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All this to produce machines of 2T to displace 80kg of human on average (think about it, the battery weight more than what it actually need to move on average) and maintain/develop car dependency infrastructures. This is the worst way of improving our efficiency and progress toward a more optimized, efficient economy and reducing massively our climate and biodiversity impact. I want those kind of factories to produce…
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Also please stop comparing absolute numbers between countries with more than an order of magnitude population difference.
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When considering how to divide that budget among the people of Earth absolute numbers for countries do not matter, because the atmosphere does not care about arbitrary lines humans draw on maps.
One easy way to see that per capita is the correct way to allocate the budget rather than per country is to consider what happens if countries split. Suppose we agree on a worldwide budget of 4 x 10^10 tons of CO2/year.
If we go by country each country's share is 2 x 10^8 tons/year. That would mean in a small country like Liechtenstein they could live a lifestyle that required 5000 tons/year/person.
Meanwhile, in the US we could only live a 0.6 ton/year/person lifestyle--about what Zimbabwe uses today. That's about 1/25th of the current US lifestyle.
That is not going to work. The US could hold a constitutional convention and dissolve with each of the current 50 states becoming an independent country, and at the same time make strong free trade and mutual defense treaties. They can call this the "American Union".
That raises the number of countries in the world, so each country now gets a smaller slice of that 4 x 10^10 tons/year global emission budget. Collectively the total emissions budget of the combined states in the American Union is around 8 x 10^10 tons/year. That allows the American Union to live a 24 ton/year/person lifestyle as a whole (which is 60% more than the current US lifestyle).
Of course China, which only gets a 0.16 ton/year/person lifestyle under the original country allocations could do the same thing. If they did the Chinese Union with the individual countries being what are now prefectures, that Chinese Union could have a 15 ton/year/person lifestyle (about the same as the current US CO2 emissions.
Each time a large country does this "split into a strong union of separate countries" thing the boost in how carbon intensive a lifestyle that union's residents can lives comes at the expense of a drop in what the rest of the world can have.
The limit of this is a world of thousands, or even millions, of micro-countries, each with about the same per capita CO2 allowance.
All this to produce machines of 2T to displace 80kg of human on average (think about it, the battery weight more than what it actually need to move on average) and maintain/develop car dependency infrastructures. This is the worst way of improving our efficiency and progress toward a more optimized, efficient economy and reducing massively our climate and biodiversity impact. I want those kind of factories to produce…
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US auto makers have been on the ropes since the 1980s. My hypothesis is that their heyday was 50s and 60s “greaser” culture and they kinda got their heads stuck in that era. “Golden ages” are incredibly dangerous. When people started wanting just practical small reliable affordable cars as the price of gas increased and cars became just an appliance they didn’t respond to that market and the Japanese did. It’s been e…
I think there’s a little bit more to the golden age story. The “malaise era” started in the early 70s as a perfect storm of fuel economy restrictions and more widespread US economic woes. This lead to decades of low quality cars being made. US automakers not only lost out on consumers looking for simple appliances to drive, but ALSO the enthusiasts that liked driving and cars. The car guys that came of age in this er…
Really, it was only a bit over one decade. Taking GM as an example, their last great cars were produced for the 1973 model year, after which point the economy, emissions, and efficiency requirements resulted in drastic (bad) changes. It only took until the late 1980s for them to make some genuinely good vehicles though. For instance, the Buick Regal/Oldsmobile Cutlass/Pontiac Grand Prix from 1988 were well built, comfortable, handled (relatively) well, and were very reliable - especially from 1990 with the introduction of the 3.8L V6, what is likely GM’s most reliable engine ever built (second possibly only to the small block V8). The same was tru for their sports cars (while not making much power out of the displacement, the TPI V8 firebird and corvette were similarly efficient to European sports cars at the time). Many GM cars from that era (late 1980s until early 2000s) are some of the most reliable American cars ever built.
The same is true for Ford; for example, the 1988 Probe, while not the most popular vehicle, was very reliable, comfortable, efficient, and well-built, likely in part due to their partnership with Mazda. It could reasonably be argued that as early as 1980, Ford was making pretty good vehicles, with the Mercury Grand Marquis/LTD Crown Victoria being well-built and reliable, if very down on power with questionable efficiency.
Not worth talking about Chrysler because they didn’t know how to make good/reliable cars before the fuel crisis and they certainly didn’t figure out how to afterwards.
I know this isn’t your main point but it’s worth considering that the US did actually figure out how to build really good cars again, and it didn’t take them that long. Mid-90s to early-00s American cars were, in my opinion, at the perfect point of technological advancement: CAD and high-precision/low-tolerance manufacturing resulting in engines that last well over 300k miles without major servicing; enough computer advancement to have high precision per-cylinder fuel and spark control with accurate air metering leading to better power, efficiency, and reliability; and enough material advancement to have interior and exterior build quality that makes the car look like it wasn’t built in a shed. But most importantly, they hadn’t figured out how or where to cheap out on components, so you end up with the “unreliable” components (like the 4L60e and 4T60e transmissions) “only” lasting 200k miles before requiring a rebuild - which in today’s money is still less than $1000, let alone 20-30 years ago.
From the birth of the US auto industry until about 2010, the only period where there wasn’t a single American car worth buying brand new was probably 1974-1981. The “malaise era” itself was by the loosest definitions only about 13 years, from 1974-1987.
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Why do you think the Chinese will invade their neighbors?
Because that's what authoritarians invariably do. They abhor liberal democracies and seek to extend their domineering control over as many people as they can. The CCP is an absolutely tyrannical organization that denies their own citizens the rights that you and I take for granted. Why would they ever desire their neighbours to have what they deny their own people? Look no further than Hong Kong and North Korea to se…
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cool now compare the population difference. In order to build renewable infrastructure, you do need to expend a lot of energy: mining, processing, transporting. China is using coal to build up that infrastructure and converting that dirty energy into clean.
So when GHG absorbs energy from the sun, it's on a per capita basis?
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Spoken like a true out of touch professional managerial class person. Regardless of country, your kind just got totally rebuked this past year. If you didn't realize, auto manufacturing was the last major home grown profession where you could have some semblance of stable middle class life. Once that is gone, the hollowing out of the middle class will be complete and there will be no money to transition to your garba…
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The 100% tariffs are already in place under the Biden administration. Trump only needs to prevent a Mexico manufacturing loophole. However, BYD still has the entire rest of the world to sell to. They will be fine.
Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia and many other countries turned sour on importing chinese EVs in favour of some kind of protectionism. Most developing countries dont have the infrastucture for EVs. Europe hit BYD with a 17 % tariff (10% being the standard)
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Spoken like a true out of touch professional managerial class person. Regardless of country, your kind just got totally rebuked this past year. If you didn't realize, auto manufacturing was the last major home grown profession where you could have some semblance of stable middle class life. Once that is gone, the hollowing out of the middle class will be complete and there will be no money to transition to your garba…
Cars only survive as a viable means of transportation due to vast subsidies and a total reorganization of society around them, the most inefficient mode of transport you could imagine. They are not the future of transport, they shouldn't even be the present.
I am so confused, the only way that can happen is via cheap imports of cars from other countries including China. So why would that help "real transport solutions" ?
If anything cheap EVs would make them less likely since a lot of nasty pollution from legacy ICE cars would be gone.