Before celebrating this too much, I urge people to read this article about how it has actually played out: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23939076/norway-electric-...
These subsidies have insentivised more car culture. It hasn't fixed most of the issues around cars, just shifted the type of cars. Even possibly increased the amount of cars in the cities. Cars are dangerous, noisy, needs lots of space, microplastics from the tires etc etc., and we should've spent this money on things that could've helped to remove this reliance on cars.
40 billion NOK in subsidies each year. That's a new metro line every year. Or faster trains between cities. Things that could've improved our cities tremendously. You pay more in taxes for buying a new bike than people pay for a new electric car. It cost more for a ticket on public transport than all toll roads driving an electric car from far away into the city in rush hour. Of course people then drive instead of biking or taking the bus.
Yes, the incentives were great and needed in the beginning. But it has gone way, way too far.
Cars are not going away, there is one statement that ensures it:
As public transport improves, traffic decreases, and the value a car provides increases.
A 20 minute commute with no traffic and parking right in front because everyone else took the bus/train? Sign me up.
You're right that cars aren't going away, and I don't think it's a serious goal.
The point about equilibrium you're not thinking through fully. If you'd have the 20 minute commute with no traffic and parking right in front of whoever you're going, everyone would do it and you'd just wind up with, well, not that.
But as transit* improves you are able to do more with less, and instead of spending insane amounts of money on 5-lane highways and McDonald's for all and the extractive economics that come with that, you can maintain your existing infrastructure and give folks who can't, shouldn't or would prefer to not drive the option to get to whoever they are going without doing so. That frees up the existing highway infrastructure a little bit, reduces costs across the board, and has a lot of other nice benefits.
You are effectively arguing against other transit methods and models because you'd rather sit in traffic, because without the introduction of alternatives that's what you are advocating for - again because everyone will be in the car and you'll never alleviate traffic and you'll never have a 20 minute commute with free and easy parking.
* We should move away from the "public transportation" frame of reference. Highways are public transportation too, fully funded by taxpayers (in general, it maybe be uniquely different in some countries) and are an entrenched lobbying group that justify projects at the expense of the public too.
I think you're reading a bit too much into their statement. I took it as pointing out the stable equilibrium due to incentives leads to a mix of cars and public transit, not that cars are a better option overall.
You can't sign up - at least not for long. As public transit improves companies quit putting in parking places up front - they still have shipping/receiving in back, but only delivery vehicles allowed. The parking lot is sold to someone else who just wants a building, increasing density. Meanwhile all those people riding transit means there is more demand for better transit.
The above plays out over decades of course, and there are lots of competing factors.
I'm curious. Where has this played out?
Manhattan, Toyoko... People still drive in cities, but the better transit is the worse driving becomes.
I think you’re misattrubuting causation here. There are numerous factors that distinguish those two places. Chiefly, they are among the densest places in the world.
Generally speaking, cars are at odds with such extreme density, simply due to geometry (i.e. how much space driving requires); it’s super easy to saturate driving supply in such places.
Think of mass transit and driving as being in an equilibrium with each other. Depending on where the bottleneck is in driving supply, shifting driving demand to transit demand (via improved transit infrastructure) should most often improve driving.
Extreme density like the places you mentioned is challenging just because space is at such an extreme premium. I would argue (and I’m not alone here) that it’s especially challenging because driving is consistently underpriced; the fair value of driving there is likely far higher than the cost that drivers pay. In such circumstances, oversubscribed car infrastructure is the natural outcome.
I don't know any city with amazing public transport where driving a private car isn't nightmarish.
It appears that driving a private car in the Netherlands isn't near as nightmarish as elsewhere.
The Netherlands is peculiar in that cyclists reclaimed their rights to the cities by kicking cars out of them.
Cars haven't been kicked out of cities in the Netherlands.
https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollecti...
https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2025/03/05/a-rare-glimpse...
https://old.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/ittddm/how_a_busy_r...
https://www.iamexpat.nl/expat-info/dutch-news/history-amster...
Removing cars from a street or two and decreasing the number of lanes on many streets is a far cry from "kicking cars out of cities"
The above-linked protests led to re-drawing urban development plans for most major Dutch cities with the effect of reducing the prevalence (and necessity) of cars in city centers. Whole housing blocks were getting destroyed as to build highways, canals were dried so cars could run in their place. All that was undone, and more, and nowadays Dutch cities are a shining example of how liveable urban centers are with fewer/close to no cars. Those are well documented facts, I don't know what you are even arguing about.
Fewer cars. not no cars
So we are playing semantics. I don't think "Kicking-out" is universally understood as "getting rid of the entirety of something", you are encouraged to prove me wrong, I certainly don't care enough to die on this hill.
It doesn't matter whether it's universally understood. It matters whether it is commonly understood. You're communicating with a wide variety of readers on the internet.
You're also using the type of phrasing hyperbole that the anti-bike-lane zealots use.
Berlin has amazing public transport (I moved here in 2018, I never needed to get a car), I've not heard anyone complain about the experience of driving.
Singapore.
But anyways, the order of causation is probably reversed. Cities with high density are forced to invest in good public transport by sheer public demand and pressure.
Singapore has an expensive plate tax that has to be renewed. They make owning a private car very expensive.
The nightmare there is paying for the car.
I don't know any city with amazing public transport, except for the lucky ones that can afford to live directly into the city center.
Cars aren’t going away, but it is very easy to disincentivize their use in urban areas.
> A 20 minute commute with no traffic and parking right in front because everyone else took the bus/train? Sign me up.
Indeed. I am not a people person so the idea of a solitary commute is massively appealing to me no matter the mode.
Luckily in these situations it's likely that huge tax costs will be pushed onto private cars. Sign me up to that
It is not all wasted. Walk/bike environment would have been better, but EVs solve another problem, they add energy storage to the grid. Norway has excess production from wind, they can store it and sell it to rest of Europe at higher prices. Also, creating demand is important for scale, Norways EV demand played a (somewhat) crucial role in building up battery factories when it was still a nascent industry, help economies of scale.
It may or may not have helped Norway directly, but out of all the Western economies, Norway performed the sacred function of the rich: support the growth of new technologies that will eventually help everyone.
I really don’t think the impact on car culture is that big. There are a LOT of other reasons not to drive a car in the cities. Our company just built a new office building. No additional parking was built (we are renting some spaces in an existing garage nearby but it’s a bit of a walk to the office). I don’t think it’s easy to get new parking built in Oslo. What we did get was a huge bike garage with bike showers. Even though I have an EV and access to parking, I bike to work in summer. Some of my colleagues also bike in winter.
Yeah the subsidies are high, but so are the implicit subsidies for ICE cars. There was a new tunnel construction in Norway where they found they could save millions on reduced ventilation since the impact from EVs had already reduced pollution that much.
I totally think we should reduce reliance on cars more. But Norway is already doing a LOT in that department. The public transportation of Oslo is already ridiculously good for a city that size. (How many US cities of that size has a metro?) We should consider the switch to EVs as a hard requirement to get rid of pollution and increase the energy efficient and long term costs with operating cars in the country. Now that the switch is complete (for new vehicles) we can shift the focus to making biking and public transportation even better. But we will always need cars. An electrician can’t take the bus to get to a job, and most pure office workers I know in the Oslo city do not drive to work already.
People buy new cars (~10m/year in US) and when they are at that decision point, follow this algorithm.
1) Is there any way you can walk instead?
2) Can you bike?
3) Can you use an e-bike?
4) Can you use public transportation?
5) Can you move to a place where 1-4 are doable?
6) If none of the 4 above work, are you a 2 car family (most are), then one of the cars can be EV. While you have a gas car for longer trips, most likely a minivan.
7) Can you buy a used EV? (which is already manufactured!)
8) Can you buy a used plug-in hybrid? A plug-in hybrid can be 99% electric miles, most trips are short.
9) Can you buy a new EV?
10) Can you buy a new plug-in hybrid?
11) Can you buy a used gas car? A 2023 manufactured used gas car is identical to 2024, the delta of new features is negligible (maybe new colors?).
I am in the prairies of Canada:
1) -20c weather or colder - not really
2) no, see previous. Bikes don't handle snow.
3) no, see previous.
4) no, unsafe. (this is a me problem. Until people stop smoking on or near public transit, it remains unsafe for me)
5) no, this is a really REALLY rude question. Part of it is city design prioritizing suburbs, but part of it is that the moving has a very high cost, and only increasing as property / rent prices continue to skyrocket. Mind, that's mostly a Canadian problem....
6) An interesting question. This one works.
7) Not really, infrastructure isn't much present yet for used EVs. Mind, it's possible, just not easy to find.
8) same as previous
9) Not easily, prices are much too high. This may change with introduction of Chinese EVs though.
10) same as previous
11) MUCH easier than other options. In some parts, going back as far as 100 years is doable in getting a car.
So we - when we finally needed a second car - went 11. Moving is out (cost of moving is comparable to buying a new car), and a new car is expensive enough that the cost is too high to carry. But then, we are not wealthy either, and I have no idea who can afford to buy that many new cars, but it ain't most people I've met or worked with. I see cars - like public transit in far too many cities in Canada - as pricing itself out of usability.
Thank you for the step-by-step execution! And 11 is the best solution when none of the above work. There are still scenarios where gas cars cover the edge cases. The first thing is to completely stop buying new gas cars. A new gas car will continue to pollute for the next 20 years. We can immediately stop all new gas car production and in the next 2 decades transition entirely to EVs.
I bike year around in Norway. On most snow days I blast past car traffic. Cars can't handle at all if it's not plowed.
Norway is a LOT warmer than prairie Canada. You want an equivalent, go maybe 600km north. heh. (not entirely a joke. Mind as far as I can tell, typical North Pole weather is also warmer than Saskatchewan winters, so ... weather is weird)
I know the Antarctic is typically a lot colder, though.
Canada is more like northeast China which is like -20 C right now, but can get down to -40 C. They still are moving to EVs though.
Siberia is a FAR better comparison than China. Among many other reasons, most of the prairies are similarly arid, and temperatures are definitely similar. Similar range of climates too (Siberia's got people a lot more spread out though).
Harbin is north of Vladivostok you know? But yah, Yakutsk is where you can’t turn your car off in the winter (well, they have auto start and stop now to keep the engine from freezing, no power outlets like in Fairbanks for block heaters) and often have to encase the whole car in a warming sock (which is exactly how you imagine it). Yakutsk is east of Siberia in the Saka republic though, the closest comparable city in Siberia is Norilsk (not as cold or populous as Yakutsk).
Yakutsk sounds similar to where I live now. Mind ... a lot of the Canadian prairies are "empty" (not really, lots of farms... but not a lot of cities that aren't close to the US border). Similar weather at least.
Yakutsk is the coldest city in the world. But cities like harbin and Mohe in China get really really cold for their latitudes, Harbin is on par with Winnipeg:
> Harbin's winter temperatures are closest to Winnipeg, Manitoba. Both cities are known for having extremely cold, dry, and windy winters due to their inland locations, with average January temperatures in both cities often falling in the range of -15°C to -20°
Mohe is worse:
> Mohe, China—known as "China's Arctic" with winter temperatures often dropping to -40°C or lower—has a winter climate most similar to Canada's coldest northern or subarctic communities, such as Yellowknife, Northwest Territories.
They both have EVs and used by Chinese EV companies for winterized testing.
Winnipeg is far south of where I usually am, and rather near the US border. It might be comparable to China what with the sea nearby and all those lakes.
I'm out in the middle of the prairies, where -40C is a normal winter day, and 100km winds are also ... normal. Mind, -20C to -30C is far more common, and -50C almost never happens where I am now. (it was a lot more common in FSJ, or in the badlands near Drumheller).
Fort St John BC however has almost exactly the same temperatures and weather as Yakutsk. Mind, it wouldn't be considered a city on these scales.
People do NOT understand how cold Canada gets. And I'm way south of places like Nunavut, the Yukon (mind, Yukon is warmer than Saskatchewan, mostly), or any of the Northwest Territories. I guess y'all think of balmy Toronto or the like. (or - by comparison - tropical Vancouver BC. Vancouver is warmer than Seattle, for the most part. Wetter too, largely, but not as wet as Prince Rupert or Kitimat).
Anyway that's mostly not here or there for EVs. EVs on the whole work really well on the prairies - especially if they've got mitigation for -50C and +50C (both temperatures happen regularly, at appropriate times of year). For the most part, more reliable than diesel at those ranges too.
The local frustrating part is while Alberta has an ok electrical grid, Sask is an unstable grid dependent on coal and low maintenance. (I mean, we do have Uranium City too ... heh..). Saskatchewan is poor, by Canadian standards.
I hope Canada moves more to EVs too. Right now they're luxury priced ...
... I work in the EV industry. (school busses though)
> Bikes don't handle snow.
Not much worse than car. You can get studded tyres.
But yes, the cold can be inconvenient without proper clothes.
eh, 30cm of broken ragged ice, a light layer of snow over top ... that's a Saskatoon Saskatchewan winter road.
so a LOT worse. heck the car does not handle it very well.
the wind makes it worse for clothing too, mind I have driven a jeep without a windshield or roof at -40C and that was more cold than I ever want to repeat. It was rather worse than working out in a field with survey gear at -55C and white out winds...
That's nonsense. No significant amount of people goes "maybe I should move instead of buying a new care".
People get car coz they don't want to be cold (and especially in northen countries) when going to work
You have no idea what you are talking about. Significant number of people take public transit (Moscow, NYC, Chicago -- lots of other cities) when its available. When you build an environment for cars and cars only, force everyone to buy cars, they have no choice but to buy car. Lots of European counties have been building biking infrastructure. They are all Northern countries.
It's not USA. "Car culture" is far less of a problem pretty much everywhere else
I'm writing this from Norway. Car cultured absolutely is a problem here. You have people saying "if you don't like cars, don't live in the city", but then in the suburbs or towns nothing is walkable and you need a car to do anything. Society is shaped around cars, and in the city vast amount of area is designated cars.
I'd argue rather than go too far, now-ish is the right time to start addressing the issues you raise around reducing car culture.
The incentives were obviously temporary and are already in the phase out stage with some starting being phased out since 2017.
There's a separation between how many cars we should have and what kind of cars those should be.
Sure, but the incentives for the latter affect the former. I don't think those two can be separated in a debate?
>noisy
Uhhh..
Above ~30 km/h the noise of a car is mainly from the wheels etc., not the motor. Trust me, you don't want to live next to a highway even if all the cars on it are electric!
I lived near a train line with a train every 5-15m 24h, Trust me, you don’t want to live near it either…
Yeah, that has societal cost too, to be sure. Which implies prima facie that such infra (roadways, high-frequency train lines) should be minimized. Since the throughout of mass transit is so much higher (iow, the societal cost per-user), mass transit is a better way to minimize those costs than cars.
Add honking, brakes squeals, people blasting music with open windows, etc.
EVs use regen for 99.09% of stops. Honking and loud music is a street problem and has nothing to do with cars. In the horse and carriage days, drivers would be required to carry a bell and whistle to move your butt out of their way.
When I was looking for a house in Seattle, I checked out a nice townhome in Wallingford beneath the I5 ship canal bridge that had a great view of the city. But this was during COVID and the noise was still horrible, so I noped out of that quickly. It was all tire noise.
Saying EVs are still too loud, trust me is the knife's edge of complaining to complain. Just take the win.
Which "win"? There were multiple complaints here, not just noise. These EV incentives have actively hampered other goals and projects for a decade, one could argue it's a net loss.
EV road noise is not a valid and mature complaint for stifling EV adoption.
The point is not about "stifling EV adoption", it's reducing problematic levels of over-dependence on cars in general. EVs don't solve all the issues that cars raise.
Noise is a relevant factor in that discussion, not compared to internal combustion engines[1], but compared to fewer cars in general.
[1] The acronym for this did not age well
They don't solve all problems, but they do make solving the "too much CO2 cooks the planet" problem easier.
I'm all for fewer cars too!
Good thing I had other arguments and a whole article linked as well, then?
Tires cause a large amount of pollution and noise.
More so than a typical engine above 25 to 30mph.
So sure, electric helps, but as noted there is more traffic than before, which doesn't.
Tire noise is the major contributor at speed, and it looks like even in a typical US residential street with 20-25 mph speed limits, tire noise already dominates.
It’s a stupid take IMHO because it’s not an either thing in politics. But yes, even EVs are noisy because there’s road noise from the tires which is the dominant noise on highways and can be substantial when lots of cars even at street speeds if there’s a lot of cars. And the wheel’s generate a lot of fine invisible particulate pollution in the air too.
Plus there’s the “whoo” sound they all play when reversing ;)