charging station than a fuel
| station, they can be installed just about anywhere, and
| they are only going to get faster and better with time.
|
| I drive a lot, and don't have much disposable income at the
| moment, and EVs are great.
| theyinwhy wrote:
| "Cities" is quite a broad category for your claims.
| lovich wrote:
| > Conversely, no mechanics in the country know how to work on
| EVs. EVs only work in the suburbs.
|
| I'm so glad you said this. No one understands how big an
| issue this is. They only have to look at historical examples
| like how motor vehicles failed to establish as a market
| because no carriage workers knew how to work on engines
| babypuncher wrote:
| And the funny thing is I bet ICE repair and maintenance
| skills are a lot more transferrable to BEVs than carriage
| -> ICE. Most shops have already been servicing hybrids for
| 20 years now.
|
| It really bothers me when people point to perfectly
| solvable problems as reasons why we can't have electric
| cars.
| _hypx wrote:
| BEVs mirror the obsession with diesel cars in Europe in more
| than one way. It was just a partial solution with many of its
| own downsides. In diesel's case, the problems drove the
| abandonment of diesel, even though it made up more than 50%
| of car sales at one point. BEVs are headed in a similar
| direction.
|
| At some point, the need for something new, whether it's
| e-fuels or hydrogen or whatever, will become undeniable. We
| simply won't be building millions of charging stations and
| place them at every parking spot. If adblue is inconvenient
| enough to stop diesel cars, then the charging problem will be
| even more fatal. We must have something that refuels like a
| conventional car, period.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > there are virtually no chargers in cities with street
| parking
|
| I suspect this will be relatively easy to build out. They
| installed them in my neighbourhood over a few weeks. There is
| already electricity supply to residential streets, so all
| that's required is installing chargers. Which can be quite
| simple if they're not fast chargers.
|
| I've also seen people simply running extension cables out of
| their houses. Which isn't ideal, but it works.
| asdff wrote:
| This depends strongly on the quality of the infrastructure
| that's already in place on your block.
| redserk wrote:
| I'd be concerned if a neighborhood block's electrical
| infrastructure is fragile enough where even 12kW shared
| across multiple chargers poses a hazard.
|
| I don't like how these concerns only get raised about EVs
| and are seldom raised over appliances that utilize far
| greater power over longer periods of time like individual
| air conditioning units
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > I'd be concerned if a neighborhood block's electrical
| infrastructure is fragile enough where even 12kW shared
| across multiple chargers poses a hazard.
|
| The US power grid is run down to the point it's a regular
| contributor in wildfires. People make memes about how bad
| the situation is. There are numerous YouTube videos
| detailing just how old a lot of the equipment and lines
| are. Besides, the problem is the continuous load. An air
| conditioner doesn't run the pump continuously for hours,
| while a charging post constantly consumes peak load.
|
| > I don't like how these concerns only get raised about
| EVs and are seldom raised over appliances that utilize
| far greater power over longer periods of time like
| individual air conditioning units
|
| FWIW yes people _are_ talking about air conditioning, and
| it 's already a massive hassle for grid operators to
| balance loads when it's extremely hot as a result.
|
| No matter what, electrical grids - and not just in the US
| - need a serious overhaul over the next few decades.
| Other than being generally old and poorly maintained,
| electric vehicles are just one issue... decentralized
| power generation, distributed battery storage, more
| demand for heat pumps (particularly in winter) and AC (in
| summer), the existing grid can't handle all that.
| fennecs wrote:
| I don't want cities to build stupid EV charging crap
| everywhere. They could invest that in public transport
| instead. EVs have all the same social problems as cars.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| As long as cars remain legal in cities, it seems
| worthwhile to put electric vehicle chargers in cities.
| fennecs wrote:
| Switching to EV is an infrastructure problem just like
| public transport. Guess it's doomed because it's not
| driven by profit.
| clouddrover wrote:
| > _It 's gonna be hilarious when all the new EV buyers find
| out about the broken chargers and start fighting over the few
| that work_
|
| No. Europe's charging infrastructure is much superior to
| North America's.
|
| Americans are already killing each other over EV charging:
|
| https://electrek.co/2023/05/03/tesla-driver-dies-fatal-
| shoot...
|
| It's a cultural thing.
| MiguelX413 wrote:
| Why would the availability of chargers remained unchanged?
| kylegordon wrote:
| This is patently horseshit.
|
| I know mechanics, they have been on EV training courses. The
| dealerships clearly have trained mechanics working on the EVs
| they've been selling for years.
|
| I live in the countryside, I see plenty of EVs. Range anxiety
| is only for people doing long distance 200+ mile journeys
| every day, as those that commute in the suburbs day to day
| have the common (and financial) sense to charge at home and
| leave every morning with a 'full tank'
|
| Judging from your prose, admittedly, I suspect you are North
| American and as such have a distinctly different worldview
| from mine.
| PeterisP wrote:
| For an EV car, the vast majority of work needed has no
| relation to the drivetrain (which is relatively low-
| maintenance on an EV), so it doesn't really matter if half of
| mechanics don't know how to work on EVs; fixing suspension or
| doing bodywork doesn't change.
| asdff wrote:
| I think the big oof repair with used EV is the inevitable
| battery replacement. That can't be cheap, especially for a
| used car.
| slondr wrote:
| "inevitable"? hardly. how many first-year Leafs are out
| there on the original battery? a lot, i'd reckon most.
| how many dead Leafs are out there which were totalled
| because of needing a new battery? certainly less than
| those which were totalled due to rust, collision, etc.,
| ie the things that kill gas cars too.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Thing is, first-year Leaf really isn't an old car.
|
| Outside of the richest countries there are whole
| communities who'd never buy a new car, because the car
| they can afford to buy is a much-used cheap car that's
| the same age as the first-year Leaf is now; the rich
| countries/communities drive the first 10 years of a car,
| buy a new car, and the used car gets sold in poorer areas
| where most people don't ever buy new cars, because even
| the entry level new cars are like twice the cost they
| would afford. The ICE market provides a significant
| quantity of such used cars, which are cheap because of
| the wear and tear of being 10-15 years old but are still
| likely to be usable for a very long time if you maintain
| them properly.
|
| Are 15 year old Leafs a comparable alternative to 15 year
| old ICE Hondas? If after the EV revolution buying a 15
| year old car ceases to be an affordable option because it
| _will_ need an unreasonably expensive replacement
| (compared to the value of such an old car) to be usable
| for 10 more years, then that 's a major societal change
| in the affordability of transport.
| asdff wrote:
| Not sure about leafs, but with teslas the batteries are
| only warrantied for 8 years and 150k miles. If you live
| somewhere with winters it probably diminishes a lot
| faster. With a gas car there are things you have to do
| around this mileage too e.g. timing belt and water pump
| but thats a fix thats an order of magnitude cheaper than
| an ev battery replacement.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| Well if EV battery prices continue to decline at a
| similar rate - and there's no reason not to expect this -
| then in 8-10 years the cost of the batteries is going to
| be about 1/4 of today's cost. So it doesn't really seem
| like it will be such a burden.
| clouddrover wrote:
| Depends on the car. Nio's cars can swap the battery in 6
| minutes:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmWL1hZQmD0
|
| It means you can have a battery subscription rather than
| buying the battery. A subscription keeps your battery new
| and also lets you swap between higher and lower capacity
| batteries as needed.
|
| Nio has 70, 75, 100, and 150 kWh packs:
|
| https://cnevpost.com/2023/07/07/nio-user-manuals-
| include-150...
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| A surprising number of mechanics will refuse to work on any
| car with a battery that has more than 12 volts, regardless
| of the problem.
|
| Found that out trying to get rotors replaced on a Prius.
| jsight wrote:
| At least in the US, those are almost exclusively problems for
| people who didn't buy a Tesla. Given the proliferation of
| NACS support, that will soon change to being a problem for
| noone.
|
| Europe is completely different, but I get the feeling the
| charging infrastructure isn't so bad throughout most of
| Europe.
| _hypx wrote:
| Diesel exceeded 50% of the market and still did not hit the
| "tipping point." This is a purely imaginary concept with no
| basis in fact.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.autoweek.com/news/green-
| cars/a44598975/electric-... (Jul 20, 2023: EVs Edge Out
| Diesels For The First Time In Europe)
|
| > Sales of EVs surpass sales of diesel models for the first
| time in Europe, with battery-electrics holding a 15.1% share
| of the market, while diesels hold 13.4%. (Audi e-tron GT
| pictured above.)
|
| > Plug-in hybrids have seen gains and losses over time in
| different European countries, but hold 7.9% market share on
| the continent overall.
|
| > The Tesla Model Y has been Europe's best-selling model in
| any vehicle category in the first six months of 2023.
| _hypx wrote:
| Which proves there was no tipping point! Diesel are losing
| sales despite being dominant at one point. BEVs will
| probably go down the same route. Some newer idea will drive
| BEVs out of the market just like it did with diesel cars.
| paganel wrote:
| We're most probably at the combustion -> "only upper-middle-
| class people and richer will be able to afford private
| transportation" tipping point.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| I'm OK with that. Big picture, EVs are just sweeping the
| fossil fuel problem under the rug, and I've yet to see a
| response to this problem that doesn't rely on counting
| chickens before they've hatched.
|
| And the cost of (often obligatory, in places like the USA)
| private transportation is almost like a crony capitalist
| regressive tax. It disproportionately harms the purchasing
| power of working-class individuals. Before I broke into the
| middle class, it was absolutely infuriating how much of my
| hard-earned money I had to spend on owning, maintaining, and
| operating my car. But there was no way around it, because the
| city I lived in was structured such that not owning a car was
| tantamount to not even having a chance at improving my
| economic opportunity. The sooner governments are forced to
| stop making infrastructure decisions that further siphon
| money out of the pockets of individuals and into the pockets
| of big automakers and oil companies, the better.
| verisimi wrote:
| > The sooner governments are forced to stop making
| infrastructure decisions that further siphon money out of
| the pockets of individuals and into the pockets of big
| automakers and oil companies, the better.
|
| I'm afraid it's not going to be anytime soon. What you are
| doing is government acting in service _harder_ for the
| benefit of big corporations.
| panick21_ wrote:
| > that doesn't rely on counting chickens before they've
| hatched.
|
| Its simple really. There are 2 problems, both need to be
| solved. We can't wait on 1 to be solved until we start
| addressing the other.
|
| And EV now are way cleaner then ICE cars even in West
| Virgina. If you are in France, Switzerland or a country lie
| that, they are incredibly low carbon.
|
| > spend on owning, maintaining, and operating my car.
|
| Yes, society would do much better to invest in walking,
| biking and trains (of various kinds) then EV and to
| discourage car usage, EV or not.
|
| This is pretty clear to anybody who has studied the issue.
| Housing and transportation cost combined are a huge part of
| avg peoples lives, well over 50% in many cases. Better land
| use and zoning policies, combined with proper transport
| policy can make this much, much better.
|
| The US ironically has so many access road lanes that
| establishing a bike network is actually easy. In
| Switzerland most cities roads are very narrow so its much
| harder to add an extra mode in.
| jandrese wrote:
| Broke AF people are still buying ridiculously expensive new
| trucks, I don't think this will be as much of a problem as
| you are thinking. Also, some EVs can be downright cheap if
| you qualify for incentives. It was theoretically possible to
| get a Bolt for like $3000 after government incentives in
| certain states before Chevy stopped making them.
|
| https://youtu.be/uxoRrdE9efk?t=355
|
| Plus, China's middle class has been gobbling up the BYD Qin
| and Song EVs.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Thank goodness, maybe we'll start making infrastructure
| around not having to get into our car to do absolutely
| everything.
| bluescrn wrote:
| That relies on actually being able and willing to construct
| infrastructure rather than just letting it decay.
|
| (And maybe, just maybe, we should create viable
| alternatives _before_ pricing vast swathes of populations
| off the roads and out of work...)
| lmm wrote:
| "We can't make it illegal to go around poisoning people
| until we've found new jobs for all the poisoners"?
|
| More restrictions on road and car use shouldn't surprise
| anyone at this point, it's been coming down the pipe for
| years. At some point you have to make the status quo
| painful, because no-one's willing to change anything if
| they're not feeling the pain yet.
| bluescrn wrote:
| You're literally saying 'we should inflict more pain on
| the relatively poor'. And it's not just about transport.
| With ever-rising energy prices, people are literally
| forced to choose 'between heating and eating'
|
| Meanwhile, the people in charge of solving the problem of
| climate change are still flying around the world on
| private jets.
| asdff wrote:
| We do plenty of that stuff. Even the poorest states in
| the country have regular highway work. If most people
| shifted to other forms of transit instead of putting such
| demand on the roads investment will shift accordingly to
| deal with the wear and tear increasing in this one sector
| while decreasing in another.
| tremon wrote:
| _If most people shifted to other forms of transit instead
| of putting such demand on the roads_
|
| I'd say this is an example of putting the cart before the
| horse. Why would you expect people to shift to other
| forms of transit before the road network supports these
| other forms of transit?
| asdff wrote:
| Well, they shifted to the car before networks could
| handle that to be fair. Grade separated highways only
| appeared after widespread car ownership. We generally
| build capacity for what exists not what would be nice to
| have in the future, so if people want to see a world of
| transit investment maybe they should think about waiting
| for the bus that shows up twice an hour, which might put
| pressure to make that come once every 15 minutes, then
| even sooner, and eventually upgraded to a rail line.
| vel0city wrote:
| If more people decide cars are getting too pricey maybe
| they'll vote for more transit and use the transit that's
| already there.
| [deleted]
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| That is typically how the manufacturing curve and the
| innovation curve works. Upper-middle-class people and richer
| have disposable income and purchasing power which funds
| expensive goods until manufacturing of those goods scales up
| to be cheap for people without significant amounts of
| disposable income and purchasing power.
|
| EVs will continue to get cheaper, faster, as global auto
| manufacturers scale up their production. If you can take a
| bus, a train, or an ebike, definitely do that. But consumers
| will not stop buying cars (global light vehicle market is
| ~83M units/annually), so sell them EVs, making them as
| inexpensive and quickly as possible. China EV sales are
| already at 9M units/year, more than half total US light
| vehicle sales in 2022 (~14M units).
|
| TLDR Volume is misleading, pay attention to velocity.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline
|
| https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-
| prices-...
|
| https://www.reuters.com/technology/ev-energy-storage-
| battery...
|
| https://finance.yahoo.com/news/used-ev-prices-are-
| collapsing...
| baz00 wrote:
| Has anyone looked at the fact most people are too poor to
| buy new vehicles? Here in the UK the average vehicle age is
| 11 years old, most vehicles are second hand and the EV
| battery warranties top at 8 years. The financial risk of an
| out of warranty EV vs ICE vehicle is much much higher and
| the second hand price is higher. There is also zero
| bangernomics model for EVs either, which is really what a
| hell of a lot of people who drive vehicles are running.
|
| The problem is not solved and may not be which is what I
| think the original poster is considering. The bottom rung
| of society is going to lose their transport.
|
| Edit: I know everyone is blinded by EV hype at the moment
| but the entire financial model is drastically different and
| that will impact people heavily. Even the infrastructure
| and housing here doesn't necessarily mean it's viable.
| bluescrn wrote:
| > The bottom rung of society is going to lose their
| transport.
|
| And in many cases, they're also going to lose their jobs.
| Politicians are incapable of thinking beyond the M25, so
| are probably expecting everyone to just hop on the Tube
| or frequent London bus services instead.
|
| People can't move closer to workplaces (or better public
| transport links), as the #1 goal of every UK government
| seems to be pumping up property prices to ever more
| ridiculous levels. (You can't allow the supply of housing
| to increase when rich people are getting richer from the
| rising prices!)
|
| We're incapable of building transport infrastructure in
| the UK. Look at the state of HS2. Something like PS500
| million per mile of railway (largely down to those
| property prices), and it might not even reach London at
| the current rate, let alone be extended north of
| Birmingham.
|
| Even for those that can afford an EV, huge numbers of
| people are unable to charge them at home (living in
| flats, relying on on-street parking, etc). There's hardly
| any visible growth of public charging infrastructure, and
| you just know that public chargers will be a huge
| bait+switch, eventually charging extortionate amounts
| compared to home charging (if only to minimize the
| queues...)
| verisimi wrote:
| All that. And also, the environmental cost of producing
| batteries is terrible. That cost is hidden (in the mining
| and making of batteries, and probs the disposal) as
| opposed to during the lifetime in the fuel that is burnt.
| This is to say, it's that the environment justification
| doesn't hold either.
|
| So why are governments committing to these non-sensical
| goals?
| [deleted]
| panick21_ wrote:
| Crossrail has just been an incredibly success in terms of
| public infrastructure. But outside of London its true.
| There are cities that are huge from a European
| perspective without even a basic S-Bahn tunnel.
|
| The UK is the perfect place for High Speed rail, and part
| of the problem with it is the idiotic bending over
| backwords for NIMBYs and the generally terrible rail
| planning practices. Not having built this in like the 80s
| is insanely dumb.
|
| If we are talking about poor people then bus reduction in
| bus service is actually by far the biggest deal.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Average price of a new car in the US is almost $48k,
| regardless of powerplant. Your concern is extremely
| valid, but the only solution is a combination of
| engineering our way to cheaper EVs and targeted
| subsidies. We have the wealth, simply need to shift away
| from fossil fuel subsidies and redirect towards EVs.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| That is a crazy statistic . This past spring I bought a
| hybrid toyota corolla LE (the lowest end model). It lists
| for $23K (of course the dealer added various markups that
| I couldn't opt out of).
|
| What does $23K get? I drive the car like a normal person
| with no attempt to eek out extra mileage. I'm averaging
| 48 mpg over the past seven months since I got the car.
| Even though it is a low end model, it is amazing what
| technology it comes with. It shows me the speed limit and
| indicates when I'm over -- not by having a map of the
| speed limit, but by reading the signs as I drive. It has
| lane keeping and adaptive cruise control, and warns me
| when my closing speed is too great.
|
| My ego isn't attached to my car so I don't care it is not
| flashy. I can't imagine paying twice as much unless I had
| some specialty need (eg, had to buy a heavy duty truck).
| asdff wrote:
| That's the average. The median price of a new car is
| $25k.
|
| https://www.cars.com/articles/2023-cars-com-
| affordability-re...
| whimsicalism wrote:
| ? from your source:
|
| > The median new-car price among Cars.com dealers was
| approximately $42,500 in December -- a 10% increase from
| December 2021 and 18% higher than December 2020.
| seltzered_ wrote:
| It's also an issue of material blindness - there's a
| decent panel discussion on this.hostee by Nate Hagens :
| https://youtu.be/5stPFdegJpg
| nicoburns wrote:
| I suspect they'll be a large market for aftermarket
| batteries (which should be a lot cheaper in 10 years time
| when this starts to become relevant). In the meantime,
| people can continue to buy second hand ICE vehicles.
| jsight wrote:
| That's already happening for Tesla 3 and Y. There are
| decent aftermarket batteries available, including smaller
| capacities for lower costs.
| asdff wrote:
| I've read it can cost over 10 thousand dollars to replace
| a battery in a model 3. That is a total nonstarter for
| the used market. Plenty of Teslas will probably just end
| up driven until the battery is totally shot then
| scrapped.
| jsight wrote:
| It is closer to $15k from Tesla :lol
|
| But my comment was about third party options with lower
| range. $6-10k depending on the range selected, IIRC. For
| a car with high mileage already, that'd be a good way to
| turn it into a commuter.
|
| In practice, I'm not seeing a significant difference
| between the way the 3 is being treated and the way
| similarly sized vehicles are treated.
| asdff wrote:
| You are buying the tesla for what like maybe $10k or so
| used lets say. Are you really going to pump $6-10k into a
| car that's only worth $10k? I mean people walk away from
| cars when they get a $2000 quote for a transmission.
| est31 wrote:
| Car batteries wear out less than your phone's batteries,
| because they build on different technologies, but they do
| wear out.
| vel0city wrote:
| How long do ICE warranties last in the UK?
| jokoon wrote:
| I can't wait to see how 2035 will unfold
|
| I heard there already are some exceptions
|
| It's about 10 years from now...
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