Electric cars in Norway
kwinn
Posts: 8,697
Interesting article on how Norway has encouraged the use of electric cars. https://cleantechnica.com/2015/06/05/1-electric-car-city-is-video/
I was there a few years ago visiting family, and have to say that Oslo was one of the cleanest and most beautiful cities I have ever been to. Looking forward to returning and driving up the new coastal highway in the next year or two.
I was there a few years ago visiting family, and have to say that Oslo was one of the cleanest and most beautiful cities I have ever been to. Looking forward to returning and driving up the new coastal highway in the next year or two.
Comments
Only problem is you have to sell you children to be able to afford buy a beer there. And it's tricky stepping over all the alchos lying in the street in the morning on the way to the office. They don't drink the over taxed beer but get by on the local black market moonshine.
What I never understood is how Norway is one of the wealthiest counties in Europe, thanks to the North Sea oil, but their people have such huge taxes. Where does the money go?
Oil: Most of the direct income from oil in Norway goes directly into a fund which is there to support future pensions. But of course the industry injects money in other ways by creating jobs and companies.
As for the tax level - it's really not a problem. I for one am extremely happy about the health system which stepped in when I got my one, serious issue. Handled perfectly. At no extra cost to me. I've been paying high taxes all my life, but knowing that the money is used to safeguard family, friends, and fellow citizens. It's never been a problem, it's not like it kills my economy. The only insurances I have to pay are for my car and my house.
-Tor
And no shortage of addicts on the streets!
A lot of people bought electric vehicles because of TOLL-roads. Then they can have their home in a 'low cost' area and still afford to commute every day.
I know of two such areas in the county where I live. Both toll roads are undersea tunnels, replacing ferries, crossing deep fjords. The first has turned into a 'high income' living area now, and most of the EVs disappeared within 2 years of the TOLL-booth disappearing. (That was mostly Th!nk and Kewet Buddy, though)
Oslo... The NPRA(Think DMV, roadplanning, and all that) have now partially closed down some of the tunnels around Oslo, and also disallowed EVs with only the driver from using the'Public Transport' lanes in the affected area. This is to do a lot of maintenance and upgrades to comply with yet another EU directive. This work won't be finished before 2019... My guess is that the EV sales will dip a bit.
The weird thing is that the traffic flows better than ever. It's assumed a lot of people have decided to try out whatever work-at-home system the office has. Bus driver reports that some routes can be done in a third of the normal time...
Of course, EVs, Plug-in hybrids, LNG, or even Hydrogen-powered cars(Google for HyNor) isn't the solution. In reality personal transportation of that size is the problem. But that's another discussion entirely.
@kwinn
Make sure to tell when you are here on a tour - you can borrow my cabin where your impulse relays are installed : )
Erlend
I'm all for taxes and the social good, like a decent health service and so on. Sadly in the modern world of the global economy there is a relentless pressure to do away with national identity, society or community spirit, and privatize everything and promote the individualism , "profit is king" and "greed is good" ideology.
Norway seems to be hanging on against this pressure. It's a lost cause in most of the civilized world.
The price include a 20% tip as bartenders get paid a living wage, alcohol sales have a high sin-tax as with to much alcohol it comes sickness that gets treated for free.
And touristy areas probably charge more than the places locals go.
All cities does have a A-Team (A as in Alcoholics) that sit around the parks, pretty harmless people as they don't mug people.
Definitely will let you know well ahead of time so we can meet.
http://my.teslamotors.com/it_CH/forum/forums/tesla-sales-banned-arizona-texas-new-jersey
It is hard for me to grasp the politics of this absurdity.
Meanwhile, in Taiwan...
a company has anounced their desire to become the "Two wheel Tesla" to the world and plans to make electric motor scooters successful in Taiwan. Enter the Gogoro, the world's smartscooter.
http://www.trustedreviews.com/gogoro-smartscooter-review
Frankly, I am skeptical. I still drive a 125cc Yamaha BWS and don't feel comfortable shifting over to electric. About the only reason I might shift to a two-wheeled electric is to switch to a bicycle and avoid parking tickets that scooters are getting these days. Also, no insurance is required for an electric bicycle, while an electric scooter does require such.
When I was 12, I had a girl friend whose day owned one of the first electric cars ever, a turn of the century French vehicle. He also had a Stanley Steamer and a steam motorcycle. I can't help but feel that the world really got it right with internal combusion for transportation, and that we will shift over to natural gas long before the electric vehicle is widely accepted.
But electric cars are exempted from paying the toll, simply to encourage more people to buy electric cars. I noticed an earlier post talked about clean air in Oslo, but Oslo actually has a sometimes big air pollution problem (to the extent that it may become illegal to drive diesel cars there on some days).
There are other freebees around for electric cars, free parking for example.
-Tor
While the US government broke a big promise to leave Social Security funds intact and borrowed from them to build the US interstate highway system, we still have some states with interstate toll roads as well - like the New Jersey Turnpike.
And the Golden Gate Bridge supposedly imposed a temporary toll to pay for the bridge, but has never been without toll.. even though the bridge has long been paid for. They claim they need the money for maintenance.
So I strongly suspect that it all comes down to 'whatever the traffic will bear'. Free to electric cars and other such special rates.. such as free commuter lanes for 3 or more people in a car are just another layer of rules. What these things really cost and when they are really paid for are difficult to determine. I suppose we just have to listen to authorities say, 'Trust me.'
But I strongly suspect once you get a cash flow started, an administration will find a way to keep it going and purposes to spend all that is gotten.
When that's been said, in the last years this process has been muddled in Norway because 'companies' (I use that word in a very liberal sense when it comes to those leeches..) have been established to collect the toll on behalf of the local or national governments or whoever. Turns out (of course!) that they siphon so much money to themselves for administering collecting the toll that it never stops..
And then you of course have those politicians who now talk about using tolls from one bridge to pay for something else. As things usually go, you start out good and it goes downhill from there. But we have had an extremely fair and efficient system for this in Norway until relatively recently. The future may not be as good, unless someone cuts off the weeds and go back to the way it was.
-Tor
Overall, humankind is still struggling with any agenda that is unselfish and requires long-term commitment.
-Tor
Did you know that Norway was among the first countries to bring a reactor online? already in 1951...
Only for research, though, never for power-generating purposes.
The Halden ractor(1958, 25MW) is a bit controversial as it has been used for illegal research, that is, research not approved by our government, such as aiding Brazil's nuclear sub program.
At the moment, I believe the two working reactors are being kept running because that's cheaper than decomissioning them...
Hopefully, they can get started on a Thorium reactor before that happens.
Here in my very own campus we were involved in converting an internal combustion vehicle to an electric. Took 6 months, and now it's running circles around the campus!
I had built the monitoring system too, but not yet installed in it. It is using an FTDI FT800 screen with a dsPIC33F microcontroller, and with CAN bus interface.
How new's the car? What are you talking to? Original devices presumably, how much of the original computers were removed? Or is it the other way round, you are simulating devices to keep the computer happy?
The car is an 11-year old locally made sedan, and the electric motor + Curtis controller is bought from a retailer in USA as a conversion kit.
There is a CAN bus on that controller which outputs the volt, current, RPM and temperature. The microcontroller gets the data through the CAN bus transceiver, and show the details on the screen. The monitoring system also obtains the data from the controller every second and log it into a CSV file to be analysed later.
It would be a big job to substitute a modern car computer I suspect.
The sedan has not much electronics inside - only electronic it has is the radio. The sedan was a cheap one - only cost $2500. The car didn't have any dashboards or whatsoever as it's been purchased by another person since 2001. My supervisor acquired it from another used car store.
We ripped out the gas tank and the whole Internal Combustion Engine in a workshop. Then we placed the electric motor (144V), with correct coupling, and then adding the motor controller (Curtis). The motor controller has a CAN bus interface which can be connected to other devices.
And yeah - the batteries are Trojan's SLA (Seal Lead Acid), 12V each, stacked to 144V. We have 12 of them all together.
I designed the monitoring system using the screen and the stuff I bought from the eBay and the board is from MikroElekotronika.