Nobody is "irrationally scared" of EVs. We are rationally scared that, once enough well-off people have switched to EVs, this market share will be used as an excuse to stop poor people from driving their petrol or diesel cars. ("Rationally" because this is already happening.)
> We are rationally scared that, once enough well-off people have switched to EVs, this market share will be used as an excuse to stop poor people from driving their petrol or diesel cars.
I don't think that is rational at all. Have you ever looked at vintage car regulations in Europe? There are none, basically-- if your car is old enough, neither accident nor emission mitigation/prevention are required at all.
Why would you expect that this is going to change?
For one, cars old enough to be without emissions or safety equipment are becoming more rare, to the point that they are now worth a significant amount of money. Anything that is currently in that grey, "pre-classic" area is already a very complicated machine that is very hard to maintain without OEM spares and support. Anything newer is designed from the ground up to hit a specified lifetime then get ground up into flakes for recycling. Opinions vary on the positive outcomes of this.
For two - regulations are constantly changing. Many cities have low-emissions zones. The EU is making significant changes to their vehicle end-of-life laws.
"Poor people" are not going to be maintaing classic old cars as a cheap form of transport, like some rose-tinted view of Cuba. They already lease brand-new cars.
This is not true. ULEZ already exist and are mandatory from the EU in several cities of my country. (If your city has a population of more than X, you must implement a ULEZ.) People with 15 year old diesel cars can no longer drive in those cities. Exactly the same people who can't afford to change their cars. We are not talking “vintage” cars. We are talking poor people cars.
Where buying a car is really expensive? The only places that come in mind are those packed cities that require a parking place for a car. Nothing to do with EV.
Europe is not the US, we have somewhat functional public transport in most parts of the continent, you are not _that_ dependent on a car. Also, EVs will become cheaper than ICEs, with or without subsidies or tax incentives, it's only a matter of time. Battery prices on a cell level approach €40/kWh. A new drive-train incl. battery will be < 2000€.
Also, given that polluted air affects poor people the most, getting rid of all that exhaust of old worn out cars with ICEs will be a good thing in any case.
>Europe is not the US, we have somewhat functional public transport in most parts of the continent, you are not _that_ dependent on a car.
That's a case by case basis and not valid blanket-wide over everyone in every city on the whole continent. Outside of HN bubble, not everyone lives in big cities with high speed rail, underground subways or working remotely in small villages with amazing bicycle paths
A lot of tier 2 cities are heavily underdeveloped in that regard and need a car for commute to work outsider or inside the city, unless you wanna spend 1-2+ hours/day, each way, on public transit switching and waiting on buses since such cities sprawled out and grew in size a lot, but public transit infra is still stuck in the 90s with slow busses and no trains. Car ownership is still the only way you can have some free time between work, sleep and commute.
This is all fine and well, but eventually once the peasants have taken enough fuckings on enough axis over enough people's pet issues they will realize the trend and you and all your buddies who think it's ok to just fuck people will lose your heads or get to share a hole or whatever. Maybe it'll be offset by productivity gains and take a few generations to get there but fucking the peasantry because the rulers know better, or whatever the argument is, isn't a sustainable way to run societies.
As the middle class shrinks it becomes clearer that these sort of heavy handed policies are almost exclusively peddled by what marx would call the bourgeois. You don't see the "my car is a significant expense" or "home ownership isn't a given" class people going off advocating for policy like this on minor issues.
Most people where I live, even the poorest, can afford to own a car and almost all of them do. It’s regulations that are making car ownership impossible for those people. It’s the government that is a bourgeois enemy of the people.
Into compliance? Compliance of what? Also why do you want draconian measures to push consumers to buy? Shouldn't you let consumers buy whenever they can afford to change their cars? What kind of draconian measures are you thinking of, emission regulations that make it impossible for poor people to drive their cars?
It's not at all clear why poor people should ever want to leave their allocated urban subdivision. We certainly don't want them clogging up tourist spots that should be kept for appreciation by sophisticated wealthy foreigners.
We don't want the CO2 that is created (and other consequences of oil production/consumption), the money can be spent on something better, and we don't want to depend on oil-exporting countries more than necessary.
First off it was like 2 months after my father's death we didnt have time for this, secondly my mom got an attorney that I paid. Was roughly the same amount though. We never paid them.
It's also not necessarily against their interests either. For example Article 15 made any European google alternative much harder, that's good for Google. Google can afford to comply with any regulation, smaller EU google wannabes can not as easily.
Then regulation like unified digital id is big business, the EU is a neoliberal institution, most of everything their member states governments do is through public-private partnerships, there is profit to be made. So investments in things like age verification are funneled to lobby for them. The EU in general is almost as big in lobby spending as the US.
The other thing is the US intel easily gets a full plaintext feed from things like whatsapp, but the EU needs chat control/etc. to get the same access.
The parent comment confuses Spain and Italy as if they were the same... as if Spain didn't had French and UK influences from the North at all since the 1600's and before... yeah sure.
Spain had and has picaresca as the Italians, of course... but we aren't 100% the same and it shows off. We used to buy legal games in the 80's because the prices plumetted down because of the piracy, and between the shaddy game loaders and having to wait 15 minutes per load, everyone wanted at least to buy one or two original games in order to play something without losing literal hours trying to tweak the casette player.
Italy in the meanwhile just resold foreing games as if they were local. Some Spaniards did the same too; but it had small powerhouses as Aventuras AD, Erbe Software and such, not just a few by any means.
And we’ve all been sold a bill of goods on the necessity of diplomas and degrees. Because businesses have been sold a bill of goods on the quality of employees with diplomas and degrees.
Within at least the last 15 years, the paper provided by a school is no guarantee of better pay - but that’s how high schoolers are convinced to go into excessive debt for attending post-secondary schools.
Has this actually happened? I didn’t find anything on Google.