There May Be More to Volvo's Move to Electric and Hybrids

Wish we still had more diesels here in the interim, but this move makes an infinite amount of sense.

This makes total sense and is understandable.

Come 2030 there will be countries banning gas and diesel, France in 2040 is banning them, so they have to get on the path to electric.  Regulations will probably make gas engines extinct post 2030.

49 minutes ago, smk4565 said:

Come 2030 there will be countries banning gas and diesel, France in 2040 is banning them, so they have to get on the path to electric.  Regulations will probably make gas engines extinct post 2030.

Should increase ev conversions as people who like their older auto want to keep them on the road.

1 hour ago, dfelt said:

Should increase ev conversions as people who like their older auto want to keep them on the road.

I think they are banning sale of new gas powered cars, so the existing gas burners could go on oil 2050 by the time they all die out.

For some reason, European regulators thought that diesel would solve all sorts of issues with emissions.  Now that this presumption is not the case, the crackdown (thanks to VW) has truly begun.  The march to EVs will certainly go a very long way into solving the CO2 problems that bedeviled regulators in the first place.  I suspect that many if not most European cars will be EV within the next 15 years or so, just because of CO2 regulations alone.  EVs will work wonders (against pollution) in our smoggiest cities such as LA and Beijing.

12 hours ago, riviera74 said:

For some reason, European regulators thought that diesel would solve all sorts of issues with emissions.  Now that this presumption is not the case, the crackdown (thanks to VW) has truly begun.  The march to EVs will certainly go a very long way into solving the CO2 problems that bedeviled regulators in the first place.  I suspect that many if not most European cars will be EV within the next 15 years or so, just because of CO2 regulations alone.  EVs will work wonders (against pollution) in our smoggiest cities such as LA and Beijing.

Totally agree, plus Europe has one of the worst Acid Rain problems that has destroyed so much forest. This should help to ease that problem and clean it up.

IDK what percentage of power is generated by coal and NG as the ev percentage goes up...

14 hours ago, 67impss said:

IDK what percentage of power is generated by coal and NG as the ev percentage goes up...

Plenty of stories but in 2015 the US had replaced most of the Coal plants with NG plants which is much more friendly to the planet.

http://www.cnbc.com/2015/07/14/natural-gas-tops-coal-as-top-source-of-electric-power-generation-in-us.html

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=25392

Interesting is that the news shows coal being surpassed by NG power plants in 2015 and our own gov being behind the times in data is saying they expect it to happen in 2016 end of year and the link above shows they published their findings in March of 2016.

 so much for gov accuracy.  

But I thought we were talking about Europe?

12 hours ago, 67impss said:

But I thought we were talking about Europe?

We are.  So the power plant market in the US has shifted to natural gas replacing coal in a lot of cases.  That is a good thing.  More importantly, replacing diesels with EVs will shift the pollution profile away from autos to power plants and steel plants.  That is even better, especially given the acid rain problems Europe apparently still has.  Thirty years ago, the Northeastern United States had a serious acid rain problem.  The cure was shuttering a LOT of steel plants and other heavy industry and the significant reduction of coal burning over the last two decades.  Europe will need to deindustrialize in order to fully enjoy the lack of acid rain in their forests like we have in the United States.  Volvo's efforts can help with that.