Nearly all major car companies are sabotaging EV transition, and Japan is worst, study finds
Nearly all major car companies are sabotaging EV transition, and Japan is worst, study finds
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.
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).
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.
It only takes 1/4 of a population to effect change.
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.
Sabotaged, or just efficiently increasing shareholder value. It’s called “Fiduciary Responsibility”.
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.
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.
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. And heaven forbid we kneecap the gluttonous, destructive lifestyle we delude ourselves we'll one day have with... barf... responsibilities towards the societies that facilitated such unethical levels of antisocial wealth hoarding to begin with. Punching down looks fun amirite?
Basically the self-inflicted doom of our species that we're sleep walking towards can be boiled down to this meme:
It doesn’t.
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.
Nothing surprising.
EVs have been developed since the 90s at least as far as I know, and progress on them has been sabotaged at nearly every turn by the industry.
I remember an early Saturn EV that was never sold, only leased so GM could maintain ownership of them. Even with a limited range, the drivers all loved them for commuting and running errands, and many tried to purchase them outright, which GM refused. Eventually, GM issued a mandatory recall for all the Saturn EVs, mothballed the project, and then they released the Hummer... made me sick even at the time.
Saw that on a great documentary, "Who killed the electric car?"
Japanese car manufacturers actually sell a lot of EVs... in Japan. They don't seem to be interested in selling those mini EVs abroad.
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 sell slightly modified kei cars in other countries, but not these electric models.
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
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
It's the policy of an entire political party. Remember "War on Your Weekend"?
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.
Seems kind of spurious to call lobbying sabotage as if the politicians being lobbied are machines and not human beings doing what they've been elected to do as nominally bourgeois party members.
Seems weird to assert politicians do anything they were elected to do. They're far more worried about what the donor class wants.
Politicians from bourgeois parties are going to serve bourgeois interests. Nobody should expect anything different from them.
I know Toyota is still ragging on EVs because they invested a lot into hydrogen tech and want that to be the next big thing instead. But I didn't know Honda, Mazda and Suzuki also under-invested.
It isn't about development investment. It's about engines. Engines have long tail after sales profits from maintenance and parts. It's why Toyota recently unveiled their ammonia fueled engine and declared electric vehicles are dead. Electric engines remove a ton of after sales profits in the form of servicing, spare parts and upgrades.
Honda is full-on for hydrogen as well.
Toyota may be cranky about EV's beating out hydrogen, but they're the company claiming to have invented some new solid state battery that has an 800 mile range and can charge 80% in ten minutes on a fast charger, which would be huge for the EV market.
Japan doesn't have enough electricity. After Fukushima, they lost most of their nuclear. The country is densely populated, and the parts that aren't populated are covered in forested mountains, which all makes building the required amount of renewables very difficult. So today and in the future, Japan runs on coal and natural gas. So they make cars that run on hydrogen (which is more efficient to create out of their imported natural gas than burning the gas for electricity) and then sell those abroad greenwashed as "but you can produce hydrogen from green electricity!"
First of all EVs do not need that much power. We are talking something like 25% more electricity production for a country like Japan. Then Japan has rather a lot of onshore and even more offshore wind potential. Mountains are a problem, but hardly something which can not be overcome. Solar can easily be installed on roofs and mountains are even less of a problem.
Also really important to say it. Combustion engines in cars are massivly inefficent. So an EV is still better for the climate, even if run with coal electricity. The other factor is that Japans population is falling. So they will need less power over the long term.
The margins are thinner. There's almost no resale value. Someone might buy a 60k car and eat the payments for a few years, knowing that they can sell it any time for a decent price.
Buying a 60k EV is more like setting your money on fire. The car might be fine, great even, but it just won't hold it's value.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
Great timeline isn't it
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.
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.
Let's be honest: They're not even going to upgrade the grid if it fails and burns down half the state
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.
That’s just the media doing its thing. Information content is a byproduct of making money. Actually, educating the public isn’t strictly necessary, because you can also manipulate emotions to attract attention and clicks.
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
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.
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.
If you’re in a city, bikes and public transportation are the answer. Rural areas are stuck with cars though. America seems to be a bit of an exception to this rule, because lots of things would need to change before any of this could potentially happen.
Stupid is as stupid does.
At this rate Saudi Arabia will beat Japan on EVs. A very big claim but I have cause to believe it.
The Saudis are also huge investors in Lucid Motors .
Lucid already started making EVs in Saudi Arabia. And they also have investments in Human Horizons and an EV manufacturing deal with Hyundai.
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.
Sounds like oil tycoons didn't find ev adoption humorous any more
Blame everyone but your SUV driving selves. The devil made you do it Im sure.
Just in: capitalism continues to be shit
Celebrated greed will be our end.
Let the market find the most efficient solution.
Oh