You must log in or # to comment.
This is extremely generalized falsely concluding from “American” to be the same as “Western”, when the reality the difference is HUGE between Europe and USA.
In USA Ford and GM have discontinued some of their more popular EV models. This is NOT happening in EU.
On the contrary EU manufacturers continue to expand their EV product lines.
The headline is a very big false equivalence.
Obviously Chinese brands have more success in EU, with about 13% tariffs than in USA with 150% tariffs.
Still European makers continue to compete on EV.You can’t lump USA and Europe together on EV, they are very different markets, and Trump is specifically undermining EV production now!
You also can’t lump in South Korea, that have been very active making good electric cars, Japan is behind, and especially Honda seems to be pulling back on EV, but Toyota is finally beginning to show some decent offerings, and Nissan has been in the EV market for years now.
The article seems to think USA is “the west”, when it is nothing like it.
Chinese EVs have up to 45% tariffs in the EU. The exact amount is different for each company and depends on the amount of state funding that company had received
up to 45%
13% is about average, brands that cooperate with EU have lower rates, obviously brands that export to EU cooperate.
AFAIK no brand is paying anything near 45%.And yet, EU automakers get billions in state funding from governments.
And you think the Chinese automakers are… ???
It’s the short term profits that they’re chasing. It’s unbelievable
short them profits over being able to make profit at all in the future. capitalism doesnt work even on standards of capitalism
Well they know that they will bailed out. Privatisation of profits and socialisation of losses.
While I think we agree on it being shitty as hell, I don’t think your statement is true. Capitalism is working just fine and as defined in theory.
Old companies that don’t innovate are being replaced by newer, more innovative companies. It’s working exactly as advertised. The part you and me don’t like is that millions of people are going to be thrown into poverty by those lunatics at the helm of the companies for their own short term gain instead of the well-being of everyone. But that is not contradicting capitalism itself.
but isnt idea of capitalism to make money for the people with capital? Any benefit like innovation is just coincidental, not the reason. If the ones with capital could prosper more through eternal stagnation, they definitely would. They couldn’t care less about other people than themselves.
So by driving these people into this, it demonstrates its own faultiness. Capitalism is as dysfunctional as communism, though for different reasons and it seems to have longer “shelflife”.
No, capitalism is that the idea that brings the most money will succeed. And not investing in the future of your product for sure doesn’t bring the most money after a certain time. The problem is that the current Epstein class values money now higher than money in ten years.
Capitalism isn’t about caring about others and (at least in theory) not about giving those with most money even more money. That is just the reality and logic if you think about it more than 5 minutes. But again: in theory the self correcting hand of the market is exactly how it should work.
but if you are smart and sustainable and think for long term, you get way more money than with short term profits?
Yes, but they aren’t smart and especially don’t think long-term.
And while in ‘true’ unregulated capitalsm, this would be heavily discouraged and punished, in our system they will just call for the governments to protect them and bail them out, as they are ‘too important to fail’.
Isnt monopoly the ultimate goal in unregulated capitalism? Then you could get the most money with least resources used to give anything back, as people wouldnt have any choice and you could also keep destroying any competition. Then you also dont have to innovate or do anything except keep wringing out the profits from people.
Yes and when it ultimately fails the governments will bail them out, smart.
You need the profits now to invest them …
At a time when less people than ever can afford new cars and they’ll have nothing to fill them with
dooming American car drivers to irrelevance at the same time
Americans don’t drive cars anyway, they drive shitty thirsty trucks built on 1960s technology and sold on high profit margins.
Trump will bomb the iran as long it take to make electrical cars great again.
Who cares about their irrelevance in 5 or ten years if you get giant boni for the bottom line in 6 months and are already somewhere else destroying another company 2 years down the line?
It takes years to design a new car model. It’s quite a risk to bet on combustion engines at this point.
While the world wide adoption of EVs is only about 20% of all new car sales (for personal cars), the statistics for countries that were early adopters shows that this figure doesn’t just increase, it accelerates when it comes over 1%, which it is almost everywhere.
So, it might seem reasonable to bet on the type of car that sells 80% on the market now, but that market is going to look very difficult by the time the cars are ready for production. Consumers have spoken: They want to buy EVs.
EVs are extremely modular, it takes a lot less time to design them because they are inherently simple.
You are explaining something everybody with 2+ working brain cells knows. But the company bosses only caring for the next bottom line and their bonus don’t give a fuck, and neither do the populists.
Because the former don’t care about anything but their personal short term gain before moving on, and the latter basically operate on letting everything go to shit intentionally to then blame some scapegoat for it.
Here’s a hot take you won’t find elsewhere: battery-based EVs are not a good solution to our problems - they require extraction of rare earth minerals often in areas with slavery and conflict mining, and strain on the energy grid. A far better solution is green hydrogen fuel cell based EVs and more investment in public transport, but it’s too hard to generate profits from either of those under capitalism, because the infrastructure costs required would be too great to be privately funded and public services are basically non-existent these days.
Mind that you are downvoted not because your claim, that electric cars are the solution, is wrong. Rather because hydrogen fuel cell cars are no better than existing electric cars.
Ideally there shouldn’t be a need for any citizen to own a private car.Ideally there shouldn’t be a need for any citizen to own an umbrella.
I broadly agree with you, though I would add that there are exceptions e.g. for disabled people.
The reason I am being downvoted is 100% because progressive people are just as capable of being reactionary, short-sighted and propagandized as conservatives.
Look at the replies. People are denying basic facts, claiming that fuel cells don’t exist and that hydrogen can’t be contained. How do you even argue with people who are so blinded by adherence to their pre-existing beliefs?
I am 100% correct about hydrogen fuel cell based EVs and these people are so sensitive that they cannot cope with someone questioning the narrative fed to them by the mainstream.
Hydrogen vehicles are a BAD idea. Get over it. Toyota wasted far too much money showing us this.
They’re a fantastic idea which is incompatible with capitalism. Recharging is easier and much, much faster, a full charge gets you much further, it allows for usage of vehicles in areas without an functioning or reliable electrical grid, it’s considerably more energy-dense meaning that vehicles can be lighter, and it’s considerably safer - fires caused by thermal runaway in EVs have been deadly. It’s completely clean, greener than BEVs because there is less raw materials required to manufacture, hydrogen can be made out of water and sunlight. It’s functionally free, and using it turns it back into water, with zero emissions. Batteries self-discharge whereas modern hydrogen systems are functionally 99.999% leakproof and even bulletproof.
They haven’t been a success because no one wants to pay the infrastructure costs necessary for them to be widely accepted, because nobody can make any profit from it. The technology itself is very good.
The main reason I find people trying to push Hydrogen for is they are stooges for the Oil industry, as Hydrogen can be made using the existing oil infrastructure we have, however I argue that we need to get off of Oil and Gas ASAP, Hydrogen made from O&G is not clean and needs to fuck off.
Fossil fuel based hydrogen is called blue hydrogen, which is why I specifically mentioned green hydrogen, which is made from renewables and water. I absolutely agree with you that fossil fuels must die, but simply replacing it with lithium or sodium mining or whatever is a bad alternative when we have a far better alternative with green hydrogen fuel cell EVs. Not to mention that BEVs are often charged with electricity generated by coal and gas power plants.
Last reply. Hydrogen stations are closing due to no demand, cant even keep them open for a year in Canada. Simply put acceptance of Hydrogen vehicles worldwide is not and will never be.
Edit: upon further research Maintenance costs alone make it prohibitively expensive to even consider one
“The cost per kilogram varies by region but typically ranges from $12 to $16. A full tank usually costs around $70 to $90 and provides 300 to 400 miles of range.”
Wow, so there is ZERO financial benefit of going to Hydrogen. For the record it costs me $20CAD/month to charge my EV.
Green hydrogen is bullshit. Just storing it and driving it around wastes energy.
Not sure about hydrogen EVs. But more public transport is definitely more important.
Ultimate goal should be to have dense network of reliable, free, accessible and fast public transport + easily rentable vans for cargo + reliable, free, accessible and fast on demand autonomous pods for less dense regions.
Hydrogen waste way more energy than batteries.
Also the infrastructure for EV is built on the electric grid, and is way easier to expand, than building a universally accessible hydrogen infrastructure.
Finally you can charge your EV at home, no such chance with hydrogen.Hydrogen may have a place in the future, but I don’t think it’s in personal cars.
Maybe in planes, trucks, and ships. That all have more specialized infrastructure. But probably not until we have very cheap renewable and surplus energy, so the wasteful method isn’t as much an issue.
But storage remains an issue, because you can’t contain hydrogen 100 %, which has a nucleus of only 1 proton, making it able to permeate every material in existence.Edit:
Added the emphasis, because someone interpreted it as if it can’t be contained at all.Your blind adherence to the status quo goes so far as to deny the existence of hydrogen tanks, for fucks sake.
Of course hydrogen tanks exist, but you are very naive if you don̈́’t recognize there’s an issue with storing hydrogen.
Hydrogen has extremely low density and requires very high pressure for storage, and the fact that Hydrogen permeates EVERYTHING, there is obviously leakage from ANY tank!!There are of course technical issues which we have overcome. We used to struggle with storing water until we invented pottery, too, but that doesn’t mean that indoor plumbing isn’t viable, does it?
Batteries also self-discharge, btw, far more than hydrogen leaks – and batteries are considerably heavier, more dangerous, and less energy dense.
You obviously don’t understand the difference between hydrogen and every other form of gas. Another issue with hydrogen is that it is extremely chemically active, and will make steel brittle.
But you just continue your arrogant ignorance.
Of course there will always be a “best” form of container, but you can never make a perfect container that actually contains it completely, like you can with everything else.There is no point in discussing this further with you. You are firmly in denial about the facts of the matter. Have fun in your alternate reality where hydrogen storage isn’t a solved problem.
I never claimed you can’t store Hydrogen, it’s not a big problem for short term storage, but you can’t store it like you can everything else.
It makes no sense to use energy to transport and store energy, just because idiots want to buy a liquid.
Transport will always be necessary, and we’ve done it with oil based fuels for more than a century.
Even electricity requires transportation through wires, to charge an EV, and when charged the car needs to transport the electricity with it in a battery.
AFAIK the waste transporting electricity in the electric grid is about 10% on average.But I agree that the way we transport electricity is way more elegant and practical.
There are a number of advantages to hydrogen fuel - recharging is easier and much, much faster, a full charge gets you much further, it allows for usage of vehicles in areas without an functioning or reliable electrical grid, it’s considerably more energy-dense meaning that vehicles can be lighter, and it’s considerably safer - fires caused by thermal runaway in EVs have been deadly.
I’m not saying you have to agree with me, there are obviously pros and cons to both technologies, but acting like there are no reasons beyond “idiots want to buy a liquid”, is just incorrect, and rude.
I honestly don’t think you’re going to move the aviation industry from hydrocarbons.
Unless there is some MASSIVE breakthrough in battery technology in terms of power density, you’re not going to see battery electric aircraft. There are a few hilariously pathetic ones in development or small volume sale, I saw James May fly one, it had an endurance of less than an hour. Maybe you’ll get a BEA to match the performance of a Skyhawk and those will be suitable for personal aircraft or primary trainers. Maybe.
In the transport category? Not a chance. Aircraft much larger than a Beech C90 and maybe even then, the max takeoff weight is greater than the max landing weight. For shorter hops, they load less fuel, for longer hops they assume the plane will burn enough fuel to be below max landing weight on arrival. Batteries don’t get lighter as they are discharged.
Another thing: liquid fuel is extremely convenient for airplanes, because the fuel tanks are just…the inside volume of the wings. They seal the internal volume of the structure and there you go, fuel tank. Who cares exactly what shape it is, liquid conforms to the shape of its container. Gaseous fuels require pressure tanks, which are going to add significant empty weight, and offer less internal volume. And we’re just not going to deal with cryogenic fuels in civilian aviation; they only put up with that shit in rocketry because they outright have to.
So…airliners are going to run on kerosene.
Unless there is some MASSIVE breakthrough in battery technology
I clearly wrote hydrogen Fuel cells.
Not for main propulsion of aircraft; to do the work of a jet airliner, you’d need electric motors driving ducted fans and fuel cells plus transmission cables and such capable of handling 5 to 10 megawatts. You’d also need to figure out a source of hot high pressure air for deicing systems and cabin pressure as that’s usually taken from the compressors of the main engines. You’ll see hydrogen burning turbofans before you see fuel cell powered airliners. I could see a fuel cell replace a turbine APU if you did build a hydrogen powered jet though.
Fuel cell planes:
https://www.airbus.com/en/innovation/energy-transition/hydrogen/zeroe-our-hydrogen-powered-aircraftThe ZeroAvia is an actually working plane:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZeroAvia
In August 2021, ZeroAvia completed its first high-power run of the ZA-600, a hydrogen aircraft engine.
So they’ve existed for years now, and the concept is proven.
Those are small, short range aircraft, the technology does not scale.
the technology does not scale.
And exactly how do you conclude that? That quad propeller Airbus design is at least 100 passengers, and Airbus say you can also burn Hydrogen directly in jet engines.
A far better solution is green hydrogen fuel cell based EVs
No. Hydrogen cells and hydrogen economy have been investigated since decades. I remember reading about it in a yearbook from Germany’s Jülich nuclear research center when I was visiting my uncle. He was doing his training as chemical engineer there and still living with my grandmother. This must have been in 1978 or so. He also had an interesting mechanical computation machine. He is long retired now.
I also did a talk abput fuel cells in my physics study, around 1993. My university was researching them. They were still far too expensive - a fuel cell for a car would have cost millions. Also requiring really expensive catalytic materials like platinum.
But the death knell for them is physics. They simply can’t be as effective as batteries, and also the process to generate hydrogen by electrolysis is energetically very expensive.
It is possible that fuel cells in some far future might become relevant for things like planes. But they won’t be powered by hydrogen because hydrogen can’t be stored efficiently - you can compress hydrocarbons like butan but hydrogen would require very heavy high-pressure tanks, and compressing gas to high pressure is energy-intensive again. And so on, and so on.
At that point, using hydrogon where batteries work well ist just another distraction from the step to just use tech great technology we have, to get away from fossil fuels. As fast as possible, before their use kills us.
You are very outdated on your understanding on fuel cell cars. We already have fuel cell vehicles with > 600km of range. Cost will soon be cheaper than fossil fuels.
You are reading some biased bullshit on the Internet. The actual fuel is cell vehicle is irrelevant, the problem is making, transporting and storing hydrogen. How many transport trucks full of electricity pass you on the highway?
fuels cells don’t and can never be made to work unless they invalidate the laws of nature somehow
electrified public transport and cycling / escooter and walking are the only solutions
ecars provide us paranoid few with a degree of energy resilience while civilisation continue to collapse but are in no way environmentally sustainable or green, the IPCC has fir devades said we need to move away from all cars.
as an aside lots of chinese cars (I have one, i cycle as much as I can but here in Australia we’re car brained fools and it’s hard to live in rural areas sans cars, it was easy when we lived in the city) The chinese ecars often use LFP batteries and don’t need the cobalt used in NMC batteries. Still a shit load of other stuff like 100- 120kg of Cu for the wiring harness and toones of fossil fuels needed for the plastics etc etc
The silicon carbon battery in my Motorola phone is good, they may be useful, solid state has issues over vibration that engineering may overcome.
None of that matters as were to far along to change course let alone reveres, inevitably well cross too many topping points in the next decade or two and the collapse of civilization will be set in stone.
Calling hydrogen stupid is actually the only smart thing Elon Musk has said in public.
…there are literally fuel cell electric vehicles already in production…?
to tell you the truth, I think public transport is the real long term solution, I put fuel cells in there too because some individuals will need a car, e.g. disabled people, and I think it’s a big improvement to ICE and battery-based EVs both in terms of environmental/social impact and safety
We are already at sodium batteries, so the environment argument is gone, and it was a weak argument, as if ICE and fuel cell cars are not made of mined metals, and hydrogen is not made from hydrocarbons. No way they could make enough hydrogen by electrolysis and if they did have the infrastructure to do that, it would be far more efficient to use EVs.
public transport is the real long term solution
Plus bicycles. They can replace and connect public transport in a great way for mid-range distances. Myself, I never had a car. I am mid-fifty now and cycle to work 14 kilometers, or 8.7 miles. And the only thing you need for a bicycle revolution in a city to happen are adequate safe ways - Paris, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, even Bogotá with its Sunday ciclovía are great examples.
Sorry, I’m not riding my bike in freezing weather on snow and ice.
^This 100% Most of these people have never experienced a proper winter.
I don’t do it with thick, uneven, crusty ice, but that’s mostly due to bad road maintenance. There is a city in Finland close to the polar circle where the bike is the dominant means of transportation, even in winter.. And it has a mean minimum temperature of -26° C in January and February.
Regarding cold, I regard riding the bike in cold weather far more convenient than waiting in a bus. I have a pack of different gloves which I use for each temperature level. The thing is… cycling in cold means moving the body which means the body generates heat. The only thing is that one has to protect hand and feed well (and use a bit less clothing on the core body compared to hiking at the same temperature, because that would be too warm).
