Britain must stand united

Where almost half the flags are not Union Jack but the English flag. 🤣🤣🤣
Such a bunch of morons.

No, lithium batteries were developed over several decades before they reached a level where they became stable and affordable enough for mass consumption.
There is not a single point that is the driver of such trends, but I’d say that the research resulting in batteries becoming good enough for ever more use cases, is a major part of what drives adoption.
And on that point I’d agree that China is ahead. With BYD and CATL leading the development of better car batteries.
But they are not engines drivings nations away from fossil fuels. Because for instance Europe has been working on that shit since the 70’s.
Sure China is a part of it now, I’ll even admit they are a significant part, but they were not at any point in time the driver for it, and Japan and Korea weren’t either.

It would be more fair to say Denmark was a driver for the adoption of wind turbines, because Denmark was the country that invested money in developing the technology basically from scratch, to enable the big MegaWatt turbines we have today. Something that was developed in Denmark when most didn’t care to, and the few that did failed to make commercially viable turbines. And the Danish company Vestas now also has the world biggest wind turbine production.
But although Denmark were a driver, they aren’t anymore, because wind turbines can now and are developed and built all over the world.

The same with batteries, batteries are developed and built all over the world, with Samsung, Panasonic, LG also being reputable producers of batteries, China is just the biggest production hub, and on some types of batteries they are ahead. But China is not the engine driving this industry, it could be said to be mostly increased demand for electric cars, and electric cars is not a country.

China is driving its adoption

That’s exactly what I responded to. And as I’ve already written, China being the #1 manufacturer on volume doesn’t drive adoption any more than Toyota making the most cars are driving adoption of cars.
Adoption is very much driven by the technologies that have made the technology feasible to begin with. And that was for decades mostly driven by Europe.

It’s a nonsense way to understand the adoption of green energy sources which have many other factors than slightly cheaper production in China driving adoption.
As I mentioned, there are other countries making panels that are competitive, obviously if China stopped making panels, those makers would scale up their production to replace it.
For instance Hyundai are very competitive, and offer 25 year warranty against typically 10 years for Chinese panels. They have very low degradation and cost less than 10% more than a typical Chinese panel.
There are perfectly good options without China.

What’s driving adoption is the fact that the technologies have matured and become affordable, which would have happened anyway.

There is no doubt that adoption is NOT driven by China, and very very obviously not by China alone. Anymore than adoption of oil was driven by Saudi Arabia.

I’m not saying China isn’t a major factor, and in the lead in some ways, especially on batteries.
I’m just saying that being in the lead doesn’t necessarily make you thee driving factor.
Which I thought I gave a good example on with Toyota. Where it’s easy to see how ridiculous the statement is.

Yes the claim of the article is obviously false regarding wind turbines, I’m not denying they make their own developments, maybe some are necessary to avoid older patents IDK. But there is no way they are the driver of this development, just like Japan or Toyota was never the driver of development of better cars. Even if arguably they made the best and the most cars.
On batteries Tesla was actually first with their MEGA factory, and although China is now the biggest producer of solar panels and batteries, they were never the driver behind this development.

The drivers were technologies first developed in the west, and China just became the main production hub of batteries and panels. if it hadn’t been China, it would still have been developed and produced at a growing pace for an ever growing market anyway.

And last year, more than 90 percent of wind and solar projects commissioned worldwide produced power more cheaply than the cheapest available fossil-fuel alternative,

This is NOT because of China, All the technologies for the multi MegaWatt wind turbines were developed in Europe, and the race to make them cheaper per Watt also clearly is more due to European innovation than Chinese cheap production. There has been heavy competition among western producers pressing the price ever lower per kW. This has been done by making larger more efficient turbines, where Europe has been clearly in the lead for decades.

On that front China merely joined the race, and the European Vestas remain the world largest manufacturer of wind turbines in the world, and AFAIK Siemens is the worlds largest manufacturer of offshore wind turbines.

China is of course a formidable competitor, but they have in no way surpassed us on wind turbines yet.

On Solar China is making massive amounts of good cheap panels, but both Germany and South Korea make better panels, that aren’t that much more expensive.

“China is the engine,” said Richard Black, the report’s editor. “And it is changing the energy landscape not just domestically but in countries across the world.”

Nope, that’s just not true, China is a major participant/player now, but the engine that drives green energy was started in Europe way before China became a major factor.

I know from personal experience, because we’ve been working on that shit since the 70’s, and made very good progress on it way before China became a factor.

To say China is driving this because they are big today, is like saying Toyota is behind the success of cars around the world. Both are nonsense, Toyota make good cars but that does not make them the “engine” of car production.
China also make good products for green energy, but that doesn’t make them the engine. This development would very obviously have happened without China, because it was already in full swing before China was a factor.

Orban is living in his own delusions, far removed from reality. EU has clearly helped create both prosperity and better conditions for the populations for the former Warsaw pact countries that have joined freely and can leave again freely if they wish.
But Hungary could have been much better off, if Orban had worked constructively within EU instead of opposing EU, to undermine democracy in Hungary. And if Orban had worked with EU instead of Russia, Russia is an obvious enemy to Europe including Hungary. Does Orban really want Hungary to become a vassal of Russia again, like Belarus is?
Why Hungary would want to work with Russia that has a long history of oppressing Hungary and other Warsaw countries is very weird to put it mildly. Oppression that has even often included military intervention into countries that were supposed to be allied. Hungary wants to enter that sphere again?
EU on the contrary has a long history now of working to NOT oppress smaller member states, but work to the advantage of all. Based on freedom and voluntary participation.
Working with Russia is inviting chaos to Hungary in so many ways it’s ridiculous.
So Orban warning about chaos with EU is pure projection, because he is actually speaking of the results of his own policies of working with Russia and against EU.
And Hungarians voting for Orban are voting for a return to the conditions as a vassal nation under the Soviet Union.
If Hungarians elect Orban again, there’s a real chance Hungary can be thrown out of EU!

Countries and voluntary organizations have tried and are trying to help, but Israel is actively preventing help from coming through.
Greta Thunberg and others have been very active in trying to demonstrate that, and create publicity about it.
The level of evil by Israel and Netanyahu is clearly matching the evils of Hitler.
And yes the world needs to step in to stop Israel from actively performing genocide in Gaza.

Good on Argentina following up on this.

Or maybe he is just pretending, because how could anyone no matter how stupid have expected otherwise from the policies of Trump? You’d have to be a MAGA republican to be that stupid!

Oh wait…

How surprising, countries working together against a country that is clearly trying to undermine them!

Even fucking Europe and Canada are working closer together with China now, because Trump forced them to.
Trump is a traitor and a Russian asset, he is just pretending to be upset by the results of the policies he was instructed to by Russia!

I’ don’t condone torture, but in this case, my protest would probably accidentally arrive too late.
Tolerance towards intolerance feeds intolerance.

Paradox of tolerance:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

during the 1970s and 1980s.

That sounds a bit extreme IMO, you can’t really claim a fair trial when judging someone on the standards of half a century later.
AFAIK Brazil was a totalitarian shit show at the time, and that was not because of VW.

It’s not too strict, it’s the law, and has been practiced without problems for decades, and other brands don’t have the issues Tesla has.

But your comment is EXACTLY what Tesla claimed, and even filed a complaint claiming regarding the steering. A complaint that was of course dismissed.
But AFAIK even Tesla never claimed rust on the brakes isn’t a safety issue.

It’s not a serious saftey issue at the level that would fail the car.

That’s weird statement when it clearly does, and you even claimed yourself it was the main reason for failing for Tesla.

I tried to find an article with better info, but I couldn’t, the info was available a couple of months ago. Search engines just wont give me those articles.
But IMO it doesn’t really matter if it’s rust on the brakes, the brakes need to work in emergencies where regenerative braking is not enough.
You don’t get a pass for not using your brakes much in your daily driving. It’s a serious safety issue and not just some minor thing that isn’t important.
Tesla not having this under control shows that Tesla is not a good brand for safety.

Tesla wasn’t going to be last if not for this rust issue.

First that is simply wrong, did you not see the biggest point of failure is in the steering? The brakes are not what makes Tesla worst, it’s the general shitty quality and service.

Tesla wouldn’t be last if they didn’t have any faults… duh.

Tesla is so much worse than everybody else in several regards, remove the brake problem and they would still be worst. Also it’s completely irrelevant, if Tesla has this issue more than other cars it makes them worse. You might as well say they aren’t bad except for the wheels falling off all the time.
Other brands exist under the same physical laws, but don’t have as many issues as Tesla, also these issue for Tesla are not isolated to Denmark, in Germany we see a similar picture, Tesla has higher failure rate than any other brand.

Tesla’s high failure rate is primarily due to rust

This is not true, although it is a common point of failure for Electric vehicles, it is not the primary fault, slack in the steering is.
Rust on the brakes is a very well known issue for all electric cars. Problem for Tesla is that the first security check coincide with the last service check under warranty.
Regulation regarding rust on the brake discs is very clear, and trivial to fix. So why wasn’t it fixed?
There was also a common issue with suspension.

No matter what or why a 30% failure rate is insane. The best cars (from VW) have only just above 2% failure rate!!

Either way on an EV, you need to use your brakes on occasion

This is true, and has been widely publicized here in all newspapers, so mostly any owner of an electric car should know that.
But more obviously the Tesla service should absolutely have known, and fixed the issue before the mandatory safety check.
Again no other car is even close to as bad as Tesla.

OK you make a lot of good points here that I absolutely agree with.
The only difference is in the final conclusion, and I admit you may be right.
Notice I never claimed fuel cells is the future, only that they might make a comeback.
But I agree that your points show that the chance of that is slimmer than I thought.

Conversion always costs energy. There is no way around it.

Why try to explain something to me I already stated is the main problem?
Which is why I stated it will not be until we have huge amounts of free surplus energy to make the hydrogen from renewables .

We already have such surplus pretty frequently here, where the price of electricity goes below zero. Such periods could be used to generate hydrogen at nearly zero cost. But I guess these periods aren’t frequent and predictable enough yet. It requires enormous scale to be profitable.

But as I write, it’s all probably moot, because the conditions will arrive too late, so batteries will probably have taken over everything. But maybe in planes because of the better weight energy ratio, and maybe also in trucks to be able to have higher load capacity. And as I write instead of fuel cells, the hydrogen can be used directly in jet engines, but also in an only slightly modified ICE car.

Disregarding the problems you describe there are actually hydrogen fuel cell cars on the roads, that have been sold commercially and been available since 2021.
For instance the Toyota Mirai:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Mirai

So kind of weird to claim a product that is actually available now, isn’t possibly feasible in a future where it can have basically free fuel!
It probably boils down to which form is cheapest to create AND store, hydrogen in containers or electricity in batteries. Batteries will always be more expensive than a container, but hydrogen has way greater loss. So it’s not an obvious calculation with one solution that fit all cases.