Live data from Hacker News

Ford hits the brakes on $12B in EV spending

theverge.com

51–60 of 64 posts

Re: Ford hits the brakes on $12B in EV spending

#51

The originally announced F150 lightening price was under $40k, and there were also some incentives IIRC. The cheapest ones are about $60k now. A lot of people were interested in the truck for the lower $30k's, but much more than that is a non-starter. The marketing for these vehicles is also laughable. Instead of advertising real-world range for a 10k towing load, they talk about how it can power your blender. The mu…

Yeah but Ford just cancelled F150 lightning orders in the US & Canada again. How many production shutdowns are they going to deal with for quality issues per year? Also it's weird to be pushing EVs in areas where they aren't wanted (trucks, motorcycles). Harley Davidson just reported that their electric bike model sold 69 units globally in the last quarter of 2022...That's basically nothing. Their yearly goals are li…

For $35k, I would want an F150 lightning with 4wd and 4 doors. That would be a great value, and while not as capable as a non-electric truck, it would fit all of my needs.

For $60k, I'll just buy a real truck.

Re: Ford hits the brakes on $12B in EV spending

#52
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, but most of global harming pollution doesn't come from ICE cars and it won't be solved by people switching to EVs. It's a necessary but not sufficient part of the solution. Solving all greenhouse gas sources in our world except the ones involved in switching from ICE to EV is nowhere near enough. > EV evangelists should know that EV manufacturing is 70% more environmentally damaging than building ICE cars. Ma…

>Also, the main damage from cars isn't the manufacturing — over the vehicle lifetimes, the emissions from literally burning fuel far out-mass the manufacturing emissions. Again, personal vehicle ICE fuel burning is only a relatively small part of global emissions (about 9%). People are just fixate on it because it happens in their back yard so that's all they see everyday as the main polluter instead of the giant min…

> Again, personal vehicle ICE fuel burning is only a relatively small part of global emissions (about 9%)

And two of your examples — air travel, shipping industry — are 1.9 and 1.7%: https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector

And the correct reduction is 99.9%. Which means that everything except cars would be 8.9% too much, assuming your 9% is correct (seems a bit much given all road transport was 11.9%, but that graph is from 2016 so I can buy it).

> except nobody's talking about them

Oh, we are. Some of us even blame only the big companies for all the combined emissions of their customers.

And I've been watching people blame China for everything even when they were a smaller emitter than the USA.

> Rich western countries moving to EVs in 10 years will not alleviate this if countries like China, India and from Africa mine and burn even more fossil fuels as they industrialized further and lift even more people out of poverty.

Obviously.

Good thing the biggest market for EVs right now is… China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car_use_by_country#/m...

Also a good thing that the cheapest sources of energy now is renewables.

> it's been scientifically proven that the planet's climate cannot sustain the emissions from the mining and manufacturing efforts of transitioning all ICE cars on the road today to EVs.

False, and I still have no idea why you believe this.

Hint: All of those things can be electrified. When the electricity itself is carbon-friendly, they can also be carbon-friendly.

The mining can even be a carbon sink, thanks to how weathering works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_weathering

> You can't have both with our current lifestyle and trajectory.

Not with that attitude you can't. Good thing we're still inventing new solutions that can feed and house people without climate damage.

> EVs alone won't save us from this.

"Alone" is not, and never has been, part of my claim.

"Help" is.

Re: Ford hits the brakes on $12B in EV spending

#53
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Also, the main damage from cars isn't the manufacturing — over the vehicle lifetimes, the emissions from literally burning fuel far out-mass the manufacturing emissions. Again, personal vehicle ICE fuel burning is only a relatively small part of global emissions (about 9%). People are just fixate on it because it happens in their back yard so that's all they see everyday as the main polluter instead of the giant min…

> Again, personal vehicle ICE fuel burning is only a relatively small part of global emissions (about 9%) And two of your examples — air travel, shipping industry — are 1.9 and 1.7%: https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector And the correct reduction is 99.9%. Which means that everything except cars would be 8.9% too much, assuming your 9% is correct (seems a bit much given all road transport was 11.9%, but…

>False, and I still have no idea why you believe this.

OK, then I guess I'll have to take your word for it and dismiss what scientists say. /s

>All of those things can be electrified.

Nope not even closely, you're juste delluding yourself with copium, hopes and dreams. And plus, electrical machines don't magically appear out of the sky but you need to manufacture them (often in dirty ways and processes in 3rd world countries) using materials mined from the ground with polluting processes.

You want a clean planet with exclusively clean products? Then you need to assure not that your end product (the EV) is clean but also that your entire supply chain from the ore extraction to the recycling of the end-of-life product is clean, and we're incredibly far away from that with no signs that it's measurably improving.

>Also a good thing that the cheapest sources of energy now is renewables.

That's why India and China have been buying Russian fossil fuels like crazy since the war made them cheaper? Again, you're only talking form a privilege wealthy westerner perspective who has abundant access to renewable energy, but you clearly have no idea what kind of dirty energy powers the reest of the world.

Re: Ford hits the brakes on $12B in EV spending

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but Ford just cancelled F150 lightning orders in the US & Canada again. How many production shutdowns are they going to deal with for quality issues per year? Also it's weird to be pushing EVs in areas where they aren't wanted (trucks, motorcycles). Harley Davidson just reported that their electric bike model sold 69 units globally in the last quarter of 2022...That's basically nothing. Their yearly goals are li…

For $35k, I would want an F150 lightning with 4wd and 4 doors. That would be a great value, and while not as capable as a non-electric truck, it would fit all of my needs. For $60k, I'll just buy a real truck.

Can you even find Ford trucks for $60k anymore?

Ford just raised prices _again_ on top of their dealers already adding insane markups without the brand curtailing that behavior. Plus everything they deliver to dealers seems to be optioned out the ass to the point where everything is $80-120k.

My truck-shopping friends (that being most people here in the southeast) are all swearing off Ford and buying used from other brands for way cheaper.

heck, Scotty Kilmer JUST did a video on this...

Re: Ford hits the brakes on $12B in EV spending

#55
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Again, personal vehicle ICE fuel burning is only a relatively small part of global emissions (about 9%) And two of your examples — air travel, shipping industry — are 1.9 and 1.7%: https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector And the correct reduction is 99.9%. Which means that everything except cars would be 8.9% too much, assuming your 9% is correct (seems a bit much given all road transport was 11.9%, but…

>False, and I still have no idea why you believe this. OK, then I guess I'll have to take your word for it and dismiss what scientists say. /s >All of those things can be electrified. Nope not even closely, you're juste delluding yourself with copium, hopes and dreams. And plus, electrical machines don't magically appear out of the sky but you need to manufacture them (often in dirty ways and processes in 3rd world c…

> OK, then I guess I'll have to take your word for it and dismiss what scientists say.

Or you could try citing them.

You know who doesn't say "it's been scientifically proven that XYZ"? Scientists are who don't say that. What scientists do say is things like "Both the underlying metallicity-specific star formation rate and the metallicity dependence of compact object formation, however, remain poorly understood (Chruślinśka 2022; Chruslinska & Nelemans 2019; Chruślinśka et al. 2023; van Son et al. 2022)". Because they know how to cite sources.

> your entire supply chain from the ore extraction to the recycling of the end-of-life product is clean

Yes, I know, that's what I'm saying we are developing towards.

You heard of metalysis? I know someone who did a PhD there about 15 years back. With enough electricity (see later point), getting metals from their ores isn't a big deal any more. https://metalysis.com/our-technology/#overview

> That's why India and China have been buying Russian fossil fuels like crazy since the war made them cheaper?

No, that's geopolitics.

The maximum pricing scheme that various rich western nations have promoted as a punishment for Russia was specifically chosen to be as annoying as possible to Russia, without interrupting supply. Apparently Russia is losing money on each unit they ship at these prices, but it's just close enough to break-even to stop them from deciding to save money by just closing their oil refineries.

Also, Russia's non-Western export capacity is rather more limited than they'd like, so "buying like crazy" is somewhat of an overstatement.

Also also, oil is useful for many things other than burning.

> but you clearly have no idea what kind of dirty energy powers the reest of the world.

On the contrary, I know exactly how dirty the world is. What you insist on not seeing is the rate of change. (And now I think I understand what you are: you're a status-quo bias personality, you genuinely can't see the situation changing).

What is: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...

How fast PV in particular is changing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics#/media...

Or if you prefer, a log-scale graph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics#/media...

Note the exponential. 19% compound growth at the moment, and this is a historical low. Even assuming it never goes back up, 19% is enough that the 2030s will go from supplying 36% of global electricity at the start of the decade to 200% at the end. As you may be aware, 200% is more than "all of it", which means some combination of the following three things will happen:

(1) we'll use more electricity, e.g. by electrifying things that aren't currently electric like cars and using metalysis instead of furnaces to turn [iron] oxides into [iron] (and etc. for each other element), and/or by powering people who don't currently get power.

(2) electricity will be cheaper

(3) we'll reduce the rate at which we build PV

Also, that's just PV, wind is also getting cheaper and deployment is speeding up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power#/media/File:Wind_en...

Re: Ford hits the brakes on $12B in EV spending

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For $35k, I would want an F150 lightning with 4wd and 4 doors. That would be a great value, and while not as capable as a non-electric truck, it would fit all of my needs. For $60k, I'll just buy a real truck.

Can you even find Ford trucks for $60k anymore? Ford just raised prices _again_ on top of their dealers already adding insane markups without the brand curtailing that behavior. Plus everything they deliver to dealers seems to be optioned out the ass to the point where everything is $80-120k. My truck-shopping friends (that being most people here in the southeast) are all swearing off Ford and buying used from other…

I maybe would buy a new Ford F250 with the 7.3l. Otherwise I'd get a Chevy 2500 if I was in the market for a truck. The F150/1500s just aren't reliable anymore, and they cost as much as a 250/2500.

Re: Ford hits the brakes on $12B in EV spending

#57
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hating the quote does not make it less true. 9 women may be able to make babies 9x faster than 1 woman, but they still cannot manage to make one in a single month. The quote is meant to point out that scaling is often limited by factors in addition to production capacity. Sometimes throwing money at the problem can solve it. Sometimes not. Sometimes there is only one person in the world, who is the rate limiting fact…

But it’s NOT the same problem! Producing an item in 1/9 the time is very different from producing them at 9x the rate. scaling production is generally not expected to do the former, only the latter. This analogy is only suitable for one off goods and projects. Not economic production capacity.

Scaling manufacturing of physical goods is never just one problem. Matryoshka dolls, remember? Let me know when you perfect that 1 month gestation period, I think there's a market for it.

Re: Ford hits the brakes on $12B in EV spending

#58
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany is pushing for ev too and Germany main industry is cars. We have bmw, VW, Mercedes etc here. A lot of people I personally know work for bmw. Your conspiracy doesn't make sense. No German politican would ever ty to hurt the German automotive sector. And we don't have that many it people we have a ton of German engineers

> Your conspiracy doesn't make sense. No German politican would ever ty to hurt the German automotive sector. The same German politicians that shutdown nuclear reactors making Germany more dependent on fossil fuels like coal?

The Ampel still exists of sod, FDP and green.

The green got there energy politics as promised.

This is not contraire to what I said.

Re: Ford hits the brakes on $12B in EV spending

#59
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your conspiracy doesn't make sense. No German politican would ever ty to hurt the German automotive sector. The same German politicians that shutdown nuclear reactors making Germany more dependent on fossil fuels like coal?

Neither coal nor nuclear is part of the German automotive sector.

[dead]

Re: Ford hits the brakes on $12B in EV spending

#60
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your conspiracy doesn't make sense. No German politican would ever ty to hurt the German automotive sector. The same German politicians that shutdown nuclear reactors making Germany more dependent on fossil fuels like coal?

The Ampel still exists of sod, FDP and green. The green got there energy politics as promised. This is not contraire to what I said.

[dead]
Post reply on HN