“Quite frankly, demand has not been as strong as what we would like,” said Rakesh Aneja, head of eMobility at Daimler Truck North America…
Battery-electric trucks cost about three times as much to purchase as a diesel rig…Ryder, using load and route data from 13,000 vehicles it operates on behalf of customers, recently analyzed the annual operating expenses of battery-electric commercial trucks and found sharply higher costs compared with traditional, diesel-powered rigs.
LOL, Bob!
Seems to me that
You are grousing about
Grousing about the cost being a
Waste of time.
3rd order grousing… to Paul merely emphasizing that costs of controlling greenhouse gases are an “Is what it is” rather than a political or economic or personal preference matter.
Are we serious about addressing climate change? Or are we merely coming up with excuses while we stall and delay? (And once again build our fortunes and leave it for future generations to deal with?)
Some are. However, many choose to ignore it because it is not “free”. So they try to avoid it during their lifetimes–and pass the bill on to to future generations.
To repeat the ‘iron law of climate policy’:
When policies on emissions reductions collide with policies focused on economic growth, economic growth will win out.
Costs are not irrelevant; they shape what gets done and how quickly/slowly things get done. In another field, think about why California doesn’t have a single-payer health care system. The answer: costs.
Why have China and India massively expanded their fleets of coal power plants? They’re not stupid.
Why is Hertz selling off tens of thousands of EVs? Costs.
It is well know that developed countries produce most of the greenhouse gases. Yes, when developing countries copy our proven technologies, the problem worsens.
Convincing developing countries to use cleaner technologies is a step in the right direction. But that does not change the fact that developed countries are major contributors and need to do more.
This has to be mandated by the national government. Without that nothing will be accomplished.
Improvement cannot be measured by accounting. But the improvement in quality of life is enormous.
This week we’ve seen a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs.
Buoyant electric car sales are a must if we’re to hit our climate targets. But EV sales in the West are down and if governments want them to recover it may have to be at the expense of their own economies…
China is also making massively more EVs than its domestic market needs – it could easily flood the U.S. and European markets with cheap cars if they weren’t held back by tariffs.
Here is the dilemma for European and U.S. politicians. They want cheaper EVs to facilitate the climate transition, but not at the cost of undermining their own car manufacturers – the likes of Ford and Volkswagen – and local jobs.
In fact, the talk is actually of raising tariffs and other trade barriers on imports to keep out ultra-competitive Chinese EVs.
Deadly serious.
What better way to green the economy than by preventing access to the world’s cheapest sources of EVs, lithium batteries, solar panels etc. via tariffs?
Thereby forcing US businesses and consumers to pay whatever fancy prices local manufacturers can charge while hiding under the increasingly generous skirts of government protection from competition
Chinese manufacturers will have plants in the US, which will mean they can sell the cars “Made in USA”. BYD makes their own batteries for their
EVs, so those would also be “Made in USA”.
