Imagine one day in Hong Kong....

I have a dream...

Great first post!

nivak said:

Almost every private/public/indoors/outdoors parking is EV-charging facilitated;
much less illegal parking not just because of tickets;.................................or his 70D... :love:

Click to expand...

So we will enjoy cleaner air and much less noise pollution, living close to the highways is much tolerable

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.

Just need to close down every real estate agent and change it into a charging / parking station.

I share that dream but the major obstacle will be how the government will have incentive to promote this when they will lose all the gasoline taxes and also import tax duties; unless they also impose a tax on kwh electricity and raise the import tax/road license fees on electric cars as well. I mean this will make a hole in their revenue in the coming years as EVs become main stream. But I think we all agree that it's a price to pay for clean air.

At the same time though for HK, the private cars actually don't make as much pollution compared to the container ships coming in and also all the heavy goods vehicles and buses burning diesel. I still don't understand what the heck is taking them so long for the electric buses conversions; Shenzhen's been doing it for a while.

- - - Updated - - -

And also about electric goods vehicles, I can't see why EVs can't replace delivery trucks in HK. The distances are short, the torque happy nature of EVs make them great haulers; the Model X has a close to 10,000 pound towing capacity so EVs aren't necessarily fragile. Add battery swapping and you can easily replace big diesel trucks that make regular 2-4 trips a day on regular routes.

Titus said:

I share that dream but the major obstacle will be how the government will have incentive to promote this when they will lose all the gasoline taxes and also import tax duties; unless they also impose a tax on kwh electricity and raise the import tax/road license fees on electric cars as well. I mean this will make a hole in their revenue in the coming years as EVs become main stream. But I think we all agree that it's a price to pay for clean air.

Click to expand...

If the purpose of the tax is to maintain the road system (as opposed to punitive, congestion control, or other artificial measures), then it is pretty clear that the registration fee and yearly license fee should be based on the two factors that impact that: (a) weight of the vehicle, (b) kilometers driven. Implementing that is not hard practically/technically, but the pushback from the commercial and public transportation sectors (who continually refuse to pay their fair share) would be politically immense.

IMHO, the way to reduce congestion is to price access to congested areas. Electronic Road Pricing. Not, some blanket registration tax to discourage car ownership (which really just impacts the poor and limits car ownership to the elite).

As I said, practically easy, politically a nightmare.

Titus said:

At the same time though for HK, the private cars actually don't make as much pollution compared to the container ships coming in and also all the heavy goods vehicles and buses burning diesel. I still don't understand what the heck is taking them so long for the electric buses conversions; Shenzhen's been doing it for a while.

And also about electric goods vehicles, I can't see why EVs can't replace delivery trucks in HK. The distances are short, the torque happy nature of EVs make them great haulers; the Model X has a close to 10,000 pound towing capacity so EVs aren't necessarily fragile. Add battery swapping and you can easily replace big diesel trucks that make regular 2-4 trips a day on regular routes.

Click to expand...

The bus companies resist change. Listening to them at public consultation meetings just makes my blood boil. They keep saying that the issue is safety at their depots (which is ridiculous given all the flammable diesel fuel lying around there), and the unavailability of electric double decker buses. Sure, there are no electric double decker buses. So, convert all the single decker ones first. The only thing they are doing are 'trials', and then only if the government pays for it.