41–50 of 347 posts
New Flyer, the US's biggest bus maker, is making battery-electric buses. But sales are low - 40 to Montreal, 10 to Toronto, 35 to Los Angeles. In comparison, Shenzhen recently replaced 16,000 of its buses with electrics, all from BYD. Shenzhen also replaced all of its cabs with electrics.
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.
So do you think Saudi Arabia will introduce a carbon tax anytime soon?
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They know that they'll have an easier time producing batteries and electricity than gasoline, that's all.
Is the world running out of petrol? Chinese fuel prices are fairly cheap on a global scale. It has far more to do with public discontent over air quality than petro-politics.
Just came back from Shenzen, seemed like most of the taxis were electric. You can tell because they're blue vs the red gas taxis. Another ingenious thing they do is there's an added fee to ride red taxis, so people avoid them like they're plague-ridden when they have other options. I thought that was a brilliant use of taxing externalities, you let customers decide whether paying the fee is worth it.
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 they'll completely ignore the gas car companies.
In China, Government is Business and business is Goverment who have to think about their bottomline above all.
Less pollution = more tourism and more content public with air quality = more incoming revenue from other countries/ Less outrage from public.
EVs = No need of importing Oil as china has enough hydropower capacity and electronic and software/AI/ML industries along with rare metal industry = less money going out of the country
Can we add some sort of HN rule that bans sites with paywalls?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
This is simply because China does not control oil supply, so they do not have a choice.
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This is helpful because the article is behind a paywall, but it makes me curious about the ethical/moral/legal questions that arise from a tool that seemingly copies other site's content verbatim. People might get annoyed with publishers like WJS for putting content behind a paywall, but at least they are trying to find a sustainable model in this post-web world. Putting up a paywall is a pretty gutsy move given the…
> it makes me curious about the ethical/moral/legal questions that arise from a tool that seemingly copies other site's content verbatim As someone who pays for journalism, and appreciates quality journalism over clickbait, this thoroughly pisses me off. Particularly when you have users such as this one who seem to single-mindedly comment with Outline links.
I also pay for journalism, to selected publications. I couldn't afford to buy a subscription to all the publications on which I read just a handful of articles a month, but most of them allow you to read a handful of articles without a subscription. The WSJ is the exception here.
My question to you: would you expect all HN readers who want to read submitted WSJ articles to purchase a WSJ subscription - along with subscriptions to all the other paywalled publications posted here? Given that few will be able to justify the cost of that, do you think WSJ should be banned from HN?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/03/22/london-taxi-...
Even London's black cabs are going electric, thanks to the Chinese. The London Taxi Company's Chinese owners (Geely) opened a £300m electric taxi factory in Coventry, UK last year. I'm not sure how many of these are in active service but I see them driving around all the time (presumably testing) as the factory is not far from my office. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/03/22/london-taxi-...
Just came back from Shenzen, seemed like most of the taxis were electric. You can tell because they're blue vs the red gas taxis. Another ingenious thing they do is there's an added fee to ride red taxis, so people avoid them like they're plague-ridden when they have other options. I thought that was a brilliant use of taxing externalities, you let customers decide whether paying the fee is worth it.
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…
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' stuff like force meme EVs on a significant national scale, where other developed nations are absolutely floundering.
What's even more interesting is how rapid that has occurred as compared to how recently China was an absolute polluting demon. Still are, but the rate of change/velocity towards addressing it is worth paying attention to.