• Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      The tariffs were explicitly to protect them. To prevent them from having to compete. We’re about to eat a lot of shit.

          • buzz86us@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            The issue I’m seeing here is that there isn’t anything to protect legacy auto does not make a product that is remotely comparable

  • dropped_the_chief@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    We’re all going to fry in old age. Our children are going to become sterile. Who tf knows what’s going to happen to whatever ppl make it past that.

  • unreasonabro@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Now that we’ve trained the whole world in american-style corporate criminality, we’re gonna pull the rug out from them and reveal ourselves to be the good guys! Right? Right, guys?

  • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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    6 months ago

    is that purely because they can’t make them well or is there another reason?

    honestly the japanese EV ive been in felt decent?

    • TassieTosser@aussie.zone
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      6 months ago

      I know Toyota is still ragging on EVs because they invested a lot into hydrogen tech and want that to be the next big thing instead. But I didn’t know Honda, Mazda and Suzuki also under-invested.

      • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
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        6 months ago

        I don’t really understand the hatred for hydrogen honestly.

        It seems like a great tech. There are huge hydrogen facilities being built in Western Australia to crack hydrogen from sea water.

        • OpenPassageways@lemmy.zip
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          6 months ago

          I’ll layer on to the other replies which are spot on…

          One reason I’ve soured on hydrogen is that it’s overall much less efficient than battery as an energy storage mechanism.

          This is a really in depth article about a study that found that “well to wheel” efficiency of battery EVs was 70-80% and with hydrogen it’s 25-30%.

          I was initially excited about hydrogen as energy storage for renewable sources, but battery tech has improved and is improving.

          Also, one of the major advantages of a BEV for me is the ability to charge at home, possibly from energy generated by my own panels. Even if there were solutions for me to generate my own hydrogen, I’d rather lose 20-30% of that energy with a BEV than lose 70-75% with a FCEV.

          • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
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            6 months ago

            I’ve provided a rebuttal for the other replies which you might find interesting.

            In a scenario where you’re considering using roof-top solar to produce hydrogen for your car then yes, the inefficiency of cracking hydrogen from water makes it unappealing.

            The thing is, I don’t think most of the world has access to roof-top solar and the portion that does will diminish as population and population density increases.

            If you consider for example this project in Western Australia covering 15,000km2 it makes a lot more sense. The land (and associated sun light) is practically free. Hydrogen is a far more cost effective method of energy storage to get the energy from middle-of-nowhere-west-aus to market.

            I guess one way to look at it is that hydrogen is a better option if the cost of the solar energy is less than a third of what it would be if you produced it nearby.

            • taladar@sh.itjust.works
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              6 months ago

              Counterpoint, most of the world does not have access to “middle of nowhere” regions with lots of sunlight, that is just Australia and a few places near major deserts.

        • ulterno@lemmy.kde.social
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          6 months ago

          It probably has to do with some of the engineering problems with containing hydrogen.
          It definitely has a lot to do with influential people bandwagoning onto Elon Musk et al. trashing EVs

          • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
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            6 months ago

            Every tech has problems.

            “Oh we couldn’t possibly make an electric vehicle because there’s nowhere to recharge it”

            There are problems storing hydrogen but we’ve been working on mitigating those problems.

            Australia has $230b worth of hydrogen projects on the board. Do you think no one involved in any of those projects has realised that it’s not possible to store hydrogen?

            • ulterno@lemmy.kde.social
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              6 months ago

              Do you think…

              No I’m not thinking about that.
              I’m just trying to reason between public sentiment and over here, trying to say that public sentiment has less to do with actual technical viability and more to do with random comments from influential people.

              There are actually, many directions in which people are trying to find ways to make the H2 storage viable for specific applications…

            • taladar@sh.itjust.works
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              6 months ago

              Do you think no one involved in any of those projects has realised that it’s not possible to store hydrogen?

              You say that as if it is completely ridiculous but have you seen how many companies jumped onto impractical technologies like the hyperloop or self-driving cars or even replacing half their workforce with LLM-based AIs?

              • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
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                6 months ago

                Who jumped into the hyperloop?

                Self driving cars are going to be worth infinite money. Great investment.

                Sure some companies were over-exuberant about LLMs, but not to the same scale of national infrastructure we’re talking about.

                Failed investments are not evidence that all investments will fail, but large investments are an indicator of economic viability.

        • zagaberoo@beehaw.org
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          6 months ago

          It is great tech, but there are serious downsides too.

          • storage and handling: Hydrogen is a tiny atom, so it leaks like nobody’s business. Even liquid hydrogen is terribly low-density which makes pretty much a hard limit on storage density, unlike battery tech which can at least hypothetically dramatically improve. Pressure vessels suck. They have to be crazy sturdy and roughly spherical which places major design limitations on vehicles that use them.
          • distribution: EVs can limp by on sparse fast charging stations and home charging while better infrastructure builds out. Electrical supply is already ubiquitous. Who’s going to want a hydrogen vehicle (which you can absolutely already buy, nobody’s stopping you in the US at least) with so few fueling options? The upfront investment to bootstrap a market with hydrogen stations to the point of even competing with crappy EV charging is enormous.
          • no onboard energy recovery: Regenerative braking is an incredible benefit on its own.
          • industry synergy: EV manufacture benefits from tons of other industries investing in battery tech. The tide lifts all boats.

          There are solutions as with any tech, but the transition picture with hydrogen is a lot lot worse than EVs. The least worst option tends to win.

          • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
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            6 months ago

            I don’t have a good understanding of the storage and handling aspect, other than to say I think most of the leakage is from embrittlement, for which the primary defense is ceramic coatings, or periodically baking the pressure vessel. That is to say it seems like a manageable problem. Design limitations are also manageable IMO. Ok it’s unfortunate it can’t be made into any shape like batteries but it’s also not significantly worse than a fuel tank.

            For distribution, of course there’s no network if no one is driving hydrogen cars. It’s not that much of a leap to imagine that gas stations will start selling hydrogen surely.

            Regenerative braking is possible for HEVs. The Toyota Mirai has it.

            I don’t really follow you with industry synergy. Like people are using batteries so batteries are best? What if we hit peak Lithium (or China puts the squeeze on)? In that case it would be better to have an alternative up your sleeve.

            the transition picture with hydrogen is a lot lot worse than EVs.

            That may be your opinion but I’m not convinced. Japan and Australia are going all in on Hydrogen. I don’t know much about this, but it seems like there’s plenty of smart people who believe it’s viable enough to invest entire countries economic futures on.

            • zagaberoo@beehaw.org
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              6 months ago

              None of the points you make are wrong, it’s just a lot more uphill for hydrogen looking at the total picture. With almost every issue there is a way forward for hydrogen, but EVs are already significantly farther along the curve. It’s hard to overcome that kind of snowballing. Only time will tell!

        • psud@aussie.zone
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          6 months ago
          1. Almost all hydrogen is made from fossil fuels, it’s much cheaper than green hydrogen, so you can guess what people would fuel their hydrogen cars with
          2. Electricity to hydrogen to electricity is really wasteful, you get less than a third the energy than you would if you went electricity to battery to electricity
          3. It’s really difficult to store and transport, it is very very low density. Being the smallest atom hydrogen can leak from practically any container or pipe, but that doesn’t compare to (2) above

          I think Toyota only promoted hydrogen because they knew it would give internal combustion more time. Toyota are really good at internal combustion engines

          • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
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            6 months ago

            Almost all hydrogen is made from fossil fuels,

            Presently yes. It’s a by-product of natural gas production. There hasn’t been much of a market for it. In Australia there’s $230b of green hydrogen production projects on the table. Just one of which in Western Australia is going to produce 3.5m tonnes of green hydrogen per year.

            Electricity to hydrogen to electricity is really wasteful,

            Yes but electricity transport is very wasteful. There’s plenty of sun in Western Australia, falling in desert areas where land for solar arrays is practically free.

            It’s really difficult to store and transport,

            There’s problems yes, but the industry believes these are solvable problems. Toyota is the largest vehicle manufacturer in the world. Japan has several other very large vehicle manufacturers. They’re all betting on hydrogen. They’ve invested $2.3b in a hydrogen supply chain which is already shipping hydrogen.

            I think Toyota only promoted hydrogen because they knew it would give internal combustion more time.

            Hydrogen doesn’t provide power through “internal combustion”. A hydrogen fuel cell produces energy by running hydrogen over a catalyst which produces water and electrical energy.

      • Baphomet_The_Blasphemer@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Toyota may be cranky about EV’s beating out hydrogen, but they’re the company claiming to have invented some new solid state battery that has an 800 mile range and can charge 80% in ten minutes on a fast charger, which would be huge for the EV market.

      • Code_a@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        It isn’t about development investment. It’s about engines. Engines have long tail after sales profits from maintenance and parts. It’s why Toyota recently unveiled their ammonia fueled engine and declared electric vehicles are dead. Electric engines remove a ton of after sales profits in the form of servicing, spare parts and upgrades.

    • Maoo [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      6 months ago

      Japanese carmakers were trying to go with hydrogen fuel and did a big grift on their government to get it subsidized. I think the idea was that Japan would have a national disadvantage with EV production as they don’t have the material base for batteries but they could have an advantage with hydrogen.

      Those failed, or course. Now they’re a decade behind - there were only two Japanese EVs sold internationally just a few years ago.

    • kalleboo@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Japan doesn’t have enough electricity. After Fukushima, they lost most of their nuclear. The country is densely populated, and the parts that aren’t populated are covered in forested mountains, which all makes building the required amount of renewables very difficult. So today and in the future, Japan runs on coal and natural gas. So they make cars that run on hydrogen (which is more efficient to create out of their imported natural gas than burning the gas for electricity) and then sell those abroad greenwashed as “but you can produce hydrogen from green electricity!”

      • MrMakabar@slrpnk.net
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        6 months ago

        First of all EVs do not need that much power. We are talking something like 25% more electricity production for a country like Japan. Then Japan has rather a lot of onshore and even more offshore wind potential. Mountains are a problem, but hardly something which can not be overcome. Solar can easily be installed on roofs and mountains are even less of a problem.

        Also really important to say it. Combustion engines in cars are massivly inefficent. So an EV is still better for the climate, even if run with coal electricity. The other factor is that Japans population is falling. So they will need less power over the long term.

    • Wogi@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      The margins are thinner. There’s almost no resale value. Someone might buy a 60k car and eat the payments for a few years, knowing that they can sell it any time for a decent price.

      Buying a 60k EV is more like setting your money on fire. The car might be fine, great even, but it just won’t hold it’s value.

      • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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        6 months ago

        why is that? i don’t think lithium batteries degrade THAT fast?

        if the used marked had these dirt cheap evs in my country id probably be considering them. scratch that there is no way to charge them unless you live in a house over here, or unless you can use regular power outlets hahaha

        • psud@aussie.zone
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          6 months ago

          You can use regular power outlets if you drive less than a couple of hundred kilometres a day. I charge mine on a 15 amp 240V plug and it charges from 30% to full in about 10 hours. I charge about weekly

      • taladar@sh.itjust.works
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        6 months ago

        There’s almost no resale value.

        That is not an EV thing, that is a new, rapidly developing technology thing.

        • TrumpetX@programming.dev
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          6 months ago

          This is what I’ve done on my last 2 cars. First was a Leaf that I leased dirt cheap. The second was a used Tesla at more than 1/2 off. I’m looking at a truck now and finding amazing deals on the '23 F150 lightnings. I’d prefer a Rivian and I’m not quite ready to let my Tesla go, but soooooon.

          Someday, the deals will be harder to find, but for now take advantage!

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Those are reasons people don’t want to buy EVs, not reasons for companies to sabotage the change over.

        • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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          6 months ago

          People not wanting to buy them seems like an entirely normal reason to be lukewarm.about making and selling them.

          • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Not at 60,000 dollars they don’t. But too bad, between the IRA and the Chinese EV tax the administration is making sure we aren’t ever burdened with EVs cheap enough for mass adoption.

        • Crashumbc@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Companies give zero fucks about anything but money.

          Completely retooling for EVs is expensive with a lot of risk. And they’ll make less money afterwards…

      • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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        yup that was the one! and it wasnt even that old. which is why i’m confused, it seemed good enough.

        japan seemed to me like one of the places where great EVs would consistently be coming from.

          • psud@aussie.zone
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            6 months ago

            The good thing about modern batteries is that in a decade after they are new and are down to 80% capacity, if that’s not enough for you and you want to keep the car, a new battery will be cheaper and/or better

            Leaf owners got twice the range from new batteries compared to the car when it was new

  • StaySquared@lemmy.world
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    I’m only buying Toyota because it didn’t get sucked into the stupid EV craze. They have common sense. The U.S. doesn’t even have the electrical grid to currently manage many parts of the U.S., especially California. How tf are we going to introduce a product that will require electricity, straining the electrical grid further beyond its capacity? It’s fkin nonsense.

    Not to mention… the number of EVs (Teslas) that were having battery failures during the Winter in the midwest. And this last Winter was mild.

    • Clanket@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Been driving a VW ID4 for 3 years in Ireland. They’re lovely to drive. Zero battery issues, zero charging issues. The future is electric.

    • deafboy@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Nobody is going to upgrade the grid, if there is no prospect of increased demand.

      I’ve noticed that media tend to bitch equally about both surplus and shortage of certain commodities. Expensive power? Horrible! Cheap power? Catastrophe! That way the world seems even more depressing than it really is.

      • StaySquared@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        They should be upgrading the grid as the population and demand for electricity increases ahead of time. This is how it works in the tech world. We set the base for the upgrade and then commit to the upgrade with fall back / disaster recovery plan.

        • ChicoSuave@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Check when the last time an installed utility performed maintenance. Now you want them to turn things off while they put in new hardware? The only thing that will drive a business to make that kind of change is if the money is behind it, which will happen when EVs are much more prevalent.

          • baru@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Why would they need to turn anything off? That’s not how they expand capacity in the Netherlands. Why would it be needed?

          • StaySquared@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Not from all the profits made by all the people using electricity and paying for electricity? And electrical grid has redundancy. You can take down primary and secondary takes over temporarily.

      • Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
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        6 months ago

        Maybe one day when the libs work towards better public mass transportation, they’ll drive their EVs to own the libs.

    • bamboo@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      This is the most fear mongering nonsense I’ve read on Lemmy to date

        • Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
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          6 months ago

          I live in Canada, Québec more specific.

          There are Teslas EVERYWHERE here. There hasn’t been any widespread reports of failing batteries.

          So wherever you got your information, you might want to look somewhere else next time

          Also, you can keep your insults to yourself. Just because someone disagrees with you, doesn’t mean you can call them an idiot.

          • naturalgasbad@lemmy.ca
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            6 months ago

            Montreal?

            I think the OP has a point here: most of North America is distinctly not urban, distinctly not pedestrianized, and really spread apart. EVs take a substantial range hit in the cold, which might not be a problem in the Montreal area but is a bit more of an issue when living in bumfuck, Wisconsin.

            • Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
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              6 months ago

              I have relatives up in Saguenay where temperatures reached -50 last year. They have EVs and it’s not an issue. Sure the range and efficiency drops, but I wouldn’t say they break or become unuseable

          • StaySquared@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            It was common in the Midwest. And I just literally gave you the keywords to google search… there’s all the sources you need for the limited information I provided in my initial comment. Don’t like it? Kick rocks. You can’t re-invent reality.

            • Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
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              6 months ago

              You know what? I don’t like your attitude one single bit.

              I’m not arguing with you.

              Take a chill pill. Go outside and touch some grass.

          • StaySquared@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Also… lmao you’re such a liar.

            Google, “teslas stranded in quebec”

            And lol @ the gullible people upvoting you.

              • StaySquared@lemmy.world
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                6 months ago

                Thanks. I find that quite fascinating, honestly. How is it that in the Americas, EVs - or at least Teslas and their charging stations were failing but in Norway apparently this is not an issue they face.

                In the U.S. extreme heat and extreme cold is bad for the electrical grid. He have blackouts / brownouts and rolling blackouts during these extreme weather/temperature conditions.

            • Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
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              6 months ago

              First of all, you need to check your attitude. I don’t know why you’re being so aggressive.

              Second, I’m not a liar. I fucking live here and my cousin who has TWO Teslas for his family has never encountered any problems. I have other relatives who have other EVs from different makes who never had problems. The vast majority of people with EVs here, even in the northern regions where it gets fucking cold, don’t have problems.

              And third, Tesla’s get stranded everywhere, regardless of temperature or weather, more than any other EVs, mainly because they’re poorly built PoS cars.

        • IzzyScissor@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Gasoline is a finite resource, so at some point all gas stations will sell out of gas. Imagine how hilarious it will be when gas cars are stranded at gas stations because there’s nothing to fill them with.

          Lmao Dead.gfy

          • grue@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Gasoline is a finite resource

            No it isn’t. Crude oil is finite, but gasoline could be synthesized from other carbon and hydrogen sources (up to and including CO2 + H2O + solar power) if you really wanted to.

          • StaySquared@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            I agree, if the resource is out… there’s nothing you can do but to go to another gas station. However, gasoline in winter weather, even if it’s -30 degrees Fahrenheit, is still usable. You’re still able to pump the fuel into your vehicle. Where as with these charging stations cold temperatures is a nemesis.

            I have no beef with EVs, I just think we’re putting the cart before the horse. Like building a house with no foundation, it’s ludicrous.

        • Blaster M@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Bruh has never experienced the pain of getting an older carbureted car going in the cold.

    • ThunderWhiskers@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      The only reason Toyota is pushing back against EV is because they are so heavily invested in hydrogen powered vehicles, which isn’t going to happen.

      • Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
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        6 months ago

        Right. At the moment, hydrogen production is too costly, energy wise. If we could find an easier, better way to make it, that would change the game entirely.

        • baru@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Ah, the magical technological advancement that is only possible with hydrogen. While ignoring the advancements with EVs.

          At the moment, hydrogen production is too costly, energy wise.

          EVs are already way more efficient. You’re repeating things that have been discussed ages ago as something new.

          • Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
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            6 months ago

            Ok calm down, you don’t need to be condescending.

            I know that right now hydrogen production is really not efficient compared to simply recharging a battery. Producing hydrogen takes more electricity to produce from water electrolysis to fuel a car for the same range as it would take to simply charge a battery. This I am aware of. And that’s what I was implying in my previous comment.

            However, a small hydrogen cell powered car has at least twice the range of a similar sized EV. And also, it doesn’t take hours to recharge. Only a few minutes to refill the hydrogen tank.

            What I hope it that we one day find a way to efficiently produce hydrogen. Because I’d rather have to wait a couple of minutes to refuel on a long trip than having to stop for an hour every time I need to recharge.

            • Fisch@discuss.tchncs.de
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              6 months ago

              We have a more efficient way to produce hydrogen, which is using nagural gas. That’s obviously a bad idea. You can’t change the laws of physics, producing hydrogen from water and electricity just takes that much energy.

            • psud@aussie.zone
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              6 months ago

              But it’s an electric car with a much lower efficiency than one that uses batteries

              • Hypx@fedia.io
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                6 months ago

                A highly exaggerated claim. Once you factor in all of the challenges of grid energy storage and battery manufacturing, there’s likely to be little to no difference.

        • filister@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          You ever wondered why traditional carmakers are pushing so hard for hydrogen? That’s because they can still reuse those super inefficient combustion engines, which they perfected in the last 50-100 years, and which is serving as a big gatekeeper to newcomers.

          And with EV, they need to start from scratch like everyone else and they hate it.

        • ripcord@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Not just costly. Transportation and distribution is a big problem.

          With electrical we already have an entire distribution network, it just needs to be significantly (but gradually) upgraded.

        • grue@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          The entire premise of hydrogen is dumb.

          We would legitimately be better off combining it with CO2 to make synthetic gasoline and just use it with normal vehicles and infrastructure.

          • Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
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            6 months ago

            Dude, that produces methane, I think?. The whole point is to avoid combustion engines to prevent greenhouse gasses.

            The way hydrogen is being used is to work with hydrogen fuel cells which is electric.

            • grue@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              Carbon is what matters, but not in the way the hydrogen-pushers want you to think:

              • It doesn’t matter if the fuel has carbon in it, if the carbon is part of the short-term carbon cycle. Biodiesel, for example, releases no net greenhouse gases even though it has lots of carbon in it.

              • The dirty secret of hydrogen is that the vast majority of it is made by cracking fossil methane. (My previous comment about combining hydrogen with carbon to make synthetic liquid fuel charitably presupposed it was made the right way, by electrolyzing water with solar power, but most hydrogen production is not like that)

              In other words, anybody telling you that hydrogen is better for preventing climate change than biofuels – despite them containing carbon – is trying to hoodwink you.

          • psud@aussie.zone
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            6 months ago

            People don’t seem to get it. Electricity to hydrogen to electricity to motion is really, really lossy, and hydrogen leaks. It is worse than electricity to hydrogen to methane to power.

    • YaDownWitCPP@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      I think time will show Toyota has been very wise in this decision.

      EVs are not and may never be the right answer for everyone. Personally, I don’t ever plan on buying one.

  • VinnyDaCat@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Nothing surprising.

    EVs have been developed since the 90s at least as far as I know, and progress on them has been sabotaged at nearly every turn by the industry.

    • Baphomet_The_Blasphemer@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      I remember an early Saturn EV that was never sold, only leased so GM could maintain ownership of them. Even with a limited range, the drivers all loved them for commuting and running errands, and many tried to purchase them outright, which GM refused. Eventually, GM issued a mandatory recall for all the Saturn EVs, mothballed the project, and then they released the Hummer… made me sick even at the time.

      • VinnyDaCat@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Wasn’t aware of that. My thoughts were more towards the EV1, although I assume there were many others before that.

        • Resonosity@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          They’re referring to how Thomas Edison created the first electric vehicles back in the 1800s. They might have had a future until Ford introduced assembly lines. Then the rest is history.

          The EV1 was the first commercial development in the US following the World Wars, but even before then you had solar EVs being made for science and eclectic racing before then. Think of those weirdly shaped cars only made for 1 driver that have solar panels covering the entire body of the car.

          Funny thing is that we’re now seeing some commercial (or soon to be commercial) manufacturers add solar panels in the same way. Just look to Hyundai and Aptera.

  • Auzy@beehaw.org
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    6 months ago

    Here in Australia I busted someone with a locked Facebook profile who apparently worked at a ford reseller lying about Kias EV9.

    He did the whole laugh emoji and called me a stalker, but deleted his message a few minutes later (probably got a call from his employer who I tagged who was probably worried about the legal repercussions). I pointed out it was libel to lie like that

      • Auzy@beehaw.org
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        6 months ago

        Actually… Just noticed one talking shit about EV’s who works for Land rover.

        But yeah, I’ve realised the same people talking shit about EV’s, tend to be the same people causing issues for everyone… They always have a locked profile (because they troll that much), they’re often anti-vax/anti-science and they’re the kind of toxic a-holes who were buttheads in high school, and continue to be.

        I guarantee they also stocked meat and toilet paper during the pandemic, and tend to leave trash when 4wd’ing

      • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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        6 months ago

        in the world*

        car goes vroom vroom and stick shift goes shift shift is honestly a lot of fun in responsible amounts. it will be a battle to undo the carbrain propaganda in people, including myself.

        • doom_and_gloom@lemmy.ml
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          6 months ago

          There is a small market for kei cars, for private use and export. But the economies of scale required for making these top-sellers don’t exist without regulatory and tax reform in foreign markets.

          • redcalcium@lemmy.institute
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            6 months ago

            Maybe in the US, but in Asia, a huge portion of sales for Honda, Toyota and Suzuki are for their modified kei cars. Even so, they still don’t seem interested in releasing their electric models there. This gap is currently filled by Chinese EV manufacturers.

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        You say that as if Americans don’t want kei cars, but we do. Even rural off-roading Youtubers (who would probably be revealed to be ultraconservative if they didn’t keep their politics out of their videos) love things like Suzuki Samurais and Subaru Sambars.

        • doom_and_gloom@lemmy.ml
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          6 months ago

          They can usually be imported for private use, but kei cars aren’t street legal for most consumer purposes in the US. Which means they would be selling to a very small market. The very few that end up getting sold in Europe are usually modified versions designed for export is another limiting factor.

          • grue@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            but kei cars aren’t street legal for most consumer purposes in the US

            Speak for your own state.

    • Etterra@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Well to be fair, trying to sell anything with the word mini in it in America is it uphill struggle; if there’s one thing us Americans hate, it’s walking uphill.