Batteries have become much cheaper, making energy storage far more affordable.
Lol. Although this claim might be technically true, comparing the cost of the first prototype lithium ion battery with a modern mass produced batteries is apples to oranges.
making electrified transport a reality
Electrified rail remains the most efficient form of transportation and has been available since the late 1800s…
People are just so obsessed with cars that they ignored the safest, most efficient, and environmentally friendly option for over a hundred years.
I guess the future is bound to be filled with dangerous traffic with even heavier cars, and filled with millions of batteries filled with lithium mined by impoverished children.
The infrastructure to build and run would be enormous in most of the US. In smaller, more compact countries, sure. But in the area I live, I couldn’t imagine this.
Not when compared to the maintenance and cost of installing the amount of multi lane interstate and highways we currently have in the US.
Electric rail isn’t a solution for every commuter in the US, but it is the solution for most commuters, as 80% of Americans live in urban environments.
Also, the argument that America is too large to have rail isnt very logical when countries like Russia or China depend on it for the vast majority of their logistics.
Should’ve put a fourth line to make sure we understand the drop
It’s amazing how much batteries have decreased in price, we now not only have mid range cars that can be electric, the lower range sub compacts have been entering the EV market too.
Among all the shit happening today, this is actually a bright spot, making an EV more affordable to normal households.
Maybe except USA that is clearly behind now, despite Tesla was a major influence in the early days of EV.All the shit happening may lead to an earlier transition into renewables, ironically trump to help reduce the impacts of climate change. We should name the new wind turbines in his honour. But yeah the US will be fucked, power in the new currency in electrostates and renewable is significantly cheaper
Nah, i hate this move to name good stuff after horrible people. I get that Trump wouldnt like his name being attatched to it, but heres the thing: is trumps suffering more important than everyone elses suffering? Because by imortalizing his name into a project like that you are ensuring that future generations learn of his ideologies.
I want him to get kirked where his name just vanished from the history books. A small footnote that he was the least popular president ever, outside of that it would be so nice if I never heard his name again after like 3 months.
What really sells it for me is erika kirks reaction. I havent actually been following the whole situation as again i dont care about right wing grifters, but projecting myself onto erika i would feel devestated that my husbands memory literally lasted like a month. All that influence, all those lives ruined, and yet you left a grand total of 1 month worth of memes as the culmination of your entire life story, then you are forgotten. That, to me, is both the best “punishment” and more importantly the best way for the world to signify to these people that their ideologies arent tolerated. It sends a message to their family about what happens when you attatch yourself to a monster. It shows the world that even if you care about a grifter, the world does not.
I feel like all of the refineries and stuff being blown up might offset any gains we get
And yet, EV prices stubbornly high in North America.
There are plenty of EVs below the median price Americans are paying for new cars ~$50k. People aren’t buying EVs because they don’t like them / the dealerships aren’t pushing them, not the price as they’re willing to shell out even more for a top of the line pickup.
North America has little competition because of the tariffs on everything not made in USA.
AFAIK Canada is getting out of that shadow. I read an article about a month ago, how Canadian imports were routed through USA, and that it stifled EV adoption in Canada.EV adoption was stifled by MAGA Premieres killing incentives and ripping out public chargers, while giving money to Detroit to keep building shitty trucks and muscle cars.
Meanwhile, to sell EVs in Europe, XPing is getting them made in Austria using Magna, a Canadian company. Why didn’t Carney/Ford insist on this in Ontario?
BYD tried to build buses in Ontario but they were so shit they had to close the plant and pay a bunch of lawsuits. And BYD is hurting, they just laid off 100,000 worldwide.
BYD tried to build buses in Ontario but they were so shit they had to close the plant and pay a bunch of lawsuits.
Wow interesting I didn’t know that, I’ve heard that China has too many car makers, and some of them would have to go. So this is probably just the beginning of an adjustment for Chinese makers.
This is actually one of the very few places that US tariffs make sense. (Not from a consumer perspective of course, but from a nationalist industry protection point of view.) The rest of the tariffs the US places are silly because there isn’t much other manufacturing in the US to protect.
Nope. Tariffs reduce competition and you end up with a shitty local option that just costs more and sales die anyway.
Oil dependency is a national security issue for a lot of countries, tariffs on EVs have really backfired here while also increasing climate change
The US manufactures more than ever. There are a lot less people in manufacturing than 70 years ago, but we make just as much. I know of one factory that went from 2000 employees in 1950 to 200 today - they make more product than in 1950 despite that. Automation has made a big change in the US.
This is actually one of the very few places that US tariffs make sense.
Not really if you want fair competition.
It’s not fair competition if labor standards are far lower in the country being imported from.
Absolutely correct, we don’t want a competition based on social dumping or highest subsidies.
That’s why you make tariffs to compensate for that like the EU does, but EU has higher standards than USA, and is hit by tariffs in USA anyway, and although China has state subsidies, the 150% tariff doesn’t make the competition fair, it simply excludes any car made in China from being sold in USA.
Why would the US want fair competition?
Like I said, the consumers do not benefit from the tariffs, the nation does.
Because US businesses will only compete and innovate if you force them. Leave them safe behind ramparts of protective trade policies, and they’ll keep coasting on 1990s technology, as the country as a whole slowly becomes a backwater.
No the nation doesn’t, it just degrades into further noncompetitiveness, and increased consumer prices.
Short term tariffs can allow domestic manufacturing to reach the design and scale to be competitive without tariffs. This was, in theory, the idea behind the 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs. Of course, none of the American auto manufacturers are doing anything with that leeway other than continuing to be terrible.
You are 100% correct that this is the general idea, the problem is that USA actually had a head start with Tesla, (as painful as it is to me to admit.)
Now the lack of competition will only result in the loss of the lead USA had until just a few years ago.
Of course Nazi Musk and Nazi Trump undermine American exports, and no amount of US tariffs can compensate for that.
Does the nation benefit when there’s no actual benefits like health care for the citizens?
If only prices were related to costs … 😄
I of course looked into used EV but…there’s nothing to buy used. You can only get shit with less than 80kW batteries for under $15k in Canada. Think 2006 - 2015 models with high mileage so even less range. I need something that can go 60 kilometers when it’s -40’C outside. Looks like I need to eat the gas prices for another 5 years or so waiting for bigger used battery capacity to trickle down.
What size of car are you looking at?
Chevy Bolt has a 60kWh and will go over 200km in the winter and closer to 400km in the summer.
Lots of them around 15k CAD. Price has been creepying up in the last few weeks. I need to grab one myself.
Ouf my subaru + jeep + dual sport and cruiser combined cost less than the cheapest POS GM ev used i need AWD + snow tires to make it up the mountain passes here in the winter, and when it’s more than free ing out I take the bike every day which gets 60+ mpg. I can’t wait for batteries to get lighter and EV bikes to become more popular, I would love to commute to work every day on an electric motorcycle. I have an old naked street bike I blew the transmission out of at 86k miles, I keep thinking about gutting the gas tank and pulling the drivetrain and electrifying it but alas time and money do not yet permit…
I can’t be picky about make/model at all. Here’s the options as of posting for my entire province:
These seem too small of a battery and worn so range anxiety is what I’m worried about. Perhaps foolishly you tell me lol.
I’m much less willing to deal with scum car lot dealers if I can help it, but these guys who are a 4 hour drive one way away from me are another option:
https://www.goelectricyyc.com/used/priceF/10000/priceT/20000
They do have Bolts right now but not affordable/too new for me. I’ll keep an eye out.
Keep in mind battery degradation and -30% range in winter here.
Thx for helping tho
Almost all Bolts should have newish batteries or a stupid long warranty on the battery.
Degradation is not really a thing on thermally managed batteries, IE only as issue on the Nissan Leaf and the eGolf to lesser extend.
Lots of Bolts in Quebec if you are willing to have one shipped. ($1000-2000).
I really regret not getting one a year or two ago when their value was sort of tanked.
I’ve never considered shipping a car or how to get that done. I’ll look into it but if you have any advice about that please do share.
I just have to factor in shipping, OOP inspection, and getting a proper charger installed.
I really regret not getting one a year or two ago when their value was sort of tanked.
Yeahhh I chose home reno instead lol. Still maybe for the best idk CoL skyrockets again.
Also, have you bought 9volt batteries recently? Batteries are NOT cheaper in the real world in any use case in my experience.
And the options are still not great.
But the savings haven’t flowed down to us. Gotta make line go up, it seems.
Lithium ion batteries are far cheaper now at a consumer level than they were thirty years back.
EDIT: I’m actually surprised that a higher proportion of laptops today don’t ship with 100 Wh batteries. Go back some years, and shrinking the battery had a much larger difference in cost than it does today. The larger battery gives you longer battery longevity (makes it more reasonable to charge to 80%, say), can be used to make a laptop run more quickly, can power more devices. The only drawback is weight, and it isn’t that heavy.
Blame Shell.
You mean thank?
No. We’d have had this already if Shell and Exxon mobile and their ilk didn’t fight it.
The price of the batteries was never really the issue, it was their weight versus their capacity with some consideration towards size and robustness.
As far as I can tell, today the biggest hurdle is charging.
You obviously weren’t buying batteries in the 70’s or the 80’s or the 90’s.
So my guess is that you are younger than 40.Yeah the price of batteries has collapsed within the last six months. The US lithium technology is still several generations behind what is available in China
As it happens, actually I was buying batteries in the 1970’s. They were massive and lasted plenty long enough to play audio cassettes for several days.
Edit: I’d also point out that three decades is 1996, not 1976, that’s five decades.
Nonono that is outright false, even 6 of the big D batteries, would last only a few hours in even a small ghetto blaster of the late 70’s. Radio yes, tape no. The tapes took massive amounts of power even in a small player for the time.
But apart from that all other uses of batteries were a pain, like in flashlights that weren’t even very good by today’s standards, or bicycle lights where batteries were a joke so we had to use dynamos.Your memory is simply wrong. IDK if they have declined 99%, but for sure batteries today are both 10 times better and only a tenth the price compared to the 70’s.
Although they are just fake numbers that seem right, it actually fits with the 99%
Althoug 3 decades only brings us back to the mid 90’s, I think that at least in some cases it is true.Batteries are way cheaper and better now, whether it’s 80% or 99% IDK, but for sure iẗ́s more than 80%.
Having had a mono radio cassette player in my bedroom in 1976, running off D-cells, that was not my experience.
The biggest drain was the volume, not the cassette player. You noticed it getting slower and slower, but the drain came from playing it loud.
My Sony Walkman a few years later ran forever on its batteries.
Admittedly I never had a walkman. Maybe you were more privileged than I was, because I remember batteries as very expensive.
But a walkman was way way later than the 70’s.,The Walkman came out in 79 and was cheap enough for a present to a teen or young adult by 82, at the latest. Hell, if you wanted to raid your parents’ stuff, they may well have had a (mono) folio style cassette recorder or even a Sony TC-50 cassette recorder/player (which looks exactly* like a Walkman), made as early as 1968! They brought them to the Moon during the Apollo program. That’s right, cassettes technically came BEFORE 8-Tracks.
But they were too expensive until the late 70s, and by then most people already had an 8-track collection, so it took a few more years to mass adopt.
Source: I have mono demo tapes that my dad recorded from his poor Oklahoma farm town in 1970
Oh the issue about the Walkman had nothing to do with price, I just didn’t like the format.
Batteries are better, but not by that much, assuming you stick with the same technology - don’t compare alkaline to lithium or something. Efficiency of electronics is much better. The improvement in flashlights is about LEDs
Modern batteries are way way better than they used to be, even alkaline is better and were quite expensive in the 90’s.
But it’s not only how much better they are, it’s the prices, alkaline is standard today, and you barely even look at the price, because they are dirt cheap.
But you are right that in electronics there have been much improvements, a modern flashlight is easily a 100 times better because of both LED and better batteries. LED improved it probably by a factor of about 10.
But for many things like a laptop, the power consumption hasn’t gone down that much, because the better batteries have actually made it possible to make more powerful laptops instead. the power consumption of a modest laptop CPU alone id 65 Watt, which would be HUGE in the 80’s.
I agree the 99% sounds like much, but I can attest to at least 80% probably more like 90% better batteries than the early 90’s.
Lithium batteries really was a game-changer, especially if you consider only rechargeable batteries.
The energy density steadily increased over time while prices decreased: This article includes some interesting background info and the following chart.
It should be pointed out that those two changes are very much not equal. Energy density has only increased by a factor of ~5, whereas cost has fallen by a factor of ~90 (by eye).
The grid… Cannot sustain in the US.
- Start investing in (green/cheap) power
- Dynamic contracts (off-peak charging)
Pulling oil from the ground is so much less sustainable, and it will only get more expensive
Even if that is the case, I would argue the grid could sustain people charging EVs at various times during the day or setting up off-peak charging schedule than it can sustain all the AI slop being generated 24-7.
Yet the people I hear complaining about the theoretical load EVs could technically put onto the grid have nothing to say about the AI data centers that are actively raising energy costs and demanding more power than the local infrastructure can actually provide.
And really, it could sustain if we would have leadership that would support efforts to do so instead of trying to hinder renewables deployment in favor of more fossil fuels that are also going up in price because of their bullshit.
Data centers are absolutely consuming a bunch of power and we’re paying for it, I agree!! California suffered brown outs from everyone charging during there day at work or at night. Idk of that’s been corrected, but that’s also why Trump relaxed coal and oil regulations so we could get enough power-though I hear some data centers are using jet engine turbines to supplement them smh.
So while batteries can be affordable, lithium is too dangerous, and the technology hasn’t quite got to the point for widespread adoption, my opinion. Solid state and sodium ion are better technologies just around the corner that offer loner range, faster charging, and safer in accidents.
Solid state and sodium ion are better technologies just around the corner
They’ve been “around the corner” for nearly a decade. While the tech is promising, it has yet to really be scaled up for mass market. Also, while I agree lithium has it’s risks, but so do ICE cars and a lot of things we deal with on a day to day. Think of how many lithium batteries exist in the world and how few catastrophic failures there are.
You hear about EVs batteries catching fire because it’s a new technology and corporate media is in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry. ICE cars catch fire all the time, so much so that it’s rarely if ever reported on, and only local news if that. Meanwhile every EV fire is a national story because it’s novel and they want to spread misinformation about the tech.
I hear some data centers are using jet engine turbines
Specifically, Twitter AI/Grok is poisoning Memphis, TN because the local infrastructure cannot supply all the power the data center there “needs” (read: wants). They are illegally running diesel generators that are only meant to be used in emergencies because they are so bad with their emissions.
The local neighborhoods have had countless health issues and people have literally died from them. Musk is killing people so his slop machine can generate child abuse material. Also, the neighborhoods in question are prominently black, which adds a whole extra dimension of racism on top of the “fuck the poor” mentality he has.
why Trump relaxed coal and oil regulations
That’s not why he did that. He did that because he is bought by the same fossil fuel executives. He’s done more damage to our energy infrastructure because he’s killed a ton of projects to get renewables deployed.
He also has a personal grievance against wind power, or as he likes to call them “windmills”, because he didn’t like the few off shore ones that he could see from his golf course somewhere in the UK.
The US was poised to be the leader in renewable energy and instead the corrupt politicians, on both “sides” mind you, decided to stifle the innovation on both renewables and EVs, letting China become the current leader.
He and the rest of the fascist have hindered renewable adoption in the US because of their corruption. Rather than be energy independent we are forced to rely on fossil fuels and on top of that we actually export most of the oil we produce because “free market”, as companies get more money selling it abroad than domestically.
So we import oil they make more expensive by tariffs and illegal wars while they prevent us from reducing our reliance on said oil and allow private companies to profit off of oil we produce by exporting it, so we can’t even be energy independent with our own oil.
Also, they fearmonger about China “beating us in AI”, when outside of Deepseek there hasn’t been any big revelations from China and Deepseek was only a big thing because US companies were not innovating but brute forcing the tech. I’m sure China is still doing research on the tech, but they likely understand the limitations of it and don’t have the private investors inflating a bubble hoping/wishing it can replace workers.
So to recap, we are wasting tons of resources on “AI” because companies want to try and replace workers and they use fearmongering about China to excuse the waste while they ignore the fact that China is kicking our ass when it comes to EVs and renewable energy.
The grid could under real leadership. Your vampire squid parasitic infection is the problem here.
