Miscellaneous desk
< January 16	<< Dec \| January \| Feb >>	Current desk >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Miscellaneous Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

January 17[edit]

oval stickers[edit]

figure 1
figure 2
figure 3
figure 4

What is the name of those export stickers for cars that now are a genre of bumper sticker (see figure 1)? Shops online selling them seem to call them 'Eurostyle' stickers but I can't figure out what if anything Eurostyle Costruzione Carrozzerie e Automobili (Q43282430) has to do with it. Arlo James Barnes 08:17, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See International vehicle registration code regarding the country codes on the things and a list of what they'ce been called. --142.112.220.136 (talk) 09:01, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I've started sorting by code on Commons. Arlo James Barnes 21:32, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

While I don't know why this kind of white oval plates or stickers, such as those with a VRI code, are referred to as Eurostyle, I am pretty sure the short-lived Italian automobile body manufacturer had nothing to do with it. --Lambiam 10:00, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Presumably as in Wikt:Eurostyle: Etymology - Euro- +‎ style. Noun - Eurostyle (uncountable) - European style.. I imagine that they were much more common in Europe than in North America, due to the frequency with which people drive across international borders. Note that this sort of sticker is less often seen in Europe now that the national code is usually included on the vehicle registration plate. Alansplodge (talk) 13:05, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In the UK the space where the national code used to be is being used by the EV green stripe. Has anyone any ideas how the Europeans are doing things? EDIT: See figure 4. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 21:50, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

By way of explanation (but no clue where the national code now goes):

Green number plates explained: about the UK’s electric car registration plates. Alansplodge (talk) 13:26, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Most European countries have licence plates with the leftmost stripe being reserved for the country code and the twelve stars of the EU symbol. And if by 'things' You mean marking the vehicle as an EV, I know that in Poland, the EV licence plates have a slightly greenish background instead of the usual white (it's just sufficiently green to make them out from among white plates, but not in-your-face green (see figure 2) and in Germany EVs have a large capital letter E at the end of the licence plate, in the typeface of the plates themselves (see figure 3). --Ouro (blah blah) 19:38, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In the Netherlands, there's no indication on the number plate showing it's an electric vehicle, and there's no need for such an indication. From next year, municipalities can create zero-emission zones, which are only open for zero-emission vehicles (currently electric or hydrogen). This only applies to goods vehicles. The only people who have to know that a vehicle qualifies as zero-emission are the operators, who're supposed to know their vehicle, and law enforcement, who can read the number plate and perform a database look-up. It's only marginally slower than a human-readable indication on the number plate and at the same time tells law enforcement some other interesting stuff. I suppose linking car registration databases across Europe isn't that hard and is useful in other ways too (checking insurance, paying tolls, localising stolen cars). PiusImpavidus (talk) 11:58, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Doubt that it would be easy given that a) database systems are most likely different from one another; b) different languages; c) channels you have to go through to get info (red tape); d) GDPR; e) other. I'm just realistically looking at things. Your idea is good. --Ouro (blah blah) 22:23, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

f) removes the bragging rights for the owner to prove their assumed moral superiority. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 22:35, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Bragging rights are important. Enough people buy very expensive and rather large Tesla cars to get a green image, then charge them with electricity from fossil fuels. PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:30, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

PiusImpavidus; Fossil fuels made up just 33% of UK electricity supplies in 2023... of which gas was 31%, coal just over 1% and oil just below 1%. [1] So we're getting there. Alansplodge (talk) 12:53, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Slightly different from what we see on the continent. Electricity use is increasing fast, thanks to a push for heat pumps instead of gas heating (a desire to stop importing Russian gas and to stop production at the Groningen gas field, which causes too many earthquakes, has something to do with that), and thanks to the data centres owned by big American tech companies popping up like mushrooms. At the same time, countries like Denmark and Germany are hitting the limit of what you can do with wind and solar. At peak times, the power from those can't be fed into the grid, so they have to be shut down. That means less production for the same investment. The limiting factor in getting more clean electricity to consumers is the rate at which new cables, both short distance distribution and long distance transmission, can be built.

That one third of electricity from fossil fuels is still pretty important in British power production. Along with hydropower (which isn't very big in the UK), it's the only source that can be quickly and economically adjusted to variation in demand and in production of intermittent sources. With intermittent sources increasing, this only gets more important. At all times, there will be some gas fired power stations on hot standby, not producing electricity, but still burning gas.

There's also a yearly cycle. Solar power is virtually absent in winter, but consumption is highest then (traditionally because of lighting, later air conditioning and efficient lighting caused a shift towards summer, but now heat pumps cause a shift back to winter). That makes production from fossil fuels far more important during winter.

In the longer run, it's inevitable that consumption has to follow production. It already happens on a small scale, like aluminium smelters, but the same will apply to households. Unfortunately, adjusting consumption to availability is much easier for rich people than for poor, so doing this with a simple price mechanism is a bad idea.

But for now, electric cars are mostly charged during the night, when no solar power is available and the fossil fraction is higher than during the day. We have to get rid of fossil fuel burning, but it won't be simply a matter of placing more solar panels. PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:48, 24 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Don't forget nuclear which as a baseline technology is woefully underused in the UK. I say underused, but a lot of the power we import from France is nuclear in origin! You're quite right about solar, at around 52°N (the same latitude as the southern Aleutian Islands) we'll never get much during the winter with its cold and short days. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 11:08, 24 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Illegal pushbacks by law enforcement agencies are increasing, and not only at the borders. Linking the various national identification and registration databases can also support authoritarian tendencies in which the "other" is, by definition, the bad guy. --Lambiam 22:58, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have an example in mind? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:02, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Road toll collection by number plate recognition already exists. I don't think it will take long before it works all over the EU, including toll differentiation for different vehicle types. Whether you like it or not. PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:34, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The alternative would be toll booths, thus slowing down the traffic, which I suspect most drivers would find annoying. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:42, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Electronic toll collection. --Lambiam 16:00, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Toll booths are fantastic, great places to wait for rides when hitch-hiking. Did me a great service when I was in France and Croatia. --Ouro (blah blah) 16:05, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]