Comment by myrmidon
3 months ago
> It's the "unreasonable" rules that were unilaterally implemented that made car companies panic and finally start competing.
I believe the margin for effective regulation is much smaller than you think.
Sure, the EU could've mandated zero-emission vehicles from 2020 on in, say, 2010. But what would have happened? Carmakers would have made giant losses because their production facilities become worthless overnight (and laid off swathes of people); prices for vehicles and transport would've invariably gone through the roof and it is quite likely that the whole industry would have picked the "wrong" technology to bet on, like fuel cells, synthetic fuel or even hydrogen combustion.
Compare how much pushback you get in the general population against costly pro-climate policy already (very important to look past your own bubble on this!) and it seems clear to me that this would have failed competely (doing great economical damage, possibly a full-blown crisis), and would have probably been rolled back by the next election at the latest.
> Carmakers would have made giant losses because their production facilities become worthless overnight (and laid off swathes of people);
This is exactly what happened and is happening now. So 10 more years didn't prepare car maker better.
In fact the CEO of Stellantis was openly talking about how much of bad idea electric cars would be.
However, during those 10 years they managed to cheat on emissions measurements.
> it is quite likely that the whole industry would have picked the "wrong" technology to bet on, like fuel cells, synthetic fuel or even hydrogen combustion.
This also happened with so called bio-ethanol and Toyota's long standing and failed hydrogen bet.
> Compare how much pushback you get in the general population against costly pro-climate policy already
In Europe it's more a question of economics (like cost of electric cars for example) than a push back against pro-climate efforts themselves.
What is happening right now is that legacy carmakers have to compete harder because their core know-how lost value. That was somewhat inevitable, but banning/destroying that industry 10 years earlier would have hurt much more and would have been punished hard by voters.
> In Europe it's more a question of economics (like cost of electric cars for example) than a push back against pro-climate efforts themselves.
This is exactly my point- people don't like to suddenly pay more for the same just to avoid "climate debt" (and I'm willing to bet that your judgement on this is distorted, because most people in your bubble would accept some sacrifice for climate conservation, unlike the majority).
I am afraid this is not a personal choice of "accepting" something. If they dont accept drastical change in their lifestyles, they gotta accept billions of immigrants given that some countries become inhabitable sooner than others. Given the current geopolitical climate I think they'd rather shoot them at the borders though. Sad world.