We’re all going to fry in old age. Our children are going to become sterile. Who tf knows what’s going to happen to whatever ppl make it past that.
Who [Is Killing] The Electric Car
Today I learned: the “conspiracy theory” about the oil industry killing electric cars in the 90’s was absolutely true.
Watching that in my high school electronics class was a early radicalizing moment
More of that capitalist innovation I keep hearing about huh. Finding innovative new ways to stop new technology that threatens their business from reaching a broader market! Great job
So when they say capitalism is innovative, they mean like regressively innovative?
I guess one last year has been allowed. After that a flood of cheap (true prices) chinese EVs will arrive.
Don’t worry, Biden just imposed tariffs on Chinese EVs so they can rest easy now.
Sabotaged, or just efficiently increasing shareholder value. It’s called “Fiduciary Responsibility”.
No. So many people misunderstand that. No, it does not simply mean you automatically sacrifice longterm profits. Fiduciary responsibility is pretty widely open to interpretation because shareholders overall can want different things. Some stocks barely budge in price but the board gives good dividends. Some companies make no profit for years upon years because they are pushing for growth. Just chalking this up to fiduciary responsibility is misguided and misses many big reasons why many boards choose short term profits while sacrificing longterm sustainability. Many get most of their earnings in stock. As long as they can keep the share price up long enough for them to make bank, they have little care about the longterm health of the company. This is one of the reasons that stock buybacks have been so big over the last decade.
Then other companies do stock buybacks instead of quality control in their airplane factories…
The Lich the holds Jack Welch’s phylactery demands sacrifices.
Well, ackchyually… /s
I am constantly baffled how refusing to futute-proof the company meets the definition of “fiduciary responsibility”.
“Let’s spike today’s profits by destroying tomorrow’s profits” doesn’t seem very responsible to me.
The desires of private shareholders, which have exclusively become “give me more NOW!” are wholly incompatible with the long term needs of our species, such as homeostasis with our sole shared COMMUNal habitat. The private shareholders that dictate how our economy runs through their captured governments literally only care as far out as their next quarterly earnings/ego score report, the planet can explode beyond that as far as they’re concerned, and my pet theory is that the wealth class is so egotistical, living like Pharoahs as others suffer and still needing mooaaaaaaar, that they kind of want the world to end after they’re gone, as they were the only point of it ever existing from their perspective.
Our species only pays lip service to the second, because many to most of us have been successfully propagandized to believe in the lie that we may one day be in the irresponsible sociopath hoarder con-man class, whether through lottery or not buying lattes, lol.
Basically the self-inflicted doom of our species that we’re sleep walking towards can be boiled down to this meme:
It’s because it’s a prisoners dillema. If they do it and other companies don’t, they are at a disadvantage. The only way to get proper behavior is to have the government force companies to behave.
Exactly… And ultimately they are beholden to shareholders. Which are largely in it for the stock price, not the dividends - they want numbers to go up, and they don’t care if it crashes the company in a few years when they’re no longer holding the bag
Money today is worth more than money tomorrow. With enough data and analysis, riding companies into the ground is the optimal way to make money
the same reason that you’re better off taking the lump sum vs the 30 year pay out if you win the lottery.
money today that i can use today is worth more than money tomorrow.
and money today that i invest now, will be worth a lot more than money tomorrow that i can’t invest and get interest on
it’s not responsible in terms of my company lasting a long time… but it’s responsible in terms of profit.
the same reason that you’re better off taking the lump sum vs the 30 year pay out if you win the lottery.
money today that i can use today is worth more than money tomorrow.
You might be theoretically better off in an ideal outcome, but I’m pretty sure taking the 30 year payout is the generally recommended option. If I were to win the Mega Millions at the current level, I would need to make investments that paid $96,244,081 over 30 years just to equal the tax savings of taking the annuity versus the lump sum payment. That works out to a 3.1% return on the initial lump sum, every year, 30 years straight. Granted, this isn’t exactly impossible, but it does require a few caveats. For example, this assumes you don’t actually spend any of that money, investing 100% of it and never having a bad year. Of course, the average lotto winner is not exactly known for their great ability to invest their money. Meanwhile, there’s nothing preventing the person taking the 30-year annuity from investing a portion of their annual payouts, which are guaranteed, while returns on investments are explicitly not guaranteed.
A guaranteed $96,244,081 return is a better investment than a possible $200,000,000 that’s continent on absolutely nothing going wrong for the next 30 years, but the sort of people who run companies seem to forget about this these days.
money now is worth more than money later.
because of inflation, and also because i can use it now. money i am getting in 30 years is no good to me now.
this isn’t that hard of a concept.
When your justification is an uncertain investment, it isn’t that hard of a concept to realize you’re wrong. You’re literally the only person I’ve ever seen advocating for the lump sum payment as the financialyl sound move when it quite nearly halves 100% sure income.
Inflation is also much less of a concern when you’re talking about literal millions of dollars, unless you’re talking about the Zimbabwe national lotto. If you’re living in a way that your ability to live with $15,000,000/year towards the end of a 30-year annuity payout has materially changed, you have bigger issues than inflation going on.
It doesn’t.
And people don’t really care about it . Let the wheel spin and get as much as you can while you ride, don’t think about next drivers.
Just in: capitalism continues to be shit
Let the market find the most efficient solution.
The market cheats, lies and scams.
Oh
Celebrated greed will be our end.
The kick is there is a large voting block who thinks we aren’t being greedy enough.
Now that we’ve trained the whole world in american-style corporate criminality, we’re gonna pull the rug out from them and reveal ourselves to be the good guys! Right? Right, guys?
Let’s just block Chinese EVs. Crisis over
Here in Australia I busted someone with a locked Facebook profile who apparently worked at a ford reseller lying about Kias EV9.
He did the whole laugh emoji and called me a stalker, but deleted his message a few minutes later (probably got a call from his employer who I tagged who was probably worried about the legal repercussions). I pointed out it was libel to lie like that
hating EVs is a lifestyle choice for too many people in australia
in the world*
car goes vroom vroom and stick shift goes shift shift is honestly a lot of fun in responsible amounts. it will be a battle to undo the carbrain propaganda in people, including myself.
It’s the policy of an entire political party. Remember “War on Your Weekend”?
Actually… Just noticed one talking shit about EV’s who works for Land rover.
But yeah, I’ve realised the same people talking shit about EV’s, tend to be the same people causing issues for everyone… They always have a locked profile (because they troll that much), they’re often anti-vax/anti-science and they’re the kind of toxic a-holes who were buttheads in high school, and continue to be.
I guarantee they also stocked meat and toilet paper during the pandemic, and tend to leave trash when 4wd’ing
I’m only buying Toyota because it didn’t get sucked into the stupid EV craze. They have common sense. The U.S. doesn’t even have the electrical grid to currently manage many parts of the U.S., especially California. How tf are we going to introduce a product that will require electricity, straining the electrical grid further beyond its capacity? It’s fkin nonsense.
Not to mention… the number of EVs (Teslas) that were having battery failures during the Winter in the midwest. And this last Winter was mild.
The only reason Toyota is pushing back against EV is because they are so heavily invested in hydrogen powered vehicles, which isn’t going to happen.
And still proudly producing gas powered vehicles which I will continue to outfit my family with.
Right. At the moment, hydrogen production is too costly, energy wise. If we could find an easier, better way to make it, that would change the game entirely.
Ah, the magical technological advancement that is only possible with hydrogen. While ignoring the advancements with EVs.
At the moment, hydrogen production is too costly, energy wise.
EVs are already way more efficient. You’re repeating things that have been discussed ages ago as something new.
A fuel cell car is an EV.
But it’s an electric car with a much lower efficiency than one that uses batteries
A highly exaggerated claim. Once you factor in all of the challenges of grid energy storage and battery manufacturing, there’s likely to be little to no difference.
Ok calm down, you don’t need to be condescending.
I know that right now hydrogen production is really not efficient compared to simply recharging a battery. Producing hydrogen takes more electricity to produce from water electrolysis to fuel a car for the same range as it would take to simply charge a battery. This I am aware of. And that’s what I was implying in my previous comment.
However, a small hydrogen cell powered car has at least twice the range of a similar sized EV. And also, it doesn’t take hours to recharge. Only a few minutes to refill the hydrogen tank.
What I hope it that we one day find a way to efficiently produce hydrogen. Because I’d rather have to wait a couple of minutes to refuel on a long trip than having to stop for an hour every time I need to recharge.
We have a more efficient way to produce hydrogen, which is using nagural gas. That’s obviously a bad idea. You can’t change the laws of physics, producing hydrogen from water and electricity just takes that much energy.
You ever wondered why traditional carmakers are pushing so hard for hydrogen? That’s because they can still reuse those super inefficient combustion engines, which they perfected in the last 50-100 years, and which is serving as a big gatekeeper to newcomers.
And with EV, they need to start from scratch like everyone else and they hate it.
Uh… No. Sorry my friend but we’re talking about hydrogen fuel cell technology. Not hydrogen combustion.
You should look into what hydrogen fuel cells are. Here’s a video that explains it.
The entire premise of hydrogen is dumb.
We would legitimately be better off combining it with CO2 to make synthetic gasoline and just use it with normal vehicles and infrastructure.
People don’t seem to get it. Electricity to hydrogen to electricity to motion is really, really lossy, and hydrogen leaks. It is worse than electricity to hydrogen to methane to power.
Dude, that produces methane, I think?. The whole point is to avoid combustion engines to prevent greenhouse gasses.
The way hydrogen is being used is to work with hydrogen fuel cells which is electric.
Carbon is what matters, but not in the way the hydrogen-pushers want you to think:
-
It doesn’t matter if the fuel has carbon in it, if the carbon is part of the short-term carbon cycle. Biodiesel, for example, releases no net greenhouse gases even though it has lots of carbon in it.
-
The dirty secret of hydrogen is that the vast majority of it is made by cracking fossil methane. (My previous comment about combining hydrogen with carbon to make synthetic liquid fuel charitably presupposed it was made the right way, by electrolyzing water with solar power, but most hydrogen production is not like that)
In other words, anybody telling you that hydrogen is better for preventing climate change than biofuels – despite them containing carbon – is trying to hoodwink you.
Ok. Because over here we’ve had a hydrogen station that’s been producing hydrogen at the station itself via electrolysis using electricity from the grid. It’s been working fine so far.
I’m gonna have to look into your claim about cracking methane being the way the majority of the hydrogen is created.
From https://solaredition.com/green-hydrogen-production-paths/ :
Only “green hydrogen” (4%) is actually good. For the other 96%, it would be better to just use the source hydrocarbon as fuel directly.
In other words, for the most part, the entities pushing hydrogen are mostly engaging in greenwashing bullshit.
See also:
-
Not just costly. Transportation and distribution is a big problem.
With electrical we already have an entire distribution network, it just needs to be significantly (but gradually) upgraded.
Gas stations popped up where they could make money, cars came first and then the gas stations.
Cool… I’ll buy an EV when both EV and electrical grid issues have been resolved. Until then… LOL
Nobody is going to upgrade the grid, if there is no prospect of increased demand.
I’ve noticed that media tend to bitch equally about both surplus and shortage of certain commodities. Expensive power? Horrible! Cheap power? Catastrophe! That way the world seems even more depressing than it really is.
They should be upgrading the grid as the population and demand for electricity increases ahead of time. This is how it works in the tech world. We set the base for the upgrade and then commit to the upgrade with fall back / disaster recovery plan.
Check when the last time an installed utility performed maintenance. Now you want them to turn things off while they put in new hardware? The only thing that will drive a business to make that kind of change is if the money is behind it, which will happen when EVs are much more prevalent.
Why would they need to turn anything off? That’s not how they expand capacity in the Netherlands. Why would it be needed?
Not from all the profits made by all the people using electricity and paying for electricity? And electrical grid has redundancy. You can take down primary and secondary takes over temporarily.
Let’s be honest: They’re not even going to upgrade the grid if it fails and burns down half the state
Been driving a VW ID4 for 3 years in Ireland. They’re lovely to drive. Zero battery issues, zero charging issues. The future is electric.
I think time will show Toyota has been very wise in this decision.
EVs are not and may never be the right answer for everyone. Personally, I don’t ever plan on buying one.
Stupid is as stupid does.
Driving my Prius to own the libs
Maybe one day when the libs work towards better public mass transportation, they’ll drive their EVs to own the libs.
This is the most fear mongering nonsense I’ve read on Lemmy to date
Literally google, “tesla stranded in winter”. Urineidiot.
Bruh has never experienced the pain of getting an older carbureted car going in the cold.
That is true… apparently diesel is pretty bad in the winter as well.
Then we never should have used diesel or carburetors.
Diesel is manageable or it wouldn’t be used in most heavy equipment. It usually just requires using a heater block in particularly cold climates.
Indeed!
I live in Canada, Québec more specific.
There are Teslas EVERYWHERE here. There hasn’t been any widespread reports of failing batteries.
So wherever you got your information, you might want to look somewhere else next time
Also, you can keep your insults to yourself. Just because someone disagrees with you, doesn’t mean you can call them an idiot.
It was common in the Midwest. And I just literally gave you the keywords to google search… there’s all the sources you need for the limited information I provided in my initial comment. Don’t like it? Kick rocks. You can’t re-invent reality.
You know what? I don’t like your attitude one single bit.
I’m not arguing with you.
Take a chill pill. Go outside and touch some grass.
Also… lmao you’re such a liar.
Google, “teslas stranded in quebec”
And lol @ the gullible people upvoting you.
First of all, you need to check your attitude. I don’t know why you’re being so aggressive.
Second, I’m not a liar. I fucking live here and my cousin who has TWO Teslas for his family has never encountered any problems. I have other relatives who have other EVs from different makes who never had problems. The vast majority of people with EVs here, even in the northern regions where it gets fucking cold, don’t have problems.
And third, Tesla’s get stranded everywhere, regardless of temperature or weather, more than any other EVs, mainly because they’re poorly built PoS cars.
Google: Norway EVs.
Thanks. I find that quite fascinating, honestly. How is it that in the Americas, EVs - or at least Teslas and their charging stations were failing but in Norway apparently this is not an issue they face.
In the U.S. extreme heat and extreme cold is bad for the electrical grid. He have blackouts / brownouts and rolling blackouts during these extreme weather/temperature conditions.
Montreal?
I think the OP has a point here: most of North America is distinctly not urban, distinctly not pedestrianized, and really spread apart. EVs take a substantial range hit in the cold, which might not be a problem in the Montreal area but is a bit more of an issue when living in bumfuck, Wisconsin.
I have relatives up in Saguenay where temperatures reached -50 last year. They have EVs and it’s not an issue. Sure the range and efficiency drops, but I wouldn’t say they break or become unuseable
Gasoline is a finite resource, so at some point all gas stations will sell out of gas. Imagine how hilarious it will be when gas cars are stranded at gas stations because there’s nothing to fill them with.
Lmao Dead.gfy
Gasoline is a finite resource
No it isn’t. Crude oil is finite, but gasoline could be synthesized from other carbon and hydrogen sources (up to and including CO2 + H2O + solar power) if you really wanted to.
I agree, if the resource is out… there’s nothing you can do but to go to another gas station. However, gasoline in winter weather, even if it’s -30 degrees Fahrenheit, is still usable. You’re still able to pump the fuel into your vehicle. Where as with these charging stations cold temperatures is a nemesis.
I have no beef with EVs, I just think we’re putting the cart before the horse. Like building a house with no foundation, it’s ludicrous.
I’m trying to say that eventually there won’t BE another gas station, and we have to prepare for that. Progress isn’t always a straight line, but I’d still rather be moving forward than digging our heels in with something we know we can’t use forever.
Agreed.
You should act like it, then.
Japanese car manufacturers actually sell a lot of EVs… in Japan. They don’t seem to be interested in selling those mini EVs abroad.
Well to be fair, trying to sell anything with the word mini in it in America is it uphill struggle; if there’s one thing us Americans hate, it’s walking uphill.
Especially walking uphill both ways
Or just walking.
It’s a kei car, though.
You say that as if Americans don’t want kei cars, but we do. Even rural off-roading Youtubers (who would probably be revealed to be ultraconservative if they didn’t keep their politics out of their videos) love things like Suzuki Samurais and Subaru Sambars.
They can usually be imported for private use, but kei cars aren’t street legal for most consumer purposes in the US. Which means they would be selling to a very small market. The very few that end up getting sold in Europe are usually modified versions designed for export is another limiting factor.
but kei cars aren’t street legal for most consumer purposes in the US
Speak for your own state.
They sell slightly modified kei cars in other countries, but not these electric models.
There is a small market for kei cars, for private use and export. But the economies of scale required for making these top-sellers don’t exist without regulatory and tax reform in foreign markets.
Maybe in the US, but in Asia, a huge portion of sales for Honda, Toyota and Suzuki are for their modified kei cars. Even so, they still don’t seem interested in releasing their electric models there. This gap is currently filled by Chinese EV manufacturers.
The Japanese car companies put all their eggs in the hydrogen basket, despite their early head start in EV with the Toyota Prius and such, and as hydrogen looks to be more and more of a dead end due to transportation and safety concerns, of course they are going to be sandbagging EV adoption to buy time and catch up.
China being a massive producer of EVs is also a large part of it. Japan and China have a long hatred of one another, but will sometimes set aside differences for simple things.
Gotta love the Japanese culture of holding onto tradition until you can’t anymore.
Gotta remember that Japan was still mostly feudal up until the World Wars. Pretty recent in human history.
Care to share some sources regarding hytrogen safety?
NEDO is a big public institution for renewable energy research. The budget is ~500M$ a year and they bet a lot in hydrogen : https://www.nedo.go.jp/english/index.html (https://www.nedo.go.jp/english/activities/activities_ZZJP_100096.html)
Great timeline isn’t it
Tesla and Tata Motors are exceptions noted, but noted highlighted in the article.
Tesla isn’t really a major car company in the transitional sense since they didn’t exist at all as a pre-EV car company.
Japan in japan sabotages cars. The real issue is that Japan went deep on hydrogen power combined with the large increase in electric prices after 3/11 any future of electric car died for the Japanese domestic market. Toyota in particular put its money in hydrogen buses, cars and other things which lead to a galaoagos tech like half of the rest of the crap in japan. Theres also some general resistance to electric over the past decade to create a parallel technology stack to china which fizzled out.
This shit actually hurts my soul. This is the type of shit as to why we might not make it. We have the technology to mitigate climate change yet we don’t because those in power don’t want to see their power decrease. It’s a serious reason why we might not make it. How do we even begin to take direct action? I really have no clue, this entire planet, life as we know it, is entirely fucked if we don’t do something soon. The US government gave billions to implement charging infrastructure and the corps did jack SHIT with it, the government has become the corps fuck pig, bent over dishing out money while getting fucked.
EVs are garbage anyways. The only way to actually save anything is to migrate most of the commonly occurring transportation to public electric systems like trains.
EVs are made in a non sustainable manner by raping the earth for the last scraps of rare earth materials, they’re hardly the answer
19 downvoters bringing a strong “shooting the messenger” energy
Certainly correct, we still need a path to direct action and it needs to be everywhere.
Technology isn’t going to save humanity. Greatly reducing population size by limiting reproduction is the only chance for a long future for humans. Thats the most direct path, but also at odds with all of our forms of government and economics. China couldt afford to keep doing it and they understand this. Its the same with the earths ecology. We would need a massive enlightening and there are far too many material and lifestyle choices and campaigns to sway people away from our staus quo. Humanity is doomed by human greed and jealousy, it always was. But thats fine, once you come to terms with it, and if you caught it before having kids, its a pretty freeing understanding.
the only reduced population size that’s needed is the population of plutocrats, the rest of us will be fine
Amazing, pure Nazi shit in this post.
you are wrong, nowhere am I advocating for anything. I’m saying human overpopulation will lead to our doom. This response is why I don’t really care about sustainability anymore. I’m not having kids, feel free to keep your head buried in the sand. Asshat
Might not make it? Sorry man we’re literally looking down the barrel of end times.
Human greed can only be stopped when the earth has nothing left to give.
This is the reality we all exist in and 99% of us are powerless to change it, unless we all collectively agree to (spoiler we’re not gunna).
It only takes 1/4 of a population to effect change.
Yay but seriously 0.25 aren’t rising up anytime soon either.
Don’t lose hope, otherwise, they’ve already won.
Nah, we’re not powerless, and we don’t all have to collectively agree. We have so many technologies that have been developed over the past several decades that can help solve this problem. Change is constant, this kind of shit is just another bump in the road.
Oh sweet summer child…
Why are you doing this?
Because they’d rather live their life believing they couldn’t change anything than believe they had a chance to change something and missed it.
this kind of shit is just another bump in the road.
I assume you are younger.
I am in my 50s. The risk of this shit was known and tought to children in schools in the 1980s.
Yet at every level. Things have gotten worse. We had solar in the 80s. Less efficient but only about 15% rather then the 20% we see now. But tax payer money in all western democracy. Was still funding oil research not batts wind or solar.
Cars became bigger and less efficient as we watched. GM was known to have destroyed its own ev production pack in the 90s.
Nothing at all was invested in building inferstructure to support other fuel types. Again dispite huge public investment in oil.
And at every 0ossible point. What little that was done was aimed at indeviduals who have the least control. While corperations were allowed to keep expanding there use. Without facing any of the costs for replacement.
Its a bump. But a 40plus year bump built intentionally to slow and limit changes in the way wealth is made.
With so much false science and outright lies from corperations its insane.
Exxon the plastics industry and many other. Behaived much worse the the cigarette industry did before them. And have not had to pay anything for there intentional and informed damage to billions of lives. Where as at least in nations with real health care options. Tobbaco companies have lost lawsuits and paid a fortune since discovery.
It’s not a might at this point.
Is there a number on the break even point where it’s better for the environment to buy a new EV than to keep driving an old ICE vehicle? I bike most days when I don’t need to buy more than a backpack of groceries or go more than 3 miles. Surely when you consider the carbon cost of refining materials and constructing a whole new vehicle, it doesn’t make sense in most situations for people who drive less than 30 minutes a day on average. This is of course assuming you have a current vehicle, new vehicles should have to be hybrid/EV in the modern era.
bro we’re so far past this lol
it’s been too late for probably a decade now, get ready to starve cuz there’s only a couple years left
