Katherina Reiche Sprungschreck
This always pisses me off. More than 10y ago everybody already said that electric vehicles would be the path forward and a necessary transition.
What did the European car makers do back then ? They said "oh you want EV ? Really?! We will make you an EV" and they all made shit like this:
Toy looking ass plastic trashcans that don't even have heating inside and can't drive 50km on a good day.
Then they said: "we made your EV, no one is buying it ! People don't want EV !!!"
Then Tesla made a successful electric luxury car and they never quit whining and crying since then, and eventually dragged their feet into making a normal looking electric car. (Disclaimer: No endorsement for Tesla. Elon has always be a sociopathic PoS. This was very clear from very long ago, I didn't wait for the Nazi salute to hate him).
European carmakers made the transition, it’s just that people in Europe didn’t buy as many electric cars as they predicted to. Porsche for example already had a 100% EV strategy, but backtracked as they didn’t sell enough.
They didn't sell enough because of a mix of bad prestige of EVs, intentional and targeted misinformation by lobby groups and because of retarded prices.
The thing about this is that Porsche is a brand for total asshole. You buy a Porsche if you want to drive unreasonably fast, drive loud, annoy other people and really use the road as your personal playground, because you are a rich asshole. Those people are not the perfect target group for EVs, but EVs are perfect cars for everyone else.
European mainstream car makers had everything and all the time in the world to be pioneers in the transition. They refused to change, they even blocked change, now that they are being surpassed in many fronts, they are complaining as usual.
Sorry but while I mostly buy european, I'm not sympathetic with your case here.
She says nonchalantly as half of western Europe burns.
German car lobby refusing to change. Its sad really. And I'm German, we see it every day. We need to fall from grace again to kickstart innovation and competition again.
Electric cars are better in every way... they had decades to transform their production processes, but no, greed and stupidity demand sticking to combustion technology... when do they finally realize, that fossil has no future?
Sun/Wind/Water = unlimited energy source!
Absolutely!
when do they finally realize, that fossil has no future?
They spend decades deying the problem to keep burning the planet. Followed by decades of "be careful to not act harshly and damage the economy"-delays to keep burning. Now we are in the "but it's too expensive, just look at the poor industry"-phase. And we are already seeing the beginning of a transition to fascism now to divert the people from the constantly more dire consequences. They will not "realize" anything, because they allready know. But they don't care. The plan is to burn, burn, burn until they die. Go fuck yourself, peasant.
As a neighbour, I'd like to thank you for helping EU production of BEV and making people believe in it.
Germans are so hard on Germany. I only hear negativity online from Germans.
Maybe you can start building from what you already have? Working from the ground up is what the rich like because it means accepting worse worker conditions. Don't fall for that trap.
I honestly think German car manufacturers have done their fair share when looking at manufacturers with heritage. Almost no one did as much!
BMW made the i3 at the time of the Tesla Model S. It was rushed, too expensive to produce, but it was good for its time. It is still a blast to drive! It is light on its feet with a great chassis. They made the i8 in tandem which helped make electric cool and accepted from a driver's car perspective. The iX is fugly but it's apparently amingst the most comfortable cars. It wasn't a financial success and BMW took a different route after but their electric cars are good driver cars for today's abysmal standards.
Mercedes created a whole separate platform for electric cars. If you look at the EQS prototypes you'll see that it was gorgeous. The production car is great but very very ugly. People believed Mercedes was going to go fully electric whether Mercedes meant it or not. Their offering after rebates of the EQB was cost-effective when compared to the Ioniq 5. That is a lot of car, great! It alsl sold a lot of those. Innovation on the CLA means it's very frugal. Mercedes did its part.
These are expensive cars, sure. But some have sold a lot and they moved the industry.
VW publicly turned around their whole company. They didn't sell but they made everyone believe that they were buying their last combustion engine car. That is a hige driver in today's market. The roof workers here were laughing when one of them said "I'll never drive electric" because they were sure there would be no other option. That is a big change. Execution of the ID3 was bad, but no one complained when Ford used the exact same steering wheel in their cars. The electric Porches seemed to sell well to an audience that really wanted to hear the flat six. The Audi etron took the market of rich people who wanted to drive electric but did not want to be seen as such. VW was dragged through the mud for the emisions scandal that everyone in the industry was participating in.
The Germans made BEV feel premium and the future we should all long for. Milking that market failed and backfired.
Compared to KIA and Hyundai that's not impressive, they executed better coming from a lower positioned brand and making it more chique. Ford created a model 3 clone with the Mach E. That's ok but not great. Attaching the Mustang name to it made people believe Ford found this to be important. They didn't move it as far as Mercedes, BMW, VW at all. Their EU BEV offering was essentially based on VW's chassis 2 years ago? Maybe still today? They failed at producing the F150 lightning. They did net up a new team and were publicly struggling to re-school their engine designers to stay relevant. Most US based manufacturers seem to have missed the mark. The Nissan Leaf made great progress but was not as technologically sound as the i3, many leafs of the day don't work anymore. They were dull and for people who cared about the environment, not for people who cared about car culture (whether we like it or not, it's a thing). Nissan just stopped innovating. Jaguar had a great offering but is essentially Chinese and stopped innovating on the platform so are now behind. Stellantis did the Citroen thing of quirky cars which seems to have somewhat worked out? Their 45kmh BEV sold well. Mostly to 16 year olds who should have been cycling but it sold. They kept the lower end of the market with basic innovation. Renault came late with a sensible offering but is there now. They certainly did not create that early belief in a transition. Toyota? The Prius was very important but then nothing. Subaru? Nope. Mitsubishi? Made the i-Miev which was a hit for being a BEV at the time, it was not a great car but not expensive by today's standards. Battery replacement is a challenge. They did not continue on this path.
Tesla made the most positive moves for BEV. Much hated now, but we have to give that to them. In an industry where no one thought a new manufacturer could stand up, they created a car brand that made BEV cool. It came with its own blend of quality control issues and challenging worker conditions.
The Chinese leapfrogged the market with the intent of leapfrogging. Heavily subsidised to enter the market, ready to push other players out. They focussed on electric know-how and it worked. Again, not an established manufacturer and different worker conditions.
German execution was not fast enough. The established manufacturers are not well equipped for disruptive events. We must remember that people were not ready to switch. It was and is expensive. But in the grand scheme of things, I find German manufacturers to have been an important piece of the puzzle in the switch. I hate the lobbying for combustion engines and would rather hear about lobbying for BEV R&D. We should ensure worker conditions can stay or improve whilst producing what we need to limit climate change.
Go Germans. Please produce BEV driver cars.
Great summary! But Renault was not that late I believe. They built the Zoe, which was great because it looked like a normal car, not like the i-Miev (Miev translates in German to stink). The Zoe was a solid car and kind of a best seller in Germany regarding BEVs (I drive one myself).
The mistake German car brands made was focussing on luxury and high class cars. The VW management was baffled that the cheap cars of Cupra and Skoda are selling really good. Which only leads to the conclusion that there are idiots sitting in the C suite, completely detached from reality.
I really want to like some European cars and get one, but they are kind of old fashioned feeling nowadays.
She said the commission should introduce more flexible carbon dioxide emission limits and adjustment mechanisms so that carmakers could help shape the industry's transition.
Wait, that wouldn't be technology-neutral. The emission limits are the same for combustion cars, hydrogen-powered cars, and electric cars. The car industry can do whatever it wants to reduce emissions of internal combustion cars to those limits. It is just unlucky that people don't buy these hydrogen cars for ten times the price!
Ah, so you figured out our government is made of hypocrite millionaires. Whenever they say something vague that kind of makes sense at first they usually mean the exact opposite.
Well you don't get any support for buying a hydrogen car as you get for buying an electric one.
Neither do companies get funding support for installing hydrogen stations as you get for electric ones.
So your example only works if there's no funding support involved.
EDIT: I don't think the internal combustion engine is the way btw.
Just wanted to say there are more things to consider for technology neutrality.
Hydrogen technology of that kind was supported by massive research funding for over 50 years. It hasn't delivered what it promised.
I'm not specifically supportive of hydrogen either, just wanted to say one needs to look at the whole picture.
There have been a massive number (and value) of publicly funded projects subsidising and supporting hydrogen worldwide, including Berlin. They all failed because it's a dud, an utter blind alley. The ONLY reason those trials happened was because fossil fuel companies want hydrogen to maintain their supply monopoly.
for hydrogen propulsion to make sense prerequisite is to have lots of cheap green hydrogen, which mean very cheap renewable electricity, by which point there's no need because electric cars are more direct replacement. but there are applications where hydrogen is used directly, as a reagent instead of as energy source and can be made from renewable electricity. Yara makes some of fertilizer this way and there's a pilot plant for green steelmaking in sweden iirc. it just so happens that now cheapest hydrogen is made from gas
this also pulls in different directions because people building renewable generation don't want electricity price to be too low
Absolutely agree on all counts.
The optimal flow from a consumer and global warming perspective is
build out renewables until lowest predictable output exceeds demand, at which point you have massive over generation at peak,
utilise excess power generation to crack water for hydrogen (pref sea water)
use h2 for making ammonia fertiliser and other viable use cases
Use BEVs for personal and busrs and as much as practical caternary overhead power or live rails for trains, trams etc the power should be super cheap given over capacity.
This of course runs into vested interests
(pref sea water)
doesn't matter because you have to purify it anyway
direct hydrogen uses that make sense given hydrogen is cheap are ammonia, methanol (also from biomass), steel and generally speaking fine chemicals. methanol and ammonia can be used as fuels for cases where BEVs don't work, like shipping. this also requires monstrous overbuild of power grid
prerequisite for cheap hydrogen (cheap electricity) will also make further electrification make sense and that eats lunch of hydrogen use for power even before hydrogen infra buildout happens
It's not the purification reason that it is "pref sea water" it's availability and impact of source. Fresh water is becoming a steadily scarcer resource whereas global sea levels are rising.
The water you spilt is better than fresh water quality. It does not matter what the source is. The cleaner you start out with, the less effort you need to purify. Sea water takes a far more to purify. You can use that for drinking etc. just as good as H2.
Also, the amount of water split is just not relevant. 1 GW of production at theoretical efficiency needs less than 300 m³ per hour! Absolutely nothing for such a massive power level. A cooling tower of a 1 GW power plant evaporates something like 10x as much.
News and information from Europe 🇪🇺
(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)
(This list may get expanded as necessary.)
Unless they're the only sources, please also avoid The Sun, Daily Mail, any "thinktank" type organization, and non-Lemmy social media (incl. Substack). Don't link to Twitter directly, instead use xcancel.com. For Reddit, use old:reddit:com
(Lists may get expanded as necessary.)
We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.
If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 7 or 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.
If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the admin that applied the rule (check modlog first to find who was it.)