schizoidman‘It’s stupid’: why western carmakers’ retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance
bearboiblakeHere’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.
JacobCoffinWritesHydrogen could/can be done greenly but there’s a reason the oil and gas companies push it as the green option of choice when they’re not trying to stop any transition at all: hydrogen keeps them relevant longer - most of it is obtained and transported through their systems. They’d love if we spun our wheels investing in a precarious energy transition into a new tech on the promise that the generation of hydrogen will eventually become green - they can draw that out for years.
Electrific cars are still basically the same thing for auto companies - keeping the car relevant, but there’s value in the comparative mechanical simplicity and the fact that the electric transition has already made significant progress and is hurting oil and gas sales now.
Full agree that public transit would be a significant improvement, especially improvements in coverage area