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
At a time when less people than ever can afford new cars and they’ll have nothing to fill them with
Yes and when it ultimately fails the governments will bail them out, smart.
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?
dooming American car drivers to irrelevance at the same time
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.
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.
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.
…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
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.
