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Honda shelves $11B Canada EV factory as its electric retreat deepens (electrek.co)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/canada@lemmy.ca
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cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/63799437

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[–] 3 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Growth doesn't have be a straight linear line always going up. We're in a transitional stage where the big issues are currently being addressed. The growth in EV adoption has been exponential, i.e slow to start with 20 years of basically nothing then 5 years of some improvements with a bit more adoption. Then 5 years of explosive growth, and the next 5 years will likely include more explosive growth as we address all the issues that they currently have.

Pretty much all technology improves like this until they plateau. Just look at mobile phones, they first popped up ~50 years ago and had very slow improvements for about ~25 years until they started to pick steam in the 2000s, and then absolutely exploded in the 2010s.

You're just an old person yelling at clouds who can't read the writing on the wall.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

    I'll repeat it for the deaf ones at the back of the room - Ive not only owned an EV for 8 years now, I have money invested in two EV startups, Edison Motors (because its a hybrid truck) and Aptera (because its solar powered). Im a past member of my local EV Owners Club and I've been following EVs since I first spotted a Citicar in 1978, so the only part of your comment that is correct is that Im older and much wiser than you.

    The problem with your analogy with mobile phones is that when the smartphone came along, it was EXPONENTIALLY superior to anything that preceded it. Not only could it be a phone but its a handheld computer, wallet, GPS, text, camera, video, it can start your car, run your entire smart home... just about any electronic application can be applied. That beats a Nokia dumb phone by miles which is why everyone has one.

    Thats definitely NOT true of EVs. They do some things better - like lower maintenance costs and have more torque and less noise. But they also do somethings worse - like much longer 'refueling' for road trips and they are almost impossible to repair by owners, they lose considerable range in the cold and they are more expensive to buy. Which is why they will remain a niche product. Because some people will find them more useful but obviously a lot of people don't.

    There are some things that more money will solve, like charging infrastructure, but there are some physics problems that EVs will never solve - like how its impossible to put the same amount of energy into an EV that you have in the size of a gas tank of an ICE car. The little 10 gallon tank in an gas Fiat 500 will take you 500 kms. The Fiat 500 EV with a battery only goes 220 km using up MUCH more room for its battery and it weighs 500 pounds more. Poorer physics is impossible to market as 'superior'.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (2 children)

    It's cute that you think age means wisdom. If that were true, then the older ruling class wouldn't be absolutely fucking our planet.

    Every problem that EVs have, there's a solution for. People are actively working on them, and some government are pushing EVs for environmental reasons. Once the problems that they have are solved they will be objectively better than ICE cars.

    Also, mobile phones weren't always the objectively best choice. There was a period of time where landlines were the better option because of the lack of infrastructure supporting them. It wasn't until the infrastructure started to expand to cover everywhere that the explosive growth really happened.

    And your "physics problems" are also solvable, people are currently putting billions of billions of dollars into battery research. There will come a point where batteries are superior to a tank of fuel for most use cases. I don't want to be the person saying "oh, solid state batteries are right around the corner," because companies have been promising them "next year" for like a decade now. But they almost certainly will eventually be viable commercially, and they only need to be half as good as they promise to really push the viability of EVs for the majority of use cases.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    And your “physics problems” are also solvable, people are currently putting billions of billions of dollars into battery research. There will come a point where batteries are superior to a tank of fuel for most use cases.

    So, we're equating spending money with finding solutions to a physics problem?Would that money include the billions for the NorthVolt plant that just went belly up in Quebec? Doesnt seem very successful. Im glad you're certain cause the people with the big bucks certainly don't seem to be.

    Have you looked at BYD (the BIG Chinese EV maker) lately? It has a Q1 2026 net profit decline of 55% year-on-year. Thats massive. Companies that cant attract investors dont succeed and when Warren Buffet pulls out of your company after 17 years, you know things are bleak.

    Just because some companies spend big money does not in any way guarantee anything. "Hope" does not equal success. More accurately the number of EV startups that have failed far outnumbers the very few that appear to be succeeding. For now.

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