Paris Plans To Banish All But Electric Cars By 2030

Reuters - Brian Love

Paris authorities plan to banish all petrol- and diesel-fueled cars from the world’s most visited city by 2030, Paris City Hall said on Thursday.

A view shows the skyline with the Eiffel Tower that is seen in the distance, in Paris, France, September 1, 2017. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes

The move marks an acceleration in plans to wean the country off gas-guzzlers and switch to electric vehicles in a city often obliged to impose temporary bans due to surges in particle pollution in the air.
Paris City Hall said in a statement France had already set a target date of 2040 for an end to cars dependent on fossil fuels and that this required speedier phase-outs in large cities.
“This is about planning for the long term with a strategy that will reduce greenhouse gases,” said Christophe Najdovski, an official responsible for transport policy at the office of Mayor Anne Hidalgo.
“Transport is one of the main greenhouse gas producers...so we are planning an exit from combustion engine vehicles, or fossil-energy vehicles, by 2030,” he told France Info radio.
The French capital, which will host the Olympic Games in the summer of 2024 and was host city for the latest worldwide pact on policies to tame global warming, had already been eyeing an end to diesel cars in the city by the time of the Olympics.
Paris City Hall, already under attack over the establishment of no-car zones, car-free days and fines for drivers who enter the city in cars that are more than 20 years old, said it was not using the word “ban” but rather introducing a feasible deadline by which combustion-engine cars would be phased out.
There are about 32 million household cars in France, where the population is about 66 million, according to 2016 data from the Argus, an automobile industry publication.
Many Parisians do not own cars, relying on extensive public transport systems and, increasingly, fast-burgeoning networks offering bikes, scooters and low-pollution hybrid engine cars for shot-term rental.
The ban on petrol-fueled, or gasoline-engine vehicles as they are known in the United States, marks a radical escalation of anti-pollution policy.
Many other cities in the world are considering similar moves and China, the world’s biggest polluter after the United States, recently announced that it would soon be seeking to get rid of combustion-engine cars too.

Links

• Why electric cars have hit a dead end in Australia
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• Paris to banish non-electric cars by 2030
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• Electric car sales SOAR in the UK as petrol and diesel bans are announced
• Norway proposes electric car tax that could affect Tesla significantly
• The rise of electric vehicles and the fall of gas engines is a matter of when, not if
• Electric cars: China’s highly charged power play
• With wireless charging, electric cars could drive forever
• No one's buying electric cars in Australia – so maybe we can let them drive in bus lanes
• Electric Vehicles Are Here. Now We Need to Figure Out How to Charge Them
• Electric car sales surge to record high as Brits beat 2040 petrol and diesel ban

General Motors Is Going All Electric

Wired - Alex Davies

General Motors

After more than a century peddling vehicles that pollute the atmosphere, General Motors is ending its relationship with gasoline and diesel. This morning, the American automotive giant announced that it is working toward an all-electric, zero-emissions future. That starts with two new, fully electric models next year—then at least 18 more by 2023.
That product onslaught puts the company at the forefront of an increasingly large crowd of automakers proclaiming the age of electricity and promising to move away from gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles.
In recent months, Volvo, Aston Martin, and Jaguar Land Rover have announced similar moves. GM’s declaration, though, is particularly noteworthy because it’s among the very largest automakers on the planet. It sold 10 million cars last year, ranging from pickups to SUVs to urban runabouts.
“General Motors believes the future is all-electric,” says Mark Reuss, the company’s head of product. “We are far along in our plan to lead the way to that future world.”
Reuss did not give a date for the death knell of the GM gas- or diesel-powered car, saying the transition will happen at different speeds in different markets and regions. The new all-electric models will be a mix of battery electric cars and fuel cell-powered vehicles.
To be sure, GM’s sudden jolt of electricity is planned with its shareholders in mind. The Trump Administration may be moving to roll back fuel efficiency requirements in the US, but the rest of the world is insisting on an electric age.
France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Norway have all said they plan to ban the sale of gas and diesel cars in the coming decades. More importantly, China—the world’s largest car market—and India, a rising star, plan to join them. No automaker can compete globally without a compelling stable of electric cars.
GM intends to grab as large a slice of the Chinese market as possible. It has previously announced plans to launch 10 electric or hybrid electric cars in the country by 2020. This summer, it started selling a two-seat EV there, for just $5,300. Last year, it sold more cars in China (3.6 million) than it did in the US (3 million).
The crucial question for the American automaker will be how, exactly, to make money from all these cars. By one report, GM loses $9,000 on each Chevy Bolt it sells. Reuss’ strategy hinges on bringing costs down thanks to steadily dropping battery prices, more efficient motors, and lighter cars. Massive scale and global supply chains helps, too. “This next generation will be profitable,” he says. “End of story.”
It's not impossible. “If they’ve really been laying this groundwork, they could be closer to not just having this tech but having a profitable and high volume way of supplying it," says Karl Brauer, an auto industry analyst with Kelley Blue Book.
General Motors’ history hasn’t been especially kind to electric mobility. Its invention of the automatic starter helped kill the first wave of electric cars at the start of the 20th century. This is the company that experimented with battery power in the EV-1, only to recall the two-seater from its owners, crush them all, and pile the carcasses up in a junkyard. In the first years of the 21st century, while Toyota was making hybrids popular with the Prius, GM was hawking the Hummer.
Over the past decade, the Detroit giant has positioned itself for a different sort of future. First came the hybrid electric Chevy Volt.
Then came GM’s great coup, the Chevy Bolt, the 200-mile, $30,000 electric car that hit market long before Tesla’s Model 3. GM is seriously pursuing semi-autonomous and fully driverless cars. It offers the first car on US roads with vehicle-to-vehicle communication capability. Now, it talks about its plans to eliminate vehicle pollution, congestion, and traffic deaths.
“GM has the ability to get all of us to that future so much faster,” Reuss says. Now it just has to deliver—and make enough money doing it to stick around for that future.

Links

• Dyson's Bid to Build an Electric Car Just Might Work
• Can This Tesla Alum Build the World’s Greenest Battery?
• Scope the Future of Driving With 7 Electric Concepts

Fears For Colony Of 18,000-Penguins That Bred Only Two Chicks

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

For the second time in four years, a large breeding colony of penguins on Antarctica has collapsed, raising the need for more wildlife protection as well as action to curb climate change, scientists say.
In January, the 18,000 pairs of Adelie penguins near France's Dumont d'Urville research station produced just two surviving chicks for the season. The penguins typically lay two eggs per pair.


Penguin-cam captures life under Antarctic ice
New footage released shows a penguin-eye view under the ice in Antarctic waters using a tiny camera mounted on the back of an Adelie penguin.

Four years earlier, about 20,200 pairs produced no surviving chicks at all, said WWF and researchers, including Yan Ropert-Coudert at France's National Centre for Scientific Research.
"Adelie penguins are one of the hardiest and most amazing animals on our planet," Rod Downie, head of WWF's polar programs, said in a statement.
"This devastating event contrasts with the image that many people might have of penguins," he said.
"It's more like 'Quentin Tarantino does Happy Feet', with dead penguin chicks strewn across a beach in Adelie Land," he said referring to the director of Pulp Fiction and the Hollywood animated blockbuster about penguins.
Dr Ropert-Coudert said unusual shifts in sea-ice cover appear to be the main cause of both breeding collapses.
"Meteorological factors - driven by large-scale climate changes - that are behind the massive failure are out of the norm, at least from what we know of the normal speed of changes in the past," he told Fairfax Media.

An Adelie penguin with its dead chick. Photo: Y. Ropert-Couder/ CNRS/ IPEV

In the first instance, the season began with the largest sea ice extent measured in the satellite era, while in the second period, the sea ice was unusually constant through the season. In both instances, adult penguins had to travel further to forage, leaving their chicks to starve.
Climate change appears to be affecting many other species, including shy albatrosses, which are having to fly further to feed. Increased intensity of rain events also appears to be affecting the integrity of their nests, prompting groups including the WWF to intervene by supplying more rigid nests for the birds.

Adelie penguins have suffered colony collapses twice in the past four years. Photo: Greg and Kate Bourne/WWF Australia

For the Adelie penguins, environmental groups are hoping the attention to the breeding failures will spur greater protection of the waters off East Antarctica, when delegates from 25 nations and the European Union meet in Hobart next week.
A proposal for a new marine protected area (MPA) is on the agenda of the meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources.

A waddle of Adelie penguins in Antarctica. Photo: Cheryl Ramalho

Such a new zone "would not prevent massive failure events like these but they would protect the species and their resources from further anthropogenic impacts that could superimpose on [them]", Dr Ropert-Coudert said.

Adelie penguin chicks starved to death at Dumont d'Urville in January. Photo: Y. Ropert-Couder/ CNRS/ IPEV 

A dead Adelie penguin chick is food for another bird. Photo: Y. Ropert-Couder/ CNRS/ IPEV

Adelie penguins - named in 1840 by French explorer Jules Dumont d'Urville after his wife, Adele - are generally faring well in East Antarctica but are in decline in the Antarctic Peninsula. The peninsula has had some of the most rapid increases in temperatures from global warming anywhere on the planet.
WWF said expectations were high that next week's gathering would support the creation of the new MPA. The plan is backed by Australia and France with the EU, and has been discussed by the commission for eight years.
The proposal originally comprised seven large marine areas off the coast of East Antarctica but was later cut to four. WWF said it was likely only three of those areas - MacRobertson, Drygalski, and the D'Urville Sea-Mertz region, where the Petrel Island Adelie colony is located - will be adopted this year.
Last year, the commission adopted the Ross Sea MPA, the largest protected area in the world. (See map below.)


Setting aside the D'Urville Sea Mertz region as off limits to krill fisheries will be particularly important for protecting the foraging and breeding grounds of the Adelie penguins, WWF said.

Links

• Thousands of Adelie penguin chick deaths lead to call for increased protections in Antarctica
• Thousands of tiny baby Adélie penguin starve to death as changing weather forces parents to travel for food
• Penguins starving to death is a sign that something’s very wrong in the Antarctic 
• 'Bold' move to halt the decline of the shy albatross
• Antarctic sea ice hits record low in big reversal
• The continent that climate change has not forgotten