this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2023
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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

EU subsidizes fossil fuel instead. But how could this be a problem...

[–] alvvayson 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Compared to Chinese subsidies for coal, EU subsidies for fossil fuels are laughable.

The bigger problem in my opinion is that China literally uses slave labour by Uyghurs.

If we are going to have free trade with a country running massive work camps, then we will have an unwinnable race to the bottom.

Obviously, that's totally unacceptable.

And it doesn't matter if the Uyghurs are not working in export sectors. Even if they only make products for domestic consumption, that will still make Chinese labour more competitive due to lower living costs.

Free trade without equal worker protections is just not going to work out.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Free trade without equal worker protections is just not going to work out.

At least as soon as the others might gain an advantage. The West was quite happy to exploit people in poor countries and to poison their environment as long as westeners got rich off it.

[–] alvvayson 7 points 1 year ago

The west isn't a person or entity.

A lot of people in the West are doing their best to combat exploitation in poor countries.

But at the end of the day, the West can't stop Xi from oppressing minorities in China, or Putin from attacking Ukraine or Modi from oppressing minorities in India.

The elites in non-western countries have way more influence on those things than western elites do.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

EU per capita emissions are below Chinese per capita emissions since a few years now. The EUs emissions are trending downwards and relativly fast.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilwinton/2023/09/06/chinas-plans-to-win-big-ev-sales-in-europe-pains-incumbents/

China’s Plans To Win Big EV Sales In Europe Pains Incumbents

Chinese electric car leader BYD unveiled its Seal sedan at the Munich show, and investment bank UBS spelled out the bottom line in a report.

“We believe BYD Seal is not only cost-competitive compared to incumbent legacy brands, but also 15% lower compared to Tesla Model 3. We estimate BYD’s cost is 30% lower than those of western incumbents, allowing it to offer a competitive price in Europe even with tariffs, shipping costs and/or more costly local production,” UBS said.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well, EU is not very successful with their own electric cars

[–] ANIMATEK 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Are you kidding? VW sells at least as good as Tesla in the EU, when not sightly better.

[–] CAVOK 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

https://www.electromaps.com/en/blog/europes-best-selling-electric-cars-q1-2023

Not quite. All the European brands together still isn't enough to take the top spot from tesla, and tesla has both #1 and #2.

[–] ANIMATEK 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You are looking at specific models though, and not whole manufacturer’s market share. It does seems that Testa took a leap in the last couple of quarters though.

While this extract is for the whole 2022, it puts VW at the top. Let’s wait for 2023 to close up.

The Volkswagen Group was the leading car manufacturer in Europe based on new battery-electric vehicle registrations recorded in 2022. That year, over 349,100 new BEVs were from one of the Volkswagen Group's brands. In contrast, the American EV giant Tesla ranked second

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1405996/bev-leading-manufacturers-europe/

In any way, EU made EVs are very competitive. Saying that the “EU is not successful with their own EVs” is the real bullshit.

[–] CAVOK 2 points 1 year ago

Saying that the “EU is not successful with their own EVs” is the real bullshit.

Agreed.

And let's see what 2023 brings. Would be good to see some European cars come out on top.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

are you serious? as much as i hate the ceo, but tesla has, unfortunately, better mpkwh than any european car manufacturer. the software is also way ahead. and then there is, at least in germany, the problem with the reliabilty of the charging network. only enbw comes close to tesla superchargers, but they are not part of any car manufacturer.

[–] ANIMATEK 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Which has nothing to do with raw sell numbers.

Teslas aren’t built to last, there is extensive documentation about parts falling after a few years.

Also the range that they display has been proven to be bullshit until you are low on battery.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/south-korea-fines-tesla-22-mln-exaggerating-driving-range-evs-2023-01-03/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

At just above 20 degrees Celsius, the average EV outperformed its stated range, but at minus 15 degrees the average EV had only 54% of its rated range, the study found.

A 2020 study of 4,200 connected EVs of all makes by Canada-based telematics provider Geotab found that most models had a similar drop in range in cold weather, primarily because the battery is also used to heat the car for the driver and passengers.

Hmm. I wonder how hard it would be to improve thermal insulation on the cabin on cars. I mean, double-paned glass and so forth. Thermal insulation in the walls and floors and ceiling. Maybe aerogel or something if one really wants to save on weight.

Insulation means weight. More weight is bad, reduces fuel efficiency, but with EVs, you also get regenerative braking, which avoids some of the cost of weight.

With internal combustion vehicles, you have a bunch of waste heat that you get for free, so at least for heating -- maybe not air conditioning -- there's not much point in worrying too much about thermal efficiency. You have more heat than you know what to do with.

So given the combination of weight being more-expensive on ICE vehicles and heat being just about free, you wouldn't have had a lot of incentive to optimize for that set of tradeoffs; I'd assume under-spending on R&D.

And maybe run the car's ventilation through a counter-flow heat exchanger to recover heat before venting it to the outside.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

In many countries (incl. Finland where I live), third party charging stations are much more common than Superchargers. For example most large shopping malls have a bunch of charging stations, often above 100kW.