Norway to 'Ban' the Sale of Regular Cars?

Not so fast, champ, what happened is way more insane, will rise prices significantly, and won't do anything to 'curb CO2 emissions'--in other words: it's perfect make-believe

Almost two years ago, we briefly talked about the hypocrisy—or realism?—of the Norwegian national gov’t granting oil & gas exploration licences while the Oslo municipal gov’t instituted a ‘zero emissions zone’ (terms and conditions apply, i.e., roads owned by the national gov’t are exempt):

Northern Delusions: Oslo to ban combustion engine vehicles from 2025 to 'combat CO2 emissions'

Of course, doing these things to ‘address the climate catastrophe™’ is one thing, esp. as I’m poised to be chatting about ‘how it’s going’ for the German-language Kontrafunk independent media station later today (2 Jan. 2025).

One of the funnier moments came when the editor asked me about that ‘ban™’ on combustion engine vehicles, which legacy media is talking about:

It’s a farce, if there ever was one—and don’t take my word for it; here’s the Norwegian Car-Driver’s Association (Norges Automobil-Forbund) explaining what is new from 2025 onwards:

No, the EU has Not Yet Banned Fossil-Fuelled Cars from 2035

Back then, it seemed that the EU Parliament had agreed that there would be a de facto ban on the sale of petrol and diesel cars in 2023 [come back to me if there is a de iure ban, then; note also that the EU ‘Parliament’ isn’t the legislative branch of the EU (that would be the EU Council)].

However, there is still no ban on the sale of cars with internal combustion engines [ah, here you see how the EU ‘Parliament’ gets to have its cake and eat it, too: you could still buy normal cars].

‘There has been a strong signal from the EU that the sale of new cars with petrol and diesel engines will stop in 2035. However, as many people believe, no formal ban has yet been imposed on the sale of new cars with petrol or diesel engines—although this may come.

Yes, you read this correctly: while European automobile manufacturing is about the phased out by insane amounts of regulation, loss of subsidies, and additional price hikes, you can still get normal cars by buying them from abroad.

For further insights, we turn to NAF’s press spokeswoman Ingunn Handagard:

What the EU has decided is two things: the first is that from 2035, the EU will stop selling new cars that run on classic [this is the key, keep it in mind] petrol and diesel. This will be achieved through a high production tax on new cars, not a ban [banning things is Soviet or Nazi, we’re of course more advanced than them; also, new taxes are also wonderful for the powers that be because it’s better for them to fleece the likes of you and me than to have us walk]. This tax will be higher the more fuel the car uses per mile, and in practice the taxes will be so high that for most people the electric car will be the preferred first choice [and they get to throw around more garbage words to make it seem we’re still running a market-economy™.

Translation from the absurd (with due reference to Robert Habeck of the German Greens—he is Economy Minister in the outgoing Scholz gov’t—who, when pressed about economic woes on a nightly talk show infamously said that ‘businesses aren’t insolvent, they merely don’t produce anymore’):

‘No-one is banning fossil-fuel cars, we’re just making them so expensive that you cannot afford them any longer.’

See how easy this is?

This nuance [sic] between taxes and bans may be important to some, because it will still be legal to manufacture, sell, and buy new cars with classic internal combustion engines in the EU after 2035—but they will be very expensive to buy. The European Parliament has also asked the Commission to investigate an actual ban, but no ban has been adopted yet.

Thus spake Ingunn Handagard, and all was well.

Work-Arounds of the ICE ‘Ban™’

The other noteworthy issue here is that these new taxes and the de facto ban are merely one side of this issue (for if you thought whatever the EU is doing is bad, they have the marvellous capacity to make even that aspect worse).

For even the Eurocrat critters realised that killing the car industry is bad politics as it delegitimises what was once sold to the citizens (prior to the EU) as an economic wonderland with prosperity for all (in Austria, politicos told voters in the 1994 accession referendum that ‘everybody will gain 1,000 Schillings more’ in direct benefits¹).

And thus we get to the work-around envisioned by the Eurocrat critters:

‘The other thing the EU has adopted is an opening to sell new cars that run on “e-fuel” even after 2035’, says Ingunn Handagard.

What, then, is an ‘e-fuel’? I’ll let Norwegian Car-Driver’s Association (Norges Automobil-Forbund) do the heavy lifting here:

E-fuel is a synthetic fuel. The prerequisite for calling it an ‘e-fuel’ is that all the energy used in the process is renewable, hence the prefix ‘e-’. [now you know; it doesn’t matter what is in the fuel, what matters is merely how you produce/refine it].

‘What makes e-fuel interesting for the German automotive industry is that it extends the lifespan of the combustion engine, giving the industry something in return for all the billions they have pumped into its development. What makes e-fuel interesting from a climate perspective is that it reuses CO2 [I have no idea how that is supposed to work]. Then, of course, there is the debate as to whether this CO2 should never have been emitted, or whether it is good that it is reused,’ she says.

And this is where the ‘fun™’ starts: the German (!) gov’t recently passed the so-called Supply-Chain Act (Lieferkettengesetz, Wikipedia), which forces all companies with 1,000+ employees to ensure human rights and environmental protection is duly considered when sourcing raw materials.

There is a comparable regulation in force at the EU level, which applies to companies as ‘small’ as 250-500 employees and 40+ million euros revenue/year.

Combine these two things, good luck ‘reusing’ CO2 contained in, say, oil from Saudi Arabia or, good heavens, natural gas from Russia Mordor. Both options are now illegal under EU ‘law™’.

And that’s well before we’d consider the insane price tag:

‘E-fuel is a relatively expensive fuel because it requires a lot of energy to produce and remove the oxygen from the carbon in CO2. In addition, you emit CO2 when you use e-fuel, just like with ordinary petrol and diesel. In Norway, this type of emission will normally be subject to a CO2 tax like regular fuel,’ she says.

Thus spake Ingunn Handagard, and all was well.

What Norwegians Will Do (according to the NAF)

If you’re wondering at which point there might be a tax revolt, well, I wouldn’t hold my breath. Here’s more from Ms. Handagard:

For Norwegian consumers, I think the question of e-fuel will be of peripheral interest. If the choice is between an electric car that is cheap to run and a car with an internal combustion engine that is very expensive to run, the answer will be obvious to most people.

See how easy this topic is to resolve? You can get your cake (a comparatively cheaper™ EV) and eat it, too (virtue-signalling included).

And to make this ‘work™’ in the minds of these snake-oil salespeople, they must quickly deflect from the issue that ICE-powered vehicles are cheaper to build, less complex, and a major revenue generator for governments (about half the price for gas or diesel at the pump is—taxes).

Hence, the comparison is not between an EV and a regular car, but between all the red tape, additional fees, taxes, and other subsidiary costs added to the latter to make the former look like the ‘obvious choice™ to most people’.

Hence the following conclusion by Ms. Handagard:

Then there is still the question of how the EU decision on e-fuel should be put into practice [oh, the EU issued such a regulation without practical considerations…?]. One solution [bruahahaha] is that those who buy a car with an internal combustion engine after 2035 must commit to only buying and using e-fuel [hence the total surveillance in cars sold today]. Another solution is that cars manufactured after 2035 will be able to run on e-fuel, but not classic petrol or diesel. ‘We don't know what the solution will be, but I’m sure the Germans have a plan for this’, says Handagard.

I do consider that latter comment a less-than-veiled threat, by the way.

What, then, Can be Done?

Prices for motoring will rise significantly no matter what, but at least we can deduce a few options in terms of what could be explored/done by regular people.

Certain climates are not really conducive to EVs, such as, well, northern latitudes (in my neck of the woods, for instance, only office-working people have EVs; and I’m at 61 degrees north—if you’d venture further north, most people drive diesel-powered cars).

Certain living arrangements—big cities—aren’t conducive to future motoring as local gov’ts will bleed drivers dry by instituting ‘zero carbon emissions zones’ or the like (as has happened in Oslo), hike parking fees/reduce parking hours, etc. If you’re somewhat fortunate, that will happen as public transport options increase (but I wouldn’t bet on that).

Prices and taxes will rise significantly, as is admitted even by the NAF:

A plug-in hybrid that emits 30 grams of CO2 per kilometre will, at today’s rates and exchange rates, incur a surcharge in the EU of almost NOK 30,000 from 2035. For an ordinary petrol car that emits 90 grams per kilometre, the surcharge will be over NOK 85,000 [divide these prices by 12 to arrive at current 2024/25 dollar/euro prices].

This is how Ms. Handegard spins this:

In practice, many call this a ban. This is because the effect is thought to be quite similar to a ban. In practice, there probably won’t be many petrol or diesel car sales left after this [is instituted], but it won’t be formally prohibited.

Problem solved: by not calling a spade a spade, no banning of spades is necessary, so to speak.

So far, the EU has determined that from 2035 onwards, all fuels must be CO2-neutral (whatever that means).

If the EU was a bit more liberal and way less tyrannical, they’d now offer prize money to those intrepid innovators who would propose a novel way to run, say, a diesel engine on something other than regular diesel fuel.

There’s probably several other ways and means innovation might be able to overcome these issues, esp. as I’m not a fan of Big Oil.

Yet the biggest problem I see aren’t emissions or the lingering issue of fuelling car engines.

The main problem with EVs is that they require an gargantuan bureaucratic apparatus to pretend to be working.

Take, say, Oslo municipality: from 1. Jan. 2025 onwards, the zero carbon emissions zone is now in effect, yet we don’t even know how many new charging stations were built last year (the city gov’t had announced 100 more such chargers to be built in 2024 [after 11 in 2023], yet no-one knows how many were actually constructed).

And that’s before we consider market-related aspects here: since the Oslo gov’t reduced tax and other benefits for EVs in July 2023 while increasing road pricing, the price of electricity has become a powerful issue of everyday life (as, if utility prices rise too much, an EV becomes very expensive to charge). Background here:

Europe's Energy Follies Reveal the Dual Cartel Running the Area's 'Energy Market™'

Bottom Lines: A Banquet of Consequences

One major consequence was—that the market for used cars began to boom and overshadow the sales of new EVs (which, in 2024, were around 90% of all new cars sold). Since summer 2023, though, buying used cars has become very attractive as they are taxed at significantly lower rates (25% less) compared to new vehicles plus there’s huuuuuuuuge demand as state broadcaster NRK wrote as early as 7 July 2023:

Used EVs turned into very hard to sell things while gas and diesel-powered used cars are selling so fast now that many car dealers don’t even put them up for sale on their websites (I’ve read that this applies to roughly half of all used cars now) as they’re sold before the effort of doing so pays off.

The main reasons here are very Norwegian, which begs consideration for the Eurocrat critters, though:

• every new car comes with a hefty 25% VAT price tag, which the gov’t has paid for (with taxpayer money) for new EVs.

• thus EVs were competitive with ICE-powered cars ‘only’ because of a massive tax break (paid for by everyone)

• running an EV was relatively cheaper while electricity prices were extra-low, which, since 2022, they are no longer

Once these things will be mandatorily factored in—courtesy of the EU’s Supply Chain Act, no less—I doubt that ‘e-fuels’ or forced child labour in the Congo (to get cobalt for EV batteries) will be as cheap or legal to sell.

But keep in mind that the aim isn’t to make driving as expensive as possible, but to make the proles stop driving while fleecing them with new taxes, fees, etc.

Then we’ll have to consider the massive infrastructure built around for driving: from motorways to gas stations to our food production and distribution systems.

None of this will run nearly as smoothly as they do today if driving becomes very much more expensive.

Hiking the prices for driving—esp. as all farm equipment and trucks run on diesel fuel—will make prices for everything rise. This will make for loads of first unhappy people defaulting on loans (which is when the gov’t will rescue the too-big-to-fail banks leaving we, the people once more in the lurch), and that will occur a few moments before blackouts and food riots begin.

Not all of this is the EU’s fault, but these insane policies will make a hard situation arguably way more worse than it would otherwise be.

There are no quick and easy solutions, yet pretending to ‘do something™’ by massively subsidising EVs while dismantling the infrastructure upon which everything rests is a stupid idea.

As I wrote two years ago in my top-linked piece about Oslo’s ‘zero emissions zone’:

You don’t have to do a ‘careful’ reading ‘between the lines’ to realise two essential facts: zero emissions zones are about as sane as zero Covid policies instituted in, say, one part of the world.

I’m pretty sure that voters won’t like higher taxes to maintain these more expensive roads, esp. if some voters (those who, like me, own a combustion engine-powered vehicle) would be ‘asked’ to pay those taxes while being banned from using them at the same time.

No taxation without representation the ‘permission’ to use public spaces, such as roads, that I’d be forced to pay for.

Also, these inanities are what passes for ‘good governance’ and ‘exemplary policies’ these days.

Using these absurd schemes to prioritise one product over another (which is, technically speaking, an ‘unlawful market interference’ according to EU ‘law™’), but then again, EU ‘law™’ is what the Eurocrats make up.

What’s arguably worse is non-member-states (here: Norway) introducing measures like a ‘zero carbon emissions zone’ without technically being obliged to do so.

This is worse as doing so is akin to not peeing into a swimming pool and hoping that everybody else is kind enough to return that favour.

Well, epimetheus, what counts are the good intentions, isn’t it?

Bullshit, I’d retort, because this is merely virtue-signalling at best and shooting oneself in the leg (or a bit higher up).

Back in early 2023, I added the following:

Wait until you see the morons of the world running things.

Oh, wait.

Shit.

Change my mind.

1. Direct conversion to euros or dollars are pointless to gauge this amount, hence we need to consider the purchasing power of 1,000 Schillings in 1995: back then, the average monthly net salary in Austria was approximately 20,000 to 25,000 ATS, i.e., 1000 Schillings more would be the rough equivalent of an increase of 4-5% of the average monthly income. As to consumer prices of staple goods, here goes:

• A loaf of bread cost 10-15 Schillings, so 1,000 Schillings bought 67-100 loaves of bread.

• A litre of milk cost 5-7 Schillings, so 1,000 Schillings bought 143-200 litres of milk.

While the nominal conversation (adjusted for inflation) would be 1,000 Schillings = c. US$170, and once you let that sink in and consider your grocery bills, you may also, however silently, weep about what the EU has done.