EVs Outsell Petrol in Europe for the First Time EVER and Battery Trains Go Live!
The hottest of the hot news is at the 2:32 mark
Lemme see... When was it that some NT luddites declared that even "majority EV" wouldn't be happening any time soon? Oh yes... that was yester-fucking-day! This is MAGA fucking over Americans - including themselves, because they're totally ignorant idiots. By the time we get rid of MAGA, China will be s-o-o-o-o far ahead...
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*eyeroll*
"Stupid" is posting on an American website with an overwhelmingly American group of people and then getting your knickers in a twist when they have an American perspective.
That makes about as much sense as me going to Burgundy and calling everybody stupid because they don't eat Texas style brisket.
My American perspective is that we should be leading the planet in renewable research, development, manufacturing, and selling of both technology and the energy itself.
Willful ignorance is not a perspective.
That seems obvious for a nation that has pretentions of world leadership.
"America First!"
Apparently, that means that other nations must obey, not that America must excel.
That is not, in any way, what I was expressing.
I would have expected you to applaud the idea of the USA leading the charge in renewables. Not cast my comment as some kind of Trump-oriented arrogance.
How do you understand MAGA's "America First" ?
Do you think I am representing MAGA, Bob? Seriously, WTF?
Of course not.
My question to you was straighforward curiousity. I asked it because apparently you and I interpret the MAGA slogan differently.
It would be nice. Seems implausible from where we are, but it's a nice thing to wish for.
In any case, you seem smart enough to understand that couldnt happen imminently anyway.
It's difficult to compete in manufacturing when labor costs are 6x and regulatory delays are 10x or more.
Then you should probably stop ignoring 70% of the relevant information.
My comments had nothing whatsoever to do with MAGA or its slogan.
Yes, the first step is to establish objectives. The second is to set achievable milestones. My way of operating is always to identify what we ideally should pursue as the first step and then use that ideal to help focus our efforts.
Not being able to fully achieve an ideal now or in the future is assumed.
The previous point of the conversation is the continuance from another seed where we were discussing realistic timelines. Obviously those differ in different parts of the world, but we absolutely must pretend otherwise or we're all "stupid".
I agree with your process ideas, and I'm sure private industry is already looking at similar calculations, waiting for the risk/reward to become favorable.
Key components of that risk/reward calculation include labor costs, regulatory hurdles, and now the ridiculously capricious nature of presidential whim, or in Biden's case, the whim of whoever was making decisions on his behalf.
So yeah. You're spot on. And I would love to see it happen sooner rather than later, but let's be realistic about how many years that probably is.
My reaction to your Comment did. Your 1.1.1 seemed to me to express the idea that America should strive to be the best. I agree.
That provoked - in me - a reflexion on just what "be the best" means. No more than that.
Tomorrow, I'll seed two EV road tests. One Korean, one Chinese... both affordable and available... in the EU.
I refuse the idea that America is less able to serve Americans than Europe is able to serve Europeans.
But corporations don't like to defy their government... particularly when obedience is profitable. So American manufacturers toe the MAGA line. And wait...
I look forward to it. I've already said multiple times my next purchase will almost surely be an EV.
Your attempt to frame the situation in that context is severely misguided and ultimately quite telling.
I cannot imagine we need to explain how different European culture is to American. There is a reason they don't sell Renaults in America, and it isn't the government.
If corporations can make money, they don't give a shit what the govt says. It's not about the govt. It's not about politics. For whatever reason, Americans don't want to buy EVs.
During the height of the Biden green era, when the US govt was paying affluent people to buy EVs, they made up less than 10% of total auto sales in the USA. We have full electric Hyundais, Kias, Chevys, Fords, Cadillacs, and even Porsches, Mercedes and Audis. They're everywhere. They just don't sell that well.
Electric pick up trucks, which are faster, stronger, more efficient and more reliable than their ICE counterparts made up less than 4% of truck sales.
Part of the issue is probably the distances we drive. It's farther from El Paso to Beaumont Texas than it is from Paris to Budapest. That's Paris, France.... to Budapest, Hungary.... and you're still in the same US state. We don't have any rail service worth mentioning, so when we need to go somewhere we drive. Nobody wants to be stopping for 30 minutes every three hours, hoping they can find a working charger.
You can't make Americans want EVs, any more than you can make them not buy the pickup trucks you think are too big.
Given that reality, near term adoption is a fantasy.
This is like getting people to give up their iPhones. Most Android phones are better in every spec and less expensive. Try to convince the Blue Bubble Heads of that. They don't care. They're going with what they know. EVs face the same issue.
The reason is obvious. A significant segment of the population has decided to oppose alternative energies for dogmatic reasons. Along with vaccines, AGW, ...
MAGA is anti-science.
If you don't see that, you're part of the problem.
That's really the basic problem. When China and the U.S. produce cars of equal quality (and features) the American car can't compete in the marketplace.
Why? Because the equivalent U.S, produced car is much more expensive than the one produced by China.
IIRC, Musk knows the future for Teslas is not very positive.
So what can he do about this? Apparently he is going to be moving away from focusing on cars and towards robotics. (Tesla may become a robot producing company).
So.... your suggestion here is that 90% of the people who bought cars in 2024 were MAGA? You sure you wanna go with that?
And liberals are terrible at math. Don't be part of the cliche.
Maybe so. He's clearly been living "Atlas Shrugged" for the last several years. He's got to be looking at how easy it is for Chinese companies to build factories and make products compared to how difficult it is in so much of the US and shake his head. It's like we don't want to win that contest.
I'm really curious about the iRobot clones he wants to make. I cannot imagine he's not going to run into the same problems. I hope he doesn't, but I'm not optimistic.
MAGA (defined as the aggregate of those who continue to support/defend Trump) is not very supportive of science. (And do not translate that into a 100% against science claim, because it is not.) The movement denies climate science (seems to want to do the exact opposite when it comes to sensible measures). Trump withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement and still calls climate change a hoax. Many seem to be against vaccines. Trump withdrew from WHO and has dismantled/reduced funding for all sorts of scientific research.
On a scale of supportive, indifferent, and non-supportive toward science, I would classify MAGA as non-supportive.
Given that you labeled the stereotype a cliché, one would think you recognize that it is a silly, hasty generalization.
Is that true? Were you just being humorous or do you actually believe that liberals are terrible at math? Mathematics is much more than mere arithmetic calculations and is mostly dealing with abstract reasoning, logic, modeling and proof. It is not clear why these skills escape political liberals but implicitly apply to those who are not. Then again, even 'liberals are terrible at arithmetic' strikes me as a silly claim.
Europe committed suicide via green energy insanity
In some ways, yeah. But it's not just them. There is a lot of that going around.
Side note... I don't mean to split hairs, but I think there is a relevant distinction between people who "support" (voted for) Trump and the ones I refer to as "true believers", just as there is a relevant distinction between people who voted for Harris and left wing true believers. I'm assuming your intent is to focus on the red hat wearing true believers. If that's not the case, correct me.
True. But I'm not sure this is more idiotic than multiple genders or men playing women's sports.
The best example of this I can think of is the dual reaction to Covid vaccines. Elements of the MAGA crowd were just determined not to get vaccinated under any circumstance, no matter how completely obvious the math was. Similarly, elements of the lefty crowd were just determined that unvaccinated people represented an imminent danger to vaccinated people, no matter how clearly the math indicated otherwise.
As I see it, we have two sets of somewhat stupid people living in glass houses throwing stones at each other.
Back to the point of the article, EVs are not struggling in the USA because of MAGA. In 2024, at the height of the EV subsidy era, 9 out of every 10 Americans who bought a new car chose not to buy an EV, even though the Biden Administration was offering almost a 20% rebate on entry level models.
MAGA is not 90% of this country. They're not even 90% of places like Texas. So this idea that Americans aren't buying EVs because "MAGA" is utter nonsense. The idea that we are decades away from being a majority EV nation isn't stupid, it's just very basic math.
Yes. I was mocking one generalization with another.
Political extremists are bad at math. It's a necessary prerequisite. You cannot be good at math and still believe the things they claim to believe.
I'm sure you know it's almost impossible to be good at science while being bad at math, so we're confirming our previous comments.
In my experience there is only a small distinction between the red hats and the purple hairs on this.
That's just one issue of many for them.
You've got illegal immigrants living in luxury hotels at taxpayer expense while driving 3x increases in sexual assaults. The data is painful to watch.
I consider MAGA to be those who continue to support Trump. Those who voted for him are not a factor to me, it is just those who currently support him (and that includes those who did not vote for him).
I also do not really care why they support him. Be it true believer, political opportunist, blind partisan, etc. anyone supporting Trump right now is part of the MAGA cult in my view.
Not entirely true. Compiled by ChatGPT (you can always fact check if you think any of this is wrong):
The biggest inhibitor to EV sales in the USA is price and the ease of charging. Trump did not create these problems but he is exacerbating them. A key thing to consider is Trump's hold on Congress. Bob could rightly view MAGA as the effective force that enables Trump's policies.
Unless you were in a crowd protesting MAGA, then it was ok and no problem.
You've been consistent in that view for years now.
As far as EVs go, we weren't buying them even when Biden was paying us to do so.
Full disclosure, I took serious advantage of green subsidies, but they certainly were yet another program funneling tax money from the working classes to the affluent. (see "student loan forgiveness")
Almost all of us who put solar on our homes could have afforded to do so without govt assistance. I didn't buy an EV, but only because I couldn't justify trading in an Audi with less than 30k miles on it.
In contrast, my nephew the HVAC technician has been driving around in a 2002 chevy pickup on bald tires because he can't afford new ones. So giving him $7500 toward a $50k EV is as helpful as giving him $10. Green mandates do nothing but increase costs he's already struggling to pay.
Have you followed the EPA's destruction?
Are you aware of Project 2025?
Bubba Beerbelly isn't the important person... Stephen Miller is.
If you wish to argue that Trump isn't MAGA...
Why do you discredit youself like this? You're probably the only conservative on NT capable of aligning three coherent sentences, and then you play peacock to idiots.
Do you really get enjoyment from this?
None of which has a tinker's damn to do with the established fact that Americans don't want EVs, even if when the govt is giving them thousands of dollars to take one.
When Biden's EPA was in full force, and before anybody knew what Project 2025 was, and when Stephen Miller was just another weird bald dude in a bad suit....and the US govt gave you $7500 for doing so.... Americans STILL weren't buying EVs.
Explain for us how Biden's 100% EV tariff is some sort of MAGA plot. That should be good.
I get that you like EVs. I like EVs. If somebody steals my car at the gym tonight, I will replace it with an EV by the weekend. (probably either a Lyriq or a GMC truck) But we're in the minority. Most Americans are not on board with this yet, and won't be for several more years.
That's fine, because in that time we'll be adding infrastructure, improving electric generation capacity, battery technology, charging times and range. As all of that falls into place, people will get more and more comfortable with the idea of an EV.
Still yet, there are 290 million passenger cars in the US currently. Americans buy 15-17 million new cars/yr. So even if every new car sold was an EV, it would take at least 10 years to get us to a majority EV nation.
Discredit? By stating facts you find inconvenient?
Illegal migrants are being housed throughout the UK and Ireland at the taxpayers expense. Sexual assaults have skyrocketed in Britain, France, Germany, Sweden and several other countries, and the offenders are overwhelmingly foreign nationals.
What part of this do you think isn't true?
None so blind...
I decided some years ago not to "argue" with MAGA horseshit.
My point, though, is that Trump is hindering the move to EVs (intentionally).
The move to EVs is evolutionary and of course it is slow for the reasons I stated. But Trump is acting to reverse it, not support it.
Seems to me that when talking about MAGA we should deal with the active agents rather than lump everyone who voted for Trump, or every R, or every conservative as MAGA.
Only those engaging in supporting Trump matter in terms of 'MAGA'. It does not matter if they voted for him (or not) or their political/ideological views. If they are still/currently supporting him, they are MAGA.
Yes, that is the other problem.
I think they double-dixied themselves!
So it is, in fact, true. Ok then
He's trying. For now.
He seems to be in that phase most presidents go through before their first midterm when they're stupid enough to believe that the majority of Americans want them to do the things their true believers tell them. Clinton, Obama, and Biden were all similarly afflicted, and W would have been had it not been for 9-11.
The midterms usually disabuse them of that nonsense, and I suspect we'll see a less RW but equally annoying version of Trump after November.
You keep trying to infuse Trump with normality. It is ridiculous.
I think that's probably fair both ways, don't you?
There are the liberals who think we should spend more money on schools and then the liberals who think home ownership is a weapon of white supremacy. Those people are not the same, and it seems unfair to accuse the former of the insanity of the latter.
Not interested in the hysteria. Not joining the cult.
‘MAGA is anti-science. ’
Yes because men can be women and give birth…s/
‘foreign nationals.’
Of what part of the world, I wonder? S/
I think labels are a bad idea since they impose stereotypes. MAGA, to me, is a shorthand for 'those who currently support Trump' rather than some defined group with specific characteristics. I do not see everyone who is technically 'MAGA' as having the same characteristics. Clearly some are operating as cult members, others are just being blind partisans, some are clueless and believe whatever the guy says, some like some of his select policies and justify it as a means to an end, etc.
I do not care what reasoning is behind supporting Trump because I am fully convinced he is net bad for this nation and that his good does not even come close to offsetting his bad.
In general, and again to your point, a liberal has some basic characteristics (as does a conservative) but lumping people under these broad stereotypes is a bad idea IMO.
Trump is abnormal compared to any other PotUS. He is clearly the most extreme outlier; and not in a good way. Surely you agree with that.
Probably so. Still, conversations about groups of people with common characteristics would be impossibly tedious without a name for the group.
I would guess he's an outlier, sure. It's probably an easier case to make that he's unlike any president of the last 50 years.
If we're honest, we don't really know what all the other presidents were like, but it seems logical to presume that Trump is unusual.
That said, he still shares commonalities with many other presidents.
The most outrageous acts of past presidents are likely part of what we call the historical record. If true, then none of them are in Trump’s league for incompetence, dishonesty, vindictiveness, psychopathy, immaturity, etc.
When the common characteristics are few and homogeneous across the group, it is fair. But when the characteristics are many and heterogeneous, the label misrepresents the individual.
I thought "Oh no, this bloke is going to say everything electric breaks eventually", lol.