Thank you to the Guardian

[cromwell]

Which is not something I often say.

But here's why.
Toyota are claiming to have made a truly massive step forward in electric car battery technology. One which may give a range of more than 700 miles and by refuelled in minutes.

So this is a great thing, right?
Not according to the Guardian, whose editorial is here.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... -transport

According to the Guardian, the car still needs to go. We will have to rely on public transport (ho ho, nice one).

This has revealled the true motivation behind the assault on car ownership and the endless promotion of bicycles and walking.
There are people involved in the green movement for whom it's not about the climate, it's about control.

Their control over you.
That car on your driveway is great. You can go within reason, anywhere you want at any time you want. It is the greatest expansion of personal freedom that was ever invented; and people like the Guardian writer can't bear that.

It's about control.

[Workingman]

The article reads like a lift from a US publication with the use of "transportation", "sunsetting" and just a few nods to the UK - London to Milan etc. There's even a hint of 15 minute cities when "rethinking urban planning" gets mentioned.

The bit I did find interesting is this, whatever it means:

Doubling down on its near-monopoly over the surface transportation system would lead to a future of ever-worsening congestion...

In Leeds the congestion in recent years has increased, not by the number of cars rising, but by the reconfiguring of roads and traffic lights to accommodate bike riders and pedestrians. We have miles of rarely used cycle lanes on the main routes now separated from the main carriageway with steel bollards. And traffic lights now keep all routes on red to allow pedestrians to cross, even when there are none there. Then there are the humps, bumps, speed cushions and chicanes used to enforce 20MPH speed limits on roads that do not warrant them.

[Suff]

Toyota lives in the same lala fantasy land as those who believe we can save our progeny by creating magical solutions to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere.

Toyota have one pitiful BEV with poor range and slow charging speeds. Meanwhile they tell us, alternately, that Hydrogen is the way to go and that they are going to produce a vehicle which goes forever and sucks power like an industrial cyclone hoover.

Toyota is toast. Their EV fleet is the only thing that sucks and it isn't power.

Watch this space.

[Workingman]

Yes, Suff, we know that you do not like hydrogen, Toyota, the Nissan Leaf, VW etc. and are in love with Tesla and St Elon.

But get this. In the early days Li-ion batteries were a bit crap - good for a digital watch but not much else - It took loads of money and research (not St Elon's) to get them where they are today - environmentally damaging, but not quite as crap

So, go read up where solid-state batteries are now and where they could be in the Li-I timeframe.

[cromwell]

Toyota lives in the same lala fantasy land as those who believe we can save our progeny by creating magical solutions to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere.

It's not the tech that interests me Suff, it's the Guardian's reaction to the news.

Because imo some of the people in the Green movement aren't green at all. They are people who want to control other people and see the climate issue as a chance to do it.
So instead of welcoming a possible development to reduce pollution from cars, they recoil from it.

Because their plan is not to reduce pollution from cars, but to reduce the number of people who actually have cars.
To fundamentally alter the way that we live, to end the era of personal motorised transport.

[Workingman]

Well the eco-warriors certainly shy away from global population and the raping of the environment and its finite resources to produce endless tat to keep us all happy.

I am just reading about the extraction of nickel in Indonesia. It is expected to rise by 65% by 2030 for use in stainless steel, mobile phones and electric car batteries. The country has signed deals worth billions of dollars with international producers keen to invest in processing plants and mines.

Green and net-zero my fundament, not when there's money to be made.

Personalised transport, as we have it today, is probably one thing that will have to change. It is simply too polluting and / or resource hungry, as are flying and holidays. The truth that everyone body swerves is that the planet is running out of things very quickly. I have two grand children and I worry what their lives will be like when they get to be my age. Hell on Earth springs to mind.

[Suff]

It's not the tech that interests me Suff, it's the Guardian's reaction to the news.

Because imo some of the people in the Green movement aren't green at all. They are people who want to control other people and see the climate issue as a chance to do it.
So instead of welcoming a possible development to reduce pollution from cars, they recoil from it.

Just stop Oil and all those idiots, certainly.

But if you follow battery tech obsessively and know about silicon nanowires and silicon impregnated carbon nanotubes grown to do the task you will know that there are dozens to hundreds of technologies competing to bring down the cost of li, increase the range and reduce chare times. Every one of them is either in lab or looking for funding to go production scale.

Toyota produce 10m vehicles a year. For any technology to be useful to them at scale, it need to be in volume production right now.

It takes 2-5 years to produce a high volume battery factory for 500,000 vehicles. Toyota would need 20 of them.

How many are they making at scale today?

Zero.

2 years is a Tesla delivery figure, 5 years is legacy auto.

You have to know what the options are, what is being done and who is doing it in order to understand what line of BS you are being fed.

Ford is looking g for 2.5m EV by 2027.GM is looking at about the same in 2030. Stellantis will go 100% electric in 2028 and is building 4 battery factories. Ford is building 2, GM, 3, BYD is looking to compete with Tesla and is building 4.

Tesla already has the largest LI battery factory in the US, has a second pilot plant, a third one in ramp in Texas and another which will go up in the Mexico factory.

Tesla uses CATL batteries in China and some BYD.

When reading these articles if you do not know the scale and time lines for delivery then you can be blindsided with a good line of BS.

Toyota is acting like the ICE vehicle market will continue for them for the next 2 decades. Japan, it seems, didn't get the memo. Yes the CEO of Toyota has just changed and early, but the game of catch up from them will not work on rhetoric.

[Workingman]

Currently the global production of cars is approximately 66 million and that does not include commercial vehicles - large vans and HGVs. By 2030, when ICEs are about to die, that number, at present increases, will reach about 98 million. If they go BEV that's a lot of aluminium, copper and iron, as well as rare and precious metals such as cobalt, nickel, vanadium and manganese to be found and produced just for the batteries.

But not to worry, the BEV zealots will just ignore those problems and be along to enthral you with tales of silicon nanowires, silicon nanoparticles, tin nanoparticles and carbon nanotubes. All still in the lab or R&D but suddenly they are going to instantly fly out like the cavalry and save us all. Hoorah! Strange that the technologies they do not like will take forever and a day to come online. BS or what?

Then you look at the production figures given:

Ford is looking for 2.5m EV by 2027.GM is looking at about the same in 2030. Stellantis will go 100% electric in 2028

Even with Tesla and BYD that's well short of Toyota's current vehicle production.

And get this....


That's some production push needed to meet the "save the world by 2030" ballcocks.

And did you know that BYD stands for Build Your Dream.... more like build your nightmare!

[Suff]

Even with Tesla and BYD that's well short of Toyota's current vehicle production.

And get this....


That's some production push needed to meet the "save the world by 2030" ballcocks.

You don't follow Tesla do you?

The Tesla goal is 20m vehicle sales annually by 2030.

What is required for that? 50% exponential growth over the long term horizon (not 50% each year regardless of the last), from 2020 to 2030.

How many vehicles does Tesla need to sell in 2023 to meet that goal? 1.67m.

How many vehicle sales has Tesla set for 2023? 1.8m vehicles.

How many vehicles has Tesla sold in 1h 2023? 900k.

What is the BYD target? Sell more EV than Tesla.

Where is BYD on that track? In China they are killing it. Now they are buying Ford and GM factories in Europe and the US respectively.

40m EV or more by 2030? It is a target, may be a dream, but the little people like Toyota will be crushed. The ants like BMW will be spread over the sole of the giants.

Watch this space!

[Workingman]

You don't follow Tesla do you?

No, I am not OCD about it.

So Tonka has a "goal" of 20 million EVs by 2030, does it? Or is it an aim or a dream?

Well whatever it is it's an extra 260, 000 tonnes of cobalt (mined by children) and 370,000 tonnes of manganese a year. Then there is the lithium and, my God, the nickel and its destruction as seen here. Look at that graphic of the mines, and that is only one area (1,000 sq miles) in one country, but they are poor and it's thousands of miles away so no problem, eh?

Suff, how you can ignore these things is beyond me, yet you do it constantly.

I wonder what you would be saying if huge reserves of nickel or cobalt were discovered in your neck of the woods and your rivers and drinking water turned to brown sludge and with young local kids working 12 hour shifts

Pas de probleme, peut-être, ou silence! I think not.