I drive an EV. I do not suggest that others drive an EV. It's the car for me, it might not be the car for you. Despite this, I have a friend that constantly engages in discussion with me on why I won't be able to convince her to get an EV.
I have never tried to convince anyone to get one! I'm not sure why she does this.
#EVs need ~30 lbs of cobalt, so the US needs millions of tons for the EV boom, which will continue to push 1000s of Black women, men, and children into pits and tunnels.
Of the 255,000 Congolese mining for cobalt, 40,000 are children. They might work for around $2USD/day.
No one knows how many have been killed in the mines.
The Congo has over 90x the amount of cobalt in the U.S., where #Indigenous people are exploited for it.
#China#BYD#EVs#USA: "“The Western markets did not democratize EVs. They gentrified EVs,” said Bill Russo, the founder of the Automobility Ltd. consultancy in Shanghai. “And when you gentrify, you limit the size of the market. China is all about democratizing EVs, and that’s what will ultimately lead Chinese companies to be successful as they go global.”
Inside a huge garage in an industrial area west of Detroit, a company called Caresoft Global tore apart a Seagull that its China office purchased and shipped to the U.S.
Company President Terry Woychowski, a former chief engineer on General Motors’ big pickup trucks, said the car is a “clarion call” for the U.S. auto industry, which is years behind China in designing low-cost EVs.
After the teardown, Woychowski, who has been in the auto business for 45 years, said he was left wondering if U.S. automakers can adjust. “Things will have to change in some radical ways in order to be able to compete,” he said."
Tesla is being sued by the Environmental Democracy Project, which alleges “ongoing failure to comply with the Clean Air Act” at the company’s assembly plant in Fremont, CA. The Bay Area Air Quality Mgt. Dist. previously said Tesla has allowed “unabated emissions” in Fremont. CEO Elon Musk is telling investors these days to think of the company “almost entirely in terms of solving autonomy.”
Having known a few people in my teens and 20s who lived in their VW buses, I've always considered these to be a more practical vehicle than most sedans (and certainly compared to SUVs). And now they are going electric!
Despite the rapid technology advances in #EVs, they still present safety challenges.
One of the inherent issues is the heaviness of EVs – meaning other vehicles bear the burden of absorbing more crash energy in collisions. This dilemma is central to the concept of “crash compatibility,” a well-established field of safety research.
Solutions include lightweight materials, more powerful sensing technologies and safety algorithms, improved seat belts and better airbags. https://theconversation.com/electric-vehicles-are-usually-safer-for-their-occupants-but-not-necessarily-for-everyone-else-223535
Read the wild email Tesla is sending to suppliers amid Supercharger chaos
Supercharger projects being cancelled, including halting rollout in the entire country of Australia, including sites that had already been subject to long-term leases and given the go-ahead for construction which will now be abandoned
This is truly one of the more baffling decisions I’ve seen in a long time. Tesla is a leader in charging infrastructure, to the degree that virtually every other carmaker is even adopting its standard.
Then Elon Musk laid off the entire Supercharger team.
I'm sure I'm not the only person in the world who has solar panels on their roofs who has wasted quite some time in the mornings watching the magic of the power coming on.
This smugness is matched by looking back at a bell curve graph of production for the day where you've used up almost everything that the panels have produced and yet drawn almost nothing from the grid.
Elon Musk is betting Tesla’s future on using self-driving fantasies to boost the share price instead of building a real car business. He just gutted the teams working on the Supercharger network (right as other companies are adopting it!) and new vehicles.
In 2021, Elon Musk said the government should end all EV subsidies. Yet new data shows Tesla received more money from Biden’s grants to expand EV charging networks than anyone else — $17 million, or 13% of all EV charging awards.
#Exxon CEO Darren Woods made a bold statement on Friday. #FossilFuels, he claims, are "not in decline" - despite markets & #EVs + decreasing transport sector #oil⛽️ demand painting a very different picture 📉https://buff.ly/3WkHhmr