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  • Hacker News
  • The world is in a weird prisoner’s dilemma right now. US, China, to some extent India, are pumping out CO2, and deriving a short term “co2” dividend of higher growth, unencumbered by green transition cost. Europe is somewhat trying harder to transition away, partly for “green” reasons, partly for sovereignty reasons, partly because they just outsourced their industry.

    Europe is also potentially more affected by climate change than US and China, as I understand. India of course would be toast in a hotter world, but perhaps it too poor right now to do much about it easily.

    But discoordinated action won’t move the dial. So should Europe continue on the green path while losing GDP share to US, China and India? Should it jump on the coal bandwagon and screw up the world since everyone else is? It’s not like green contrarian action will do much good on its own.

    It’s altogether a not pretty picture…

    by rich_sasha
  • Huh?

    https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capit...

    by ImHereToVote
  • My impression is that the US is more vulnerable to climate change than Europe. While Europe has heat waves, the US has a hurricane problem that simply does not exist in Europe, which can result in horrendous societal damage.
    by pgsandstrom
  • Plus, the US dumped the most CO2 into the atmosphere in the first place. They shat in the pool and now seem be to telling others to clean up the pool. At least we received some good entertainment content from the US in return.
    by robocat
  • > So should Europe continue on the green path while losing GDP share to US, China and India?

    So the article is about huge private EV car marketshare in Denmark, but for the whole EU the EV marketshare of passenger vehicles is around 25% right now, plus around 10% PHEV. China (a much bigger car market) is at 43% EV marketshare, and also another 20% for PHEV. They have invested much more in the passenger vehicle transition to EV than us (the EU). And they did it partly (also, of course, for other reasons) because they have seen this as an opportunity to leapfrog powerful foreign carmakers that have made or sold huge amounts of ICE cars in China and create their own independent car industry.

    Which means this is clearly the wrong question. Even if somehow the EU car industry returned to making ICEs, it won't save them.

    > India of course would be toast in a hotter world, but perhaps it too poor right now to do much about it easily.

    Even so, their 3-wheeler market is already overwhelmingly EVs.

    > But discoordinated action won’t move the dial.

    And this take is incorrect too. If you have a look at the IPCC RCP scenarios, the worst (RCP8.5 I believe) has already been dropped because it's improbable because the emmission curve has been trending a bit lower as a result of our actions. China's CO2 output is peaking right about now. And we have CBAM. We have to do what's possible.

    by tpm
  • Mr. Trump unexpectedly, successfully promoted EV around the world!
    by donkeylazy456
  • In another news the sales of +10 years old diesel cars are not dropping in Romania and Bulgaria and Hungary and the Balkan countries
    by thrownawaysz
  • I live in a town in Hungary and would never consider an EV. It is slow and costs about the same to charge as petrol, there is no infrastructure, way more expensive, value degrades more compared a simple (and clean, euro 6) diesel or petrol engine here. If I had a house with solar panels on the roof (thank you govt subsidiaries), maaaybe. I can buy a few years old compact car for 6-10k euros and use it for years with none of the infrastructure cost or battery degradation.
    by concretebush
  • Chinese EVs are making rapid inroads in the balkans, lots of new brands
    by seydor
  • The supply of 10+ year old EVs is rather limited, so that is not a very surprising fact.
    by adrianN
  • New diesel vehicles are 6.4% of sales in Romania, 15.4% in Bulgaria, 9.5% in Hungary, 12.2% in Croatia.

    That's a drop except in Bulgaria, where it's the same as last year.

    And if those 10+ year old diesels are replacing 15, 20+ year old diesels it's still an improvement.

    https://www.acea.auto/pc-registrations/new-car-registrations...

    by Symbiote
  • Has the EV charging infrastructure kept pace with the EV adoption?
    by langfo
  • In Sweden it has. When I got my EV 4 years ago, the list of public EV charging locations was about the same as the amount of petrol stations, now its 3-4x as many. And as others have mentioned, having a wall charger of your own is of course the easiest and cheapest, but fearing long distance travels with EVs in Europe is not a thing, I think.
    by IcePic
  • No. And it's not the number of charging stations, it's the general shittiness of those. You never know how much you will pay per kWh, there are apps, networks, roaming agreements, cards, getting through this mess and starting to charge is always a challenge and takes a significant time (sometimes comparable to charging time!). You also get gouged on pricing, companies clearly set it so that the cost of 100km is comparable to that of a gas-powered vehicle. And for some reason people think EVs can only charge by backing into a stall, never in a drive-through bay like gasoline vehicles.

    I own an EV and enjoy it a lot. I would not even consider buying a gas vehicle again. But while charging at home is great, charging during a trip is annoying. This needs regulation.

    by jwr
  • There are 50K public chargers in Denmark. 7K of which are fast chargers. There's no shortage of public chargers and more are deployed as demand is increasing. Also, Denmark is a small country. Most return trips inside the country would be doable on a single charge if you have one of the newer longer range vehicles. Copenhagen to Aarhus is only 300km or so. You could do that without charging in a new BMW. Mostly people charge at home or at one of those tens of thousands of roadside chargers in their neighborhood.

    And of course Denmark pioneered a lot of wind technology. The country is running on cheap wind power at this point and you can get really favorable rates off peak hours.

    by jillesvangurp
  • Most people charge EVs at home most of the time.
    by hdgvhicv
  • At least here in Norway it has, it seems like it's not very difficult to put some cables in the ground and install a big pre built metal box :)

    Most gas stations have them and there is also a lot of street charging stations.

    But it's still cheapest to charge at home.

    by capitol_
  • it is hidden behind paywall, here no paywall and in English

    https://www.electrive.com/2026/08/04/denmark-evs-account-for...

    also it should be noted that Denmark has extremely high car registration taxes, so for instance 40K EUR worth ICE car cost after registration 73.5K EUR, while 40K EUR BEV cost after registration 40K EUR, that's really tough choice to make - either you pay 73K EUR for ICE or 40K EUR for BEV, both with same price tag in dealership + BEV has other benefits like cheaper parking etc.

    if gov were to remove these artificial (B)EV tax benefits then we would really see what would people choose, but gov is completely influecing the market, so people just do what is currently beneficial for their wallet, it is for sure not due to EV being good, do you think people would buy EVs if tax rates were reversed and ICE would cost 40K EUR and BEV would cost 73K EUR?

    by Markoff
  • Data set of one: yes I would. I despise the stink of fumes. And generally, I see zero advantages of gas over EV - also the other way around - a car is a car, costs some, takes you from A to B, unless it's some hobby (which is not this discussion).
    by soco
  • if gov were to remove these artificial (B)EV tax benefits then we would really see what would people choose, but gov is completely influecing the market, so people just do what is currently beneficial for their wallet, it is for sure not due to EV being good, do you think people would buy EVs if tax rates were reversed and ICE would cost 40K EUR and BEV would cost 73K EUR?

    Pound for pound I prefer an EV for as a daily driver (have a Hyundai Ioniq 5). Instant torque, no maintenance to speak of besides tires and windshield fluid. They are not exciting, there is no delicious noise drama. But in the US, the EVs and hybrids/PHEVs have always been, and now more so, more expensive than their ICE counterparts. Good for Denmark, hopefully that spreads here with the next admin.

    One immediate downside of EVs that I often see cited in the states, is that even small accident can result in a total insurance write off of the vehicle, much more often or severe than with ICE cars. Which is kind of strange, because new ICE cars pack as much tech.

    by stasomatic
  • Maybe that's a fair price for the externalities of fossil fuels.
    by stevesimmons
  • It is interesting that the big selling brands are Skoda (VW group) and VW itself, then a resurgent Tesla in third place. These are companies that are claiming hardship from Chinese EV imports and VW is planning to lay off 100K employees.
    by wood_spirit
  • Denmark is right next to Germany, so has a high affinity for German car brands. Even with worse specs than the chinese imports, the danes feel the german brands are a higher quality a more stable producer who will be there for the long run, so service and guarantees can be trusted.
    by ExxKA
  • Assuming this continues, it'll be interesting to see what happens in about a decade as demand for petrol collapses. My general sense is that there's a fairly _large_ minimum demand required before the fuel distribution network becomes uneconomic and just collapses.
    by rsynnott
  • No wonder, the country is so small that any modern EV can drive it around completely with single charge. They also have abundance of especially wind energy, and the government recently dropped the electricity tax to EU minimum in order to make electricity very affordable for the Danish folks.
    by sqbic
  • eh, this is EU people regularly and en mass do comute across borders for work.
    by cineticdaffodil
  • I don't think driving around the country is the main selling point of a car, at least not around here. Huge commutes by car are not a usual thing in my environment, au contrary, I know companies who actively push against that.
    by soco
  • How often does the majority of the population need to drive around the country? I doubt it’s a major factor for the majority of people.
    by moltar
  • The country has also modified the tax code that any EV is ~5000 euro cheaper in acquisition costs (through tax punishment for ICE + tax advantage for EV), about ~800 euro per year cheaper (there's secondary tax measures making ICE vehicles more expensive on an ongoing basis, depends on the car, and okay, 800 would be for a very nice car), plus guaranteed public charging capacity (and of course due to charging limits these are cheap parking spaces too)

    That's what it takes in 2026 to make EVs still not quite cheaper than ICE cars. I imagine the free-with-charging-at-guaranteed-low-prices parking spaces make a large difference here.

    Sadly for obvious capacity reasons the cheap parking space will be only for a few years.

    by spwa4