Who would have thought killing all affordable car models to focus on only luxury, while simultaneously significantly cutting quality on their luxury models, would back fire in the long run?
The US auto industry is about as alive as Mitch McConnell. Let me just buy a damn BYD already, and may gas prices rise a dollar a gallon per day until I finally can.
I found this to be one of the most insightful articles I've read about the auto industry and the role of the EV in the US and across the world.
The article notes, among other things, that it was the rise of the automobile industry in the US that led the nation to its position in the world. And the fall of the industry seems to be doing the same thing--hastened by the people currently in charge.
From the article: According to the International Energy Agency, a Paris-based policy group, one of every four vehicles sold globally in 2025 was battery-powered. Analysts with Bloomberg have predicted that in the next decade, that number will more than double, putting gas-powered cars — for the first time ever — in the minority of overall new vehicle sales.
Another comment from the article: China now makes 75 percent of all E.V.s sold anywhere on earth. (The United States makes around 5 percent.)
I've lived through it, but I just don't understand what's happened to the USA.
What happened? Pure, unadulterated greed and self interest. China is winning because they continue to invest in R&D and long term thinking as a country, where America doesn't really direct the economy except to prop up failing big companies, and every company is only concerned with "making the line go up" every quarter. R&D does not do that for a long time so it's cut out of the budget. Why innovate when no one else can really compete and you already have a working product? Works fine right until someone else can compete.
And that is what is happening with China vs the West. China was behind for a long time. Then they took over manufacturing to learn that and build the supply chains up. While doing that they also focused heavily on education so they could start to have an educated workforce. Couple that with lopsided IP enforcement laws and you get to where we are now.
China now has the ability to manufacture, the educated workforce to innovate, and a government that prioritizes national growth in all sectors, not just straight total market value.
Agreed, China's reinvestment in core growth drivers vs US actively sabotaging them seems to be the long and short of it. Education in particular just kills me, as it's the most obvious place to start. I blame religion, citizen's united, and super pacs.
Not me. I’ve tried to tell people about corporatist politicians since the day I could vote, whether it’s on the Democrat or Republican side. Now if you feel guilty about contributing to them, that’s on you.
How you end up with a shit country is people who use religion and culture wars to ignore real existential threats like climate change and pandemics. People who voted for politicians that sold this country to corporate interests absolutely deserve part of the blame.
china and norway invested earlier and more in the infrastructure for EVs. Charging is everywhere, people have less anxiety going electric. I live in a small city, and have never seen an electric charging area. Im sure we got them, probably can use an app to find them, but in china they are like gas stations. everywhere. and they invested heavily in super fast charging, only a small fraction of ours can handle 90% charge in 10 minutes. we are more typically at 20-40minutes for 90% charge.
China and the us are basically the same size geographically and they have 4.8 million public charging stations, we have 200,000.. and theirs are faster. They also have a massive 21million private charging, like employee parking and apartment building chargers. That's how you build a market.
they built the infrastructure to make people to want to buy EVs and then they did the tax subsidies like we did, if you buy electric over gas
we could have done it, but we fight too much over infrastructure and have too much interest in oil and gas. CHina is the worlds biggest importer of oil and they would rather not be.
Yes. What many people forget was that China came up with a program to attract capital investments and obtain technology from western counties. ( I wish I remembered the name of the program, but I forget ). The western countries would get access to China's cheap labor market.
In return China, not only received jobs, modern factories, and access to new markets, they just sat back and watched as most of the industrialized world just handed them expensive technological advancements. Their program also required that the factory management would be Chinese. This ensured that there were no manufacturing secrets.
Whenever you hear about how "China is stealing our technology" always remember this. While countries have always tried to get an edge keeping their own technological advancements secret and trying to obtain the benefit of other countries more closely guarded tech, this situation is a bit different.
I don't think that there is any other time in history that so many countries with such opposing political views just gave a country so much of their technology voluntarily. The Allies sharing military & manufacturing technology with the USSR in WW2 doesn't even come close.
We did not just have multiple places manufacture different parts of a CPU and piece them together elsewhere with the intention of none of the manufacturers understanding the overall piece of technology. China's program prevented this. While there might be multiple manufacturers, even some outside of China, working on particular products, China made sure they understood how all the pieces came together.
Knowing all of this, the CEOs of the western nations, especially the USA, just handed China hundreds of years of technology for a few years of extremely low labor costs and temporary profits. They cashed out and are retired and their trust fund babies might be senators one day, but America's long term economic prosperity was gutted and may never recover.
Always remember that the vast, overwhelming majority of the technology that China has acquired, was given to them by greedy, multi-billion dollar corporations in search of temporarily lower labor costs. They did this with full knowledge of the dangers of sharing our technologies and modern processes.
China is, and has been looking out for themselves as a country and using businesses to further their goals of global economic domination. Western corporations stopped having allegiances to countries decades ago.
It started as a tax dodge and then ended with them distributing parts of their organization over various countries prioritizing shareholder value and short term profits over loyalty to countries or workers. This was only made possible by them being allowed to purchase politicians & judges into changing many laws. Then they bought many media properties to push pro-corporate & pro-globalization propaganda.
The outcome is now that America may be more fractionalized now than at any other time in their history (even the Civil War). Meanwhile China is growing steadily in many industries and especially in the industries of the future. Their global economic & political influence is felt worldwide. They are choosing and directing aspects of their future, while America economically decays and politically have chosen leadership that is imploding on the world stage.
> the vast majority of use cases for trucks do not require this
The vast majority of use cases for trucks were solved by the early 2000s. The US manufacturers have been working tirelessly to unsolve these problems for going on 30 years now and morons can't stop opening their wallets to fund it.
“Fossil” fuel industry leadership is so entrenched in US politics that they will never let EV (or any low impact ) tech prosper. This old boy network shit always leads to an eventual collapse. This country has never held long term views towards our society. Self enrichment is the religion and at this scale will eventually lead an aggressively inhospitable environment for humans. I’m in NYC at the moment and watching the smoke from all Canadian fires drifts in to large population areas it’s not hard to imagine what a worst case scenario could look like.
A big part of the problem, and this goes across administrations, is that we haven't done a good job preventing tariffs from hindering our exports. And the auto companies didn't really try that hard to get around that b/c the US market was lucrative and we have costs built into cars like health insurance that makes it hard to compete. But that means the auto makers focused on a dwindling market of about 330 million people and just gave up on a similar sized market in Europe and Latin America, and just flat out gave up in India.
But the other problem was that the automakers successfully fought regulations that would have forced them to be competitive by aligning with fossil fuel industries.
And now we've got a president who is not very smart and basically made it harder to even try to compete b/c he asked the fossil fuel companies for a big bribe and they mostly paid it.
Meanwhile the sales are telling a different story. I remember when the turbo 4s were a complete joke and now they're like 20% of Silverado sales. They're outselling the big V8 almost two to one.
> People who drive large trucks have been convinced that they need them to be gasoline powered.
Batteries are great for a truck doing the daily commute to work, but fall off pretty hard when you're doing things someone likely bought the truck to do.
A Ford Lightning (extended battery) pulling a 7500 lb trailer gets about 90-100 miles per charge. Then if you want to recharge the truck, it's a huge pain in the ass because EV charging stations aren't pull-through, you have to find somewhere to park the trailer, unhook it, drive the truck over to the EV charger, and find something to do for the next hour and a half.
Also, as you pointed out, charging infrastructure in rural areas, or out in the wilderness for camping just doesn't exist.
The next gen of Lightning is taking a pretty cool approach to solve this conundrum. Medium sized battery with enough juice to cover your typical daily driving, EV power train, and a motor strictly designed to turn a generator to recharge the battery.
The setup gives you pure EV operation during the week, and extended range when towing or going on that weekend road trip to the mountains with the dirt bikes.
what they're describing is not a plug in hybrid. it's a diesel-electric generator, like a locomotive. in a plug in hybrid, you still run on a gas engine sometimes. this is a purely electric vehicle that runs on batteries, with a 100% electric drivetrain, and the batteries are charged with a diesel or gas generator that is not connected to the drivetrain.
i think it's the short-term future of electric trucks. the edison platform just makes good sense. a full electric truck, with a big diesel generator that is insanely fuel efficient compared to a regular diesel truck, but has the necessary power, torque, and range to compete with existing trucks without needing infrastructure to adapt around it.
> Batteries are great for a truck doing the daily commute to work, but fall off pretty hard when you're doing things someone likely bought the truck to do.
I would agree with this if people actually bought trucks for work stuff or actual things you need a truck for. But a lot of trucks, and SUVs built on truck frames or that evolved out of truck frames, are just for show. I would put it at somewhere around 70% are more for show than anything else. Construction and farm labor only make up maybe 13% of the entire labor force in the US and most of that, 11% is construction. There are other jobs that a truck is useful and other lifestyles, but they're going to be a much smaller number.
Add to that the cost to charge is like 65 cents a mile. Even more expensive than gas if the vehicle is only getting 1.1 mile per kilowatt hour used. No incentive to use electric for hauling as those energy prices are literal money confiscation. I love my 2020 Bolt. But US regulation, lack of building an affordable charging network, and making cars spying on you concerning everything is hurting the market. Chevy doing away with apple and android car play pissed me the fuck off too. What asshats.
>Additionally, there are many rural areas in the United States that do not have public charging stations.
You might be surprised.
Worst case, basically any RV park or campsite with RV/motorhome hookups for power will be able to charge an EV modestly quickly.
Additionally, you can charge at home, you don't need additional public infrastructure for most people's day-to-day. f you're not commuting 50 miles round trip, if you get a reasonably efficient EV, you can live off 120V.
I just came back home from a trip to rural Maine and New Hampshire in an EV. The ONLY time I had any range anxiety was that I may have had to plug into a campsite for 45 minutes to get to a DC Fast Charger.
PlugShare will show you all the charging infrastructure via points provided by charging companies and individuals. If you look at the zoomed-out map of flyover America, it looks like there's no infrastructure there. Zoom in a little and you see there's a lot more than you think.
> ...I just don't understand what's happened to the USA.
Unrestrained capitalism. Greed. A myopic focus on immediate returns rather than long-term goals.
Everything is focused on short-term profits. Making the line go up quarter after quarter. Absolutely no concern about what happens later-on.
We've stopped investing in infrastructure, education, and R&D. We're rolling-back regulations in order to make bigger profits. We are willingly giving up our seat at the table to go chase money.
That was a really interesting article. Thanks for sharing.
I always thought it would be inevitable that electric cars would be the future. I definitely want an electric car eventually. There are so many headwinds though, and now, of course, politics…
I don’t understand why nobody has produced something that can do 80 to 100 miles for under 20 grand. A super basic commuter. Seems like this could be a surefire winner.
While I agree, Americans generally buy a car based on the greatest possible need they’d experience. There’s a lot of “yeah, but once every three years I load up 5 kids and go camping 300 miles away down logging road, so I definitely need an Expedition” out there
Americans love to complain about affordability. But when you look at sales, for example 2025, the cheap Maverick sold 155k units while the expensive F-series sells 828k units. Apparently they love to complain more than they love to save.
r/slate is getting close. But no, we won’t be switching wholesale until china can sell their cars here. Something established brands have every incentive to prevent.
I was thinking that having just enough miles for commuting, say between 80 to 120 miles of range, and the car being very small with no frills, would allow them to get down that cheap. But you’re probably right. Everything is expensive here.
FYI at least in SoCal there are many used EVs for sale and rebates that make electric a no brainer. I got a 2017 Bolt last year, 250 miles a charge, 20k miles on the odometer , cost me 9k. Absolutely amazing car.
What motivated you to make this comment? People talk about this sort of thing all the time, what would make you think this particular person would think that no one had thought of it before? Or are you just being a dick for no good reason?
The person you’re replying to is probably in the auto industry.
My company very publicly went through a large layoff recently. There were folks saying similar things to “let them crash” in threads discussing the thousands of workers affected. Sure, the leaders and decision makers in the auto industry have gotten super greedy, but that doesn’t make it cool to cheer on like hundreds of thousands people becoming unemployed, ya know?
Yeah man, of course, all those people suddenly without an income would be fuckin' terrible. If we had some legislators with some imagination I bet we could come up with a good solution to that problem.
I'm just some asshole on the Internet so I don't know, but we could figure out a way to let the auto industry take itself out and still take care of the workers, if we wanted to.
Or just let a zombie industry die. Preserving jobs in a defunct industry just to preserve jobs is a very Soviet move that went poorly for that once great power. Let the people find jobs in a new industry that’s growing. Stop protecting and subsiding the gasoline and gasoline powered car industry. Sometimes destruction is necessary for growth. Ford and Chevy have shown no ability to adapt to reality outside of regulatory capture and subsidy.
GM had the best EV around in the Bolt and it killed it, twice actually. Americans only learn lessons the hard way. I'm all for people driving what they want. But in large, urban cities the registration and insurance fees for a truck NOT needed for a business should be astronomical in order to offset the negatives those trucks do on small city streets.
I owned a 1991 Buick Skylark when I was in high school. It met its end at 90k miles when the transmission detonated and blew a hole in the outer casing and dumped all of its fluid all over the road.
I never thought I'd own another GM vehicle but electric is a different story and GM makes pretty good EVs.
Cheap, practical and fun to drive. Not many cars check all three boxes. I’m not sure if it’s a marketing failure or if the people really don’t know what they want.
IMO a big problem w/ the Bolt is the chevy nameplate. Its a badge that went decades building low quality commuter cars and disparaging fuel economy.
You could have sold a Saturn Bolt if you didn't drown Saturn in the bathtub.
The bZ4X is perhaps the biggest POS on the road today. However put it next to a Equinox EV and I bet 8/10 people would say the bZ4X is the more reliable, better vehicle just because of the badge.
I will never buy another gas car. For my needs, they are worse in every way. The US auto industry attitude reminds me of the 80's where they failed to even try to compete with Japan.
Tesla's sales have been anemic for the last two years at least in part because Musk's association with it, though some numbers appear to be going back up this year. Half a decade of public mental health crises, political controversies, and outrageous behavior is a nightmare for any brand management, and its stock valuation has no meaningful relationship with market fundamentals.
It’s by far the best selling EV though. I just bought a BMW i4, in no small part because of the Musk association. But hundreds of thousands of people each year are still choosing Tesla.
Sure, they have a little under 50% market share of EVs. That's more a reflection of how little effort the major manufacturers are putting into the market than Tesla's dominance though.
The point of the article is that the other manufacturers shrugged and decided it wasn't worth changing their business model to compete, and now that the rest of the world can also build EVs, they're building them faster, cheaper, and more quickly than any of the American companies could. Tesla's not really able to scale much and is now bloated with Twitter debt. The third-string EV lines from the major competitors are now starting to eat its market share in quality and price competition, but nowhere near fast enough to compete with BYD and anyone trying to chase them in global market dominance. At some point the Japanese and Korean competitors will copy-paste some homework over from the global market into their existing supply chains here and wipe the floor with Tesla and the American giants and those giants will probably collapse, consolidate, or pivot to non-auto manufacturing.
We are the #1 producer of oil, and we are a multicultural country. Lots of rich vested interests, and a forever/structural supply of “others” to blame and easily organize the poor/dumb/busy.
Tesla’s sales have flatlined and are now in decline. The cybertruck is such a disaster Elon is having to have space x buy them just to get rid of the damn things. It is probably the biggest automotive flop in history. Even the Edsel wasn’t this bad. If he wasn’t selling them to himself the sales numbers would be even worse. (And bonus points, because the government is dumping all that money into space x, we get to pay for them!)
Meanwhile Elon has managed to tarnish the company so badly with his politics, that are in direct opposition to the people he is trying to sell cars too, that people don’t want to be seen in them anymore.
Not to mention of course they have not updated the cars in any noticeable way since they came out. And he has cancelled half the model lineup to pivot to robots is it?
Tesla is not “doing great”. We are watching them pivot away from cars because he has kind of fucked it up.
Because it’s easy enough to google. That’s what I did before posting to make sure I wasn’t wrong. You should give it a shot. It’s fun.
Anyway, I’m not putting links to anything because you Tesla bros will just argue black is white anyway and I’m not having that argument with any of you. I don’t want to spend the next few hours trading links with you. This is the internet in 2026, I’m sure you clowns can drown me in articles telling me Tesla is the best company in the world and the stock is undervalued.
But the sales numbers are the sales numbers. And while you guys are arguing about it, BYD is quietly pulling farther and farther out front.
BYD is outselling Tesla globally as of the last quarter. If it wasn’t for protectionist tariffs keeping BYD out of the US, that would have been the case for a few years now.
The Chinese are selling a superior product at a lower price everywhere but here.
Do you mean like the more expensive not as fast Ioniq? The car that cant drive itself, or travel as far? I am not familiar with the tesla killing KOrean car
It doesn't matter if a car is very "Fast" when bits of it are falling off and the panels don't match. The point I made was they're rubbish as an ownership proposition. It's a car selling at a premium price point with panels gaps that are woeful and the quality of the workmanship is just not at that level. There are budget Dacias in the European market that are built better. I had an Ioniq 5 for a week, it was comfortable and felt expensive. I had Tesla for a month, and I was scared I'd break the internal fittings.
What's good about it is the software and the charging network, but those gaps are being filled, and to be honest the ADAS systems that other manufacturers use are not that bad , and in some cases superior depending on what you want to do. I have driven lots of premium vehicles and the ADAS works just fine.
I guess i figured with a premium price point it would be more expensive. Hmmmm. Also turning the car on and off seems silly after a Tesla. Not the biggest fan on the ioniqs interiors myself as the door handle also feels like it will break apart if I push too hard, but if anything ever falls off my tesla I will remember this conversation
I used to drive Mercs, BMWs and Lexus. The car turning itself on is a gimmick. It really isn't an inconvenience to turn a key or press a button. Lexus and mid 2000s Audi have done the best interiors for finish. Boring, slightly worthy but just excellent in terms of quality of feel and the level of engineering depth. The panel gaps on a Lexus , especially the high-end models breathtakingly accurate.
Teslas area about the software and "experience", which ages badly and can be copied quickly, as the Chinese EVs are demonstrating at a rate of knots.
As someone who gets to play in all manner of cars the on and off is more then a "gimmick". It means the windows and AC are working as soon as you get in. It also means you cant forget to turn your car off as you walk away. Silent EVs can be tricky to tell. But my battery wont kill itself cuz I was too distracted to turn off the car. Also. Doesn't the ionic also do that door handle thing that announces to the world your car is unlocked... or is that just Rivians. The Audi is defenitly awesome. But its out of my current price range. Not sure how fast they are either
It's a nice gimmick, but it's still a gimmick. You seem to be a young man. Speed isn't that important as, beyond 0-60 in about 5 seconds, there's a limit to what normal driver can handle and it's pretty useless to be able to floor it in a straight line.
If you like to drive cars, and actually know how to drive cars, straight line speed is not really the thing that gives you pleasure, it's balance and control. In that respect most modern cars are a bit rubbish, an old Mazda MX5 (Miata) or Porsche Boxter are such fun cars you don't need much else on normal roads.
And both of those are better built than any Tesla.
Back to the original point, you seem to be very US focused. Around the world, we have much more choice and better quality EVs than Tesla. Most standard cars have better quality materials, are put together really well and at very high levels of quality. The Tesla only really surpasses in terms of its charger network and the software.
The strip mining for lithium needed is vastly more harmful than using fossil fuels. Really everyone needs to educate themselves on this. You can take steps to reduce harm from using fossil fuels. Strip mining has no such possible reduction in harm
There are 40 million tons of fossil fuels dug up every day, 40 million tons a day, thay will be used up and then be gone so continually has to be dug up to replace it.
There are a couple hundred tons of lithium processed a day, lithium that is never inherently destroyed and is perfectly recyclable forever.
Your not understanding the issue. Extracting oil is not nearly as destructive to Earth as strip mining millions of acres. And Oil extractions already pretty bad but strip mining is leagues more severe
There are 3 millions acres of coal strip mines out there, there are maybe 50,000 acres of lithium mines.
However, thats besides the point, most lithium doesnt come from mines, 70% of lithium comes from brine. lithium is one of the three primordial elements and spread pretty evenly throughout the universe, anywhere there is sodium there is lithium such as seawater so they extract it from salty water.
Although natural brine exists, brine is also a side product of water desalination so combined desalinated fresh water and lithium plants are on the horizon.
Your missing the big point. Earth is still exiting an Ice Age. Sooner or later the Poles will melt entirely. Speeding it up is what we are doing. We are not the cause of it. Its a problem thats gonna be a problem no matter what we do. Speeding up the melting by about 2000 years time is not the entire end of the world. If we didnt burn fossils fuels in 2000 years the problem would still be there. The Earth fluctates between Warm/Cold periods and theres nothing we can do to halt it.
Lithium Mining is 100% a massive problem we are doing and destroying vast amounts of ecosystems to so, heavily polluting the area with contaminates that cause immediate harm to current living people.
>Speeding it up is what we are doing. We are not the cause of it.
We are the cause of this increase.
>If we didnt burn fossils fuels in 2000 years the problem would still be there.
If we are talking about moving out from our current ice age then you are off by a lot of years:
>Based on orbital models, the cooling trend initiated about 6,000 years ago will continue for another 23,000 years.[49] Slight changes in the Earth's orbital parameters may, however, indicate that, even without any human contribution, there will not be another glacial period for the next 50,000 years.[50] It is possible that the current cooling trend might be interrupted by an interstadial phase (a warmer period) in about 60,000 years, with the next glacial maximum reached only in about 100,000 years.[51]
What is shitty with the current warming is the speed of increase. If you have something happens over 50 years instead of 5000 humans, animals and plants will have quite a bigger issue adapting
>Lithium Mining is 100% a massive problem we are doing and destroying vast amounts of ecosystems to so, heavily polluting the area with contaminates that cause immediate harm to current living people.
honeybakedham1 | 11 days ago
The US auto industry is crashing itself just fine, no need to blame EVs
NihiloZero | 11 days ago
"If only we'd committed to producing and marketing a new Canyonero!"
Kaelin | 10 days ago
Who would have thought killing all affordable car models to focus on only luxury, while simultaneously significantly cutting quality on their luxury models, would back fire in the long run?
Justin__D | 10 days ago
Don't threaten me with a good time!
The US auto industry is about as alive as Mitch McConnell. Let me just buy a damn BYD already, and may gas prices rise a dollar a gallon per day until I finally can.
[OP] mushpuppy | 11 days ago
Submission statement:
First, an archive.ph link.
I found this to be one of the most insightful articles I've read about the auto industry and the role of the EV in the US and across the world.
The article notes, among other things, that it was the rise of the automobile industry in the US that led the nation to its position in the world. And the fall of the industry seems to be doing the same thing--hastened by the people currently in charge.
From the article: According to the International Energy Agency, a Paris-based policy group, one of every four vehicles sold globally in 2025 was battery-powered. Analysts with Bloomberg have predicted that in the next decade, that number will more than double, putting gas-powered cars — for the first time ever — in the minority of overall new vehicle sales.
Another comment from the article: China now makes 75 percent of all E.V.s sold anywhere on earth. (The United States makes around 5 percent.)
I've lived through it, but I just don't understand what's happened to the USA.
TeutonJon78 | 11 days ago
What happened? Pure, unadulterated greed and self interest. China is winning because they continue to invest in R&D and long term thinking as a country, where America doesn't really direct the economy except to prop up failing big companies, and every company is only concerned with "making the line go up" every quarter. R&D does not do that for a long time so it's cut out of the budget. Why innovate when no one else can really compete and you already have a working product? Works fine right until someone else can compete.
And that is what is happening with China vs the West. China was behind for a long time. Then they took over manufacturing to learn that and build the supply chains up. While doing that they also focused heavily on education so they could start to have an educated workforce. Couple that with lopsided IP enforcement laws and you get to where we are now.
China now has the ability to manufacture, the educated workforce to innovate, and a government that prioritizes national growth in all sectors, not just straight total market value.
mwdeuce | 11 days ago
Agreed, China's reinvestment in core growth drivers vs US actively sabotaging them seems to be the long and short of it. Education in particular just kills me, as it's the most obvious place to start. I blame religion, citizen's united, and super pacs.
jameson71 | 11 days ago
I simply blame republicans. The things you listed are tools they used to grab more power however
lislejoyeuse | 11 days ago
Things like super pacs also contribute to the Democrats failings
jameson71 | 11 days ago
Hard to fight against billionaires when “money is speech”
optifreebraun | 11 days ago
We’re all collectively guilty of this. Blaming one party and absolving the other - doesn’t matter which is which -
Is how we ended up here.
bladex1234 | 11 days ago
Not me. I’ve tried to tell people about corporatist politicians since the day I could vote, whether it’s on the Democrat or Republican side. Now if you feel guilty about contributing to them, that’s on you.
optifreebraun | 11 days ago
Always blaming someone else. That’s how you end up with a shit country.
bladex1234 | 11 days ago
How you end up with a shit country is people who use religion and culture wars to ignore real existential threats like climate change and pandemics. People who voted for politicians that sold this country to corporate interests absolutely deserve part of the blame.
powercow | 11 days ago
china and norway invested earlier and more in the infrastructure for EVs. Charging is everywhere, people have less anxiety going electric. I live in a small city, and have never seen an electric charging area. Im sure we got them, probably can use an app to find them, but in china they are like gas stations. everywhere. and they invested heavily in super fast charging, only a small fraction of ours can handle 90% charge in 10 minutes. we are more typically at 20-40minutes for 90% charge. China and the us are basically the same size geographically and they have 4.8 million public charging stations, we have 200,000.. and theirs are faster. They also have a massive 21million private charging, like employee parking and apartment building chargers. That's how you build a market.
they built the infrastructure to make people to want to buy EVs and then they did the tax subsidies like we did, if you buy electric over gas
we could have done it, but we fight too much over infrastructure and have too much interest in oil and gas. CHina is the worlds biggest importer of oil and they would rather not be.
FourKrusties | 11 days ago
america is the largest producer of oil
uncleawesome | 11 days ago
How's that working out for us?????
snowtax | 11 days ago
That’s not going to help when the rest of the world is moving to electric.
Mo_Jack | 10 days ago
>Pure, unadulterated greed and self interest.
Yes. What many people forget was that China came up with a program to attract capital investments and obtain technology from western counties. ( I wish I remembered the name of the program, but I forget ). The western countries would get access to China's cheap labor market.
In return China, not only received jobs, modern factories, and access to new markets, they just sat back and watched as most of the industrialized world just handed them expensive technological advancements. Their program also required that the factory management would be Chinese. This ensured that there were no manufacturing secrets.
Whenever you hear about how "China is stealing our technology" always remember this. While countries have always tried to get an edge keeping their own technological advancements secret and trying to obtain the benefit of other countries more closely guarded tech, this situation is a bit different.
I don't think that there is any other time in history that so many countries with such opposing political views just gave a country so much of their technology voluntarily. The Allies sharing military & manufacturing technology with the USSR in WW2 doesn't even come close.
We did not just have multiple places manufacture different parts of a CPU and piece them together elsewhere with the intention of none of the manufacturers understanding the overall piece of technology. China's program prevented this. While there might be multiple manufacturers, even some outside of China, working on particular products, China made sure they understood how all the pieces came together.
Knowing all of this, the CEOs of the western nations, especially the USA, just handed China hundreds of years of technology for a few years of extremely low labor costs and temporary profits. They cashed out and are retired and their trust fund babies might be senators one day, but America's long term economic prosperity was gutted and may never recover.
Always remember that the vast, overwhelming majority of the technology that China has acquired, was given to them by greedy, multi-billion dollar corporations in search of temporarily lower labor costs. They did this with full knowledge of the dangers of sharing our technologies and modern processes.
China is, and has been looking out for themselves as a country and using businesses to further their goals of global economic domination. Western corporations stopped having allegiances to countries decades ago.
It started as a tax dodge and then ended with them distributing parts of their organization over various countries prioritizing shareholder value and short term profits over loyalty to countries or workers. This was only made possible by them being allowed to purchase politicians & judges into changing many laws. Then they bought many media properties to push pro-corporate & pro-globalization propaganda.
The outcome is now that America may be more fractionalized now than at any other time in their history (even the Civil War). Meanwhile China is growing steadily in many industries and especially in the industries of the future. Their global economic & political influence is felt worldwide. They are choosing and directing aspects of their future, while America economically decays and politically have chosen leadership that is imploding on the world stage.
Multigrain_Migraine | 10 days ago
Not merely imploding but actively destroying what allowed it to gain power in the first place.
adamwho | 11 days ago
The best selling vehicles for American automakers are large trucks.
People who drive large trucks have been convinced that they need them to be gasoline powered.
Additionally, there are many rural areas in the United States that do not have public charging stations.
In reality, the vast majority of use cases for trucks do not require this.
_CHEEFQUEEF | 11 days ago
> the vast majority of use cases for trucks do not require this
The vast majority of use cases for trucks were solved by the early 2000s. The US manufacturers have been working tirelessly to unsolve these problems for going on 30 years now and morons can't stop opening their wallets to fund it.
mango_boom | 11 days ago
“Fossil” fuel industry leadership is so entrenched in US politics that they will never let EV (or any low impact ) tech prosper. This old boy network shit always leads to an eventual collapse. This country has never held long term views towards our society. Self enrichment is the religion and at this scale will eventually lead an aggressively inhospitable environment for humans. I’m in NYC at the moment and watching the smoke from all Canadian fires drifts in to large population areas it’s not hard to imagine what a worst case scenario could look like.
elmonoenano | 11 days ago
A big part of the problem, and this goes across administrations, is that we haven't done a good job preventing tariffs from hindering our exports. And the auto companies didn't really try that hard to get around that b/c the US market was lucrative and we have costs built into cars like health insurance that makes it hard to compete. But that means the auto makers focused on a dwindling market of about 330 million people and just gave up on a similar sized market in Europe and Latin America, and just flat out gave up in India.
But the other problem was that the automakers successfully fought regulations that would have forced them to be competitive by aligning with fossil fuel industries.
And now we've got a president who is not very smart and basically made it harder to even try to compete b/c he asked the fossil fuel companies for a big bribe and they mostly paid it.
Desperate-Till-9228 | 11 days ago
>People who drive large trucks have been convinced that they need them to be gasoline powered.
They're just resistant to change.
They were convinced they needed V8s.
Then they were convinced they needed at least a V6.
Then they were convinced that they needed a turbo 4.
Eventually they'll get on board with EV.
SuccessfulLand4399 | 11 days ago
I don’t need to be convinced of anything. I want a v8. I don’t want a v6. I don’t want a turbo 4. And I don’t want a toaster on wheels.
SilverMedal4Life | 11 days ago
No one is immune to propaganda.
The giant American truck is the product of corporations bypassing emissions regulations.
Desperate-Till-9228 | 11 days ago
Meanwhile the sales are telling a different story. I remember when the turbo 4s were a complete joke and now they're like 20% of Silverado sales. They're outselling the big V8 almost two to one.
SteveDaPirate | 11 days ago
> People who drive large trucks have been convinced that they need them to be gasoline powered.
Batteries are great for a truck doing the daily commute to work, but fall off pretty hard when you're doing things someone likely bought the truck to do.
A Ford Lightning (extended battery) pulling a 7500 lb trailer gets about 90-100 miles per charge. Then if you want to recharge the truck, it's a huge pain in the ass because EV charging stations aren't pull-through, you have to find somewhere to park the trailer, unhook it, drive the truck over to the EV charger, and find something to do for the next hour and a half.
Also, as you pointed out, charging infrastructure in rural areas, or out in the wilderness for camping just doesn't exist.
The next gen of Lightning is taking a pretty cool approach to solve this conundrum. Medium sized battery with enough juice to cover your typical daily driving, EV power train, and a motor strictly designed to turn a generator to recharge the battery.
The setup gives you pure EV operation during the week, and extended range when towing or going on that weekend road trip to the mountains with the dirt bikes.
Senior-Albatross | 11 days ago
That's a plug in hybrid. They have been a thing since the Volt.
drokihazan | 11 days ago
what they're describing is not a plug in hybrid. it's a diesel-electric generator, like a locomotive. in a plug in hybrid, you still run on a gas engine sometimes. this is a purely electric vehicle that runs on batteries, with a 100% electric drivetrain, and the batteries are charged with a diesel or gas generator that is not connected to the drivetrain.
i think it's the short-term future of electric trucks. the edison platform just makes good sense. a full electric truck, with a big diesel generator that is insanely fuel efficient compared to a regular diesel truck, but has the necessary power, torque, and range to compete with existing trucks without needing infrastructure to adapt around it.
elmonoenano | 11 days ago
> Batteries are great for a truck doing the daily commute to work, but fall off pretty hard when you're doing things someone likely bought the truck to do.
I would agree with this if people actually bought trucks for work stuff or actual things you need a truck for. But a lot of trucks, and SUVs built on truck frames or that evolved out of truck frames, are just for show. I would put it at somewhere around 70% are more for show than anything else. Construction and farm labor only make up maybe 13% of the entire labor force in the US and most of that, 11% is construction. There are other jobs that a truck is useful and other lifestyles, but they're going to be a much smaller number.
Pabst_Blue_Gibbon | 11 days ago
Also…. Most construction companies have company cars. I was a construction worker and I never drove a pickup privately.
rockalyte | 11 days ago
Add to that the cost to charge is like 65 cents a mile. Even more expensive than gas if the vehicle is only getting 1.1 mile per kilowatt hour used. No incentive to use electric for hauling as those energy prices are literal money confiscation. I love my 2020 Bolt. But US regulation, lack of building an affordable charging network, and making cars spying on you concerning everything is hurting the market. Chevy doing away with apple and android car play pissed me the fuck off too. What asshats.
fifthecho | 11 days ago
>Additionally, there are many rural areas in the United States that do not have public charging stations.
You might be surprised.
Worst case, basically any RV park or campsite with RV/motorhome hookups for power will be able to charge an EV modestly quickly.
Additionally, you can charge at home, you don't need additional public infrastructure for most people's day-to-day. f you're not commuting 50 miles round trip, if you get a reasonably efficient EV, you can live off 120V.
I just came back home from a trip to rural Maine and New Hampshire in an EV. The ONLY time I had any range anxiety was that I may have had to plug into a campsite for 45 minutes to get to a DC Fast Charger.
PlugShare will show you all the charging infrastructure via points provided by charging companies and individuals. If you look at the zoomed-out map of flyover America, it looks like there's no infrastructure there. Zoom in a little and you see there's a lot more than you think.
ephemeriis_ | 11 days ago
> ...I just don't understand what's happened to the USA.
Unrestrained capitalism. Greed. A myopic focus on immediate returns rather than long-term goals.
Everything is focused on short-term profits. Making the line go up quarter after quarter. Absolutely no concern about what happens later-on.
We've stopped investing in infrastructure, education, and R&D. We're rolling-back regulations in order to make bigger profits. We are willingly giving up our seat at the table to go chase money.
susiedotwo | 11 days ago
Late stage capitalism happened.
ILoveLandscapes | 11 days ago
That was a really interesting article. Thanks for sharing.
I always thought it would be inevitable that electric cars would be the future. I definitely want an electric car eventually. There are so many headwinds though, and now, of course, politics…
I don’t understand why nobody has produced something that can do 80 to 100 miles for under 20 grand. A super basic commuter. Seems like this could be a surefire winner.
jollyllama | 11 days ago
While I agree, Americans generally buy a car based on the greatest possible need they’d experience. There’s a lot of “yeah, but once every three years I load up 5 kids and go camping 300 miles away down logging road, so I definitely need an Expedition” out there
HB97082 | 11 days ago
Americans love to complain about affordability. But when you look at sales, for example 2025, the cheap Maverick sold 155k units while the expensive F-series sells 828k units. Apparently they love to complain more than they love to save.
nondescriptzombie | 10 days ago
Plumbers, Electricians, and other Tradies are using F-series, which IIRC includes the Super Duty's. Not Escapes with a truck bed.
They sold more Mavericks than Toyota sold 4Runners.
ElectronGuru | 11 days ago
r/slate is getting close. But no, we won’t be switching wholesale until china can sell their cars here. Something established brands have every incentive to prevent.
Kaurifish | 11 days ago
I’ve hated cars since I was a kid. Didn’t get my license til 23 even though I gew up in L.A.
But I kinda love my Bolt. 200+ mile range, quiet, and boy is it named right because when you put the pedal down, it bolts.
Pabst_Blue_Gibbon | 11 days ago
20k usd is tricky but there are a few models on the European market under 20k eur and a few more under 25k eur, both Chinese and European cars.
ILoveLandscapes | 11 days ago
I was thinking that having just enough miles for commuting, say between 80 to 120 miles of range, and the car being very small with no frills, would allow them to get down that cheap. But you’re probably right. Everything is expensive here.
donh- | 11 days ago
China does, I am told.
scampfree4me | 10 days ago
FYI at least in SoCal there are many used EVs for sale and rebates that make electric a no brainer. I got a 2017 Bolt last year, 250 miles a charge, 20k miles on the odometer , cost me 9k. Absolutely amazing car.
bobojoe | 10 days ago
Buy and old Nissan leaf for $4k
DrEnter | 10 days ago
The BYD Seagull is the car you are looking for. The range is better than that, though.
AM_Bokke | 11 days ago
What new car can you buy for under 20 grand?
You are delusional.
Builder2World | 11 days ago
Let them crash. Tired of socialized losses and privatized gains. Get them out of the dealer model while you're at it!
b_rizzley | 11 days ago
I’ll bet this felt like an independent thought
NojTamal | 11 days ago
What motivated you to make this comment? People talk about this sort of thing all the time, what would make you think this particular person would think that no one had thought of it before? Or are you just being a dick for no good reason?
Devildadeo | 11 days ago
The person you’re replying to is probably in the auto industry.
My company very publicly went through a large layoff recently. There were folks saying similar things to “let them crash” in threads discussing the thousands of workers affected. Sure, the leaders and decision makers in the auto industry have gotten super greedy, but that doesn’t make it cool to cheer on like hundreds of thousands people becoming unemployed, ya know?
NojTamal | 11 days ago
Yeah man, of course, all those people suddenly without an income would be fuckin' terrible. If we had some legislators with some imagination I bet we could come up with a good solution to that problem.
I'm just some asshole on the Internet so I don't know, but we could figure out a way to let the auto industry take itself out and still take care of the workers, if we wanted to.
am_i_wrong_dude | 11 days ago
Or just let a zombie industry die. Preserving jobs in a defunct industry just to preserve jobs is a very Soviet move that went poorly for that once great power. Let the people find jobs in a new industry that’s growing. Stop protecting and subsiding the gasoline and gasoline powered car industry. Sometimes destruction is necessary for growth. Ford and Chevy have shown no ability to adapt to reality outside of regulatory capture and subsidy.
Builder2World | 11 days ago
It didn't, doesn't mean it's not true.
extremetolerance2013 | 11 days ago
You must be in the wrong sub....
susiedotwo | 11 days ago
The irony of this comment being framed as some sort of “rebuke” to the comment above it…
egzwygart | 11 days ago
You know Rizz thought that was an original, independent gotcha.
Awkward-Painter-2024 | 11 days ago
GM had the best EV around in the Bolt and it killed it, twice actually. Americans only learn lessons the hard way. I'm all for people driving what they want. But in large, urban cities the registration and insurance fees for a truck NOT needed for a business should be astronomical in order to offset the negatives those trucks do on small city streets.
Em_Es_Judd | 11 days ago
The Equinox EV is great. I have one and love it, but it is large.
I wouldn't mind having a Bolt as a daily commute and our Equinox for family hauling and road trips.
NoLie129 | 11 days ago
Loved my bolt, traded for the blazer SS and man this is a great car. Hardly hear anything about it in the normal EV vids.
HB97082 | 11 days ago
People have sticky memories. They hate GM, love Toyota. Because yes, there was a time...
Em_Es_Judd | 11 days ago
I owned a 1991 Buick Skylark when I was in high school. It met its end at 90k miles when the transmission detonated and blew a hole in the outer casing and dumped all of its fluid all over the road.
I never thought I'd own another GM vehicle but electric is a different story and GM makes pretty good EVs.
Bubbledood | 11 days ago
Cheap, practical and fun to drive. Not many cars check all three boxes. I’m not sure if it’s a marketing failure or if the people really don’t know what they want.
rook119 | 10 days ago
IMO a big problem w/ the Bolt is the chevy nameplate. Its a badge that went decades building low quality commuter cars and disparaging fuel economy.
You could have sold a Saturn Bolt if you didn't drown Saturn in the bathtub.
The bZ4X is perhaps the biggest POS on the road today. However put it next to a Equinox EV and I bet 8/10 people would say the bZ4X is the more reliable, better vehicle just because of the badge.
TheGameIsFizzbin | 11 days ago
I will never buy another gas car. For my needs, they are worse in every way. The US auto industry attitude reminds me of the 80's where they failed to even try to compete with Japan.
HB97082 | 11 days ago
Oh how the times have changed. Tesla topping charts. Honda not having an EV. Toyota and Subaru partnering to produce effectively their first EV.
MrPBH | 11 days ago
Same, I love EVs.
boner79 | 11 days ago
China won EV car market just like they did with most other appliances. Let us buy BYD and get rid of annoying as shit to maintain gas cars.
PrimeIntellect | 11 days ago
They are gonna be better at making pretty much everything in like 5-10 more years
HB97082 | 11 days ago
China has definitely won its domestic market. Though BYD may not be the best example, they use American motors.
revolvingpresoak9640 | 11 days ago
I hate Tesla, but Tesla is the American EV. They moves hundreds of thousands of vehicles a year. Where is this “death” exactly?
kylco | 10 days ago
Tesla's sales have been anemic for the last two years at least in part because Musk's association with it, though some numbers appear to be going back up this year. Half a decade of public mental health crises, political controversies, and outrageous behavior is a nightmare for any brand management, and its stock valuation has no meaningful relationship with market fundamentals.
revolvingpresoak9640 | 10 days ago
It’s by far the best selling EV though. I just bought a BMW i4, in no small part because of the Musk association. But hundreds of thousands of people each year are still choosing Tesla.
kylco | 10 days ago
Sure, they have a little under 50% market share of EVs. That's more a reflection of how little effort the major manufacturers are putting into the market than Tesla's dominance though.
The point of the article is that the other manufacturers shrugged and decided it wasn't worth changing their business model to compete, and now that the rest of the world can also build EVs, they're building them faster, cheaper, and more quickly than any of the American companies could. Tesla's not really able to scale much and is now bloated with Twitter debt. The third-string EV lines from the major competitors are now starting to eat its market share in quality and price competition, but nowhere near fast enough to compete with BYD and anyone trying to chase them in global market dominance. At some point the Japanese and Korean competitors will copy-paste some homework over from the global market into their existing supply chains here and wipe the floor with Tesla and the American giants and those giants will probably collapse, consolidate, or pivot to non-auto manufacturing.
nordic86 | 11 days ago
Hating Musk is more important that being unbiased.
CornerHugger | 11 days ago
All my cars have been foreign for many many years now. US has been behind for a loooooooong time.
HB97082 | 11 days ago
Yes, until the EV revolution when a small company from California...
rileycurran | 11 days ago
We are the #1 producer of oil, and we are a multicultural country. Lots of rich vested interests, and a forever/structural supply of “others” to blame and easily organize the poor/dumb/busy.
Random_182f2565 | 11 days ago
I hope so
browsing_the_news | 11 days ago
Luckily the Tesla S is well built American engineering quality in aluminum and titanium so I hold onto mine
hawksdiesel | 11 days ago
Zero bailouts!!
Bawbawian | 11 days ago
we handed the next century to our competitors
BusyBanana4205 | 11 days ago
Impossible, that’s what the US taxpayer is for.
grammer70 | 11 days ago
Tesla is doing great. They are a U.S. auto maker.
Blaizefed | 11 days ago
Tesla’s sales have flatlined and are now in decline. The cybertruck is such a disaster Elon is having to have space x buy them just to get rid of the damn things. It is probably the biggest automotive flop in history. Even the Edsel wasn’t this bad. If he wasn’t selling them to himself the sales numbers would be even worse. (And bonus points, because the government is dumping all that money into space x, we get to pay for them!)
Meanwhile Elon has managed to tarnish the company so badly with his politics, that are in direct opposition to the people he is trying to sell cars too, that people don’t want to be seen in them anymore.
Not to mention of course they have not updated the cars in any noticeable way since they came out. And he has cancelled half the model lineup to pivot to robots is it?
Tesla is not “doing great”. We are watching them pivot away from cars because he has kind of fucked it up.
HB97082 | 11 days ago
A lot of cope in above comment. Not a lot of sales data. I wonder why.
Blaizefed | 11 days ago
Because it’s easy enough to google. That’s what I did before posting to make sure I wasn’t wrong. You should give it a shot. It’s fun.
Anyway, I’m not putting links to anything because you Tesla bros will just argue black is white anyway and I’m not having that argument with any of you. I don’t want to spend the next few hours trading links with you. This is the internet in 2026, I’m sure you clowns can drown me in articles telling me Tesla is the best company in the world and the stock is undervalued.
But the sales numbers are the sales numbers. And while you guys are arguing about it, BYD is quietly pulling farther and farther out front.
grammer70 | 11 days ago
Wrong, Teslas are fucking amazing, you can rage all you want, but they are the best vehicles.
Blaizefed | 11 days ago
The sales would seem to indicate otherwise. But you really like them and I love that for you.
Pitiful_Aioli_5030 | 11 days ago
LMAO, no they’re not!
D-Hex | 11 days ago
Made in China
OkDifficulty7436 | 11 days ago
Tesla is also in China, that's correct
maverick118717 | 11 days ago
They are also selling the most cars in the world the last couple years. This article is silly
Blaizefed | 11 days ago
BYD is outselling Tesla globally as of the last quarter. If it wasn’t for protectionist tariffs keeping BYD out of the US, that would have been the case for a few years now.
The Chinese are selling a superior product at a lower price everywhere but here.
HB97082 | 11 days ago
>BYD is outselling Tesla globally as of the last quarter.
maverick118717 | 11 days ago
They might be able to open a shop stateside if they stop spontaneously combusting
grammer70 | 11 days ago
The cars are amazing.
D-Hex | 11 days ago
Teslas are crap.. Badly finished, with lack of quality materials. Get hammered on both by Korean cars.
maverick118717 | 11 days ago
Do you mean like the more expensive not as fast Ioniq? The car that cant drive itself, or travel as far? I am not familiar with the tesla killing KOrean car
D-Hex | 11 days ago
It doesn't matter if a car is very "Fast" when bits of it are falling off and the panels don't match. The point I made was they're rubbish as an ownership proposition. It's a car selling at a premium price point with panels gaps that are woeful and the quality of the workmanship is just not at that level. There are budget Dacias in the European market that are built better. I had an Ioniq 5 for a week, it was comfortable and felt expensive. I had Tesla for a month, and I was scared I'd break the internal fittings.
What's good about it is the software and the charging network, but those gaps are being filled, and to be honest the ADAS systems that other manufacturers use are not that bad , and in some cases superior depending on what you want to do. I have driven lots of premium vehicles and the ADAS works just fine.
maverick118717 | 11 days ago
I guess i figured with a premium price point it would be more expensive. Hmmmm. Also turning the car on and off seems silly after a Tesla. Not the biggest fan on the ioniqs interiors myself as the door handle also feels like it will break apart if I push too hard, but if anything ever falls off my tesla I will remember this conversation
D-Hex | 11 days ago
I used to drive Mercs, BMWs and Lexus. The car turning itself on is a gimmick. It really isn't an inconvenience to turn a key or press a button. Lexus and mid 2000s Audi have done the best interiors for finish. Boring, slightly worthy but just excellent in terms of quality of feel and the level of engineering depth. The panel gaps on a Lexus , especially the high-end models breathtakingly accurate.
Teslas area about the software and "experience", which ages badly and can be copied quickly, as the Chinese EVs are demonstrating at a rate of knots.
maverick118717 | 11 days ago
As someone who gets to play in all manner of cars the on and off is more then a "gimmick". It means the windows and AC are working as soon as you get in. It also means you cant forget to turn your car off as you walk away. Silent EVs can be tricky to tell. But my battery wont kill itself cuz I was too distracted to turn off the car. Also. Doesn't the ionic also do that door handle thing that announces to the world your car is unlocked... or is that just Rivians. The Audi is defenitly awesome. But its out of my current price range. Not sure how fast they are either
D-Hex | 11 days ago
It's a nice gimmick, but it's still a gimmick. You seem to be a young man. Speed isn't that important as, beyond 0-60 in about 5 seconds, there's a limit to what normal driver can handle and it's pretty useless to be able to floor it in a straight line.
If you like to drive cars, and actually know how to drive cars, straight line speed is not really the thing that gives you pleasure, it's balance and control. In that respect most modern cars are a bit rubbish, an old Mazda MX5 (Miata) or Porsche Boxter are such fun cars you don't need much else on normal roads.
And both of those are better built than any Tesla.
Back to the original point, you seem to be very US focused. Around the world, we have much more choice and better quality EVs than Tesla. Most standard cars have better quality materials, are put together really well and at very high levels of quality. The Tesla only really surpasses in terms of its charger network and the software.
Let's agree to disagree and leave it that.
WellIGuessSoAndYou | 11 days ago
Is that a joke? They look pretty from a distance but up close they're very poorly made vehicles.
ChornobylChili | 11 days ago
The strip mining for lithium needed is vastly more harmful than using fossil fuels. Really everyone needs to educate themselves on this. You can take steps to reduce harm from using fossil fuels. Strip mining has no such possible reduction in harm
jwm3 | 11 days ago
There are 40 million tons of fossil fuels dug up every day, 40 million tons a day, thay will be used up and then be gone so continually has to be dug up to replace it.
There are a couple hundred tons of lithium processed a day, lithium that is never inherently destroyed and is perfectly recyclable forever.
ChornobylChili | 11 days ago
Your not understanding the issue. Extracting oil is not nearly as destructive to Earth as strip mining millions of acres. And Oil extractions already pretty bad but strip mining is leagues more severe
jwm3 | 11 days ago
There are 3 millions acres of coal strip mines out there, there are maybe 50,000 acres of lithium mines.
However, thats besides the point, most lithium doesnt come from mines, 70% of lithium comes from brine. lithium is one of the three primordial elements and spread pretty evenly throughout the universe, anywhere there is sodium there is lithium such as seawater so they extract it from salty water.
Although natural brine exists, brine is also a side product of water desalination so combined desalinated fresh water and lithium plants are on the horizon.
cc81 | 11 days ago
My assumption is that your education comes from tiktok or instagram reels?
ChornobylChili | 11 days ago
I actually read scientific articles from people that specialize in these fields. Heres an article with sources
https://earth.org/lithium-and-cobalt-mining/
cc81 | 11 days ago
First paragraph:
>However, the environmental impacts of lithium and cobalt mining, though lower than fossil fuel production,
ChornobylChili | 11 days ago
Your missing the big point. Earth is still exiting an Ice Age. Sooner or later the Poles will melt entirely. Speeding it up is what we are doing. We are not the cause of it. Its a problem thats gonna be a problem no matter what we do. Speeding up the melting by about 2000 years time is not the entire end of the world. If we didnt burn fossils fuels in 2000 years the problem would still be there. The Earth fluctates between Warm/Cold periods and theres nothing we can do to halt it.
Lithium Mining is 100% a massive problem we are doing and destroying vast amounts of ecosystems to so, heavily polluting the area with contaminates that cause immediate harm to current living people.
cc81 | 10 days ago
>Speeding it up is what we are doing. We are not the cause of it.
We are the cause of this increase.
>If we didnt burn fossils fuels in 2000 years the problem would still be there.
If we are talking about moving out from our current ice age then you are off by a lot of years:
>Based on orbital models, the cooling trend initiated about 6,000 years ago will continue for another 23,000 years.[49] Slight changes in the Earth's orbital parameters may, however, indicate that, even without any human contribution, there will not be another glacial period for the next 50,000 years.[50] It is possible that the current cooling trend might be interrupted by an interstadial phase (a warmer period) in about 60,000 years, with the next glacial maximum reached only in about 100,000 years.[51]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation
What is shitty with the current warming is the speed of increase. If you have something happens over 50 years instead of 5000 humans, animals and plants will have quite a bigger issue adapting
>Lithium Mining is 100% a massive problem we are doing and destroying vast amounts of ecosystems to so, heavily polluting the area with contaminates that cause immediate harm to current living people.
It is over comparatively small areas.
13Zero | 11 days ago
You can recycle lithium batteries (at least in theory).
You cannot recycle fossil fuels.