True, but with a constant 100% plus generation from renewable, there obviously wouldn’t be any fossil fuel burned to generate electricity. Here we are already at 80% of our total yearly electricity generated by renewables.
When that reaches 100%, it can be done by utilizing surplus at peaks to generate hydrogen, exactly to completely prevent any use of fossil fuels.

I don’t see the whole worlds energy consumption going purely green within the next 100 years.

100 years is a very long time, back in the 70’s it was considered a lofty goal to achieve even 10%, and now we are at 80!!
I don’t think you have historical perspective.
Personally I think within another decade we will surpass 100% here, and have the ability to export a lot of surplus renewable energy.
I was also mostly thinking about civilized countries, not so much for instance USA.

This was a peak situation, but long term with even more renewable energy, that’s when Hydrogen becomes relevant.
And when we have enough surplus production of electricity to produce cheap hydrogen the sky is the limit. Because cheap hydrogen can replace oil and gas everywhere.

We are not there yet, but I think it’s not too far away.

the Danish Energy Agency is spearheading an ambitious plan to produce even more wind power for both export and domestic use.

And we are far from alone in this, all European countries are working towards more renewables. Which is why I think the above will become reality soon. Hydrogen is wasteful and cost a lot of electricity to make, but when electricity becomes plentiful enough that renewable production goes to waste, that’s when hydrogen becomes really really relevant, and can replace everything that can’t be replaced with electricity and batteries.

Regarding sales in China. Mercedes sold all their big cars: S/E class and GLS and GLE in China. Same applies for the US.

That was exactly my point too, and those are because of political circumstances in China and USA, and not because of management, prices or quality.
Yes they have a problem, and that problem is caused by a storm of circumstances management had absolutely no influence over.

European brands have not managed to come out on top.

Not true:
https://fdm.dk/nyheder/nyt-om-trafik-og-biler/elektrisk-bilsalg-elbiler-har-kurs-mod-90-procent

German brands alone are 13 out of 25. The only VW owned brand not on the list is Cupra/Seat, maybe because some of their models are made in China?

18 models are European, one brand that has been squeezed out is Hyundai, which used to be a very popular brand, and also Volvo which is made in Sweden and has always been among the favorites here, and they definitely are on top of the EV development with a lot of Chinese help.

With cars coming in from China, Japan and USA, European makers maintain 72% of the market here in Denmark. Where we have a 90% of new cars sold being EV.

Most of the time a year later there would be a quite similar looking car from a Chinese brand.

If the chain is as you suggest that the Chinese authorities hand over documentation for Chinese manufacturers to copy, that would be an issue for EU.
I don’t believe things happened quite the way you suspect. But for instance Xiaomi when they developed the SU7 had European designers on it, and they chose to copy Porsche.
But good design elements have a tendency to spread, and Xiaomi does not make a secret of where their inspiration came from.
You don’t have to give the specs to Chinese authorities for that to happen. Every manufacturer can buy a European car, and tear it apart to see how every component is built.

Their sales of petrol cars gone down in China the last few years

That’s happening to everybody, including Chinese car makers. I don’t get what you point is with that?

IDK about other countries, but Mercedes seems about as popular as it always was here:
https://fdm.dk/nyheder/nyt-om-trafik-og-biler/elektrisk-bilsalg-elbiler-har-kurs-mod-90-procent

With 3 models in the top 25, it’s not exactly bad for a brand that is more expensive than the competitors.
2 models beat Tesla model 3, which is a cheap crap car, and all 3 models beat VW ID.3 which is a very decent car, and they all beat the Chinese Zeekr which is a new darling in the market. In the list 13 models are German brands, which make German cars just beat 50%!!
In fact Mercedes and BMW are the only luxury brands on the list!

Notably Volvo and Polestar are out completely! And that’s significant because in Denmark we have always bought many cars from Sweden!
It is also notable that the field is pretty narrow, so although Mercedes is a bit down the list, the sales are not that much behind.
But in China the market is dominated by subsidized Chinese cars, in an exploding market, and in USA tariffs have nearly destroyed the market for cars made in Europe.
So European car makers are not doing great internationally ATM. Not because of incompetence, but because of a very tough even hostile market for European cars.

I am not aware of enshitification with Mercedes.
On the contrary I just saw a review the other day of the Mercedes ACL vs Zeeker. The Mercedes was way higher quality, and the assist systems actually work, contrary to Chinese cars, and the efficiency of the Mercedes was 20-25% higher!!
Yes China can build some pretty attractive cars with decent specs, but don’t get fooled to think they are of similar quality to any label of German cars.

IDK if your claim is true you don’t provide any sources for it.
If it is I agree that sounds very high for a company with a market cap of only 45 billion.

They move3d fast, but so did the Chinese. It’s a competition, your opp0onent doesn’t always do as expected. China came sooner than expected because the Chinese development has been insane. No wonder Mercedes didn’t expect them to move that fast.
But the Chinese market is over saturated now, which is why China expands to Europe before expected.

This show nothing, Mercedes was always a luxury brand, of course they aren’t in the top of the list, they never where.

They sold their soul in China for short term profit.

Exactly what did they sell out? Exactly what technology did China “steal” from Mercedes?
Car manufacturing has been a global business for more than half a century. Should they just ignore a major emerging market?

During Covid they were making record profits,

Yes the Chip shortage had the effect that car prices increased, making each car more profitable to sell.
But the after effect was a near recession and inflation where profits and sales fell back. Only helped partially and regionally subsidizing EV sales.

They always kept laughing at Tesla and Chinese cheap EVs.

Doesn’t change the fact that Mercedes today make the best electric cars on the market without comparison. So they must have done a heck of a lot more than just laughing.

No one wants the Mercedes expensive EVs…

That’s an absolutely moronic claim, A Mercedes CLA is not much more expensive than a VW ID.4 here.
But yes compare to a Fiat 500 Mercedes is expensive, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have good value.

Blaming management when the truth is the car industry has been in an almost perfect storm for almost a decade.

1. Global Chip shortage ( Disruption of supply chain, decreasing sales due to slowed production )
2. Covid ( Hurting sales and production )
3. Energy crisis in Europe imposed by Russia before they invaded Ukraine ( Increasing production cost )
4. Increased competition from China ( lowering sales and profits )
5. Brexit ( Disrupting supply chains, and decreasing sales to UK )
6. Transition to EV ( Increasing cost of R&D and production due to more models makes production more expensive )
7. Sanctions against Russia ( Loss of market and the value of investments in supplying the country )
8. US Tariffs ( Preventing sales to USA )
9. War in Iran ( Disrupting the economy and economic outlook, lowering car sales globally )

All these issues have direct impact on all European car brands, VW is making EU best selling EV cars, and they too have problems.
But yes the management for the car brand that makes the most energy efficient EV is incompetent.

Fuck Russia

Thanks, I never considered that.

Isn’t it a bit weird to do that from Norway?
AFAIK it’s best to be near the equator, because it’s easier to reach escape velocity there.
There’s a reason it’s the first time, even though we’ve had a European space program for decades.

Do you have an example of this alleged IP theft?
Because the things they are famous for are their own developments,like the blade batteries and the insanely fast charging.
The rest of an EV is not really different from normal cars, or are you claiming the rest of the world has some IP right to make cars?

China is absolutely a giant in EV development and production.
But compared to EU they are not really ahead IMO. I just saw a review comparing a Zeeker and Mercedes of similar price.
And the Mercedes beat the Zeeker by 25% in efficiency!! Using only 16 kWh/100km against 20 for the Zeeker.
The Zeeker was fast at charging, but with similar sized battery the Mercedes had way better range.
Also the assistant systems in the Chinese car were utter crap compared to the Mercedes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLkcQTRHANc

In the cheaper spectrum the new ID Polo from VW has got absolutely raving reviews.
So I think we are still in the game here in Europe, But as you state, I too think USA is falling behind.

Each Flash charger carries 370kWh of on-site battery storage

That buffering approach is central to how BYD has quickly scaled the network. A site that would otherwise need an industrial-grade grid connection can instead run on a more ordinary one

This is very cool, and answers a question I’ve heard from users here, arguing that the draw from a cluster of such chargers would overwhelm the grid.

That… applies for fuel too? If it’s not super busy, I’ll go inside and grab a snack while getting fuel.

That’s illegal here, the hose is not allowed to be able to lock.

That’s got to cause more problems than it solves.

Just because you don’t see how it can work, doesn’t mean it doesn’t. ( argument from ignorance ) First of all the grid of Estonia isn’t isolated, it is connected to a much larger European grid of about 700 million people.
I know this is pretty recent, before it was connected to Russia. But these connections are strategic and are constantly expanded throughout Europe.

These 1.5 MW chargers are generally connected in groups, if the grid isn’t powerful enough to handle them, they will not be established.
But my guess is they use batteries to store power for fast discharge, that are charged a steady but lower rate.
Remember when a car charges at that rate it only draws power for 5 minutes. So one charger can handle maybe 12 cars per hour.

Here in Denmark we have Charging stations where multiple brands are represented, with each their “island” of chargers. And I’ve seen some that have more than 20 stations with 400 kW charging available. The reason they aren’t bigger, is that there isn’t a market for it yet. But if they are run all of them simultaneously that would be 8 MW.
But if 2 on the same station are used at the same time they only provide half the power. So the max is really only 4 MW.
This is in Denmark where we are about 6 million people, and our peak AFAIK is only 5,3 GW, But the country is split into 2 energy zones, East and West, so for one zone the number is probably closer to 2,7 GW. Mostly half the country is on 1 island, and the rest is mostly a peninsula and an island.
So closer to 3 million, and for some reason with way lower peak power per capita than Estonia. But the electric grid is connected to Norway, Sweden, Germany, and even UK and Poland.

IDK how they do it, but it works, and I’ve never experienced a problem.

The ID.4 isn’t amazing in acceleration it’s only 204 hp. But that’s still enough to make it faster than our old Ice car that was 160 hp.
In European terms that makes it go 0-100 km/t in 8,5 sec. That’s less than half a second faster than the old ICE car.
BUT, the acceleration is always instantly ready, and it’s so quit I barely hear it inside the car.
We could have had a car that goes from 0-100 in less than 5 seconds for the same price, but we chose not to, for 2 reasons, number one I’ve seen neighbors have stupid things happen because they accelerated too quickly, like a small garden trailer turning over for going too fast through a roundabout. And quite frankly, I know myself well enough to know that I would have a very hard time not to give it a bit of pedal occasionally. The 2nd is that insurance on those faster cars is twice the insurance of our more moderate car.

But despite that, I agree that the acceleration is cool, because it’s always ready, it’s plenty fast IMO, and it quiet.
AND I also noticed that a bit of acceleration doesn’t kill the economy nearly as much as it does in an ICE car. The efficiency when accelerating is way better.

But they ignore that you don’t need to even go to a public charger like that most of the time if you charge at home.

Absolutely, in the 10 months we’ve had the car we’ve literally only charged away from home less than 10 times. Because almost all of our trips can be done on 1 charge.
And charging at home is both super convenient and super cheap.