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Britain to ban all new diesel and petrol heavy goods vehicles from 2040 (reuters.com)
16 points by underscore_ku on July 14, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 9 comments


2040 is so far off it’s as if they just punting the ball down the line for the next generation to deal with. Why not 2050 or 2200?


While there has been a lot of progress on consumer vehicles, and electric cars are common, things like large trucks aren't really available yet. You can't get a Tesla semi; best hope is for early next year. The first Tesla trucks are due out this year, but the Ford ones not until next year.

20 years is a lot, but you're talking about completely shifting a market to something that literally doesn't exist yet. And that means creating infrastructure: it will take a lot to charge a semi. These are heavy vehicles designed to go 800 miles without significant down time.

So, yeah, maybe they could push harder. But it would be incredibly aggressive to make it 2030 -- for vehicles that don't exist and may not be available in sufficient numbers by then, at any price. Maybe call it 2035, but at that point we're talking about minor differences.

The main thing now is to make it clear that it's something they're going to do, so start planning to shift your fleet and don't come whining in 2030 when you say you can't do it in a measly 10 years. You had 20.


Do you feel like by 2030 we would have the Infrastructure in place to go electric only? Certainly not In rural or cold areas.


In 2040 they'll announce a new deadline of 2060. Anyone who worked on any kind of large scale project knows the drill...

When the political life cycle is 5 to 10 years nobody gives a shit about 2040, it's effectively "never"


I think it's certainly doable; it's 9 years away.

I don't necessarily think that it'll be done in that time and a 2040 deadline just makes that even less likely.


In Rural/cold areas, you might not be able to go full electric. CNG is an option in those cases though.

Not a perfect solution but sometimes perfect is the enemy of good.


If we cared about the problem, yes, we could do it.


It's a pissing contest with EU. Eu said 2050, Britain 2040.


The german government got their hand forced by the german automobile industry (Daimler, VW, BMW). 2036 last I checked.




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