Chinese technology companies are paving the way for a world that will be powered by electric motors rather than gas-guzzling engines. It is a decisively 21st-century approach not just to solve its own energy problems, but also to sell batteries and other electric products to everyone else. Canada is its newest buyer of EVs; in a rebuke of Mr. Trump, its prime minister, Mark Carney, lowered tariffs on the cars as part of a new trade deal.
Though Americans have been slow to embrace electric vehicles, Chinese households have learned to love them. In 2025, 54 percent of new cars sold in China were either battery-powered or plug-in hybrids. That is a big reason that the country’s oil consumption is on track to peak in 2027, according to forecasts from the International Energy Agency. And Chinese E.V makers are setting records — whether it’s BYD’s sales (besting Tesla by battery-powered vehicles sold for the first time last year) or Xiaomi’s speed (its cars are setting records at major racetracks like Nürburgring in Germany).
Batteries, yes. Chinese? Not necessarily for long.
I don’t know if he’s obsessed by oil. So far when a president invaded a country because of it’s oil, it always went with a cover story to justify it. Now the (cover) story provided by Trump is oil, so it may be possible it was all just to get the Nobel prize. As trinkets are all he cares about. Now it looks like he wants what I want when playing hearts of iron: make all the continent mine.
His best before has already expired, one foot is in the grave, old age takes its toll, why do you think he would care about anything other than himself at this point in his life?
It is the party, they are coming out of the(ir nazi) closet and holding his hand to betray his america first promises and use the unchallenged power of the military for the benefit of their rich and connected.
We get the bill. And if we are dumb enough a feeling of pride being the most capable of killing people for the benefit of the same rich stealing our lunch.
The president does not know what is going on. Big fella really went downhill the last 5 years, he is running on autoprick.
it always went with a cover story to justify it
Trump is too stupid to come up with a plausible cover story, though he tried claiming that Venezuela was the source of fentanyl coming into the US, which was quickly and easily disproven.
One is an energy and material source. The other is neither and is simply storage.
Why would you compare them?
Because batteries are a point of tension in the adoption of some electricity-centric techs. Electricity production can be done in many different ways already (unless you suddenly decide to 100x the demand for shit and giggles), but a lot of applications requires batteries, which makes them some sort of choke point for adoption. Making them better, more accessible, cheaper, more friendly on the environment ease that.
The comparison is also on one end of the world focusing on the dying down side of things, while the other end is (allegedly) looking forward.
That’s why they’re compared.
That’s nice. Now run a modern civilization of 10 billion (upcoming) with only electricity.
EVs alone have major grid balancing potential. You can get home batteries for under $100/kwh in US right now, and cost of EV batteries have always been lower due to bulk/contract purchases. At $100/kwh, even from grid TOU use power, you can time shift profitably for just 1c/kwh before financing costs, but before resilience/backup benefits from batteries.
Solar is by far the cheapest way to charge those batteries, where home solar without monopoly persecution from utilities, as in Australia, can be extra affordable. But even before abundant solar is permitted in our countries, or even net metering, simply having TOU rates that are cheap at night allows for enough arbitrage for when TOU rates are high. Where some EVs are $300/kwh to $500/kwh for the entire car, TOU rates can allow for arbitrage that pays for whole car.
What sorts of batteries are around that price per kwh? Genuinely curious, been thinking about adding batteries but can’t justify the costs I’ve seen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bShGUPU3TQ $120/kwh. There are amazon listings for 20kwh in rack batteries for under $3000. It does take DIY (no soldering kits) to get to $100/kwh. searching youtube for projects/options reviews, and especially the linked author is recommended if you’re interested.
Amazing, thank you. My new obsessive project has been lined up
Those Chinese seem to be some decent forward thinking blokes. Nothing like I was led to believe by west
‘Alledged’
They brutally exploit their people. 6 days a week, 12 hours a day work in factories, for substinence wages, dumping their pollution, no protections, no unions, brutal one party state controlling every word spoken.
Really taking the shaft of capitalism and even getting the balls in. Impressive suckery from a gullible sucker. Kudos!
Says the guy stroking off one of the most repressive regimes in the world.
Do not let a group of half witted tankie thralls convince you you are right, anyone in reality will ignore every opinion you have knowing you hold up china as a great government. And troll for them with gay terminology, something china would lock you up for.
So you think moving away from fossil fuels and moving to electric is a net negative not worthy of comment? It is possible to can praise the good without endorsing the bad. And cocksucking isn’t inherently gay that just seems to be part of some latent homophobia you harbor. But then you went and used cockfondling to what, insult me? I’m a decent cockfondler and bet you give toothy head. But not that good kind with a little drag on the backstroke rather that just stop and let fuck your esophagus kind. Also, keep up, ‘Tankie’ has been so overplayed it just indicates you are a lazy and your argument is weak. But I’ll humor you. Defend your statements of China with proof…
What a word smith!
*wordsmith
Thank you! It’s a gift. I think it’s because I read so much.
Oil is the longest word he can spell without spellcheck.
He managed to spell enigma pretty well.
Nonsense. We all know he can spell Ghina.
Yes, China has very purposefully put itself at the forefront of the first technological revolution of the 21st century and done this at multiple levels (solar panel production, battery tech, EVs)
Meanwhile the American elites have decided that 19th century technology is were they want to be. Well, that and dead ending killing the country’s lead in the Tech revolution by going down a branch with no future in the form of LLMs and making everybody lose trust in keeping their data in anything owned by American companies.
And, of course, the crooked politicians here in Europe are actually following America more than China in this.
And, of course, the crooked politicians here in Europe are actually following America more than China in this.
That is much less the case then it might appear. Out of the Top10 largest EV makers three are European(Volkswagen, BMW and Stellantis). When you look at wind, Europe has a few of the largest companies in the world. Europe is also basically the only place even attempting to compete with China in batteries, since Trump cut US support for that industry. There are plenty of more niche industries as well, in which Europe has some very strong companies.
It is a lot more complex than “Europe is actually following America more than China in this”.
Europe have very limited lithium deposits compared to China. Europe is trying to be as self sustaining as possible, especially now that the US have shown themselves to be a highly unreliable partner.
So exchanging one dependency for another is a poor lateral move at best.
You can’t just start digging up the entire ground and make car batteries out of all lithium you find.
European universities all over are researching alternative battery technology that doesn’t rely as much on lithium.
None of that is true. There is lithium everywhere, Germany just found 45 million tonnes of it. People have been digging up the entire ground for oil for 200 years.
You can research all you want, but the periodic table is not changing, and Chinese R&D is decades ahead of the West.
Yeah, they just found it late last year. And still working out how they should bring it up. They’ve made estimates on the amount, i’m not qualified to verify their estimates.
If they can actually bring it up we have security in the materials required to make the research worth it.
But no, we have not dug up all of the ground to get oil. Oil is a lot more liquid than lithium ore. We can pump up the oil without having to excavate the entire surrounding area.
I’m not saying that to defend oil. But the funny part about it is that if they had dug up all of the ground to get it, they would have found their lithium deposits sooner. Because they found it in an oil-field.
You can research all you want, but the periodic table is not changing, and Chinese R&D is decades ahead of the West.
What does that even mean? Do you have any idea how long ago it was since we found the last naturally occurring element? Should we have just stoped all research I the early 1900’s because “the periodic table is not changing”. Dumbest shit I’ve heard all years. And yes, I did hear about Trumps email to Norway. You still win.
Adding to your comment: Lithium brines are extracted through drilled wells, it’s not always ore.
Thank you. I didn’t know that.
You can research all you want, but the periodic table is not changing, and Chinese R&D is decades ahead of the West.
Yeah, well, there’s no Oil in Europe either, so ICE cars are even worse for a self-sustaining Europe (at least Lithum is only consumed once for an EV car, whilst Oil is consumed all the time for ICE cars)
If Europe can constantly source Oil from abroad to keep ICE cars going, I’m sure it can also source (a far lower quantity of) Lithium from abroad to make cars that can then run on electric power produced right here in Europe.
Your entire “argument” is one big cherry picked excuse.
I’m not arguing for oil. Yet the current production costs for lithium batteries, compared to their lifecycle, rivals that of combustion propulsion. That doesn’t mean we should stop researching and finding better methods. But it’s far from as “environmentally” friendly as you think it is.
Oh, and Europe have oil. Plenty of it. Where would you like start? The coast outside Norway? The vast natural gas reserves in western Russia? The ocean outside of Scotland, maybe it just happenes to be a shit ton of oil under Greenland which is 100% unrelated to why Trump wants to own it.
I’m still not arguing for or against oil. I’m saying Europe isn’t following the US, and Europe isn’t interested in following China either. Europe is interested in carving out sustainability for themselves without US or China.
there’s no Oil in Europe either
Confused European noises
https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/crude-oil-production?continent=europe
Yeah, well, there’s no Oil in Europe either,
C’mon. I’m a dumb American, but even I know without looking it up about Norway’s vast petroleum production as well as the North Sea petroleum platforms off the coast of Scotland.
Russia has alot of gas
Erm you really shouldn’t trust American companies with your data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act
Well informed people knew that it wasn’t safe already for quite a while.
Most people did not, most companies did not, most public institutions either did not or could make believed they did not.
That’s changing (as are lots of other things) because Trump is being far more loud about how Europe is an adversary of America than previous administrations (it was too for Democrats, though only on business and trade terms)
There was quite a lot of fighting against treating America as a safe haven for the data of Europeans from people in the know in Tech and IT Security in Europe but we lost, but now crooked politicians can’t make believe America or American companies are safe for the data of Europeans anymore.
I’d sooner buy a Chinese EV than a Tesla, but the orange gameshow host running my country says I can’t.
Because Biden said you could? He’s the one that doubled tariffs on Chinese EVs from 50% to 100%. Biden also gave the EV tax credit which was essentially a subsidy to Tesla, which Trump ended.
Note that I’m not defending Trump, but simply noting that the US was heading in his direction. He’s a symptom of advanced disease, but you don’t get to blame him all the shitty things all US presidents ever did. He’s a raging tumor, but the cancer was spreading already.
Because Biden said you could? He’s the one that doubled tariffs on Chinese EVs from 50% to 100%. Biden also gave the EV tax credit which was essentially a subsidy to Tesla, which Trump ended.
I don’t fault Biden for adding a tariff on Chinese EVs to temporarily protect the American auto manufacturing envornment. We just have too many jobs tied to the domestic production of cars. The immediate loss of those jobs would plunge the USA into deep recession. It looked like this was working too with many American companies adapting and coming out with EVs.
However, most of those American EVs have been scaled back or canceled. Further, with the exception of the Chevy Bolt no domestic maker produced an affordable EV. Since American companies decided they don’t want to play in EVs anymore, I fully support removing the tariff and letting Chinese EVs into the USA. It looks like that will be the only thing that will force American car companies to compete. This situation closely mirrors the 1970s where Japan introduced small, reliable, fuel efficent cars, and affordable cars at a time when gasoline was crazy expensive.
It looks like this time around it will be the Chinese that teach the American auto market to adapt instead.
Biden increased tariffs…AND invested heavily in battery plants in the US. Trump killed that. Biden’s tariffs were because the Chinese government is dumping in the US to undermine the car industry.
Because the US is a corporatocracy. Red or Blue, corporate donors win.
That is a very fair statement.
Agreed. Not sure what those downvotes are for. I saw this coming 20 years ago. Especially with lobbying as out of control as it has been. If Trump dropped dead now, we’d still have a catastrophe.
You’re absolutely right. Trump is a lightning rod for rage, but most of what the US is doing is bipartisan. It’s a huge problem that so many people harbor false hope for the controlled opposition.
People downvoting facts simply because they contradict their own stated position tells so much. They want cheap Chinese EVs but can’t accept that what they defended as protecting American companies (Biden’s tariffs) and making EVs more affordable for Americans (Biden’s EV tax credit) are the reasons they can’t have cheap Chinese EVs.
Instead of reflecting on the progranda they’ve been consuming, they downvote and move on to repeat the same nonsense later. I’m relieved they didn’t call me a tankie Russian bot this time for suggesting Biden wasn’t an angel.
Yeah, people responding to my original comment assume I’d prefer Jim Crow Joe. Trump has a more abrasive personality that a lot of people love to hate, but obviously they’re both geriatric puppets to distract everyone while the billionaire cabal continues business as usual. Trump is primarily an entertainer and is certainly the more engaging distraction.
Well this is Lemmy, not reddit. We’re all tankies here.
JFC…are people this dumb? The first taste is free buddy, these TEMU EVs are being sold below cost just to attack US industry. BYD has a $38B debt propped up by the Chinese government.
You geniuses forgot about the Biden investment in US battery plants.
You’re mixing a few real dynamics with a lot of propaganda framing.
Yes, China uses industrial policy and subsidized credit, and yes, firms can price aggressively to gain market share. But pretending the U.S. is some pure “market” victim is absurd when it literally did the same thing via public-credit industrial policy. The Biden-era battery buildout you cite is a perfect example: the public underwrites corporate risk, and when demand softens the companies pause projects, restructure deals, and keep the upside private. Ford/SK On’s “big national strategy” became delays, a JV breakup, and loan restructuring; Stellantis/Samsung is ramping cautiously amid volatility. That isn’t “saving U.S. industry,” it’s socializing risk and then calling it patriotism.
Also, “TEMU EVs” is just culture-war branding. The issue isn’t that consumers are “dumb,” it’s that working people are getting squeezed, and cheaper cars matter when wages lag and housing/healthcare eat the paycheck. If you want to defend tariffs or targeted restrictions, make the case honestly on labor, climate, and supply-chain resilience, not xenophobic moral panic.
And the funniest part is you invoke BYD debt like it’s uniquely scandalous while ignoring the mountain of subsidies, tax abatements, and cheap financing that props up U.S. automakers and battery JVs. If you’re worried about state-backed capital distorting markets, congratulations: you’re arguing against capitalism as it actually exists, not for it.
If we’re going to spend public money on industrial capacity, attach enforceable labor standards, community guarantees, and public equity or governance rights. Otherwise it’s a corporate welfare program with a flag taped to it.
I just read an article stating that Ford lost 36k on every EV they sold in 2023… In a market where they had government protection from Chinese EVs.
I just read an article stating that Ford lost 36k on every EV they sold in 2023…
Ford, and other American auto makers, were asleep at the wheel when EVs were starting to take off. Ford and GM doubled down on selling pickups and big SUVs which had good margins. Instead of investing in R&D to make a solid product they were caught unprepared and had to throw everything at the wall to see what stuck with their first EVs. Yes, they were able to bring them to market fairly quickly (good), but at the cost of efficient of the product and the production method.
This means for every EV they make, they do it expensively where they wouldn’t need to if they improved their designs and production methods.
Wrong, they are selling cheap to dismount Mercedes, Porsche and BMW in Europe, and it’s working. Once they dump on those 3 companies they will raise the prices to be profitable, but Europe will already have no options. Just wait and see. Chinese EVs are all over Germany now, and it’s only going to increase.
the controlled opposition.
The strongly worded letters opposition?
That’s a joke, right?
Yeah, I liked Jim Crow Joe even less than orange gameshow host. Some of his policies had direct negative effects on my life. Then the election came around and the democrats decided we don’t get a primary at all this time, so we ended up with a choice between an ignorant gameshow host who somehow fancies himself an independent thinker and a cackling hen who puts on no such airs, both of whom are completely loyal to the international billionaire cabal.
I want a fucking Huawei P70. The 10x camera on that thing can practically take stabilized macro photos from a 5 m distance. But Ursula says Orange Man will spank her if she allows competition to Apple and Google.
I wouldn’t buy that even if it wasn’t banned, locked bootloader and spyware preinstalled at all levels
I can hold out on not buying a new car a hell of a lot longer than the American economy can survive under a tariff regime.
The market can remain irrational longer than you can stay solvent - John Maynard Keynes
I thought America was a democracy as opposed to China.
US is the same as China now. Well that’s not true, US foreign policy is way more batshit insane than China’s. If you can even call it a foreign policy… it seems to me it’s just the whims of a deranged old child molester surrounded by fucking Nazis.
And China is further away and there’s pretty much zero probability China will invade my country. With the US, who knows? Kinda stupid to send money to a country I may have to be fighting against within a year.
Whenever I hear news of China, they built a new electric railway, invented something new, or made massive tech progress.
Whenever I hear of USA on the other hand…
…they are still following the philosoohy of the people who explicitly said they want the human race extinct.
Whenever I hear news of China, they built a new electric railway, invented something new, or made massive tech progress.
A lot of things in China fall apart in a few years. You can build things fast when you don’t care about people’s rights and just force them off whatever land you need, and make people work insane hours. A lot of the amazing things China brags about is a Potemkin village, just made to show the authoritarian leaders they did got the project complete on time and they in turn use it in their propaganda. Authoritarians always love to brag about making the trains run on time, right? The reality is often different from what the media portrays it to be in an authoritarian country.
But still, China is slightly preferable to the US at the moment.
there’s pretty much zero probability China will invade my country.
Boots on the ground invasion? Sure, not likely.
But that’s because China long ago realized the wars to be fought in the 21st century are economic… and they’re way ahead.
Trump is following in china’s footsteps. His longterm plan will fail because he is not authoritarian enough to retain power. If the CCP were in his shoes they’d have murdered millions of americans to ideologically cleanse the country.
Trump is on it dummy
yeah this is a great example of him not being authorization enough to follow in ccp footsteps. For this to be a proper comparison it would have to be ice murdering 1000s of unarmed protestors not 1.
Using photo-generating AI has become a mixed bag for me.
It’s not far from the truth
Many Chinese EVs are made by Tesla
You’re right. They call them ‘Teslas’ if I remember correctly.
I assume you’re referring to the fact that Tesla has a Shanghai factory and is exporting Teslas made there to Canada.
I’m guessing so too as I read (albeit I don’t recall where so could have been an unreliable source) that its the other way around - Tesla utilise BYD for some of their cars destined for the Chinese market
For Australians (alas, big Teska supporters) and much of the world they are all made in China anyway.
It’s like he wakes up every morning and asks himself “What can I do to make sure China owns the 21st century?”
Thats because he’s stuck in the 80s. It’s common for people with dementia to fall back to a time they thought was good and for him, it was the 80s when oil was king.
Frankly you’re giving him too much credit. If oil is really still king it won’t need his help. He might be able to claim he was just being fair if he had only removed subsidies, but he was and still is actively sabotaging adoption of electric vehicles, like by terminating the USPS contract to buy all those electric mail trucks or removing already installed EV chargers at federal sites.
Oil is king but you can still make some sweet sweet bribe money. - Trump
Oil is still king. It’s not by a long shot about to lose it’s value as a strategic resource.
King eh? Well I didn’t vote for yah!
Not sure about that.
Nuclear energy is safer than ever.
We even have small nuclear reactors that can use spent fuel from the larger ones, thus solving in part the disposal of it.
Furthermore, significant advances have been achieved on fision power.
Clinging to oil is like refusing to replace your horse with a car.
We even have small nuclear reactors that can use spent fuel from the larger ones, thus solving in part the disposal of it.
Do we? Last I heard there aren’t any in service.
Furthermore, significant advances have been achieved on fision power.
We’ll need a hell of a lot more advances before fusion is even close to powering a grid.
Are you guys taking about fusion? Aren’t all nuclear powerplants using fission reactions?
Corrected, thanks!
When you have plug-in hybrid tanks or nuclear powered strategic bombers oil will see a diminish in it’s strategic relevance as a resource.
Fusion is nowhere near being in industrial use or being profitable. In the future, maybe, pending more breakthroughs.
Whether nuclear is a good idea to cling to going forward or not, it takes time to deploy. Those small reactors don’t just come off a shelf, ready to be turned on. Oil, however, can generate power TODAY, anywhere you can ship it.
The question isn’t whether it’s a good idea to keep burning oil – it definitely isn’t – the question is whether oil is still a hugely important energy commodity and the answer is a resounding yes. Notably, the article mentions that China’s oil use hasn’t even peaked yet. China does not use a small amount of oil.
the question is whether oil is still a hugely important energy commodity and the answer is a resounding yes
This is a HUGE reason to push for progress. Oil is critical to so much of modern life and we have no substitutes for all too much of it. We need more progress where we do have options (eg. EVs) so we can start growing out of our dependency before it becomes a crisis
I think we should also focus on using less energy overall – e.g. replace short to medium persinal car trips with walking, bicycles and public transport, medium to long travel with trains, eliminating unnecessary travel that can’t be accommodated by those modes of transport. Environmental solutions like replacing fossil fuel powered cars with emissions free, but equally dangerous and still inefficient EVs for personal use will keep us burning oil even longer by tying up investments in highways and hostile, car based infrastructure.
Things like rethinking infrastructure, labor, economy and housing would have been more achievable and, for most, felt more like progressing towards a better future than straighup sci-fi level efforts to continue the status quo without as much oil. But it’s the latter we get, they’re putting carbon capture machines on Norwegian oil rigs as we speak.
For sure we should reduce overall travel.
- To the extent people still work from home: we do. On days when I work from home I generally don’t use a motor vehicle for anything
- to the extent we order online, we do. I rarely goto stores besides the grocery. Sorry retailers and local shopping advocates but a dedicated delivery vehicle is more efficient that you taking yours
- I’ve seen gradual progress in train buildout from the 2022 infrastructure bill. It’s very slow, piecemeal, not dramatic but there are more transit options
We are long past peak oil. Look I’m not saying we’re not going to need oil long into the future and its use for aviation is currently unsurpassed but the argument is our reliance on oil is waning as newer technologies have come into play, especially in the power generation and automotive sectors. Chemical and plastic production is still vital and that can’t be done without oil. We’re not getting away from using it for a long tine but it’s past it’s peak.
What Dumpy forgets is supply and demand (because he’s one of the worst business people ever) and releasing more oil into the market from his imperialist acquisitions means a drop in value - even the oil execs were apprehensive as to whether the takeover of Venezuela and being told they need to fix up their processing was a good thing as they don’t want the market flooded as that will cause the cost of oil to plummet.
As far as I’m aware peak oil production has not been recognized to have happened yet.
Over the last century, many predictions of peak oil timing have been made, often later proven incorrect due to increased extraction rates.[9] M. King Hubbert introduced comprehensive modeling of peak oil in a 1956 paper, predicting U.S. production would peak between 1965 and 1971; his global peak oil predictions were predictive through the 1990s and 2000s but eventually were deemed premature due to improved drilling technology.[10] Current forecasts for the year of peak oil range from 2028 to 2050.[11] These estimates depend on future economic trends, technological advances, and efforts to mitigate climate change.[8][12][13] Peak oil, Wikipedia
It is still assumed that global oil consumption scales with economic growth and under 2025 consumption increased.
Global liquid fuels consumption increased by an estimated 1.2 million b/d in 2025 and is forecast to increase by 1.1 million b/d in 2026 and 1.3 million b/d in 2027. Consumption growth rises next year as global economic activity picks up pace. Based on forecasts from Oxford Economics, our forecast assumes global GDP will grow by 3.1% this year and 3.3% in 2027. Short-Term Energy Outlook, EIA (U.S. government)
Consumption is still growing, but the ‘oil’ in Venezuela is just tar, the ‘oil’ in the United States come from fracking. The days of sweet crude are behind us.
This is one of those situations where the venn diagram of Trump’s handlers becomes a circle.
You have the billionaire Oil executives that want to continue using all their existing infrastructure and wasy access to continue printing money like they do now. Meanwhile, those companies all see the writing on the wall and know it’s running out so they’re investing in or buying technologies and companies working on alternatives. They’re playing both sides because they’re not idiots.
And then you have the manipulators like Putin (who we know Trump idolizes) with their goals of destroying American power across the board. Having America not only abandon new technologies but even propping up the old ones past when they should be phased out to focus on century-old priorities while the rest of the world continues to move on, helps that overall goal.
They’re bribing him and his daughter to do so.
Bribery is how the US political system has operated for the bulk of the country’s history
But, for the most part, the bribery was intended to increase private profits. Rarely have we seen industry bribe the feds in an act of self-sabotage.
Coal Brittain -> Petro Murica -> Electro China.
It’s funny how China said years ago that was the plan and they’re doing it while nobody stopped them because of short term greed.
nobody stopped them
What would “stopping them” have even looked like?
Competing. No one really even tried.
Europe just did a 180 on the commitment for no ICE cars to be sold from 2035 onwards under pressure of just a handful of big automakers.
And when I say Europe, I actually mean crooked European politicians rather than the public in general.
I mean, even if one puts the aside the whole strategical point of Europe delaying even more commiting to the first big tech revolution of the 21st century so that a handful of large automakers make a little bit more profit, there are actually lives as stake: fumes for diesel cars are estimated to kill more than 10,000 people a year in Europe.
Corruption in politics is both killing people and fucking up our future prosperity.
I personally know people who cheered for the extension of ICE cars to be sold, so it’s not only “crooked politicians”, this is an actual sentiment among people.
Here in the US, the reasons people generally cheer for ICE vehicles boil down to how expensive EVs are here. Legacy manufacturers sell them only in premium trims and dealers tack on excessive profit to help discourage them - they truly are not affordable here.
They don’t seem to understand this is a choice by legacy manufacturers, combined with protectionism bought by those same manufacturers.
I suppose there’s a range concern but I don’t see how that has any validity. As people have more direct experience, that should mostly disappear. While there are never enough chargers, most of the population has high speed charging convenient to them and most homeowners can charge at home.
In my experience, how many people think like that really depends on the country of Europe: my own native Portugal is far more shit when it comes to Environmentalism in general - especially around cars as the country has a very 1980s mindset on them and a car is still seen as symbol of status - whilst for example The Netherlands is almost the the opposite.
Yeah, it means giving up the current cash cow and they’ll only do that when it’s visibly dying. And then the competition has too much of a headed start so it’s already to late.
Tesla is definitely “trying” by number of units produced. Volkswagen is also taking EVs very seriously, at least by current and projected manufacturing numbers.
Lol Volkswagen, the company that actively rigged diesel cars to pass the tests… ? Dieselgate. The German car manufacturers are hopelessly late at EV because they wanted to drain every last penny out of their ICE. The EU setback to extend ICE is after German car manufacturers lobbied… They are killing themselves in the long run, for bit more production in the short run. They saw this all coming decades ago and made wrong choices. Now they’re fucked. The Volkswagen id (EV) sales numbers are so disappointing they had to lower production and make employees stay home.
Lol Volkswagen, the company that actively rigged diesel cars to pass the tests… ?
That’s the one. They’re run by absolute pieces of corporate shit, but they do still seem to recognize the market driven writing on the wall.
The German car manufacturers are hopelessly late at EV because they wanted to drain every last penny out of their ICE.
The pool in Europe is a lot shallower, especially in the wake of the Russia/Ukraine war. They don’t have the same access to cheap fossil fuels that the US enjoys, so they’re being forced to pivot to EVs entirely due to their regional limitations. They’re also competing internationally in a market with a growing Global South demand. Many of these countries are undergoing electrification far faster than they’re seeing a petrochemical expansion, in no small part thanks to the high installation costs of pipelines and processing plants relative to electric grids and renewables generation.
The Volkswagen id (EV) sales numbers are so disappointing they had to lower production and make employees stay home.
The entire EU economy has stalled out with the war. But they’ve seen a double-digit upswing in EV sales in Latin America, Africa, and the Pacific Rim.
Facing reality and evaluating technologies through the crucial era of the 2010s with an eye on efficiency and pollutant reduction in the overall energy sector. From there, having the empirical justifications to your nation that focusing on energy storage and further electrification would be more beneficial than fossil fuels.
Rather than doubling down on the existing status quo due to lobbying and sunk cost beliefs from prior consumption rates.
Sure. But that doesn’t change China’s economic growth path. You aren’t changing their behavior
Oh, certainly. However, if enough nations had their heads out of their asses and spoke with engineers rather than oil tycoons, we’d have a more competitive and distributed market for these technologies and a lower future dependence on Chinese imports for said technologies.
Right now, I can see a chokehold forming on that sector, and it’s a completely self-inflicted circumstance for those deadset on oil.
we’d have a more competitive and distributed market for these technologies and a lower future dependence on Chinese imports for said technologies.
I don’t see a future where at least one of the two largest populations of educated professionals doesn’t lead the way on electric vehicles. And that really only leaves you with China or India.
You might have a broader distribution or more regionalized production. But there’s no world in which a country with the manufacturing capacity plus the enormous population advantage doesn’t come out on top eventually.
Right now, I can see a chokehold forming on that sector
I don’t see a chokehold on EVs any more than Taiwan has a chokehold on CPUs.
There’s a building comparative advantage, but the global market is enormous. Plenty of room to catch up.
That’s why China has ten competitive major brands right now
Regarding EVs I agree with you, but I was referring to sodium/solid state battery production.
As for Chinese production leading the charge, I also think that’s apt, but I’m referring to the availability of domestic alternatives for things such as military production, which seems to only being kickstarted recently compared to say the 2010s. Currently, it seems like compromises will have to be made in order to minimize reliance on imported batteries from China, which is not necessarily a problem for the consumer market, but may be for governments seeking isolationist policies for their self-sufficiency (EU, US).
There is still plenty of time for things to change of course, but there are plenty of missed opportunities along the way.
Our Danish company Ørsted which produces wind power, has been in a huge legal dispute with the American administration for months over this. He wants oil, even if wind is cheaper:
He wants oil even if the wind is cheaper, the wind farm is almost finished and already producing power
Yeah because it’s not so much “he wants” as “oil and gas corporations are paying him for”.
I’m not sure how true that is. For example, Exxon don’t want to go back into Venezuela.
Beyond EVs, the much cheaper sodium-ion battery is entering mass production in China. We can already buy B-grade cells on AliExpress. This will have implications for all sorts of use cases that could use batteries but don’t due to cost.
much cheaper sodium-ion battery
To my understanding, these aren’t suitable for many use cases we associate with batteries (smartphones, EVs, laptops), but it has the potential to have a massive impact on utility scale battery systems and industrial use cases.
Yeah they can’t match top of the line Li-Ion like lithium-cobalt batteries. Neither can LFP, but LFP is good enough for lower range EVs cars as they’re already used in such. Sodium ion has even lower density than LFP but not dramatically so and it’s still early days so their density is likely to improve. Look at these two cells currently on sale:
The first one is a CATL-made LFP. The second is some smaller manufacturer’s sodium ion. The 729Whr vs 713Whr, 1944cm³ vs 2593cm³. If the sodium ones can be made cheap enough, these are already usable in low range vehicles like Nissan Leaf or equivalent. And then there’s buses, trucks, other ICE powered equipment.
I just replaced my Acid starter battery in my car for a sodium one. 12Kg less weight, double the lifespawn, better low temp performance. All at the same price.
Neither Lithium nor LFP can do that.
If this holds true, Sodium definitely has a place.
China is better for world in every way possible so good.
Ugh…
Nn…no. Just because people are going to be forced to choose China, doesn’t make them good. You should be good based on providing the best and with how China recently handled GPUs, I’m remaining skeptical in their practices.
Yeah, conservatives don’t think of the future except through the lens of the present. They can’t imagine a world with EVs and batteries because they have oil brains. They are looking for solutions to problems with an oil first mindset. Sunk cost is everything.
That’s in part because they see their future through the lens of them oppressing objective developments, so EVs and batteries will never happen in that fantasy. They took a liking to AI for example despite it being relatively new development purely because it helped them in that department. They will only embrace something if it’s ‘their’ idea, and they have a lot of shitty ideas.
Need to remember where they are getting paid from as well. That’s oil money lining their pockets.
It’s not conservatives, it’s money and power.
it’s not money and power because both are on the side of renewable energy: money already today and power in the future
