The crusade on the car as we know it continues.
The Netherlands has decided to ban the sale of petrol and diesel cars by the year 2030.
The UK has imposed a similar ban on petrol and diesel cars, starting in 2040, which will stop the sale of everything that isn't electric or a hybrid.
Electric cars currently only make up around 2% of the Dutch market. This means they need to capture an additional 98% of the market in just thirteen years. That equates to a gain of around 7.5 percent of the market annually.
The main issue with this endeavor is the need for infrastructure. Electric cars require electricity, obviously. This means their reliance on the power grid is increased exponentially.
As a result, they will need to produce and/or import more electricity. While pollution isn't a massive issue, as Holland's power grid relies mostly on thermal and nuclear power, the costs associated with such a massive power bump will be substantial.
Thirteen years to ban the sale of traditionally fuelled vehicles is ambitious at best. Very few manufacturers are prepared for bans such as these.and even fewer have a lineup of just electric or hybrid vehicles; the only mainstream manufacturer of electric cars is Tesla, and Volvo is moving to a fully hybrid and electric lineup by 2019.
Furthermore, there are the issues of range and charging time. Most electric cars don't have a range good enough for a decent road trip; the Tesla Model S offers 315 miles on a charge at most, and you have to spend over $100,000 to get such figures.
To charge it to full using Tesla's so-called "Supercharging," it takes about eighty minutes. Using a 220-volt charger would take over ten hours. Using a 110-volt charger could take over ninety hours.
While charging time isn't awful with Supercharging, eighty minutes is significantly longer than the five or ten minutes you spend at a fuel stop. If manufacturers are able to increase range while lowering charging time, the transition to electric cars won't be too awful.
Many countries are trying to ban petrol and diesel cars. While there are some valid claims to back these moves, stopping the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles will not save the penguins.
Electric cars are great, but you cannot compare an electric motor to a big, all-American V8, or any petrol or diesel engine for that matter.
The fact is, petrol and diesel cars are excellent. If they weren't, they wouldn't have caught on over the last 120 years or so. You can't compare that to a blender on wheels.
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