• 3volver@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    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.

    • Vivendi@lemmy.zip
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      6 months ago

      EVs are garbage anyways. The only way to actually save anything is to migrate most of the commonly occurring transportation to public electric systems like trains.

      EVs are made in a non sustainable manner by raping the earth for the last scraps of rare earth materials, they’re hardly the answer

      • hglman@lemmy.ml
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        6 months ago

        Certainly correct, we still need a path to direct action and it needs to be everywhere.

        • daemoz@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Technology isn’t going to save humanity. Greatly reducing population size by limiting reproduction is the only chance for a long future for humans. Thats the most direct path, but also at odds with all of our forms of government and economics. China couldt afford to keep doing it and they understand this. Its the same with the earths ecology. We would need a massive enlightening and there are far too many material and lifestyle choices and campaigns to sway people away from our staus quo. Humanity is doomed by human greed and jealousy, it always was. But thats fine, once you come to terms with it, and if you caught it before having kids, its a pretty freeing understanding.

            • daemoz@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              you are wrong, nowhere am I advocating for anything. I’m saying human overpopulation will lead to our doom. This response is why I don’t really care about sustainability anymore. I’m not having kids, feel free to keep your head buried in the sand. Asshat

    • set_secret@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      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).

      • 3volver@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        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.

        • HumanPenguin@feddit.uk
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          6 months ago

          this kind of shit is just another bump in the road.

          I assume you are younger.

          I am in my 50s. The risk of this shit was known and tought to children in schools in the 1980s.

          Yet at every level. Things have gotten worse. We had solar in the 80s. Less efficient but only about 15% rather then the 20% we see now. But tax payer money in all western democracy. Was still funding oil research not batts wind or solar.

          Cars became bigger and less efficient as we watched. GM was known to have destroyed its own ev production pack in the 90s.

          Nothing at all was invested in building inferstructure to support other fuel types. Again dispite huge public investment in oil.

          And at every 0ossible point. What little that was done was aimed at indeviduals who have the least control. While corperations were allowed to keep expanding there use. Without facing any of the costs for replacement.

          Its a bump. But a 40plus year bump built intentionally to slow and limit changes in the way wealth is made.

          With so much false science and outright lies from corperations its insane.

          Exxon the plastics industry and many other. Behaived much worse the the cigarette industry did before them. And have not had to pay anything for there intentional and informed damage to billions of lives. Where as at least in nations with real health care options. Tobbaco companies have lost lawsuits and paid a fortune since discovery.

    • LappingDog@sh.itjust.works
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      6 months ago

      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.

    • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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      6 months ago

      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.

      • Jambalaya@lemmy.zip
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        6 months ago

        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.

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          6 months ago

          Exactly… And ultimately they are beholden to shareholders. Which are largely in it for the stock price, not the dividends - they want numbers to go up, and they don’t care if it crashes the company in a few years when they’re no longer holding the bag

          Money today is worth more than money tomorrow. With enough data and analysis, riding companies into the ground is the optimal way to make money

      • Allonzee@lemmy.world
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        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:

    • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      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.

  • VinnyDaCat@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    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.

      • VinnyDaCat@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Wasn’t aware of that. My thoughts were more towards the EV1, although I assume there were many others before that.

        • Resonosity@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          They’re referring to how Thomas Edison created the first electric vehicles back in the 1800s. They might have had a future until Ford introduced assembly lines. Then the rest is history.

          The EV1 was the first commercial development in the US following the World Wars, but even before then you had solar EVs being made for science and eclectic racing before then. Think of those weirdly shaped cars only made for 1 driver that have solar panels covering the entire body of the car.

          Funny thing is that we’re now seeing some commercial (or soon to be commercial) manufacturers add solar panels in the same way. Just look to Hyundai and Aptera.

    • Baphomet_The_Blasphemer@lemmy.world
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      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.

  • Auzy@beehaw.org
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    6 months ago

    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

      • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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        6 months ago

        in the world*

        car goes vroom vroom and stick shift goes shift shift is honestly a lot of fun in responsible amounts. it will be a battle to undo the carbrain propaganda in people, including myself.

      • Auzy@beehaw.org
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        6 months ago

        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

  • suoko@feddit.it
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    6 months ago

    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.

  • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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    6 months ago

    is that purely because they can’t make them well or is there another reason?

    honestly the japanese EV ive been in felt decent?

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      6 months ago

      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.

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        6 months ago

        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.

      • Baphomet_The_Blasphemer@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        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.

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      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!”

      • MrMakabar@slrpnk.net
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        6 months ago

        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.

    • Wogi@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      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.

      • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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        6 months ago

        why is that? i don’t think lithium batteries degrade THAT fast?

        if the used market had these dirt cheap evs here id probably be considering them. scratch that there is no way to charge them in my country unless you live in a house, or unless you can use regular power outlets hahaha

        • psud@aussie.zone
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          6 months ago

          You can use regular power outlets if you drive less than a couple of hundred kilometres a day. I charge mine on a 15 amp 240V plug and it charges from 30% to full in about 10 hours. I charge about weekly

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          6 months ago

          This is what I’ve done on my last 2 cars. First was a Leaf that I leased dirt cheap. The second was a used Tesla at more than 1/2 off. I’m looking at a truck now and finding amazing deals on the '23 F150 lightnings. I’d prefer a Rivian and I’m not quite ready to let my Tesla go, but soooooon.

          Someday, the deals will be harder to find, but for now take advantage!

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Those are reasons people don’t want to buy EVs, not reasons for companies to sabotage the change over.

        • Crashumbc@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Companies give zero fucks about anything but money.

          Completely retooling for EVs is expensive with a lot of risk. And they’ll make less money afterwards…

        • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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          6 months ago

          People not wanting to buy them seems like an entirely normal reason to be lukewarm.about making and selling them.

          • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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            Not at 60,000 dollars they don’t. But too bad, between the IRA and the Chinese EV tax the administration is making sure we aren’t ever burdened with EVs cheap enough for mass adoption.

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        There’s almost no resale value.

        That is not an EV thing, that is a new, rapidly developing technology thing.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      The tariffs were explicitly to protect them. To prevent them from having to compete. We’re about to eat a lot of shit.

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            The issue I’m seeing here is that there isn’t anything to protect legacy auto does not make a product that is remotely comparable

  • CrimeDad@lemmy.crimedad.work
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    6 months ago

    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.

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      Seems weird to assert politicians do anything they were elected to do. They’re far more worried about what the donor class wants.

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        6 months ago

        Politicians from bourgeois parties are going to serve bourgeois interests. Nobody should expect anything different from them.

  • Margot Robbie@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    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.

  • dropped_the_chief@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    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.

  • StaySquared@lemmy.world
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    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.

    • bamboo@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      This is the most fear mongering nonsense I’ve read on Lemmy to date

        • Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
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          I live in Canada, Québec more specific.

          There are Teslas EVERYWHERE here. There hasn’t been any widespread reports of failing batteries.

          So wherever you got your information, you might want to look somewhere else next time

          Also, you can keep your insults to yourself. Just because someone disagrees with you, doesn’t mean you can call them an idiot.

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              6 months ago

              First of all, you need to check your attitude. I don’t know why you’re being so aggressive.

              Second, I’m not a liar. I fucking live here and my cousin who has TWO Teslas for his family has never encountered any problems. I have other relatives who have other EVs from different makes who never had problems. The vast majority of people with EVs here, even in the northern regions where it gets fucking cold, don’t have problems.

              And third, Tesla’s get stranded everywhere, regardless of temperature or weather, more than any other EVs, mainly because they’re poorly built PoS cars.

              • StaySquared@lemmy.world
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                6 months ago

                Thanks. I find that quite fascinating, honestly. How is it that in the Americas, EVs - or at least Teslas and their charging stations were failing but in Norway apparently this is not an issue they face.

                In the U.S. extreme heat and extreme cold is bad for the electrical grid. He have blackouts / brownouts and rolling blackouts during these extreme weather/temperature conditions.

          • naturalgasbad@lemmy.ca
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            6 months ago

            Montreal?

            I think the OP has a point here: most of North America is distinctly not urban, distinctly not pedestrianized, and really spread apart. EVs take a substantial range hit in the cold, which might not be a problem in the Montreal area but is a bit more of an issue when living in bumfuck, Wisconsin.

            • Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
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              6 months ago

              I have relatives up in Saguenay where temperatures reached -50 last year. They have EVs and it’s not an issue. Sure the range and efficiency drops, but I wouldn’t say they break or become unuseable

          • StaySquared@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            It was common in the Midwest. And I just literally gave you the keywords to google search… there’s all the sources you need for the limited information I provided in my initial comment. Don’t like it? Kick rocks. You can’t re-invent reality.

            • Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
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              You know what? I don’t like your attitude one single bit.

              I’m not arguing with you.

              Take a chill pill. Go outside and touch some grass.

        • Blaster M@lemmy.world
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          Bruh has never experienced the pain of getting an older carbureted car going in the cold.

        • IzzyScissor@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Gasoline is a finite resource, so at some point all gas stations will sell out of gas. Imagine how hilarious it will be when gas cars are stranded at gas stations because there’s nothing to fill them with.

          Lmao Dead.gfy

          • StaySquared@lemmy.world
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            I agree, if the resource is out… there’s nothing you can do but to go to another gas station. However, gasoline in winter weather, even if it’s -30 degrees Fahrenheit, is still usable. You’re still able to pump the fuel into your vehicle. Where as with these charging stations cold temperatures is a nemesis.

            I have no beef with EVs, I just think we’re putting the cart before the horse. Like building a house with no foundation, it’s ludicrous.

          • grue@lemmy.world
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            Gasoline is a finite resource

            No it isn’t. Crude oil is finite, but gasoline could be synthesized from other carbon and hydrogen sources (up to and including CO2 + H2O + solar power) if you really wanted to.

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              Cool.

              The process of synthesizing it is inefficient and expensive. Companies have gone bankrupt trying to make it profitable, so it really doesn’t seem like that’s an answer here, especially when we have cars that don’t require any such fuel already on the roads.

              Sure seems easier.

    • ThunderWhiskers@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      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.

      • Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
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        6 months ago

        Right. At the moment, hydrogen production is too costly, energy wise. If we could find an easier, better way to make it, that would change the game entirely.

        • ripcord@lemmy.world
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          Not just costly. Transportation and distribution is a big problem.

          With electrical we already have an entire distribution network, it just needs to be significantly (but gradually) upgraded.

          • Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
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            Right now there is a hydrogen refueling station in Quebec city that produces it’s own hydrogen on the spot. It takes electricity and uses water electrolysis to create hydrogen.

            It’s inefficient, but it works. No need for transportation.

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          Ah, the magical technological advancement that is only possible with hydrogen. While ignoring the advancements with EVs.

          At the moment, hydrogen production is too costly, energy wise.

          EVs are already way more efficient. You’re repeating things that have been discussed ages ago as something new.

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              6 months ago

              But it’s an electric car with a much lower efficiency than one that uses batteries

              • Hypx@fedia.io
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                A highly exaggerated claim. Once you factor in all of the challenges of grid energy storage and battery manufacturing, there’s likely to be little to no difference.

          • Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
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            Ok calm down, you don’t need to be condescending.

            I know that right now hydrogen production is really not efficient compared to simply recharging a battery. Producing hydrogen takes more electricity to produce from water electrolysis to fuel a car for the same range as it would take to simply charge a battery. This I am aware of. And that’s what I was implying in my previous comment.

            However, a small hydrogen cell powered car has at least twice the range of a similar sized EV. And also, it doesn’t take hours to recharge. Only a few minutes to refill the hydrogen tank.

            What I hope it that we one day find a way to efficiently produce hydrogen. Because I’d rather have to wait a couple of minutes to refuel on a long trip than having to stop for an hour every time I need to recharge.

            • Fisch@discuss.tchncs.de
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              We have a more efficient way to produce hydrogen, which is using nagural gas. That’s obviously a bad idea. You can’t change the laws of physics, producing hydrogen from water and electricity just takes that much energy.

              • Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
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                Yeah I know that. That’s why initially I was saying it would be great if we found a better more efficient way to produce it. Obviously hinting at the fact that it wasn’t the case right now.

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          6 months ago

          You ever wondered why traditional carmakers are pushing so hard for hydrogen? That’s because they can still reuse those super inefficient combustion engines, which they perfected in the last 50-100 years, and which is serving as a big gatekeeper to newcomers.

          And with EV, they need to start from scratch like everyone else and they hate it.

        • grue@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          The entire premise of hydrogen is dumb.

          We would legitimately be better off combining it with CO2 to make synthetic gasoline and just use it with normal vehicles and infrastructure.

          • psud@aussie.zone
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            6 months ago

            People don’t seem to get it. Electricity to hydrogen to electricity to motion is really, really lossy, and hydrogen leaks. It is worse than electricity to hydrogen to methane to power.

            • grue@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              Exactly: it makes sense only if you have an excess of clean electricity to electrolyze it from water, and even then the best thing to do would be to immediately (at the point of production) use it to synthesize a liquid hydrocarbon fuel for easier transport and storage (which also has the benefit of letting it be burned in existing ICE cars).

          • Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
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            6 months ago

            Dude, that produces methane, I think?. The whole point is to avoid combustion engines to prevent greenhouse gasses.

            The way hydrogen is being used is to work with hydrogen fuel cells which is electric.

            • grue@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              Carbon is what matters, but not in the way the hydrogen-pushers want you to think:

              • It doesn’t matter if the fuel has carbon in it, if the carbon is part of the short-term carbon cycle. Biodiesel, for example, releases no net greenhouse gases even though it has lots of carbon in it.

              • The dirty secret of hydrogen is that the vast majority of it is made by cracking fossil methane. (My previous comment about combining hydrogen with carbon to make synthetic liquid fuel charitably presupposed it was made the right way, by electrolyzing water with solar power, but most hydrogen production is not like that)

              In other words, anybody telling you that hydrogen is better for preventing climate change than biofuels – despite them containing carbon – is trying to hoodwink you.

          • Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
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            6 months ago

            If that was the case, Toyota would never have created the Toyota Mirai.

            And have you ever seen what happens when an EV battery is damaged? Many residential buildings with underground parkings don’t allow EVs to park underground due to the fear of the intense fires and how it can cause severe damage.

            • Blaster M@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              Have you ever seen what happens when a hydrogen tank ruptures? It’s the Ford Pinto all over again.

    • deafboy@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      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.

      • StaySquared@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        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.

        • ChicoSuave@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Check when the last time an installed utility performed maintenance. Now you want them to turn things off while they put in new hardware? The only thing that will drive a business to make that kind of change is if the money is behind it, which will happen when EVs are much more prevalent.

          • baru@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Why would they need to turn anything off? That’s not how they expand capacity in the Netherlands. Why would it be needed?

          • StaySquared@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Not from all the profits made by all the people using electricity and paying for electricity? And electrical grid has redundancy. You can take down primary and secondary takes over temporarily.

      • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz
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        6 months ago

        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.

      • Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
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        6 months ago

        Maybe one day when the libs work towards better public mass transportation, they’ll drive their EVs to own the libs.

    • Clanket@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      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.

      • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz
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        6 months ago

        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.