We're heading down a crazy path where the rest of the world outside of North America has cleaner air and cheaper transportion options enabled by high quality Chinese EVs. Meanwhile life is worse and more expensive in wealthy NA, still chained to the whims of the oil market.<p>All because of political choices in banning imports and not sufficiently pushing local auto makers to push for an EV transition.<p>Really wild stuff to see NA that has always been at the technological bleeding edge, weirdly politicize vehicle engines and cede so much ground because it is so politically beholden to oil interests.
“The future is coming faster in China”
China’s fuel consumption peaked in 2019 and is projected to drop 2-5% each year for several decades.<p>This is probably a predictor for the rest of the world too. Potential for Africa to leapfrog over fossil fuels, developing nations will embrace solar and cheap Chinese electric vehicles.
This will cause a shift in global energy markets.
I’m not positioned to capitalize on that prediction, but it seems pretty sound.
"In the US, EV’s still represent only about 10% of total car sales, and BloombergNEF sharply scaled back its forecasts for growth after the Republican election sweep."<p>"[In China] they've accounted for more than half of retail passenger vehicle sales in the four months from July, according to the China Passenger Car Association"<p>Cue the excuses: Something something reducing our carbon emissions is pointless because China and India emit blah blah. And also China is in terminal decline because of a baby crisis.
That is bad news for oil producing countries like Saudi Arabia or Russia, but good news for the rest of the world.<p>It seems our planet will be saved by China and not by the USA.
So China burns coal, to generate power, at huge heat and transmission loses, to power “clean” EV cars.
Much worse for the planet.
Clean gasoline cars, once they implement particulate filters on them, are going to be cheap, and pollute a whole lot less than burning coal.<p>EVs will be an option but they’re going to have to force the chargers through the grid to only charge during the day to take advantage of solar, and properly account for upstream and downstream emissions on the battery pack manufacturing and disposal. A full life cycle has to be considered.<p>A gasoline engine, runs for a very long lifetime now, and then immediately becomes high value scrap that can be used and sold immediately. No dangerous batteries to deal with.