Sorry to get back to the original topic and kinda skipping the towing part
I happen to live in europe so I might be able to provide some perspective.
In Sweden (my dad lives there) diesel and petrol vehicles pay equal amounts of road tax and the fuels costs about the same. I am not current on the situation in finland but I am with norway. Fuel there is REALLY expensive, much more so than in the rest of europe even the netherlands were fuel is taxed up to 80%. We pay about as much at the pump, corrected for currency, as you would... at the bililuna station on the csr. And that's at a cheap in town bowzer, not on the highway. Yes, norway is even more expensive... So is denmark btw. Norway is also in love with tesla and EV's although they don't really work that well there. Most norwegians don't believe in hydrogen vehicles because the exhaust gas is water vapor which in an icy country covers the roads with a nice thin layer of fresh ice when they pass
Yes, in europe diesel has/is pretty much received/is receiving the death blow. A lot of city's are outright starting to ban the older diesels and there is no reason to believe they will up those limits soon. On a side note; since cities are projected to house up to 70% of the worlds population within a generations time they will get more and more power, like the city states of yesteryears and I can even imagine them trying to exert their influence in the surrounding country side. To give you a example: the greens in Amsterdam (which pretty much run the city) decided they wanted to ban al motor vehicles by the year 2030. The national government blocked that idea but just to show you how far gone we are, in my opinion...
In any case, diesel trucks (the big 18 wheelers) are no exception. We have euro 6 at the moment and although most cities require you to have such a modern diesel to be able to enter, SOME cities have woken up and figured out that making diesel particulate filters ever more efficient only exacerbates the problem; the particles you are left with are so small, they cause more trouble than the big particles since they can get way deeper into your lungs etc. There was a talk of at least one city who wanted to go the other way around and ban euro 5 and 6 trucks for that reason.
Now, on to EV's via hybrids. Some 15 years ago I believe it was the dutch government who thought that subsidizing hybrid vehicles was a good idea to renew the country's fleet of cars. You see, when you drive a company car down here and use it privately a certain percentage of the vehicles value (including taxes) is added to your income. Since we use different tax rates for more or less income (ie the more money you make, the more tax you pay) the value of the company car ALWAYS comes over the top of your income and thus almost always in the highest tax bracket. For a normal vehicle, ie. one that is not exempt due to some environmental tax break the rate is 22% at this time and back then it was 25% IIRC.
What happened is that the honda civic hybrid and the toyota prius, the only two hybrids available at that time, became very popular vehicles. When I was driving around in my not so economical honda legend
people would overtake me with breakneck speeds in their hybrids, pushing the 1.3 or 1.5 to its limits to get some performance from them. The end result was hybrid vehicles which should do 5L/100 with ease started using 8+L/100.
When after a few years the tax break on these vehicles was lifted though and people had to pay full rate, guess what, they started buying normal cars again. Whilst the government had though of that and kept the scheme in place long enough to theoretically replace the entire dutch fleet (30% or more of new cars sold in this country are leased company cars, so keep a scheme like this in place for 5 years or so and you will have replaced a LOT of old cars) what actually happened was that somewhere in the former eastern block countries some politician decided that people should get a tax break on hybrids as well. So; virtually ALL hybrids in this country were bought up by traders and exported OUT of the country leaving us dutchies with the dirty old cars where we started of with. Sure, the 2008/9 financial crisis did not help but that's life. In any case, hybrids are rare on our roads today.
Leaves us the EV's and to be clear, down here the EV is just one brand: tesla. There are other brands and models but tesla's are everywhere. There is a simple reason for that: see above! The only two countries in europe that I have traveled through that have a lot of EV's (tesla's) are the netherlands and norway. The tax break on those vehicles is the primary reason that this is the case. From next year on the law is going to change here and I predict that the people in the market for upper-scale vehicles (like the model s which costs a whopping 200K AUD over here) will simply buy themselves an AUDI Q7 or beamer 7 series again since there is no reason to buy a limited EV again. When driving through germany I've seen 2 tesla's, one at BMW in munich (I used to work for them) as a test vehicle and one dutch guy who was brave enough to take his EV over the border. In norway there are plenty but the only tesla I saw in sweden was a norwegian plate
Also, in norway hundreds of tesla's are rotting away at a dealer since there are no spare parts to fix them (google or youtube it)
Finally, in my opinion, EV's do have their uses in a very densly populated country like the netherlands. The theoretical 400K range, which you don't get when it's hot 'cause aircon, or when it's cold 'cause the batteries have less capacity etc., is plenty since the largest distance you can drive here is actually slightly larger than the largest cattle station in australia
What most people seem to be forgetting is the pollution an EV produces. Those batteries are not very recyclable compared to lead acid which has a 99%+ recyclability for instance and the amount of resources needed to actually produce them forces us to dig up frigging afrika. My money is on hydrogen but hey, in the past most crap solutions won over the better alternative
(vhs vs beta comes to mind) Also, do not forget that a tesla model S weighs MORE than a friggin range rover loaded up to gvm!
So, in the diesel vs petrol discussion: I think diesels in densely populated area's will have a harder and harder time to survive but they will probably survive in all country area's. The fear that investment in diesel technology would be hurt is justified I believe since honda used to produce diesels, specifically for those thick europeans and they stopped doing that (at least announced it), volvo has also announced to quit the diesel game, mercedes runs mostly renault diesels since they can't meet regulations otherwise, JLR sales have taken a huge hit which is probably due to thier mostly diesel line-up has taken a beating, etc. etc.
Perhaps this is good news. The world will stop caring about trying to "improve" the diesel engine, aka kill it even further with more restrictions, and just let it be in the area's where it is needed. Availability of fuel could become an issue though.
I know one thing and that is that I am pushing towards making my dream trip(s) as soon as I possibly can since I am not getting any younger and before I know it, I can't even visit them anymore because of the environment. Luckily I stubbornly chose a P38 with a rover V8 petrol, hopefully that'll get me into most places before I am done
Cheers,
-P
PS most of this is less relevant to australia I guess but I would only hope that the lessons we have already learned down here are useful for your government not to make those same mistakes, but that might be too much to hope for.
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Originally Posted by prelude
Sorry to get back to the original topic and kinda skipping the towing part
.... not towing!
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