38% of cars sold in China are now electric, Sinopec says the ICE is doomed

I agree, coming here to start a baseless claim about climate change not being an undeniable scientific fact has indeed shifted the discussion about EV adaptation in a non productive direction.

Maybe we should instead focus on the efforts China is making to produce clean energy to power their growing fleet of EV's, and how it's easier for them to electrify fully during this stage of their economic development then it is for countries with older economies.

Both because upgrading a power grid not designed to handle the additional requirements for supporting a full EV transportation system being harder then designing one from scratch, and because they have less interference from an existing fossil fuel industry and their highly paid lobbyists.

Besides the economic impacts on other countries, because no one should deny China is heavily subsidizing this entire sector, people should also acknowledge the environmental goals this heavily subsidized sector can reach and the benefits to consumers who don't care why things are suddenly affordable for them but are just glad for it.

Even if this would mean other countries who can not compete in this market, even with subsidized manufacturing, would see a stagnation in their industrial output. I think the climate is more important certainly in the long run, compared with saving a car industry which just isn't able or willing to adapt to electric fast enough. Off course I would love the US to mimic China, and do everything in their power to get a Chevy Volt or w/e the most common US EV would be, to be price competitive with cheap Chinese's EV. Anything which puts people in EV's and out of ICE's when possible, is a good thing.

One of the things which should immediately happen, is a reassuring political commitment. Like China does for it's electric vehicle industry. And unlike the ..... from ...... who claim we should instead stop with electrification and go back to 'buying THEIR fossil fuels'. That's the same as the right wing parties in my country trying to unsolidify the commitment from our big cities to ban ICE's from the city center.

The industry will only invest what is needed, when our politicians stop regurgitating 'claims' depending on who is filling their campaign donations. And small companies will NEVER invest in electrifying their fleets when government doesn't seem committed to it themselves.
 
classicalgas said:
That's not accurate.

Over much of the transcontinental railroad system, it was a significant technical challenge to get water to railroad "watering stations" .
Click to expand...
Right. Which was only an issue once we HAD a transcontinental railroad system. When most railroads were used to get food/cotton between agricultural towns and ocean/river ports, it wasn't a big deal. 6% was fine. There was water and wood at both ends.

When people began moving West, often rails got them there, because the prevailing mode of transportation in the early 1800's were rivers and waterways, via boats and barges - and not too many rivers could bring people from coastal cities to the west. Efficiency started to be a bit of an issue but not a huge one, because what was considered the "west" in those days were states like Iowa, not states like California. And Iowa had plenty of water and forests.

When the first transcontinental line opened in 1869, efficiency became a MUCH bigger deal. And those 6% efficient engines didn't look so good any more, but it was all they had. That's one reason why, out west in the plains states, there are places where there are small towns every 50 miles and larger towns every 100 - because that's how close together watering/fueling stations had to be to support the inefficient locomotives of the time.

It also drove technology, and within a few decades they had more efficient designs - both increased thermal efficiency and water condensation/recapture.
 
marvin78 said:
Even if this would mean other countries who can not compete in this market, even with subsidized manufacturing, would see a stagnation in their industrial output. I
Click to expand...
That's an important consideration as well. Countries that cannot/will not adopt new technologies will be left behind by countries who do. It's all well and good to say that horse-drawn wagons (and all the industries that support them) are better than gas cars. But if we intentionally tried to move our country away from automobiles and back to horses, that would end up impacting our economy in a very negative way.
 
marvin78 said:
...co2 exists in the atmosphere for hundreds if not thousands of years, so wanting to see an immediate effect after 1 year of reduction is really... 'shortsighted'.
Click to expand...

That's not what they said. They said the global co2 level didn't stop increasing when there was reduced fossil use globally.
 
marvin78 said:
I heard of this idea, but don't think it's something which can/should be implemented at scale since it puts additional load on battery production which will keep prices higher for longer and hurting the economic viability. It's a great solution to the charging stations putting additional draw on the grid, but it isn't really that great for EV adaptation as a whole ( because of that drain on a shared resource, batteries ).

Now, if they can change the storage medium from batteries into something else.. like perhaps making hydrogen generation less wasteful, then you could put a small hydrogen generator at such a charging station which would constantly generate hydrogen from water, putting it into some storage, which can be fed into a fuel cell which would convert the hydrogen into electricity to be used by the EV charging station.

edit: lol, as I posted this I looked into if it would even be viable, remembering something like an 80% loss rate in hydrogen conversion. Seems ABB in partnership with AFC Energy are working on exactly that:

"This collaboration combines ABB's energy storage solutions and DC fast chargers with AFC Energy's high-efficiency hydrogen fuel cells to create a fully autonomous, zero-emission charging system"

Edit2: after finding this 'announcement' on their actual website... it's from end 2020. If they had been really successful already we would have heard more from them :(
Click to expand...
Hydrogen production is either extremely dirty (from NG ) or extremely wasteful of energy (from water ) Electrolysis is a crap energy storage method, returning less than 50% of the electricity put in, as you noted.

Those buffer batteries don't need to be brand new, custom pack, or lithium, even. Energy density, bulk, weight, don't much matter when used for static energy storage.

"Resources" are becoming less worrisome by the month, as new US sources of lithium are found and new extraction and refining tech are developed, and as non lithium, non cobalt chemistries improve. Copper is likely the toughest one to solve.

Pumped hydro storage makes sense only if you have existing hydro storage in place to take advantage of. Most hydroelectric dams qualify, not too many other spots.
 
JackFlorey said:
Right. Which was only an issue once we HAD a transcontinental railroad system. When most railroads were used to get food/cotton between agricultural towns and ocean/river ports, it wasn't a big deal. 6% was fine. There was water and wood at both ends.
Click to expand...
No, and no. Improvements in steam engine efficiency were useful enough to drive further effort since before Watt, as I noted. Wood and water are never "free", they were a significant factor in the costs of running a steam engine since before Watt as well. When conversion efficiency was in the three per cent range, if you could get six percent, your fuel and water costs were cut in half.
 
Comrade said:
That's not what they said. They said the global co2 level didn't stop increasing when there was reduced fossil use globally.
Click to expand...


Of course not. The global drop in co2 production was in the range of six percent, and that deep dip only lasted months.


"Using data from NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 satellite launched in 2014 and the NASA Goddard Earth Observing System atmospheric model, the researchers identified several reasons for this result. First, while the 5.4% drop in emissions was significant, the growth in atmospheric concentrations was within the normal range of year-to-year variation caused by natural processes. Also, the ocean didn’t absorb as much CO2 from the atmosphere as it has in recent years – probably in an unexpectedly rapid response to the reduced pressure of CO2 in the air at the ocean’s surface"
 
I'm tired of watching my thread get derailed like this after asking multiple people to stop.

Can't even post on the website i run without hillhater successfully baiting people into filling up the thread with multiple pages of fruitless arguments about co2.

Discussion quality on this thread is going down the tubes.

I'm very not happy about it and I don't any any more of this discussion.
Thread locked until further notice. Go take it somewhere else.
 
Back.

No more AGW debate. Let's talk EV car industry and where it's heading.
 
Dude, that was a great video. I'm subscribing to the guy.
 
harrisonpatm said:
He's a great combination of dull information and dry humor
Click to expand...
If you like that sort of thing, you should check out Technology Connections on YT.

Some good info there on quite a few things. :)
 
Hillhater said:
Interesting that Tesla is not considered to be a significant EV battery manufacturer 😳
Click to expand...
"Significant" being the key word. They do make cells, for sure... do they make enough to ramp up production? Elon says he wants to, for sure, but we'll see what happens.
 
Interesting news from Ford:

The Mustang Mach-E had its best sales quarter since launching in late 2020, with 16,119 models sold in Q4. With 51,745 Mach-Es sold last year, it was the second-best-selling electric SUV in the US, behind the Tesla Model Y. Even more impressive, the Mach-E outsold every gas-powered Ford Mustang model in 2024. Ford sold just over 48,600 gas Mustangs last year, down 9.5% from 2023.
Click to expand...

Ref: https://s201.q4cdn.com/693218008/files/doc_news/2025/Jan/03/Ford-U-S-Q4-2024-Sales-Release.pdf


Kia is taking a 'if you can't beat them, join them' move and manufacturing EVs in China now. And doing well with their EV5 model.
Kia has found its answer to low-cost Chinese EV makers like BYD

1736742843134.png

Chinese price for Kia EV5: $21k
American price for Kia EV5: $40k
 
Recent business take about GM not doing good in China:
What’s good for China has been very bad for General Motors | Analysis

"General Motors CEO Mary Barra has said that China’s crowded market is a “race to the bottom.” For GM, it’s a contest that’s left the automaker saddled with losses and rethinking its options."

"For China, meanwhile, these types of partnerships offered both domestic benefits and a means to get technology and quickly learn how to make cars, said Dunne, the former GM executive. China’s objective from the beginning was to do joint ventures with the big automakers, and then get the technology and do it themselves,” he said.

GM is struggling to compete on price with domestic models subsidized by the Chinese government and could eventually leave the venture if losses persist, people familiar with the matter said. And if SAIC is no longer getting cutting-edge technology or a brand bump from working with a well-known American manufacturer, it may have a reason to walk away, the people said.

"It was a cunning move by the Chinese government aimed at fostering domestic companies. In 2018, Chinese producers had capacity to make about 1 million NEVs, and foreign companies could only produce about 150,000, according to researcher AutoForecast Solutions. GM and traditional rivals dragged their feet developing EVs, and were unable to take advantage like domestic producers could."

"What’s becoming clear for GM — and other legacy giants like Ford Motor, Volkswagen and Toyota Motor — is that the China party is over. Foreign companies are losing ground to ascendant Chinese players, which have benefited from more than $230 billion in government subsidies over the past 15 years."

“We’ve seen a collapse of market share and profits all at once,” said Mike Dunne, a former GM executive who consults on the Chinese market. “And the established carmakers are powerless to stop it.”
 
So if the west continues to be selfish and keep buying cheap Chinese products, the domestic industries and jobs will continue to decline until only imported goods are available.
At some point we have to face up to this problem of “economic strangulation by stealth”, and restrict some of the major imported products to enable domestic industries to survive.
Of course that means we have to be prepared to pay more !
 
Hillhater said:
So if the west continues to be selfish and keep buying cheap Chinese products, the domestic industries and jobs will continue to decline until only imported goods are available.
At some point we have to face up to this problem of “economic strangulation by stealth”, and restrict some of the major imported products to enable domestic industries to survive.
Of course that means we have to be prepared to pay more !
Click to expand...
In the USA, we also must be prepared for the implications of our expensive goods being made by incompetent idiots who don't even have a firm grasp of cause and effect, or beliefs not equaling facts. Maybe we should just pray to Jesus to manufacture things for us. It would probably work about as well.
 
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