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China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

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Re: China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

#171

Post by dsfyu404ed »

FooHentai wrote: post #50
InGodsName wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works in china because CCP thinks, "if it's better for business/control/money/people, we'll do it, doesn't matter if some of us loses in this" Basically, if you are in goverment and you've stock holding in Gas cars, and they are lobbying, gas cars stay. But in China, CCP will simply acquire controlling interest in new winning EV firm if it's better from the perspective of power/money/control over an industry, so t…

And yet, in a weird way it's working in a way that aligns to wider, long-term, individual interests. By making the government the controlling monopoly, China ends up with a form of capitalism where externalities apply to other countries rather than surrounding corporations and citizens. That's kinda interesting compared to how most other capitalist nations are handling their shit right now. You can do 'common good' s…

>On a weird way it's working in a way that aligns to wider, long-term, individual interests.

Only so much as the interests of individuals align with those of business and the state. Anything threatens stability (e.g. individual freedoms, business models that allow people to circumvent state authority) is a threat to the state and to business by proxy and is struck down.

Re: China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

#172

Post by segmondy »

paganel wrote: post #85

Why don't we bring trolleybuses back? They rock! You don't need polluting batteries in order to run them, just some copper to put the wires up, and we've been master of this "technology" for almost a century now. Also, we should extend or re-introduce the tram network.

Why don't we figure out this remote business? If more people, just 10% of the population work remote full time, can you imagine the difference?

Re: China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

#173

Post by ekianjo »

Xylakant wrote: post #156
D_Alex wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simply because electric buses are the superior technology right now. Metro bus services is actually an ideal application for electric vehicles: The needed range is short, charging facilities can be in one place (depot), stop-start driving suits the propulsion system, and low noise and no emissions are a bonus in the highly populated areas.

Trolleybusses are electric, they just get their electricity from overhead wires, similar to a railway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus

Good luck rerouting them when you change their path thru the city.

Re: China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

#174

Post by dsfyu404ed »

mschuster91 wrote: post #127
antaviana wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Just see the "Yellow Vests" riots in France because of the tax raise on fuel.

> Just see the "Yellow Vests" riots in France because of the tax raise on fuel. Problem with the French protests is that the fuel tax raise didn't take care of poor-ish people. Most "eco" politics doesn't care about these people either - no matter the country - and that's the reason why Trump and other right-wingers can hate so successfully against anything environmentally-friendly.

The problem is that getting off of fossil fuels (or solving pretty much any other large politically charged problem) will cost a lot of money and in society it's always the people who have the least power and influence who are left with the bill so until the middle and upper classes can figure out how to stop screwing poor people at every turn there will always be opportunity for populist leaders to gain power by promising to actually solve people's problems, drain the swamp, etc, etc.

It's not a left vs right thing. It's a the people calling the shots are out of touch with what the day to day problems of the masses are thing.

Re: China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

#175

Post by adrianN »

ctdonath wrote: post #92
marvin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That type of taxation of externalities is really a no-brainer in the West too, but there’s just not democratic majority for implementing it. A tragedy. Tragedy of the commons, really, on a spectacular scale. A general CO2 tax wouldn’t be hard to implement if we were a dictatorship.

A general CO2 tax wouldn’t be hard to implement if we were a dictatorship. It's ideas like this why Americans are heavily armed. Nobody can explain how a "co2 tax" would actually do good, yet you implicitly advocate killing people to enact it.

A CO2 tax would do good because it would reduce demand for goods and services that cause the release of CO2, proportional to how much they release, while also providing the funds necessary to clean CO2 from the atmosphere.

Not that hard to explain.

Re: China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

#176

Post by ekianjo »

agsdfgsd wrote: post #162
ollie87 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are but they need more infrastructure than battery vehicles.

Are a few overhead wires actually more expensive than the massive batteries electric buses require? They are certainly less damaging to the environment.

Copper is not cheap anymore, thats why copper cables get stolen at night in a number of countries. Plus there may be new safety considerations compared to when trolleys were retired.

Re: China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

#177

Post by mmikeff »

agsdfgsd wrote: post #162
ollie87 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are but they need more infrastructure than battery vehicles.

Are a few overhead wires actually more expensive than the massive batteries electric buses require? They are certainly less damaging to the environment.

Buying a handful of electric buses as the start of a migration away from diesel is a lot cheaper to get started, and a lot less commitment than installing all the infrastructure before you can run a single tram.

Re: China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

#178

Post by [deleted] »

benj111 wrote: post #71

So its interesting to think what will happen when they turn their gaze outwards. How long will it take Chinese brands to be a force to be reckoned with? Yes they might be sniffed at to start with, but that's only the same as Japanese cars in the 60s, Skoda in the 90s and most recently Kia, but other manufacturers won't be able to get away with calling them cheap tat for long (assuming they aren't). I assume there are…

[deleted]

Re: China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

#179

Post by moduspol »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #166
moduspol wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why stop at a CO2 tax? All kinds of problems could be solved with a dictatorship.

It's not having a dictatorship -- it's having a national economic strategy and a popular will to make decisions without letting very particular selfish interests get in the way. It does not require an authoritarian central leadership. But it does require stopping and rolling back the capture of political bodies and the public sphere generally by private interests.

Respectfully, it's a pipe dream.

If gas, energy, or home heating prices double, whoever's in power is going to be voted out. It's not the capture of political bodies that drives that--it's normal people. It'll take a suspension of democracy or a long time to make a measurable impact on climate change.

Re: China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

#180

Post by francisofascii »

ctdonath wrote: post #92
marvin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That type of taxation of externalities is really a no-brainer in the West too, but there’s just not democratic majority for implementing it. A tragedy. Tragedy of the commons, really, on a spectacular scale. A general CO2 tax wouldn’t be hard to implement if we were a dictatorship.

A general CO2 tax wouldn’t be hard to implement if we were a dictatorship. It's ideas like this why Americans are heavily armed. Nobody can explain how a "co2 tax" would actually do good, yet you implicitly advocate killing people to enact it.

A CO2 tax would reduce the following: pollution, resource depletion, suburban sprawl, commute times, obesity, loneliness, traffic related deaths. So there will be less people killed with a C02 tax.
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