Speaker 1: A big part of the transition from fossil fuels to
Speaker 1: renewable energy is electric cars. I've lost track of how
Speaker 1: many times we've talked about evs in one way or
Speaker 1: another on this show, but in some places, the growing
Speaker 1: desire for electric cars has also come with growing pains.
Speaker 1: Hong Kong based reporter Linda Lu went out to see
Speaker 1: a strange site that can be found in a number
Speaker 1: of cities in China, EV graveyards where unwanted early models
Speaker 1: are piling.
Speaker 2: Up, hundreds and hundreds of these cars sitting under the
Speaker 2: sun gathering bus as far as that I could see.
Speaker 1: Later, contributor Villa Marx talks about how Norway, which offers
Speaker 1: generous tax breaks for EV buyers, is now contending with
Speaker 1: some unexpected consequences of so many people flocking to buy them.
Speaker 3: So when you have this big hole in your public
Speaker 3: finances because of these incentives, because of these exemptions from
Speaker 3: tax for evs, you've seen that whole become problematic and
Speaker 3: it's become a bit of a political footballer Norway.
Speaker 1: And a city councilman in Oslo, Norway tells us why
Speaker 1: even with more evs, he thinks cities like his would
Speaker 1: still be better off with fewer cars period. I'm West
Speaker 1: Kasova today on the Big Take the Upsides and down
Speaker 1: sides of the EV Boom. Hey Linda, Hi, wear's how you?
Speaker 1: I'm all right. I am just fascinated to talk to
Speaker 1: you about this because your story was about something I
Speaker 1: didn't even know existed, these EV graveyards. How did you
Speaker 1: even come up with the idea to write about this?
Speaker 2: So Chinese media has been reporting this phenomenon since two
Speaker 2: thousand nineteen, and we kind of thought, maybe, you know,
Speaker 2: these car companies and government after previous media reports, they
Speaker 2: would have cleaned them up by now, But actually, as
Speaker 2: we discovered to our surprise, they are very much still
Speaker 2: out there. So these are EV's that have been kind
Speaker 2: of abandoned after usually it's the right hailing companies that
Speaker 2: own them went bust, or they're EV's that have become
Speaker 2: obsolete because they usually lower quality, have lower driving ranges,
Speaker 2: so now that you get better models on the market,
Speaker 2: people don't want them anymore.
Speaker 1: And so they've just been abandon.
Speaker 2: So when we went to visit a couple of these
Speaker 2: EV graveyards and Hungre City recently, we just saw hundreds
Speaker 2: and hundreds of these cars sitting under the sun, gathering
Speaker 2: dust as far as that I could see. Essentially, they've
Speaker 2: got weeds growing all around them. There's weeds coming out
Speaker 2: of their trunks. Some of them still have soft toys
Speaker 2: or drink bottles left over from their previous drivers. A
Speaker 2: very kind of desolate picture of abandoned cars.
Speaker 1: And why were they just left there?
Speaker 2: I think people don't really know what to do with
Speaker 2: these cars. The companies that owned them went bankrupt and
Speaker 2: the government have been trying to clean them up, but
Speaker 2: the legal ownership of these cars are not clear. Now
Speaker 2: we've read about some of these cars are actually waiting
Speaker 2: to be auctioned off, but again it's not clear who
Speaker 2: should take responsibility for them.
Speaker 1: And why were there so many of these ride sharing
Speaker 1: companies that popped up in China and then just went belly.
Speaker 2: Up with EV's. The Chinese government kick started a boom
Speaker 2: with giving out millions of not billions of juan and
Speaker 2: subsidies to try to get people interested in these evs.
Speaker 2: At that time, the evs were lower quality, lower driving ranges.
Speaker 2: Consumers weren't that interested, but the right hailing companies were,
Speaker 2: so they started up to take advantage of the subsidies.
Speaker 1: So it makes sense why these ride sharing companies would
Speaker 1: suddenly pop up if they're getting these government incentives. But
Speaker 1: who is making all of these cars in China?
Speaker 2: China had a lot of new EV startups that essentially
Speaker 2: into the market after all of the subsidies came on
Speaker 2: the scene. You've also got existing car makers that started
Speaker 2: churning out evs as well, on top of gasoline cars.
Speaker 2: At one stage, there were as many as five hundred
Speaker 2: EV startups.
Speaker 1: All of them making cars.
Speaker 2: Not all of them were making cars, but they were
Speaker 2: definitely trying to get a piece of those subsidies. Recently,
Speaker 2: after the subsidies dried up, so the government essentially slashed
Speaker 2: those subsidies from twenty nineteen and last year ended that program.
Speaker 1: Why did they do that.
Speaker 2: I think it's a combination of the government realizing a
Speaker 2: lot of it's actually gone to waste, and also China
Speaker 2: always has kind of a ten year plan.
Speaker 1: When did the government start noticing that this was becoming
Speaker 1: a problem, that all these cars were being abandoned and
Speaker 1: just left to right.
Speaker 2: The kind of abandoned graveyards didn't gain attention until twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: but the government was aware of subsidy fraud as early
Speaker 2: as twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: And what did subsidy fraud?
Speaker 2: The companies were fraudulent claiming subsidies for evs that they
Speaker 2: said they were making when they weren't making, you know,
Speaker 2: evs that would qualify it. Some companies made just empty
Speaker 2: chases of cars that didn't contain any batteries, getting like
Speaker 2: a generous eight thousand US dollar subsidy for each car
Speaker 2: that they claimed to have sold. Some companies made evs
Speaker 2: that did have batteries, but the batteries didn't fit the standards,
Speaker 2: so they wouldn't have qualified it, but they still fraudulently
Speaker 2: claimed them. And then these right hailing companies that started up,
Speaker 2: some of them were backed by carmakers themselves, so carmakers
Speaker 2: would just easily shif their inventory from themselves to these
Speaker 2: right hailing companies to get those subsidies.
Speaker 1: All told, how much did China spend on the subsidies
Speaker 1: to both car makers and these ride sharing companies.
Speaker 2: Local media have reported that they estimated something like nine
Speaker 2: billion yun of subsidies were fradulently claimed, and.
Speaker 1: That comes out to about one point two five billion
Speaker 1: US dollars today. One of the things you write in
Speaker 1: this story is that not only is it just an
Speaker 1: isore to have all these cars stacking up, but it's
Speaker 1: what you call a missed opportunity.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, because all of these cars contain metals in
Speaker 2: their batteries such as nicole, cobalt, and lithium that are
Speaker 2: very much in demand to make new evs these days.
Speaker 2: Not to mention, obviously, you've got other components in the
Speaker 2: car that could be reused. So essentially they've become what
Speaker 2: people have caught them urban minds that are just waiting
Speaker 2: to be recycled.
Speaker 1: And despite all these cars that went to waste and
Speaker 1: all the money that went to waste, you write that
Speaker 1: there was an upside to this huge investment in cars
Speaker 1: that it gave a big boost to China's EV industry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was something that surprised me. Essentially, after speaking
Speaker 2: to analysts about this phenomenon, one of them told me
Speaker 2: that she thinks that it's something that was essential to
Speaker 2: China's journey and EV adoption because without these early stage
Speaker 2: ride healing companies, there wouldn't have been this demand for
Speaker 2: car companies to keep investing in EV related technologies and
Speaker 2: At the same time, when customers weren't buying them, they
Speaker 2: still had exposure to EV's through using these right healing companies.
Speaker 2: They acted as an education for customers that EV's were
Speaker 2: a safe alternative.
Speaker 1: So what does the government said about these things? What
Speaker 1: do they say are they're going to do with them?
Speaker 2: We reached out the Chinese government for the story. Unfortunately
Speaker 2: they didn't respond to us. Local media reports have said
Speaker 2: that Hongo governments, where these ev graveyards that we visited
Speaker 2: were located, said that they were trying to clean them up.
Speaker 2: But obviously they're still out there because we just saw
Speaker 2: them recently.
Speaker 1: Are there still more cars coming into these graveyards or
Speaker 1: are these artifacts from another time that is passed.
Speaker 2: I think there's a possibility that more cars could still
Speaker 2: end up being abandoned. Hangjol, the city that we're discussing,
Speaker 2: essentially released new rules again saying that EV's that are
Speaker 2: driven has to be over a certain price range, So
Speaker 2: that would eliminate a lot of the older, cheaper evs.
Speaker 2: So I think as long as Chinese cities continue to
Speaker 2: adjust their EV standards, you're going to have more cars
Speaker 2: that will become obsolete.
Speaker 1: So you could have this generation of great evs winding
Speaker 1: up in the graveyard as the new generation comes out
Speaker 1: and the other ones are just no longer useful exactly.
Speaker 1: And you mentioned earlier that there big lost opportunity of
Speaker 1: not recycling the batteries and all the precious metals that
Speaker 1: these cars contain. Do you think that's going to happen? Somebody,
Speaker 1: it seems, could probably make a lot of money doing that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And it's funny because after the story went out, I've
Speaker 2: had a reader reached out to me that said they
Speaker 2: deal in industrial assets and could they please be referred
Speaker 2: to whoever owns these evs because they would very much
Speaker 2: like to get their hands and try to recycle these cars.
Speaker 2: But in China, I think there is an appetite to
Speaker 2: recycle them again. I think it's a question of who
Speaker 2: owns these cars and who has the responsibility to take
Speaker 2: care of them. I think once that sorted out, these
Speaker 2: cars could very much be put to reuse again.
Speaker 1: Linda, you cover China's car industry. When you look at
Speaker 1: this story, what's the lesson you take away from this?
Speaker 2: When you use industrial policy to to try to basically
Speaker 2: grow a nascent sector, access and wastes are quite an
Speaker 2: easy thing to happen, you know, other countries like the
Speaker 2: US or also you know, dolling out subsidies to try
Speaker 2: to grow the EV sector. I think this is something
Speaker 2: maybe that people should pay attention to, just to make
Speaker 2: sure that well, it's a good thing that you're going
Speaker 2: this green space, but also make sure that you know
Speaker 2: there's compliance. People aren't just in there to get the
Speaker 2: easy money, that it's genuine growth that you're trying to help.
Speaker 1: Steward, Linda, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 2: Thanks Liz for having me.
Speaker 1: After the break. What happened when Norway gave citizens big
Speaker 1: sweeteners to buy evs? Let's go from China to Norway.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business Week contributor Villain Marx reports that the government's
Speaker 1: big pushed make evs attractive has been a huge success,
Speaker 1: and now that's created a bit of a puzzle too.
Speaker 1: Film you're writing about Norway's amazing success story with EV's
Speaker 1: and they have just a huge number of electric vehicles
Speaker 1: on the road.
Speaker 3: They really do. It's by far the most in terms
Speaker 3: of per capita EV adoption anywhere in the world, hundreds
Speaker 3: of thousands of them in a relatively small country, and.
Speaker 1: When somebody in Norway goes to buy a car, they're
Speaker 1: almost always now buying an electric vehicle.
Speaker 3: Is that right? Yeah, we looked at the last couple
Speaker 3: of months and we looked at the averages. It was
Speaker 3: more than ninety six percent of all new car purchases
Speaker 3: or either electric vehicles or hybrids, and that was just
Speaker 3: an astonishing number.
Speaker 1: And of course it's not just an accident. The reason
Speaker 1: that happened is because Norway really wants people to buy
Speaker 1: electric cars.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this has been a long time program in Norway.
Speaker 3: They were moving in this direction really before any other
Speaker 3: government in the world was thinking about this, going back
Speaker 3: to the nineteen nineties, they had some of the earliest
Speaker 3: tax incentives and the consequence has been that for people
Speaker 3: deciding to buy a new car, it's just not made
Speaker 3: economic sense to buy a car that's not in some
Speaker 3: way electrically powered because of the level of taxation on
Speaker 3: hydrocarbon and carbon emitting vehicles.
Speaker 1: Can you run through some of those numbers, because that
Speaker 1: was one of the things that really leaped out at
Speaker 1: me in your story was just how expensive it is
Speaker 1: to buy a gasoline powered car in Norway.
Speaker 3: So ninety six percent let's say roughly new car purchases
Speaker 3: are electric vehicles. Obviously, that leaves a very small number
Speaker 3: that are not. But in terms of those that are
Speaker 3: facing that decision when they start to look at how
Speaker 3: much is going to cost them to buy a emitting vehicle,
Speaker 3: it's absolutely astronomical. We're talking tens of thousands of dollars
Speaker 3: more than you would expect some of the vehicles, going
Speaker 3: up to well over one hundred thousand dollars for a
Speaker 3: not particularly fancy car, just based on the amount of
Speaker 3: taxation that's being applied. So, for instance, we looked at
Speaker 3: the data and over the past three decades, the EV
Speaker 3: market's been exempted from what's known as the auto purchase
Speaker 3: tax that currently averages more than twenty seven thousand US
Speaker 3: dollars a car, and that is not forgetting on top
Speaker 3: of the vat the value added TACKS, which is itself
Speaker 3: twenty five percent, and so with your combustion vehicle and
Speaker 3: that's what you decide to buy, those fees are being
Speaker 3: based on just a combination of weight and emissions, and
Speaker 3: therefore the bigger and the dirtier your car is, you're
Speaker 3: going to be paying a huge amount more than.
Speaker 1: That, and so Norway has just exempted electric vehicles from
Speaker 1: all of these additional.
Speaker 3: Fees, yeah, largely over the last few years until very recently,
Speaker 3: And that was kind of the crux of our piece.
Speaker 3: Is this fork in the road, if you'll forgive the pun,
Speaker 3: that the government's had to make to try and figure
Speaker 3: out how they make this sustainable from a taxation burden
Speaker 3: distribution perspective for citizens. As they get to a point
Speaker 3: where double digit percentage of their total vehicle fleet for
Speaker 3: passengers is now electric, where do you draw the line?
Speaker 3: And that was the question that we set out to
Speaker 3: try and answer.
Speaker 1: And the reason why Norway is really struggling with this
Speaker 1: is because they're losing a huge amount of tax revenue
Speaker 1: because all these people are buying evs, which they wanted
Speaker 1: them to do, but as a result, they're not getting
Speaker 1: all the money from those car sales.
Speaker 3: Governments make a huge amount of cash every year from
Speaker 3: car tax right, and so when you've got tens of thousands,
Speaker 3: hundreds of thousands, millions of vehicles in larger economies being
Speaker 3: brought every year, that translates into billions of dollars in
Speaker 3: tax revenue. And in twenty twenty two last year. According
Speaker 3: to government estimates in Norway, those incentives for EV purchases,
Speaker 3: they ended up costing the national treasury around four billion
Speaker 3: dollars the equivalent in tax revenue, and we figured out
Speaker 3: that was around two two percent of the country's entire
Speaker 3: treasury take for the year. And it's become a bit
Speaker 3: of a political football in Norway.
Speaker 1: Why did Norway adapt these incentives so much earlier than
Speaker 1: a lot of other countries.
Speaker 3: That is a debatable question to answer, and it depends
Speaker 3: who you ask. Norwegians felt they had a responsibility to
Speaker 3: try and be at the head of the curve on
Speaker 3: this adoption of evs as one of the mechanisms as
Speaker 3: a country they can adopt to try and get closer
Speaker 3: to net zero. And because they make huge margins on
Speaker 3: their oil exports and their production, this is something that
Speaker 3: as a country they were perhaps more easily able to
Speaker 3: access the financing for these kinds of incentives, these exemptions
Speaker 3: of the taxes on other vehicles. They've ended up with
Speaker 3: what they wanted. They've seen the numbers of EV purchases rise,
Speaker 3: as I said, to ninety six percent, and theyre at
Speaker 3: a point now where in theory, within the next eighteen months,
Speaker 3: cars that emit carbon will no longer be happening, at
Speaker 3: least for new purchases anywhere in Norway. And speaking to
Speaker 3: the dealerships, you know they're planning for that. The manufacturers,
Speaker 3: they're planning for that. When you're thinking about buying a
Speaker 3: new car, of course, you're not just thinking about what's
Speaker 3: the sticker price, you're also thinking what's it going to
Speaker 3: cost me to run? And part of the value proposition
Speaker 3: that Norway has made four users of electric vehicles is
Speaker 3: that you will maybe pay less when you first purchase it,
Speaker 3: but you'll also have lower running costs. You will not
Speaker 3: have such high fees when you're passing through tolls on
Speaker 3: major highways or into major cities. You won't pay such
Speaker 3: high parking fees in major cities. A lot of people
Speaker 3: use ferries in Norway to get around the country, either
Speaker 3: to islands or different parts of the mainland, and those
Speaker 3: then also face much lower fees if you're driving an
Speaker 3: electric vehicle. There are some other really interesting kind of
Speaker 3: developments over the last few years around giving apartment owners
Speaker 3: this so called right to charge, meaning that if you
Speaker 3: own a block of flats or you're one of several
Speaker 3: condo owners in a building, all the other condo owners
Speaker 3: have to share the cost of reducing new charging infrastructure.
Speaker 3: So if you're the first EV owner in a block
Speaker 3: of six apartments, it's not all on you. The other
Speaker 3: five are forced by law to help underwrite that cost.
Speaker 1: So you say they're reducing these incentives, exactly what are
Speaker 1: they cutting back now?
Speaker 3: Over the last few decades, there have been different types
Speaker 3: of tax incentives on vehicle purchases, whether that's the value
Speaker 3: added tax or an auto purchase tax, and these have
Speaker 3: all been very live debates inside the Norwegian government over
Speaker 3: the last couple of years. What they've started to do, though,
Speaker 3: is think about how they can disincentivize people from buying
Speaker 3: perhaps the larger, heavier, maybe even more expensive evs with
Speaker 3: a form of essentially progressive taxations, so that when you
Speaker 3: get above a certain value of a car, you will
Speaker 3: face a tax rate that is not in place lower
Speaker 3: down that value scale. And so what they're thinking is
Speaker 3: that if they can increase the taxes on the more
Speaker 3: expensive vehicles but maintain some of the exemption for the
Speaker 3: cheaper ones, it will allow people further down the socio
Speaker 3: economic ladder to still make this transition to an EV
Speaker 3: but won't necessarily encourage wealthier people to buy multiple evs
Speaker 3: at a time when frankly, they would like to have
Speaker 3: less cars overall.
Speaker 1: How are people in Norway reacting to new taxes and
Speaker 1: fees and cars that for so many years were an
Speaker 1: incentive to buy them.
Speaker 3: One thing it has seemingly incentivized is to have people
Speaker 3: driving when it's very cheap to get into town. If
Speaker 3: you maybe live in the suburb, you're incentivized to drive
Speaker 3: your car because you can park and you don't pay
Speaker 3: a congestion charge or whatever it might be. They seem
Speaker 3: to have had enough warning, had enough advanced notice on
Speaker 3: these price changes. There's not been too much outcry. It
Speaker 3: does seem to have had the impact of encouraging people
Speaker 3: to move faster in some ways, and that's why we've
Speaker 3: got to this extraordinariyly ninety six percent number of new
Speaker 3: purchases being evs and hybrids.
Speaker 1: Norway is just starting to roll these things out. But
Speaker 1: you write about as an example of what happens if
Speaker 1: you take away these incentives too quickly, because their experience
Speaker 1: was completely different.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was having this conversation with one of the
Speaker 3: CEOs of one of the larger charging network companies, and
Speaker 3: here and his team were very keen to point out
Speaker 3: that in Sweden, where they'd ended these subsidies, in their words,
Speaker 3: too quickly, they saw this drop in demand for evs
Speaker 3: because they hadn't maybe got to that point of momentum,
Speaker 3: that tipping point, whatever you want to call it, where
Speaker 3: people felt they had no choice but to move along
Speaker 3: that transition curve, and so people I think over the
Speaker 3: course of the first half of this year there was
Speaker 3: a twenty percent drop in private car registrations for evs
Speaker 3: in Sweden, which they pointed to as evidence of don't
Speaker 3: move too quickly and too soon.
Speaker 1: For places like the US and the UK that are
Speaker 1: at least a few years behind Norway in this transition
Speaker 1: to evs, what are the lessons that they should be
Speaker 1: taken away from Norway's example.
Speaker 3: I'm an EV owner myself, that's my disclosure. I live
Speaker 3: in the UK. And one thing that again and again,
Speaker 3: the network is not yet there that people feel one
Speaker 3: hundred percent confident driving out of their house, their garage
Speaker 3: that they will get to where they want to be
Speaker 3: over long distances without complications or delays. And that's the
Speaker 3: lesson based on these conversations I had with Norwegians that
Speaker 3: they really seem to have got right. That is not
Speaker 3: a consideration for people there. They know that there are
Speaker 3: sufficiently large and sufficiently widespread charging facilities that that range
Speaker 3: anxiety you hear so often about is not a problem
Speaker 3: for them.
Speaker 1: Film. Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: After the break. How Norway's capital, Aslo, is trying to
Speaker 1: quickly adapt to so many new electric cars and its streets.
Speaker 1: I didn't trade all spends a lot of time thinking
Speaker 1: about this trend decision from gas cars to evs. He's
Speaker 1: a city councilman in Oslo, Norway, and he leads the
Speaker 1: Transport and Environmental Affairs committee. I think, what is the
Speaker 1: impact of so many people in the city and really
Speaker 1: in Norway buying evs.
Speaker 4: Well, it's a very important part of our climate efforts
Speaker 4: here in Norway. Of course, transportation cars is one of
Speaker 4: the main sources of emissions, and it's had a certain
Speaker 4: impact on the missions from car transportation, but we haven't
Speaker 4: come that far. It's about twelve thirteen percent of the
Speaker 4: total amount of cars right now, but for the city
Speaker 4: we have a much higher percentage, I think closer to
Speaker 4: forty percent now, and this does make a big difference.
Speaker 4: You know, it's quieter, it's less polluting. There are many
Speaker 4: benefits to changing to evs, and we see that become
Speaker 4: so popular that now it's over ninety percent of the
Speaker 4: new car sales.
Speaker 1: And we've been talking about all the incentives that the
Speaker 1: government gives the people to encourage them to buy evs.
Speaker 1: How do people feel about evs, about switching over from
Speaker 1: combustion engine cars.
Speaker 4: I think the kind of the phase where people were
Speaker 4: skeptical or unsure about evs are way behind us. There
Speaker 4: are having some starting issues with getting people chargers, having
Speaker 4: fast charging network, you know, in the whole country, but
Speaker 4: mainly now evs are just completely normal and most people
Speaker 4: would probably just not to consider buying a fossil fuel
Speaker 4: car if they buy a new car, both because there
Speaker 4: are a lot of you know, incentives, but also because
Speaker 4: they are basically just as useful and a bit cheaper.
Speaker 1: So that question of charging that you mentioned is always
Speaker 1: the big achilles heel with getting people to switch over.
Speaker 1: Imagine you had to deal with that question of getting
Speaker 1: enough charging stations in Asla we have and we.
Speaker 4: Still have issues with that with parking spaces especially not
Speaker 4: every one in the city, of course, have their own
Speaker 4: garage or their own house, so there are, you know,
Speaker 4: incentives we have spent a lot of money to incentivize,
Speaker 4: for example, people living in a city block where you
Speaker 4: can get chargers in your garage. So and of course
Speaker 4: also the city provides some public chargers, but I think
Speaker 4: that those are kind of quite manageable.
Speaker 1: What are some of the kind of unexpected downsides if
Speaker 1: there weren't any to so many electric vehicles, Like everyone
Speaker 1: thinks it's gonna be great, We're gonna switch over to EV's,
Speaker 1: and yet there's always things you just can't see.
Speaker 4: The biggest problem, I would say, is just that an
Speaker 4: EV is still a car, you know. It's there are
Speaker 4: a lot of cars in the city. We want to
Speaker 4: reduce the amount, and right now we are in a
Speaker 4: situation where evs are so lucrative that is actually cheaper
Speaker 4: than for example, using public transportation. A lot of people
Speaker 4: might use evs that might just as well have used
Speaker 4: the bike or walk to where they're going. So when
Speaker 4: we have been incentivizing them as much as we have
Speaker 4: in Norway, we can actually get to the kind of
Speaker 4: downside where you know, kind of squeeze out even more
Speaker 4: environmentally friendly modes of transportation. We are suffering a bit
Speaker 4: from the success of the EV revolution here in this city,
Speaker 4: I would say.
Speaker 1: And I guess it's not even just the question of
Speaker 1: green fuel versus dirty fossil fuel, but just quality of
Speaker 1: life that if you have a city where people walk
Speaker 1: and ride bikes, it's nicer than if everybody is stuck
Speaker 1: in traffic exactly.
Speaker 4: And this is kind of the next frontier, I guess,
Speaker 4: of the urban transportation debate, because here in Norway we
Speaker 4: have kind of had one answer to the environmental issues,
Speaker 4: and that has been to subsidize a new car for everyone.
Speaker 4: The battle for space in the city will be the
Speaker 4: same no matter you know, how you power your vehicle.
Speaker 4: And I guess that's kind of where we're now. The
Speaker 4: debate has gone in Austro. There is almost no opposition
Speaker 4: to the EV policies, but there are a growing kind
Speaker 4: of conflict about do we just want to be satisfied
Speaker 4: with everyone getting an electric car, or do we also
Speaker 4: want people to switch from the car to other multiple
Speaker 4: transportation that are more efficient and environmentally friendly.
Speaker 1: Is there any concern that you as looks at some
Speaker 1: American cities, which of course are just blocked up with
Speaker 1: cars since there's such a huge US car culture, and say, yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't want to be like that.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, And you know, we are lucky and or sure
Speaker 4: because this city was built before the cars. That's usually
Speaker 4: not the case for a lot of American cities. So
Speaker 4: we do have that privilege that a lot of our
Speaker 4: infrastructure is kind of made before we got the car
Speaker 4: explosion after the war. We do see that we have
Speaker 4: a better starting point. The city has been built around
Speaker 4: the subway system. We have a very good public transport system.
Speaker 4: There are more people traveling every day with public transport
Speaker 4: in this city than with cars. The very cheap availability
Speaker 4: of electric cars can be a threat to that, and
Speaker 4: this has to do with how we plan our cities,
Speaker 4: how where we build new developments, and of course what
Speaker 4: we incentivize. We want all cars to be electric, but
Speaker 4: we also want there to be fewer cars, and I
Speaker 4: think it's very important to be able to reach both
Speaker 4: those goals.
Speaker 1: Ivan, thanks for talking with me today, Thank you, thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to us here at the Big Take it's
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