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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 2, 2025

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and some cities (London, Paris, I assume others) explicitly discourage or even disallow non-EVs from certain areas.

I've lived in cities with emission norms, and even diesels are allowed in as long as they're relatively new. London and Paris might have gone literally zero emission, though I've never had to drive in either so can't confirm, and they'd be an exception.

Subsidies don't seem to be enough to sway any normie I've met, and the type of person I've met that has an EV still very much fits into the profile we were discussing with Southkraut.

I've lived in cities with emission norms, and even diesels are allowed in as long as they're relatively new. London and Paris might have gone literally zero emission, though I've never had to drive in either so can't confirm, and they'd be an exception.

EVs are exempt from the London Congestion Charge (to be replaced with a 50% discount from next year) and get discounts on residents' parking permits in most boroughs. But there isn't anywhere EVs can go where petrol or diesel cars can't. But the direct subsidies to EVs are lower in Europe than in the US - the big difference is that the running cost advantage of an EV is larger because petrol is more expensive here.

Essentially all minicabs on London streets (including Ubers) are hybrids - a quick check of the stats suggests that EVs are about 20% of the UK new car market and hybrids about 25%. Note that fleet purchases are (unusually by global standards) 60% of the market in the UK - this is part of why Tesla's market share is so low - they don't put much effort into fleet sales.